Over-50

We Boomers Had Seen That Show - Smirk

This is nothing new: All those CEO departures happening, with the explanation of their wanting to spend more time with the family or to attend to other pursuits.

According to a study by Exechange, 52% of those exits represent being forced out. That charade has been going on since I had been an executive communications scribe for the Fortune 50 in the late 1970s. Here today, then poof. No real explanation. Don't dare ask. 

Usually members of the board of directors want to prevent bad publicity for themselves. After all they hired that leader. Then some things went very wrong.

However, this ritual of secrecy may go the way of the rotary phone. That is because of the increased focus on corporate governance. That is part of the ESG (Environmental Social Governance) movement. 

Scrutiny of board behavior has been surging.

When WeWork couldn't pull off the IPO not long ago, there was attention paid to the passivity of the board.

There are accusations floating around that the passive members of the board at collapsed Theranos should have been hauled into court.

Recently the board at Activision Blizzard, before the announcement of the proposed acquisition by Microsoft, had been vilified for supporting CEO Bobby Kotick. 

Obviously, boards will have to learn to navigate the growing demand for transparency. In itself that could create brisk business for law firms with ESG practices and public relations agencies skilled in reputation management. 

However, there have been boards which had been straight with constituencies. Those include Apollo's as the Jeffrey Epstein scandal engulfed its co-founder and CEO Leon Black. Board members had an internal investigation by law firm Dechert. Here you can read it. 

Soon enough Black stepped down as CEO. For a bit he remained as Chairperson of the board of directors. But then later he also stepped down from that leadership role on the board. 

Apollo's quick recovery from that scandal may provide the template for other businesses needing their CEOs to exit.

The takeaway is: Don't attempt to spin the mess. Consult with the lawyers what is legal to say. Polish the wording with the public relations experts. Yes, board members should admit errors of judgment, maybe offer to step down themselves. Then the business moves rapidly on.

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Circling Back to Counterculture Ethos of Enoughness

Already, McDermott Will and Cadwalader in the law firm niche had matched the Milbank scale for salary raises for 2022.

Essentially that had been a $10k boost for very junior lawyers and a $20k one for more experienced ones.

Now, as Bloomberg Law reports, Fried Frank has also bellied up to that reality in the war for talent. It is matching Milbank.

MONEY NOT SUSTAINABLE SOLUTION

However, watchers of the war are not optimistic that throwing money around is a sustainable solution for recruiting, retaining, and motiving human assets in the law firm niche.

The counterforce is being called "soul suck."

Here is my analysis of that force field which is driving lawyers, both associates and partners, out of the practicing law and onto new career paths. The latter range from retraining for hands-on healthcare to opening a bed-and-breakfast. 

Soul suck is being experienced in not only the legal sector. It also has been overtaking all of professional services. 

MINIMALISM

The flight out of law and other professional services usually entails lower income.

However, that can be embraced through adopting a minimalist lifestyle.

Smirk, just look at what Leon Black's $10.4 billion got him. His mistress turned on him and his former partner allegedly orchestrated a smear campaign. 

Chasing after maximizing income, through work and passively, could become the new very uncool.

The ethos could circle back to counterculture having-just-enough. At that time the economic system of the coops was: Take what you need, leave behind what you don't. Free clinics provided comprehensive healthcare including psychotherapy.

Marketing communications for blockchain, cryptocurrencies, NFTs, and much much more (including waterproofing, roofing, and shipping containers). You want results. And that’s exactly what you get partnering with Genova Communications. Fees customized for your unique budget. Complimentary consultation - janegenova374@gmail.com.

Geriatric Industry: Big Banking

From Dealbreaker to Law and More one-time influential GoldMan Sachs (along with other farts in Big Banking) is being derided as being operated by aging and fading professionals. Like, increasingly out-of-sync with The Changing Everything.

NOISY OLD MEN

It's interesting to note that as its brand shrinks the geriatrics at Goldman Sachs had kept posting more and more predictions.

Remember the one about bitcoin hitting $100,000 this year? In the midset of what feels like another global crypto winter bitcoin is at 41,735.28 today. Meanwhile, other coins such as Ether are reducing bitcoin's market dominance. $100,000? Not proable. 

WALL STREET LAW FIRMS AND PRESTIGE

So, here we are. Prestige is important in the law firm sector. It has been a big deal to have been selected by Law360 Pulse as among the year's Top 10 Most Prestigious law firms.

So, it has to become a growing issue for law firm chairpersons - who really are The Chief Prestige Officer - to consider replacing Goldman Sachs as a client with one with what is considerd current cool. This should be a major matter for Wall Street law firms. 

TROUBLED CRYPTO PLAYERS (so much fun)

There are plenty of replacements, especially in the digital assets box. Many of them such as Crypto.com are entering regulatory headwinds. How interesting - and prestigious - to assist them.

TOO LATE FOR BIG BANKING

Can Big Banking grab itself back from The Fade?

Unlikely.

The leadership is a closed system. They are clueless how to change. Soon enough, the media outlets will ignore them. 

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As We Boomers Know, It's Not Age Per Se - When Leaders Get Stuck "Acting Old"

As with JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs is having its financial performance dragged down by the surging expense for recruiting and retaining star power, reports Bloomberg.

UP 33% 

For Goldman, that expense, mostly for compensation and benefits, rose by 33%. Without having to pony up so much for what it takes in Big Banking to hold onto talent, expenses would have gone down 9%. That's because less is going out for litigation and regulation. 

AGING LEADERSHIP

David Solomon, Goldman's CEO, is 60. Recall how he resisted WFH.

Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan's head, is 65. Of course, we remember how he sized up bitcoin as a "fraud."

These are old men who are acting old. Age itself is not the problem. It's failing to be in sync with a rapidly changing everything. 

In contrast, those in fintech and some non-banking large financial players don't behave old. And those niches are attracting talent from Big Banking. 

NO COOL FACTOR

Much of Big Banking lags in the cool factor. The farts at Morgan Stanley, ranging from CEO James Gorman to head of legal Eric Grossman, pontificated on what was very very wrong with remote work. Smirk.

Later, Gorman did apologize. But, had that 63-year-old leader been aligned with what-is he never would have railed against the post-office way of work. 

PARACHUTING IN MILLENNIALS (and some GenZers)

With so much push-back from investors about the expenses and so much competition from fintech and non-banking players such as The Blackstone Group, Big Banking boards might consider nudging the current leadership to step down. Sure, for instance, Dimon is on long-time contract. But, he can decide he wants to smell the roses. 

In their place could be the Cool Kids. Young. Totally linked into distruptions. No loyalties to legacies whatever. Fun. They might be willing to receive less compensation. Or not continually be lobbying for more and more money. There could be a cap.

LAW ALSO SO UNCOOL

A similiar dynamic could take place in law firms, where expenses for talent will soon enough eat into PPP. That could stop. 

Put a 40-year-old lawyer in charge. And/or non-lawyer managers. Make the place electric as a business hub. Fun, maybe that too.

In the regulatory sandbox states such as Arizona those young non-lawyers could even own law firms. Or, as with LegalZoom they can deliver legal services w/o being a law firm. 

Hardened rituals like assigning partners committee tasks could be dumped. It might have been those mundane but time-consuming tasks which provided the stress tipping point for Sidley partner Gabe MacConaill. Consumed with the Mattress Firm bankruptcy, he seemed to not be able to hold it together any more. Gabe committed suicide.  

OF COURSE, NOT AGE PER SE

Big Banking and large law firms can have their Betty Whites. Age gave her new perspectives through which she had extended her career runway.

But in general those industries are no longer for old men and old women.

Marketing communications for blockchain, cryptocurrencies, NFTs, and much much more (including waterproofing, roofing, and shipping containers). You want results. And that’s exactly what you get partnering with Genova Communications. Fees customized for your unique budget. Complimentary consultation - janegenova374@gmail.com.

Re-Learning How to Make Friends (in my 70s)

The average work schedule for junior lawyers at Kirkland & Ellis is from 9:14 A.M. to 11.28 P.M. That's about 14 hours daily. At Ropes & Gray, the average day runs 13.5 hours. And, at Weil Gotshal, it's 12.5 hours. 

HUNGER FOR FRIENDSHIP

Those of us hungering for old-fashioned friendship - remember friends' night out - might consider those lawyers blessed.

They don't have to focus on finding, holding, and deepening friendships. They would be lucky if they can maintain their marriages and any other kinds of romantic relationships. For them, work/life balance is a meme media outlets have conjured up for clickbait.

Meanwhile, those of us who do have enough work/life balance are cursed with the craving to develop the kinds of friendships we had in college and perhaps a few years afterward. 

In The Atlantic, Katharine Smyth details why it's so difficult, perhaps impossible, to make friends as fully-formed adults. "The Friendship Report" by Snapchat documents that at age 21 we are finally capable of developing a real friendship. That's a peaking experience.

After that, the unsuccessful search for new friends can be the source of unique pain.

After all, what friendship provides is so important to human beings that in TechCrunch Amand Silberling attributes part of the downfall of Elizabeth Holmes to the one-dimensional reality that she had no friends.

HARDENED APPROACHES, PREDICTABLE FAILURE 

However, like most hardened types of problems, this one can persist because the same old approaches are used and, although ineffective, continued to be applied. 

Among the standard MOs for making friends is to look for and reinforce common ground. As Smyth highlights, that's often a total dead end.

Contrary to accepted belief, likes rarely click. 

That could be that there is the none of the force field generated mystically by those from different tribes.

I know.

OFF THE RESERVATION

A series of disasters forced me off the reservation. That's a raw metaphor for one's comfort zone.

For example, my dog and I had just relocated from the midwest (where neither of us had friends) to a town in Arizona, about a 90-minute drive from the Mexican border.

After only two weeks, his serious heart condition deteriorated. It was the slo-mo surreal trudge to the vet one very early Sunday morning. There, there was no choice but to assist him in passing over.

Then it was just me. 

That was just the beginning of troubles. 

In a very human way, people then drifted into my life. We had nothing in common. Even the generational silos came down. We still have nothing or very little in common but we are friends.

THE OLD NEIGHBORHOOD

All this is just like the friendship that had existed or how we want to remember it existed in The Old Neighborhood. My experience of that had been pre-gentrified Jersey City, New Jersey. The oppressiveness of the Hague political machine increased social cohesion. 

Could the takeaway be: Just be in there living life and open (we break open in adversity, don't we) and friendship will happen? It has no predetermined set contours. It simply is. Back in those days, Jersey City didn't consist of "planned neighborhoods" of likeminded people. 

WONDERMENT

Off the reservation in the past 13 months I have experienced wonderment. That emerges from my friendships with members of different tribes.

They range from a short-order chef who knows butterscotch-flavored cookies will lift my mood and will whip up a batch (he wants to remain anonymous) to the head of an elite law firm (Brad Karp at Paul Weiss) who guided me out of stuckness into fresh professional territory. 

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Really, Those Millennial Lawyers Pulling Down the Big Bucks Need Our Help

"We were carefree and exuberant, while you [Millennials] are dour and anxious. We had Woodstock; you have safe spaces. You are Alfred de Musset’s enfants du siècle, living in the shadow of an earlier, more exciting generation and conscious of having missed out on all the fun." - F.H. Buckley from Scalia Law School, in The Wall Street Journal, January 2, 2022.

The media outfits, ranging from legal to business, are in lockstep in reporting on law firm associates as unhappy, burning out, and either already mentally ill or heading toward that state of emotional distress. And, the law firm brass are taking it on the chin about the epidemic of such an unpleasant state of affairs. 

However, law firm chairpersons might try something. In the process they can liberate themselves from being cast in those media narratives as the bad guys and gals. 

Firms which tend to be innovative such as Dentons and Paul Weiss can pilot a mentoring program. Bring in us boomers to tutor all-too-serious millennial associates on how to change the channel in their heads. That can shift from seeing the world through the lens of gravitas to being totally convinced not much is worth taking serious. As they put it in the film "The Matrix Resurrections," associates have taken the blue pill.

We boomers ourselves were mentored in such a channel-change by Alfred E. Neuman "What Me Worry" of Mad Magazine. We had to be.

Just like the current millennials, our teachers, parents, church leaders, coaches, and part-time employers socialized us about the dangers of mirth.

After all, with so many of us, there was stiff competition for a seat in college, those entry-level jobs in Corporate America, and being selected for the country club to network. In Synder Public High School, in pre-gentrfied Jersey City, New Jersey, our freshman composition instructor regularly issued dire warnings about "falling by the wayside." We listened. Until we didn't.

Did we have fun. 

When the severe recession came mid-1970s, we had to do a reverse "Licorice Pizza" and grow up. Or pretend to. We never did lose our senses of humor. Even in the stern corridors of the Fortune 50, we would gather together and collectively deride management in unique funny ways. When we became management, we were even able to see how ridiculous we ourselves were. Yeah, conducting performance reviews of those reporting to us ... 

In the first tutoring session with associates we boomers will outline the fundamentals of incongruity - that is, the juxtapositions which make things belly-laugh funny. Likely we have no choice but to select examples from partner behavior. There should be plenty.

In the next tutorial, associates will share with the group why they are incapable of having fun - and position and package that as a mea culpa for being that way. 

The third mentoring experience will be to explain why the law doesn't make sense. After that, of course, they won't need us any more. They can never return to being so serious about what they do 10 to 14 hours a day. 

Meanwhile, the world needs to let it rip about what's so funny about all the blockchain and crypto memes. A good line could be a reverse Alfred E. Neuman: "You should be worried." Since digital assets are my special area of marketing-communications expertise I have been taking all that way too seriously.  

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Marketing communications for blockchain, cryptocurrencies, NFTs, and much much more (including waterproofing, roofing, and shipping containers). You want results. And that’s exactly what you get partnering with Genova Communications. Fees customized for your unique budget. Complimentary consultation - janegenova374@gmail.com.

"The Matrix Resurrections" - Is the Evil Psychoanalyst Right?

"The Matrix: Resurrections," like "Spider-Man," is a success at the box-office.

Also, it is catching on in terms of memes.

Specifically, what is resonating is the metaphor of the blue pill, given by Thomas Anderson's villain psychoanalyst.

That has surfaced in the collective concsiousness as a symbol of mind control. That chokehold is in contrast to the red pill which opens the human being to the truths of existence.

Anderson makes the shift from blue to red. That one decision propels him through the door to his mission to change the world. His soulmate in that is his romantic partner Trinity. 

The messaging of the film is not simplistic. For example, what controls Trinity is the concept of the family. No, the family - and by extension any other system - is not in itself bad. The peril to individual autonomy and global values is set in play when that value overrides all others.

The analogy, of course, is this: Nothing wrong with working long dedicated hours in Big Law. What is wrong is embracing that ethos as the only one which makes sense for how to live a life. The bad effects are not simply the overwork. In addition, those knocked off the partner track could wind up broken. Their design for professional life had been too circumscribed - and determined for them externally. 

No surprise, that one-dimensional thinking in Big Law is reinforced with the gala rewards. That's the way the blue pill is coded to operate.

Take the dynamics at Kirkland and Ellis. There are the giant bonuses. More recently what had been added to the goodies is a more promising shot at partnership. K & E reduced that rite of passage by a year to nine.

However, even internally in Big Law viewing the practice of law through that tiny lens is being questioned.

In a Bloomberg Law interview, Paul Weiss Chairiperson Brad Karp, for instance, indicated a need to press down on the brakes on extreme work.

Interestingly, in the influential film "King Richard," the audience experiences the reverse of the driven helicopter parent. The father of Venus and Serena Williams insists that his children have a normal childhood. The road to stardom won't be non-stop exclusive practicing and entering competitive events. One afternoon, instead of practicing, the whole family packs it in and drives off to Disney. 

It's possible that "taking the blue pill" could replace "drinking the Kool-Aid" as the buzzphrase for caving to external sources of influence. 

The issue, though, is how seriously will society consider the implications of the blue pill?

The evil psychoanalyst smugly assesses human nature as eager to be controlled.

However, there may be a lessening of that force field with the decline of trust in institutions, ranging from government during COVID to Big Banking during the era of crypto. There may seem to be no choice other than making one's own decisions about values and then how to live them.

Way back in 2015, a Yale instructor William Deresiewicz warned about success-directed mind control in the book "Excellent Sheep." That detailed how willing ambitious youth in elite colleges are to buy into whatever was labeled as strategies for professional upward mobility.

More recently, some youth have opted out of that whole college pressure-cooker to invest what would have paid for tuition and living expenses in crypto. A number of them, documents Jefferies, have emerged as the new market segment to purchase lux goods, both in brick-and-mortar and in the metaverse.

Meanwhile, as The Wall Street Journal has been featuring for about a year, too many of those excellent sheep have wound up with staggering student loan debt and low-paying jobs. Yes, they opted for the blue pill. 

Marketing communications for blockchain, cryptocurrencies, NFTs, and much much more (including waterproofing, roofing, and shipping containers). You want results. And that’s exactly what you get partnering with Genova Communications. Fees customized for your unique budget. Complimentary consultation - janegenova374@gmail.com.

Those Irrelevants - Desperate, Intrusive (and so annoying)

No, we don't "feel sorry" for one-time power brandnames such as Bette Midler and the World Economic Forum as they struggle to stay on, too long.

Business and lives are in too much turmoil. It's enough to just keeping our own enterprises and personal affairs from coming completely undone.

The New York Post fills its digital front page with 76-year-old Midler's offensive rant about West Virginia. She labels that state "poor, illiterate and strung out." Yet, this is an era in which we need grace and eloquence. How we miss the Kennedyese lofty rhetoric. 

Then there is the eco-unfriendly World Economic Forum at this time of growing panic about climate change. Annually, it would facilitate the Davos, Switzerland summit for which attendees often took private jets to get there. Even commercial travel consumed plenty of fuel. 

What the hell was that Davos antic about?

COVID has put a stop to that. Let's hope forever. Given how the irrelevant become increasingly more aggressive when they are losing their influence and power, expect the World Economic Forum to do something big - and probably annoying - to get attention.

All those Irrelevants do, though, have the fade-out option.

The classic case of that had been Johnny Carson. He hosted a just-in-time (pre-irrelevance) good-bye gala. Ironically Midler performed during it. Then Carson went poof. No clawing back into the limelight. 

So, what's on our wish-list for gentle fade-outs this holiday season? Those would be gifts to The People.

Here are Law and More's Recommendations:

The Clintons, along with side players like Huma Abedin. If it sounds and looks like Hillary is trying for a comeback, maybe even a run for US President in 2024, it well might be.

Public affairs player Bob Dilenschneider who had been Roger Ailes' personal PR representative. His firm's website is already stuck in 2019 and 2020. Really. Look here at The Dilenschneider Group. In another universe he had headed all of giant PR agency Hill + Knowlton.

SNL. It hasn't been funny for a long time. What grates is that everyone is trying too hard.

Leon Black. He stepped out of the wilderness where the fallen-from-grace take refuge to attend a Mike Milken financial pow-wow - and file a high-profile lawsuit. That blew any progress in reputation restoration. Acquisition of wealth seems to have no necessary correlation with wisdom. Along the way, Black's errors in judgment threw shade on Apollo, the Museum of Modern Art, and law firm Paul Weiss. 

The Dollar. Block's head Jack Dorsey may be onto something in predicting it will be replaced by bitcoin. However, the betting crowd might opt for Ether, mined on the Ethereum blockchain, not bitcoin.

So, who or what is relevant?

That answer is simple: Anyone or anything not self-absorbed, therefore not stuck. The "in" term for that kind of stuck is "grandiose narcissism." 

Is it possible to get unstuck?

Let's be positive.

Of course there is a passageway out of infatuation with the self, especially a legacy.

The New York Times shook off the arrogance. It's profitable once more.

Big Law is trying. It's not there in terms of human-resources policies but the simultaneous pile-on of crises has widen the lens through which it views what it does - especially to human beings. 

And there is Spider-Man 2021 who again learned that with power comes responsibility. Box office results documented that the message resonated. Yes, it's all about the public interest.

Marketing communications for blockchain, cryptocurrencies, NFTs, and much much more (including waterproofing, roofing, and shipping containers). You want results. And that’s exactly what you get partnering with Genova Communications. Fees customized for your unique budget. Complimentary consultation - janegenova374@gmail.com.

Not Only Empty Offices, Also Stuck-in-Time Websites: The Dilenschneider Group

In Manhattan and Chicago, The Dilenschneider Group operates public affairs agencies.

Those had been launched in the early 1990s when Bob Dilenschneider stepped down from the leadership of giant public relations firm Hill + Knowlton.

Now, The Dilenschneider website is stuck-in-time. Its digital front page features reports and promotional material from 2019 and 2020. 

Is that a message that Bob wants us to go back in time to when the world was less chaotic? Happy-clappy nostalgia?

Or is the time travel indicative of a business on hold? Or maybe phasing out? Or maybe not-there any more?

This is puzzling. At one time all those nuts-and-bolts administrative activities had been overseen by Bob's long-time assistant Joan Avagliano. She didn't miss anything. 

Also, The Dilenschneider Group had represented powerful brandnames such as Roger Ailes and GE.

Now we watchers of the communications world find that time may have stopped for The Dilenschneider Group. And the rest of us will be struggling to navigate the unknowns of 2022. They range from if we will survive Omicron to how high will inflation go. 

Sadness hovers, of course for the world which is operating in real time: There could be coal in mankind's stocking Christmas Day. The virus obviously has the upper hand.

Marketing communications for blockchain, cryptocurrencies, NFTs, and much much more (including waterproofing, roofing, and shipping containers). You want results. And that’s exactly what you get partnering with Genova Communications. Fees customized for your unique budget. Complimentary consultation - janegenova374@gmail.com.

The Boomer Struggle to Grow Up - Enjoy Revisiting Some of That in "Licorice Pizza"

"Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest film [Licorice Pizza] is an antic comedy about a child actor in 1970s California, but it’s also a bittersweet reminiscence about how difficult embracing adulthood can be." - David Sims, The Atlantic, November 26, 2021.

The plot line of "Licorice Pizza" is a familiar one: the extreme reluctance to become an adult.

In it, 25-year-old going-no-where Alana Kane loops into the teenage life of 15-year-old child actor Gary Valentine. That Peter Pan or Patty Pan meme, of course, permeates pop culture in America. After all, we are a young nation, not like Poland or Italy. The theme plays out everywhere from film "The Big Chill" to the television series "Seinfeld." 

In real life we boomers borne witness to that when the counterculture outlived its usefulness. Too many - called "hippies" then - hung on. They never did what adults are supposed to for getting and holding a good job, being part of the middle-class ethos of being tethered to a mortgage, and saving enough for retirement. 

Not that we who made that rite of passage into adulthood enjoyed the process. Actually, for most of us something hardened. Yes, the music died. And it's only now that we can let up on the intensity of a career (they call that semiretirement) and just work at what we love that we can circle back to the joy and fun of pre-adulthood. 

Naturally, there are those - and they're the ones who make partner (usually early) at the Cravaths, Skaddens, and Mayer Browns - who seem to be born adult. When we were fighting the good fight during the counterculture on the campus of the University of Michigan, they were in the law school law library.

We didn't know they were there and not with us because our conception of the world, like that of all children, was totally egocentric. Only years later, when we had settled down into corporate life and they were working as the in-house counsel did we find out that they were "at Michigan" when we had been.

The jury is still out on the question: Is it possible to completely escape, rather than just delay, adulthood? I have seen instances of that and none of them were good.

Marketing communications for blockchain, cryptocurrencies, NFTs, and much much more (including waterproofing, roofing, and shipping containers). You want results. And that’s exactly what you get partnering with Genova Communications. Fees customized for your unique budget. Complimentary consultation - janegenova374@gmail.com.