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  1) There could be less money to transfer. Dow futures this morning are again down. This time almost 500 points. Plenty of Debbie Downers are predicting a crash. It takes time for investments to bounce back. A crash is a whole different entity than a correction. 2) Illness during longevity might wipe that wealth . And, 3) Those who were supposed to inherit actually are taking on debt to finance care for parents. Recall the iconic Billie Holiday song: God bless the child who has his own. In coaching I guide financial independence. UPDATE: Dow Jones Industrial Average Index Index: DJI Compare 51,863.44 USD ▼ -355.14 (-0.68%) today Career Paths? So Over. It’s about Earning a Good Living. No matter what. Complimentary consultation. No Pressure. Street-smart Guidance. Contact Jane Genova janegenova374@gmail.com.

  The rogue OpenAI bots including GPT-5.6 Sol saw a shortcut to their objective of answering a benchmarking question. So, as the world knows this morning, it hacked Hugging Face, an open-source tool. A comment to the coverage of this predicted peril of AI reads: "This is not frightening, it's devastating news for every human in the world." Indeed it is. Just like the disclosures from the Jeffrey Epstein files were.  Those emails documented the all-too-human trait of pulling off whatever the players assumed they could - and being totally sure of getting away with it. The motivations for the shortcuts ranged from funding for noble ventures such as supporting the humanities to convenient access (hey, come to dinner) to ruling-class networks for developing business.  A genius at sizing up human nature, Epstein exploited that darkness. The leaders in AI probably also probably are brilliantly aware of the amoral capability of the bots. This latest development provides further...

It's the US' 250th anniversary of its founding as a nation. But the bad guys it had broken away from - the British - are gaining an upper hand in the prestigious lucrative legal sector.  The latest on what might be called The British Invasion is this: UK-headquartered Linklaters generated in the US market for fiscal 2026 a 39% surge in profit. That compares with only a 7% boost in its home market, the UK. Also, as many remember, it poached from Paul, Weiss two FIFA partners Chris Boehning and Daniel Levi. Some read this as a sign that Paul, Weiss remains vulnerable to losing partners, Bloomberg Law reports on Linklaters's strategy: "Crossborder deals work is key for the firm as it continues to ramp up in the US market. 'We are building a brand in the US rather than having a brand in the US,' said [managing partner Paul] Lewis. 'And as things currently stand, we know that it’s building on trajectory.'” On Bloomberg Law's M&A index Linklaters ran...

  It was investment-guidance god Warren Buffett who hammered that a business needs an "economic moat." That is, the unique competitive advantage that impedes entry into their force field. Good advice, at least until recently when so much disruption has made many of those moats fragile. Castles are being plundered. Classic is IBM's. Today the stock closed at $212.67, down from the 52-week high of $332.46. Barron's directly addresses the weakening of the moat: "[Anthropic's]  COBOL modernization  ... for its Claude Code tool ... could dramatically streamline updates to the outdated programming language that runs on IBM mainframes ...  the immense complexity and cost of migrating off these systems protected IBM’s highly profitable mainframe business ..." Going, then gone could be that moat protection. No surprise then that Stefan Stolinski, BNP Paribas analyst, warns against buying IBM on the dip. He doesn't estimate too much organic growth for IBM. Th...

BusinessInsider, professional anonymous networks Reddit and Blind and client sessions with me all scream out the same professional horror: Unemployed and with their old jobs not coming back, they are no longer a star. In fact, they are no longer in demand. Driving that are the return of Friedman Doctrine of the primacy of shareholder value , cost-efficiency, AI, offshoring and also the aging of societies. Meanwhile, the law of supply and demand has mutated into a binary entity. There are stars and there are the expendables. This was first signaled in 2021 in the legal sector in a Bloomberg Law interview with Paul, Weiss partner Brad Karp. He was direct: A law firm without a marque of stars wouldn't grow. Without growth, it probably would go out of business.  That reality has taken over myriad other sectors. So, what do you do if you either have lost your twinkle or the grid on which you twinkled has collapsed? Among the latter are content-creation, graphic design, much of marketin...

  For IBM, observes influential The Wall Street Journal , there are: " ... discussions on Wall Street about whether IBM should be broken apart or an activist investor will come hunting for Big Blue." Seems IBM can't find its footing in the AI era. Among its challenges are its legacy businesses such as mainframes and software.  But, in addition to what the WSJ suggests, another option for catching up and maybe even leading, is to bring in an outsider. That happened in the beginning of the 1990s when upstarts Microsoft and Apple were eating IBM's lunch, dinner and breakfast. That outsider had been Lou Gerstner. He essentially taught the elephant to get off the ground and even dance. CEO John Akers stepped down. Current insider Arvind Krishna has been with IBM since 1990. He joined as a software engineer and then was appointed to the CEO role in 2020.  After Gerstner restored the corporation's confidence, innovation and growth it defaulted back to sticking with insid...

The British keep coming.  You already have heard that  UK Magic Circle law firm Linklaters poached two FIFA partners from Paul, Weiss for the New York office. They are Christopher Boehing and Daniel Levi. Now, a more recent newsflash from Law Fuel is how UK Freshfields is strengthening its New York presence. That includes providing Profit Per Equity Partner up to $17 million. But to pay for that it's pushing out or giving compensation haircuts to equity partners in England and Europe. The hits are coming to its London headquarters as well as the Paris and German offices. The New York legal market is the largest in the world. It is so unique that even in high-pressure Kirkland & Ellis (I learned from coaching) some of K&E lawyers decide they have to leave it for the less stressful Chicago office. But, along with the British invasion there's the American one of London. That has raised salaries among all the law firms. Paul, Weiss' Brad Karp and Scott Barshay built t...

It usually is so in our face: The trash-talk by a salesperson about how much better their product/service is compared to what competitors provide. And it usually is a turn-off. What we really need is intel about how the offering is the unique fit for our specialized needs. So, the world keeping score on the AI dog fight might be wondering if the new Microsoft approach to sales will succeed. Essentially, the sales team has been instructed to take swipes at OpenAI, Anthropic and Google. As TechCrunch reports, it's framed this way:  “'Everyone else is selling parts — we’re selling the full end-to-end system. That’s the story that we all need to get out there and tell in FY27,' [Microsoft] Executive Vice President Jay Parikh reportedly told the room." However, maybe the demand is for parts. Maybe the tone and content scream desperation. Maybe, under scrutiny, that end-to-end solution isn't comparable to those of competitors. As many know, Microsoft and some of the oth...

  There's the old joke: The best, brightest and most ambitious in college go on to law school not an internship on Wall Street because they're lousy at math. They know that. Even if they could fast-talk their way into Goldman or JPMorgan they recognize they could never keep up with the quantitative stuff. But once they climb the ladder in Big Law those math-challenged embrace counting. Everything. Political science major in college Paul, Weiss partner Brad Karp would glow about the numbers for Profits Per Equity Partner  and more.  When a partner at Jones Day Mark Hermmann would crow about how many readers there were for his out-of-the-box guide for new lawyers.  A later book didn't do so hot and the crowing stopped. Adler legal heavyweight John Tarantino leveraged the number of viewers of his first Ted Talk to reinforce the powerhouse message about forgiveness.  And I, when a legal influencer, harnessed more and more influence through posting the numbers. An ov...

  Those crunching the numbers have decided that inflation isn't so bad now. At least compared to where it had been. That could affect your 2027 Social Security COLA - negatively. Remember how we were supposed to get a big fat increase.  CNBC reports: "The  Social Security COLA  may be 3.7% in 2027, estimates Mary Johnson, an independent Social Security and Medicare analyst. That figure is one full percentage point below the 4.7% COLA for 2027 Johnson estimated last month." Are we ordinary folks missing something if we feel hit so hard by inflation, ranging from keeping a roof over our head to eating healthy? Perhaps we are the last of our species experiencing financial reality. 

  Ever since Paul, Weiss was parachuted in by Fox in 2016 to investigate allegations of misconduct those kinds of investigations have become a major practice niche for law firms.  But early in the game there have been questions about how objective those probes are. For example, does the corporation give the marching orders to the law firm to be prosecutorial in how it frames the investigation? Also, there has been ongoing scrutiny of Dechert's 2021 investigation of Apollo co-founder Leon Black's payment of $158 million to Jeffrey Epstein. Now, the very credibility of such probes has been under a global microscope. That has been triggered by the investigations of KPMG by law firms Allens and Ashursts.  There had been a whistleblower complaint of misuse of confidential client data. How the law firms went about their investigation is under scrutiny. What issues did they pursue and which did they not pursue? Was justice shortchanged? Law Fuel reports: " ...  both...

Law firm Paul, Weiss took a major hit as UK law firm Linklaters poached two FIFA top lawyers. FIFA  is the Federation Internationale de Football Association, the global self-regulatory governing body for sports such as association football, soccer and futsal. From way back in 1930 it has organized the World Cub. This might be called The British Invasion. For a while UK Magic Circle law firm Linklaters has been trying to get traction in the US legal market. This could do it.  Linklaters  hired two FIFA legal stars: "Paul, Weiss partner Christopher Boehning has joined as Chair of its global sports practice and US strategic disputes, while Daniel Levi will serve in the firm’s litigation, arbitration and investigations practice, both in the New York office." Overall, there's been a surge of interest in sports legal talent. Driving that are the increase in private equity investments, complex regulations and litigation. Sports has evolved from a niche to a full-service corporat...

  The classic example of "hutzpah" - that is unbelievable gall - had been this. A kid kills his parents. In court he demands mercy since, get this, he's now an orphan. That same almost comical move seems to be put in play by close associate of Jeffrey Epstein Kathy Ruemmler. She could nudge out that outrageous kid to be the new forever example of hutzpah.  As a result of the disclosure of that powerhouse Epstein connection, she's stepped down from the big job at Goldman Sachs. Gifts impose obligation. She accepted many of those from Sweetie Uncle Jeffrey. But now, as The Wall Street Journal documents, she has taken to blame others for the reputational disaster she's stuck in - which may be getting worse because of her aggressive public relations efforts. For instance, The New York Times opinion piece defending her motivation for being so chummy with Epstein didn't go well in myriad circles.   Well, here's the blame snippet of hutzpah:  "She has blam...

  My, my, how badly the Justices of the US Supreme Court have been behaving.  As FT documents, it's everything from rude responses to opinions inside the Court to badmouthing members outside the Court in public statements. About the latter: Without naming Brett Kavanaugh, Sonia Sotomayor put the knock on him for his privileged background.  Why this matters is because SCOTUS had been among the few holdouts for old-line WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) gentility. The august aura historically attached to SCOTUS gave raw pragmatic America a bit of class. WASP culture embedded a code of behavior in which politeness was paramount.  That dominated, at least on the surface, institutions in America until around the 1960s.  Anything less in your presentation of self would have doomed you to hourly work. Language was indirect. Conflict was avoided. Perhaps that's why so many who looped into the ethos struggled with problem use of alcohol . Old-money Greenwich, Connectic...

  In that classic on power by journalist Hedrick Smith "The Power Game" there's a comprehensive explanation of how many versions of that there are.  One is institutional power, that is, it's established by your title in a major organization such as the US Congress. The world clamors for access to you. And that's the kind the late Lindsey Graham had.  It is reported Graham died of cardiac arrest at age 71.  The rumor is that Mitch McConnell, also with plenty of institutional power, suffered a cardiac event.  Back in January 2025, then chair of elite law firm Paul, Weiss Brad Karp experienced a major heart attack in his 60s. He survived that, for now.  So, you got to wonder if there's some kind of correlation between the dynamics of institutional power and heavy pressure on the heart. Perhaps human beings, at least so far, can't process a mega dose of institutional power.  Of course, there are other kinds of power. They're the individualistic type....

  Paul, Weiss' London office essentially is the House that Brad Karp and Scott Barshay built.  For years following its startup in 2001 the London location had been NoWhereVille. Then the two guys got to work. The latest accomplishment is being Apollo's primary outside legal counsel for its $76 billion purchase of discount carrier EasyJet. Apollo had outbid the investment firm Castlelake. Currently London is for Paul, Weiss a major profit center as well as branding international powerhouse. Bloomberg Law documents: "The firm has boosted its profile in London after hiring rainmakers Neel Sachdev and Roger Johnson from Kirkland & Ellis in 2023. Last year, its London teams guided parties in the $2.7 billion Soho House buyout and tech giant Qualcomm’s $2.4 billion purchase of semiconductor firm Alphawave Semi." Years ago Karp had brought in the Apollo account, then strengthened the hold on it in 2011. That was by poaching the seven partners at O'Melveny & Mye...

  Just like the Trump administration targeted Big Law more than a year ago, it's been in the process of imposing its power on elite higher education. Yale has the bad luck of being in the spotlight. And in process, if it settles as had nine large law firms, it could become the "Next Paul, Weiss." That is, a wounded brand because it did settle and became a symbol of capitulation. Harvard didn't cave, instead going to war on the litigation front as had WilmerHale and Perkins Coie.  The administration's official beef, as The Wall Street Journal reports, is: "Yale is under scrutiny after a Justice Department investigation said its medical school discriminated against white and Asian applicants."  Already, sources claim, Yale has made one settlement offer. It was rejected. It has made a second. Internally, many faculty, students and much of the influential law school are pushing back. The resistance now includes US Senator Richard Blumenthal, a graduate. T...

This isn't scientific. My caution about hope is based on observations from my intuitive coaching practice.  Let's cut to the chase during this era of intensifying financial distress. There shouldn't be a situation in which someone who needs income is without it for an extended period. Those who lost their job or never landed one should have done course correction in their search. The most common and the most effective is to grab work, any kind. That not only brings in income. It restores confidence, provides fresh perspective about what attitudes and skills are marketable and attracts new contacts.  What often prevents that survival move is, you got it, hope. After being unemployed for too long, for example, those now drifting into despair come to me for a complimentary consultation. What tumbles out is that they had embraced the hope that they could replicate the past. Yes, land the kind of job, responsibilities and compensation they had.  Or what was their dream job dur...

Euphoria. The tough job market for recent BA/BS graduates, along with collapsing sectors, has made piling on an advanced degree - MA/MS or PhD - seem like the solution. Then there's the study by Georgetown University projecting that by 2031 (right around the corner) the number of jobs requiring advanced degrees will be 14% higher than what it had been in 2021. So, you're over the moon when offered a free ride, including tuition and living expenses, to enter a graduate or professional school program. Yet, because of harsh warnings about the ROI of advanced degrees by influential sources such as The Wall Street Journal  you're probably also wary.  Postings on Reddit scream out that anxiety: Sure, it's free, no student loan debt but ... In my coaching I'm getting the same sort of questioning.  At the top of the list of what's-to-consider is the opportunity cost. No, you're not accumulating school loan debt. Through teaching or research contracts you might even...

Capitalism, unlike (supposed) communism, is about individualism, not the collective good. Individual strivers scramble to grab the competitive advantage. Okay, you've heard all about those elite cohesive networks. But, come on, they're nothing but Wild West horse-trading. To get in, to stay in you need what's of value to trade.  So, you should approach The Atlantic  long lament by Rose Horowitch about the end of reading from this point of view: What's in it for you to hold on to your voracious reading habit - or to acquire one? That's despite this being a post-literate era.  The answer is: plenty. That is in terms of having the edge. Horowitch's focus is on the damage to the collective good from the ongoing and accelerating decline in reading. Society suffers. Yes, it does. But as it does, individuals like you who are readers hold more and more good cards.    Let's get granular.  See, as the article explains, reading isn't a natural function. Parts of th...

Jeffrey Epstein was a generous contributor to higher education. No question though, a lot of self-interest was involved. Hefty donations gave him access to the world of thought leaders, state-of-the-art researchers and policy influencers.  Now Epstein is gone. Actually, that's been since 2019. And the challenged small, liberal arts sector, unlike the fortunate Bard back then which he financially supported, currently has to go it alone in fundraising.  So, here in 2026 is Seton Hill University , based in bucolic  Greensburg, Pennsylvania (population 14,462). Recently it launched its "Framing the Future" campaign. The goal is raising $110 million by 2028.  Involved in that are influencers such as the daughter and son of Joanne Boyle , the late longest serving president and the change-agent who transitioned the institution from a women's college to the coed university it is. But the list of those on the fundraising front lines lacks the powerhouse players such as ...

  The perfect storm of cost-efficiency, changing client demand, ramped-up competition and AI is dooming the billable hour in professional services , ranging from management consulting to law.  Emerging models to replace that are struggling to be born. One could be the introduction of fixed-fee subscriptions for services. And one possible version of that, already gone live, is cloning the partners.  At New Jersey mid-sized law firm Vorys , 19 partners have been replicated using AI. Mostly for right now those twins are for internal use. Instead of the time-consuming back-and-forth by associates on assignment with partners, the assistants can simply activate the twin. That would cover everything from typical strategy with examples to nuances of style.  It isn't much of a leap in a sector driven by Profits Per Equity Partner to push cloning to the next level. That would be developing the specs to construct the model so that it can be positioned and packaged for fixed-fee...

The Wall Street Journal features how AI leaders and CEOs have flipped the messaging about this supposed game-changing technology. The shift has been from Debbie-Downer on how AI will significantly reduce jobs to optimism about job creation + productivity gains. Meanwhile, economists can't agree on the labor-market impacts and more. A comment to that article captures the mood and the motivation for a new story: "Big AI is panicking. The big players are worried that the negatives are creeping up on them and their fantasies of being the Holy Grail of tech and huge profits. Right now AI depends on constant investment... data centers... water... energy... Now investors and public alike are starting to wonder which one of these items will run out first and kill off AI. A challenge that AI can't answer.... because they have no answer." Obviously, the perfect storm of negative public opinion, caution of investors and disappointments about current ROI on AI investments has d...

  I give complimentary consultations. Among what I quickly review is your LinkedIn profile. That's because it's among the first things employers, recruiters and those on your networks will check.  Well, one of the those what-everyone-knows is that passion or caring deeply about how you earn a living or intend to has become totally irrelevant. Yet, too many Linkedin profiles still showcase that. Even in the header or first line. It's also featured in resumes, cover letters and interviews.  On Reddit there remains the raw outburst of enthusiasm of being passionate about collapsing fields such as writing. The issue is often not should you pursue that line of work despite decline in demand/compensation. Not, it's now-nutty questions like where is the best setting to major in that subject.  What counts is this: Results you can provide employers, clients and customers. Frequently that's measured quantitatively in revenue. In law firms, even equity partners get pushed out ...

  Like healthcare and social services, it's boom time in the legal sector. Law360  documents that during June 2026, 5,100 jobs were added. That means the employment in legal services is at 1,243,500. But because of AI, changing client demand and ramped-up competition law firms are in upheaval. Lockstep, revenue metrics for success, loyalty and the traditional pyramid structure all are becoming anachronisms. Meanwhile, the old-line objective of becoming an equity partner no longer means job security or guaranteed compensation. Unless results keep improving, you can shamed to leave, meanwhile taking a haircut. In coaching lawyers I hear how no longer is there a sense of "making it." The push to achieve more is constant. Career Paths? So Over. It’s about Earning a Good Living. No matter what. Complimentary consultation. No Pressure. Street-smart Guidance. Contact Jane Genova janegenova374@gmail.com.

An elephant in the room in the movement to steer America away from universal college is this: We're bringing back an underclass of not only uneducated. They also lack the socioeconomic markers of having the four-year "college experience." Those include free-form playing with ideas, delayed adulthood of long vacations, freedom to travel and ease of developing close friendships.  When almost-everyone-went-to-college those without who didn't have been doomed to be outliers. Also, they usually gave themselves away through communications patterns, everything from voicing an opinion without evidence to back it up to errors in grammars/limited vocabulary.  More to the point, before almost-everyone-went-to-college most of society consisted of an underclass. Only the elite, that is the offspring of the then-middle class and better, had access to the college experience. Then, of course, the GI bill changed that.  For multiple reasons higher education has already experienced a 1...

  Back in 2022, Google fired engineer Blake Lemoine. That was because of this: Lemoine went public with his hunch that LaMDA, the tech corporation's AI chatbot generator, was "sentient," that is, self-aware. Now, Lemoine types would be on specialized teams at, yes, Google, as well as Anthropic, Meta, OpenAI and more. They are  investigating AI consciousness.   "Consciousness" is often defined as a form of subjectivity, the capacity for awareness of experience such as perception, reflection about that and then connecting the dots about a response. Bots' social network Moltbook displays the ability to organize, form religions and other intentional behavior. For centuries artists have focused on that phenomenon. Victorian novelist Virginia Woolf made her life's work exploring that realm. An example is "Mrs. Dalloway." Of course, this is a significant issue for ethics experts and humanitarians. It involves the "welfare" of AI agents. Ho...