TransformingYourCareerTransformingYourself

  Molly Jong-Fast does a comprehensive job of capturing how fame took control of her mother author Erica Jong. In memoir "How You Lose Your Mother," she gets down cold how mom could never unfame, even after the name recognition petered out.  In real time we might be bearing witness to how that curse might have overtaken visibly aging Bob Iger. He did extend the shelf life of extreme visibility by getting back the CEO job for a second time. But now out, he, as  FT notes, seems to be struggling to stay on the radar.  Meanwhile Barack Obama, Paul McCartney and already-over JD Vance have been busy with the objective of remaining in the current collective consciousness.  Innovative plaintiff law firms such as Motley Rice might file a public nuisance lawsuit on behalf of a society burdened with hangers-on.  But the good news is that there are those who manage to escape the curse. They leveraged fame to achieve noble or commercial goals and then were able to let ...

  In the US market, there's still the residue of controversy sticking to the Paul, Weiss brand. But no sign of that in the London market. That's a powerhouse operation that current partner/former chair Brad Karp helped build. Although that law firm had been in London since 2001, it was a small operation. Only recently did Karp, along with now current chair Scott Barshay, start paying serious attention to it.  Who, for example, in the legal sector doesn't recall that shock and awe Paul, Weiss  poaching of talent from Kirkland & Ellis' London office back in August and September 2023.  Now, as LawFuel documents, the raiding has become broader:  "Paul Weiss is the firm everyone else has been losing partners to. Since summer 2024 it has hired more than 20 partners from rivals, eleven of them from Kirkland, four from Linklaters and three from Clifford Chance ..." So dominant a presence Paul, Weiss has developed in the London legal scene that it's now consid...

Forget camp to improve tennis or violin skills. The kid isn't going to backpack through Europe. And no do-gooding in volunteer whatever. Ambitious parents, most of them upper-income, have their offspring get paid jobs during college and even high school. They have gotten the memo that paid work on resumes, no matter how menial such as cleaning pools or scooping ice cream, significantly increases the odds of being hired post-graduation. That's what employers want to see on a resume. Sure, good grades still count. But not as much as once assumed. And that assumption was always faulty any way. Unless the family was directing the kid to an elite law, medical or business school. On those kinds of career paths grades, along with performance on standardized tests, are the great deciders.  None of this about the power of paid work is new. That is, that real world work experience in high school and college predicts sustained success later on.  When I was a first-generation college c...

  We legal watchers always wondered why Williams & Connolly didn't use some version of the insanity defense on behalf of tech founder Elizabeth Holmes. After all, the tactics she leveraged to conceal a failing startup were, well, nutty. Had some type of mental aberration been explained to the jurors Holmes might have gotten off with less than the 135 month/$135 million payback sentence . Less promising seems the "extreme mental disturbance" strategy for Luigi Mangione, created by the law firm Agnifilo Intrater. Essentially the argument is that at the time of the alleged shooting of United Healthcare executive Brian Thompson the defendant was experiencing a mental breakdown. However, what seems obvious - premeditation and careful logistics including for a getaway - make proving that seem quite difficult. The guy appeared to be very much in control. Another reason that legal move might not be effective is the high level of stress in current society. Who among us doesn...

It's nothing new. Law firms chase star talent and pay premium compensation for those twinklers. Way back in 2021, Paul, Weiss' Brad Karp hammered in Bloomberg Law  the critical importance of that star power. Law firms which don't have the financial resources to recruit, hold and motivate them could stop growing, going out of business.  What is new are these current realities: the current frenzy of the chase and annual compensation reaching $40 million.  Well, equity partners who aren't stars will help pay for that payout. Law.com  predicts haircuts for some of them this year. There always had been a caste system in Big Law, a niche in which prestige is an embedded value. Never were all equity partners equal. It had been standard to de-equitize those not cutting it or even force them out. A strategy of shaming usually was effective to get them to exit.  Now, it's more brutal. Already the number of equity partners is being reduced. That's to ensure top dollar fo...

  Boomers remember that era before air-conditioning became standard . There were times when even in our capitalist max-productivity system it was too hot to work. At a Pennsylvania college - Seton Hill in rural Pennsylvania - the president gave all employees the day off.  By midcentury, projects the Union of Concerned Scientists , that could happen on a regular basis. About 32 million outdoor workers could lose out on $55 billion each year in wages. (College staff didn't lose pay.) Those out-of-work could range from landscapers to construction crews to farm laborers to those Manhattan dog walkers.  So, labor markets are not only being reconfigured by AI, extreme cost-efficiency and the end of management as we've known it. There are the implications of what some believe to be climate change. Yet, in coaching more and more clients tell me that "I want to work outside." A nation tires of The Box, that is, the office. Let's get outside, move around. In addition to wo...