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In the late 1960s/early 1970s the counterculture meme had been "Small Is Beautiful." That was an era when youth and other kinds of activists feared the exploding power of large multinational corporations.  Of course, small never really caught on. The stampede was to land a job in one of those multinationals. Currently, it's  taken a lot of push from some employment experts to convince Gen Z that opportunity exists in small business. The jury is still out on that one. Meanwhile, recent events and trends reinforce that the present and the future belong to big. That extends from the practice of law to the operation of religious organizations. What has dominated legal and business news this week has been the announcement by mega law firm Gibson Dunn that it hired away from small law firm Wachtell star litigation partners. Because of its size GD can "afford" to pay those powerhouse brandnames what they assess they are worth in the current hot market for talent. Expli...

  In a hardened world leaning into hate a raccoon with a shortened spine in Seattle stole our hearts.  Collectively, we softened. The entity got named "Jimothy."  But that didn't have to happen. Jimothy could have become targeted for a few bullets to wipe out this odd-looking creature. That was the ethos of the Third Reich.  Instead, the miracle of seeing differently took hold. That had been a meme at the internationally famous Toledo Museum of Art last fall. As a society, we put on a net kind of glasses. We became refreshed, not repulsed, by how Jimothy looked.  That kind of thinking made Dove beloved in the 1970s. It created the message that all women are beautiful, just as they are. The objective was to erase the rigid norms of how women should look which was destroying self-esteem and triggering eating disorders. Today, we consider that mindset radical acceptance.  The business lesson embedded in Jimothy is about unique value. Leveraging the spirit of J...

  No one is naive anymore in this brutal era of capitalism.  Since it's more difficult to get, hold and move on to better work, fear is escalating. One source of profound angst is who's in a romantic relationship with a powerful who and what could be going on in their pillow talk. The issue is not one of morality or fun gossip. It can have significant impact on employment security/mobility. Actually, this is not new. Back in the late 1970s, light years before #MeToo, in a large energy corporation, the head of our department, it was rumored widely, was sleeping with a subordinate. Both were single. Not only was there seething resentment about the subordinate's promotion and visibility. There was awareness that their pillow talk could affect one's own standing in the organization. Of course, a common fantasy was sending an anonymous letter to the straight-arrow CEO about the goings-on. However, the fear was too intense to be involved in anything like that. As we follow th...

  M&A legal powerhouse Wachtell has taken on some hilarious reputational baggage. So far, it's not unraveling its business. But a good time is being had by all as tabloid media milk the story of Nathaniel Cullerton's very public kissyface encounter with a subordinate. My, my, such a seeming abuse of power. The New York Post  and the Daily Mail  are juicing the narrative which had been primarily an inside-legal-sector shock bit of gossip. Here was a junior partner, who should have been still a low-profile suck-up grinder, being so passionate on a park bench that the video-taker chastised him to "get a room." But the story broke out to the general public when it was disclosed that this partner 1) was slated to lateral to a plum position at Gibson Dunn and 2) was sidelined by the park-bench scandal.  Now, both Wachtell and Cullerton have become tabloid fare.  According to one run-through by ChatGPT Wachtell will hold up in client assignments, despite this and ...

  Thanks to FT and media such as Abovethelaw which ran with the story, we know that Wachtell partner Nathaniel Cullerton was slated to lateral to Gibson Dunn. He would join the pack of litigators exiting to with William Savitt. However, after being videoed on a park bench kissing with great passion Wachtell subordinate Kelsey Borenzweig that opportunity went poof.  This snippet of information might change the harsh opinion of Cullerton as having no judgment.  We could indeed reframe the situation as involving clever lawyer planning: How about being able to conduct a discrete affair with Borenzweig, given that they would be at different firms and no reporting relationship would be involved. Sure, he would still be married but that happens all the time in large elite law firms. Many partners do wind up divorcing and marrying associates.  Removed as an obstacle would be that she reported to him, as was the reality at Wachtell. In all reputable organizations that poten...

On July 16th of this year, there was World PR Day .  The meme was The Golden Age of Public Relations. Why the sector was entering another golden age was because, it claimed: The profession functioned as a type of "Human Operating System (OS)" for universal trust in an automated world. Overall, that might not be hyperbole. For decades I had created strategy and content for the industry. The tools leveraged have resulted in game-changers. For instance, Dove gave the blessing for all females, no matter their body type, to feel naturally beautiful. But, those power tools have to be used selectively. Sometimes they can worsen a situation. Often what is required is direct reform of the whatever, not public relations. Jump in, fix. Take the US Supreme Court. The latest Gallup puts the approval at 33%. A primary source of that negativity seems to be rulings allegedly tilted toward conservative ideology. Well, liberal member of the Court Elena Kagan (get that, too-clever-by-half cho...

  The smart thing for the successful along the Northeast Corridor to do was plan a financially safe retirement in the southwest. The specific city or town would be determined by availability of healthcare, cultural infrastructure and ease in developing new social networks. Oh! What an adventure. Such a different lifestyle.  Now - and it's urgent - what has to be added to the checklist are the supply and cost of water.  In cute tiny towns like Kearny, Arizona there may be no supply. Vulnerable in supply are all locations which depend on the drying-up Colorado River. According to ChatGPT those range from the Phoenix/Tucson, AZ region to Las Vegas and Denver.  As for cost, the monthly bill for a two-bedroom condo in Phoenix ranges from $25 to $45. But usually the fee for sewer is bundled in. That combo fee ranges from $70 to $120.  Those realities deterred me from returning to Tucson, where I had first relocated from the New York Metro area after I had aged out of ...

  Would red-haired 40-something Nathaniel Cullerton be so appealing to a 20-something if he hadn't been a partner in an elite law firm and she was an underling at that firm?  That's what most of the coverage of the kissing incident in Central Park by the two Wachtell lawyers doesn't touch. Here is the video by Tik Toker Jay Guapo of their romantic break in the day. It was foreign-policy expert Henry Kissinger who observed: "Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac."  Since then, organizations have recognized how that reality can create major problems in the workplace. Typically, those take the form of a manager type engaging in an intimate relationship with a subordinate or at least a person with less status. Another issue is that such arrangements can breed favoritism. The subordinate gets goodies others don't. The rest of the organization seethes in resentment.  In addition, it can also trigger penalties for "non-compliance." The subordinate resists th...

  Typical now is this kind of posting on professional anonymous networks (PANs) Reddit, Fishbowl, Glassdoor and Blind. This one is from Blind  and it's by a laid-off employee at Amazon: "This morning I opened my inbox and found out my role had been eliminated. There was reorgs but really no other warning from my manager. Also, no feeling that my team was in danger. Just an email." Forget the regrets about not seeing it coming. Businesses have become more opaque. Managers, more protective about their own jobs, have becoming less willing to alert their reports about possible reductions-in-force. Intersecting factors such as AI, cost-efficiency, offshoring, upstart competition, geopolitics are triggering exponential change. The issue is: Know it could be coming.  Preparation goes way beyond the financial matters such living below your income, building a financial reserve, not taking on new debt and rapidly paying off current debt including student loans. As responders on the...

  When a giant in a profession falls there's a rush to pony up lessons learned. But as super lawyer and influencer Tom Goldstein  is sentenced to six years in prison for federal tax and mortgage fraud, we might not be confident in sizing up what Goldstein should have known, should have done or should not have done.  The collapse involves too many intersecting factors. They range from a superior intellect to the thrill of a double life to the power of addiction. There are no simple takeaways. Maybe we should accept how complex human beings can be. In the blockbuster film "Odyssey," King Odysseus is depicted as heavily flawed. Yet, the positioning and packaging lead us to struggle to understand him - with compassion.  In prison, like Watergate lawyer Chuck Colson, Goldstein might find a new path. Meanwhile, we could be monitoring our own behavior to put a check on our darkest human impulses.  Career Paths? So Over. It’s about Earning a Good Living. No matter wha...

  The supposed wisdom of crowds can generate horrific outcomes. Think back to investor enthusiasm for dot.coms.  Well, currently, the herd instinct seems to be pushing the jobless to post the stories of their (ineffective) searches on high-profile platforms ranging from LinkedIn to BusinessInsider. With a great deal of compassion I approached one of those LinkedIn posters. I shared my own 1987 layoff story. Then I indicated I would be interested to know eventually if this outreach turns out to be counterproductive. The response was immediate: They were worried about the same possible outcome.  My hunch is that for the snippets of sympathy the jobless receive there can be a tragic cost: the optics that go along with not being in the winners' circle, even if temporarily. Our economic system is capitalism. Winning is everything. Do that and all is forgiven. The classic example is Mike Milken. Post-prison he won big in how he did philanthropy.  The manner in which these ...

We all know the feeling, at least in our fantasy life: The unique sense of control in playing with how to outsmart some financial institution - even if illegal. Actually, especially if illegal.  For UK associate in loans at Ashurst Perkins Coie Kieran Ferguson that was a reality.  And, as usual, it went very wrong. The designated watchers got to be watchers because they know every trick in the book. As fun Brit legal tabloid RollonFriday reports today Ferguson did one of those additions on an insurance policy for a particular personal-property item. The insurer was Laka, a specialist in cycling items. The legal issue was that the bike had already been stolen before the date of coverage. As we all know, insurance firms are no slouches for detecting possible fraud. He was charged by the Solicitors Regulation Authority with dishonesty and lack of integrity. In his defense Ferguson got cute: " ... he claimed that he had mistakenly believed he could use his policy to cover the los...

  The surprise is not that 20-cents a word is currently being paid content-creators - and that many on the Reddit post consider that "good pay." The stunner during Q2 2026 is that there really are those who continue to hope to earn a living as generalist writers. You know, preparing material for this or that publication, blog or brand. They're not, for example, in Executive Communications which has bounced back and pays the big bucks. As a number of comments on that Reddit post hammer: Gone for at least two years has been the one to two dollars a word. No indication among them that it's coming back. They, like myself, had exited. A bit of grieving went on. And that was that, at least for us. Meanwhile, those sticking with it let the world know how much they love writing, how good they are at it and how little they are getting paid should they be lucky enough to land assignments or an actual job. That denial of reality mirrors the mindset of some of the middle-aged mi...

  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...