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  From a business standpoint, those large law firms which opted to cut deals with the Trump administration did the right thing.  But through that horse trading and the negative responses which followed it became clear: Paul Weiss, Skadden, Willkie and Milbank (Kirkland & Ellis could be joining them) were a business. Not a special institution. Not a profession. The core value seems to be: To stay in business and to grow that business.  However, that has been pointed out before in recent exposes about Big Law such as "The Caesars Palace Coup" and "Servants of the Damned." And a brutal business it is.  In  Bloomberg Law , Roy Strom hammers that there should be no ambiguity about the absolute business identity. Decision-making is shaped by that reality. Financial performance bears that out: "Partners at the three firms who’ve settled ... on average, twice as much as the three firms who’ve chosen to fight executive orders targeting them in court. "In 2023, ...

The bright spot in knowledge work is the legal sector, at least right now. In March 2025 it added 3,700 jobs . And compensation levels, which are deflating in myriad white-collar categories, remain high in the top 200 law firms.  Of course, out there is a glut of lawyers, though. Some of those forced out in federal government might not be able to find a place to land. But glut has been the usual, with the exception of COVID. Getting that first job tends to be difficult for new JDs. As everyone knows, the cloud hovering over the sector is generative AI. It has made rapid inroads in not only business but also on Main Street. Traditional search, that is on the Google platform, is dying. More ordinary folks are bypassing clicking in a query on Google and going directly to ChatGPT. "Googling it" is getting replaced with "ChatGPTing." The Cleary law firm has acquired an AI enterprise. Paul Weiss is hiring more technologists and data scientists. Paul Weiss Chair Brad Karp ...

If you got a good news story, keep milking it.  And that's what's being done with the fallout among some Generation Z law students about large law firms' dealmaking with the Trump administration. The Wall Street Journal is running with the bit of news that there are those law students at top school who are refusing to be interviewed for jobs at those firms such as Skadden which made "peace offerings" to the administration. The story is getting attention. Of course, it is. News has hardened into entertainment. So much for the Edward R. Murrow revered media ethos.  But the raw reality is that for every best and brightest shunning a job at Skadden, Willkie, Milbank, Paul Weiss and maybe soon Kirkland & Ellis there are many other best and brightest who will have the goal to land that kind of lucrative prestigious entry-level position in the legal sector.  In addition, those best and brightest usually have a short shelf life in that up-or-out system. Most will be ...

  Survivors find the right data points to retrieve and then connect the dots.  In this volatile economy, which is hard to figure out, the smart thing to do is to get granular in spotting and figuring out what's signaling what. Then, make decisions. The Wall Street Journal does a bit of that for you. It fingers bringing-your-lunch-to-work as an indicator of how people are experiencing the current economy. It mentions that not too long ago a lawyer in Buffalo, New York was ponying up about $500 a month to do lunch in local dining spots. Now there's the old brown-bagging it as in the days before the Post-WWII economy caught fire. I recall mom packing lunches for all of us, ranging from dad to myself and two siblings. Later when she tired of worrying about waxy floor build-up and went to work a bag of whatever went with her for lunch. Another light flashing red is that the demand for exotic dancers is down. A third is that falloff in the once booming psychic business. Psychics we...

Tabloids like sensationalism and on both sides of the Atlantic two of them are making merry with covering the deals several large law firms have made with the Trump Administration. In the US that's Abovethelaw. In the UK it's RollonFriday. Today, predictably RollonFriday  came out with a vilification of the negotiations Skadden, Willkie and Milbank had made with who it refers to as the Don. Nice photo of a character from "The Godfather" kissing the Don's ring. Of course, there's a drive-by hit on Paul Weiss. That law firm, once the champion of the most vulnerable, has become the bad guy. A cute wrinkle is that RollonFriday posts a survey. You have two choices if you headed a law firm targeted by the Trump administration: Tell the Don where to go, or Bend the knee. Obviously RollonFriday posted before it received the intel that Kirkland & Ellis has been reported to also be planning a "peace offering" to the Trump administration. That is supposed t...

  Boomers and Gen Xers have legit reason to worry. 39,251.00 USD ▼  -1,294.93 (-3.19%) today April 4, 10:28 AM EDT  ·  Market Open UPDATE: It got worse. 39,069.12 USD ▼  -1,476.81 (-3.64%) today April 4, 11:41 AM EDT  ·  Market Open Staying marketable. Complimentary consultation with Intuitive Coach Jane Genova (Text 203-468-8579, janegenova374@gmail.com).

Futures  are down heading into Friday, after the Dow carnage Thursday. M&A is in decline. Business is in a panic. So, it's predictable that professional anonymous networks such as Fishbowl Big Law would start asking if we'll soon experience another 2008, in terms of loss of jobs. Recall, that was the first year of the brutal global downturn. In one day Latham cut loose more than 400.  In other firms start dates were delayed. Worse, job offers were rescinded. Paul Weiss was among the few law firms which didn't lay off. Well, that Fishbowl post asks: "When is it okay to say this feels like 2008?" The majority of replies say that question is probably from someone who wasn't there in 2008. Back then I was coaching the newly jobless former associates. Most had nowhere to go, that is, in the legal sector and had to take non-legal survival jobs to pay off student loan debt. The average monthly nut at that time was $700. However, there's this quip: "Nah ...

Totally expected: Futures on Thursday night were down. CNBC reports: "Futures tied to the blue-chip index lost 77 points, or 0.2%, after the 30-stock average tumbled more than 1,600 points in the prior session.  S&P 500 futures  lost 0.1%, and  Nasdaq 100 futures  were marginally lower." So, what are Boomers/Gen Xers supposed to do about funding what could be a very long life? Answer: Keep working.  Those who have retired and plan to unretire are in for a rough re-entry. You are rusty in 1) How to conduct a job search, especially since AI has changed so much of that 2) How to hold onto a job, since so much more in expected in not only the work load but in old-line deference to authority. It isn't only at those top-down power structures like law firms Kirkland & Ellis and Paul Weiss that seem to require total obedience. That's part of the extreme employment insecurity even in low-paid positions at big boxes. Not that those of us over-50 who have kept lab...

  Heading off an Executive Order through, for example, negotiating a certain amount of pro-bono work - that's becoming a standard peace offering in the Trump administration's escalating war on law firms. The Wall Street Journal refers to it as "as low-cost." That's even though it cost Skadden, Willkie and Milbank each a $100 million. Paul Weiss, after it was hit with an actual EO, lucked out with a discount - only $40 million. Could the chair Brad Karp's signature charm have factored in? Well, the largest, most powerful and most financially successful law firm in the world - Kirkland & Ellis - is reported to be in the midst of packaging its own peace offering to the administration. The firm has 4,000 lawyers. It also has been hit with an EEOC investigation. The threat of an EO may be surprising. If you check the political donations by law firms which Open Secrets documents you'll find that Kirkland & Ellis contributes heavily both to the Dems and t...

 A sign she herself has become irrelevant Anna Wintour is quoted in the New York Post as pontificating: " ...  I believe [what] a great editor does – she defines the times.” Probably it was with the internet that society stopped paying attention to media. Influencers, who replaced media, only have about eight years to shape the culture. And along the way they can and often do self-destruct. Never again will there be a forever revered media presence like Edward R. Murrow or Walter Cronkite.  Gonzo, at least for now, is also the reach of law firms in defining a time. Consider the intersection of: Fierce escalating global competition in the sector The absolute power of the Trump administration  The threat to their business clients from tariffs and More. Erased is their ability to reset values. Law firms, ranging from Paul Weiss to Motley Rice, once change agents, are just a business. They have to be. Their focus primarily has to be "sticking to the knitting" - a conce...

Liberation Day was to be the time of clarity, when business could size up the economic impact of the Trump administration tariffs. There has certainly been plenty of clarity. At times, this day after, the Dow plunged 1,500 points.  How bad will this get for their nest eggs, Boomers and Gen Xers ask, horrified. Sure, they can consider unretiring. But, come on, even those low-paying gigs are harder and harder to land. New college graduates, shut out from entry-level knowledge work, are grabbing them.  Those still with jobs have even more reason to fret if those will hold up. Today auto corporation Stellantis announced the temporary layoff of 900. What other businesses will make such announcements - and soon?  Abruptly over could be those plans to take that vacation, have that baby or, yes, buy a new car. Of course, in an economy driven by consumer purchases, that's a dangerous trend. Yeah, things could get that bad. So, this shift to brute survival means that legacy media ...

  When it comes to Boomer/Gen X nest eggs, the question is: How much worse can this get? 40,803.72 USD ▼  -1,421.60 (-3.37%) today April 3, 11:20 AM EDT  ·  Market Open UPDATE:   40,545.93 USD ▼  -1,679.39 (-3.98%) today April 3, 4:20 PM EDT  ·  Market Closed Yes, it got worse. There's a massive psychic shift in how Boomers/Gen Xers see their world and the future. Need help sorting out how to make a living? Complimentary consultation with intuitive coach Jane Genova (text 203-468-8579, email janegenova374@gmail.com).

  In family conflicts inevitable is this: One or more members pipe up with "Grandpa/Grandma would be turning in their graves if they found out you made that decision." That's usually pure staging. But if they really believe that those who had passed over decades ago would object strenuously to a whatever in the present they are delusional. The raw reality is that everything changes. The world changes. The family changes. The individual members change. And if the deceased were alive today they probably would have undergone many a psychic shift as well as transformations in how they used to behave. So, it's a stunner that the granddaughters of the late Judge Simon Rifkind - Amy and Nina - are absolutely certain how that revered figure would size up the deal that current Paul Weiss chair Brad Karp made with the Trump administration.  The two have been busy. They sent a letter  to Karp, essentially saying that, yes, Judge Rifkind would be turning over in his grave. That...

  The story of the dealmaking with the Trump administration by elite law firms such as Paul Weiss and Skadden has had a longer than usual run on the digital front page of legacy media, in professional anonymous networks and on social media.  Now that the fourth negotiation is over - Milbank agreed to $100 million for pro-bono work - interest is waning. Or should be. The attention should be shifting to the grim disappointment M&A demand has been. That throws shade on the ability of many firms with transactional practices to keep everyone busy.  But, there is The New York Times at it again. It has posted one of those very long-form articles on the crisis that has been analyzed broadly and opined about noisily. The angle is associate discontent about their law firms' decisions. And the question raised is: Will this hurt the recruitment efforts of the firms which negotiated rather than using legal tools, like Perkins Coie has, to fight the administration.  Much of...

   Paul Weiss is looking increasingly shrewd, at least when it comes to dealmaking.  Now, three have opted to provide $100 million in pro-bono work to the Trump administration. The most recent is  Milbank.  The other two are Skadden and Willkie. In contrast, when Paul Weiss chair Brad Karp made a pilgrimage via private jet to the oval office, meeting personally with Donald Trump, the law firm got off with agreeing to $40million. Will this kind of track record attract more dealmaking assignments to Paul Weiss? Overall  M&A demand  has been disappointing for many firms. Transactional in general hasn't been going gangbusters either for a number of firms. Karp says Paul Weiss is busy. During Q1, for instance, it handled two major transactions for Rocket Cos. As a coach/tarot-reader, I'm asked: Do I see layoffs ahead in Big Law? Answer: Not right now. But if M&A demand remains low and the global economy worsens, there could be RIFs as well as stealt...

  Breaking News. The Willkie law firm , where Kamala Harris' husband Doug Emhoff got a job, cut a deal with the Trump administration. Like Skadden it seemed to be facing an Executive Order and chose to head it off. And like Skadden it agreed to the $100 million in pro-bono work that the administration approves. In contrast, Paul Weiss, which was actually hit with an EO, only negotiated $40 million in pro-bono assignments. Do the math. That's 60% less. Should its chair Brad Karp who hopped a private jet and sat in the Oval Office with Donald Trump for three hours be designated Dealmaker of the Year? UPDATE:  To head off an EO, Milbank has also cut a deal with the Trump administration. That includes $100 million in pro-bono work. Need help sorting out how to make a living? Complimentary consultation with intuitive coach Jane Genova (text 203-468-8579, email janegenova374@gmail.com).

  Not long ago CMO at Paul Weiss Luke Ferrandino switched teams and went to work in a new position but titled "CMO," at Skadden. Maybe he should have stayed put.  Paul Weiss seems to be recovering nicely from the PR fallout after dealmaking with the Trump administration. It even put up again on its website the material for Center to Combat Hate . Who knows, its chair Brad Karp may return to being in the front lines of social justice initiatives. The link to the Pivot podcast in which he is saluted as a change agent might even go up again on the website too. Saint Brad can circle back to his comfort zone of social justice.  In contrast, the PR nightmare darkens at Ferrandino's new home Skadden. After the litigation associates were treated to a supposed calming-down session Monday about Skadden's values, associate Thomas Sipp quit.  He's the third associate to exit in response to how Skadden's handling the Trump administration. And Sipp did that with a Norma Ra...

  Around Skadden there's a campaign struggling to get traction : Associates are being encouraged to opt out of all those events to recruit new lawyers to the firm. Having junior lawyers in the recruiting outreach is important because it's assumed they will be straightforward with applicants, as opposed to receiving some hardened party line from partners.  How would this be accomplished? As part of a collective action, associates wouldn't respond to calendar prompts to participate in recruitment.  The thinking is: Hey, this won't damage client work so it won't throw shade on my reputation and therefore won't move the dial on being forced out the door. But is that assumption aligned with the law-firm power structure? In such a top-down system all associate actions are under close scrutiny and open to assessment by both senior associates and partners. Not being enthusiastic about recruiting could ding you. For that reason, I don't anticipate too many associates...