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Is the rise of eDiscovery and the proliferation of relevant social networks getting you down? Not as much as it’s bugging federal judges who have to make decisions about the admissibility of posts on Woo Woo while they’re still struggling to figure out a Speak and Spell.
That may be a bit of an exaggeration, but not much, according to the Southern District of New York’s Judge Shira Scheindlin, one of the more tech-savvy judges in the federal system. Judge Scheindlin told the Big Law Business Summit on VCR tape that “[a]ll of us over 60 are getting nervous. But the rules have changed and require attorneys to be competent in technology.”
Judge Scheindlin could only think of one group with less technological knowhow than federal trial judges: “I can tell you that appellate judges know nothing about it.”
Burn.
Check out the whole video below:
Editor's note: Your ProbateShark finds no humor in this attack on the elderly. It is important in that it baits lawyer against lawyer. And is the "change" they seek resulting in the corrupt Probate Court of Cook County? Lucius Verenus, Schoolmaster, ProbateSharks.com
Old lawyers have earned themselves a bad reputation, especially in light of the current legal economy. They’re reviled by some as the Boomers who refuse to retire and make way for the new generation of attorneys. They refuse to adopt new technologies, they always think they’re right, and they adamantly refuse to change. This may be an unfair characterization, but many people believe it to be true, as disrespectful as it may be.
Given the harsh way some view older lawyers, of course they would be amused to see two of them almost come to blows inside a genteel Alabama country club. Imagine an attorney in his 70s allegedly screaming “you motherf*cker” at the top of his lungs, and then you’ll get an idea of what reportedly went down….
The events we’re about to talk about happened in October, but the dueling Montgomery Country Club membership revocation letters that were sent by the lawyers involved have been making their way around the legal circuit in Alabama, and we finally received them last night. In the long list of forwards, various members of the bar wrote that the letters were “hilarious” and “awesome.” One recipient summarized what transpired thusly: “I think one of them called the other an amoeba.” How’s that for southern charm?
The attorneys involved in the altercation were Thomas T. Gallion III and Thomas G. Mancuso. Here’s what Mancuso claims happened at the beginning of the country club confrontation (click to enlarge):
Gallion, on the other hand, claims Mancuso sent him a “defamatory letter” days before the incident at the club. Here’s Gallion’s description of what allegedly happened on the day of the fight (click to enlarge):
Here’s another excerpt from Mancuso’s letter to the country club president that we suspect was meant to gin up some sympathy for him as he painted himself as the lawyer with the cooler head (click to enlarge):
Here’s Gallion’s response to Mancuso’s “woe is me” narrative. This paragraph makes Gallion seems like… a very special kind of d-bag who must be a big hit at parties and social gatherings (click to enlarge):
We don’t know for sure if either of these fine gentlemen was barred from returning to the country club, but Mancuso suggests that he may file criminal charges against Gallion, while Gallion claims that never happened because he “learned a long time ago never to put one’s hand in garbage.” This guy’s got balls.
Gallion made the following promise when it comes to Mancuso’s presence at the club (click to enlarge):
Life as a grumpy old lawyer in Alabama certainly seems like it gets pretty entertaining, y’all. (Flip through the following pages to see Thomas Mancuso’s and Thomas Gallion’s redacted letters in full.)
Remember Adriana Ferreyr? She’s the 30-year-old Brazilian telenovela star who’s suing octogenarian moneybags George Soros because he didn’t buy her a $1.9 million apartment (or a $4.3 million apartment; the nerve of that old codger). When we last checked in on her, she was busy hiring Davis Polk alum William Beslow to fling legal arguments at the geriatric gigolo almost thrice her age she once banged, presumably hoping to make billions.
Ferreyr’s adventures in gold-digging continue this month with claims of her wild and crazy antics at a recent deposition in New York. She may only be known as a Hoveround ho in this country, but that doesn’t mean she’s not going to act like a diva.
Adriana Ferreyr doesn’t care if you’re a legal legend of the bar. She’ll still slap the glasses right off your stupid face…
According to recent filings, Ferreyr “came out swinging” at a deposition last week. While George Soros was being deposed, the fiery Latina allegedly appeared with a videographer, demanding that all of the proceedings be filmed. Martin Singer, representing Soros alongside William Zabel of Schulte Roth & Zabel, agreed with Beslow that a video would not be necessary, so Ferreyr apparently did what any elegant young woman would have done: she punched her lawyer and then screamed at him for about 20 minutes before allowing him to return to the deposition.
But that’s not all. Here’s a great summation of what allegedly went down from the New York Daily News:
Ferreyr … clocked Soros in the head, knocked the glasses off his California lawyer Martin Singer, cursed his other prominent lawyer William Zabel and even screamed at her own high powered attorney William Beslow, according to papers filed Friday by Singer.
“A–h–le! You piece of s–t!” Ferreyr, 30, allegedly screamed at Soros, 83, when he passed her in the hallway on the way to the restroom.
We hope Soros was able to turn down his hearing aids before Ferreyr started yelling at him. Singer, on the other hand, a young buck when compared to his client, was unable to avoid the soap star’s alleged wrath:
When the lawyers agreed at 1 p.m. to break for lunch, Singer said, Ferreyr “suddenly and without warning … lunged at Mr. Soros — who is 83 years old — and struck his head with her hands, knocking off the headphones he was wearing to amplify the audio in the room.”
“Ms. Ferreyr pulled back her arm to strike Mr. Soros in the face. I was able to grab both of (her) arms to move her away….I let go of her arms. Ms. Ferreyr immediately swung at my face, knocking off my glasses.”
Singer said he had to pull her back from stepping on his glasses and she tried to kick him. Then, he said, she slapped a Soros aide, Jose Santos, across the face and kicked Santos in the shins.
Biglaw firms have a problem. They can’t get their senior partners to retire. Or to pass along their clients to younger partners fast enough.
The reasons for this unwelcome phenomenon are straightforward. First, today’s Biglaw senior partners are making too much money. Would you retire if you were making seven figures and billing 1200 to 1500 hours a year? Of course not. Especially if you are helping to support your children. Or in this age of the 70-year-old rainmaker, a grandchild’s “education” as a communications major at the top party school in this year’s rankings.
Kidding aside, I know that many senior partners have very valid reasons for continuing to maintain their Biglaw practices. But that does not mean that what works for them at an individual level is what is good for Biglaw as a whole. In fact, I think the “sticky senior” issue is the greatest long-term threat to the continued viability of many Biglaw firms….
In fact, many of the non-lockstep global behemoth (modern?) Biglaw firms already treat their senior attorneys with the same level of consideration as they give their junior partners. As a partner in those firms, you are welcome as long as you are producing, and unwelcome within two or three quarters of you not producing. Simple. In contrast, the uber-prestigious lockstep firms have done the best job of holding the line on enforcing mandatory retirement ages, even in the absence of hard and fast rules on the issue. It is a lot easier to get your partners to retire early when you have been paying them very well throughout the duration of their partner careers. (Remember how much better partners at lockstep firms do than at closed-compensation shops. The primary beneficiaries under the lockstep system are service partners, who tend to be either new-ish or old-ish partners in firms that follow that model.) It is much harder to get a rainmaker to retire at 55 when you made him wait until he was 50 with a solid $3 million dollar book before you started paying him anything close to the firm’s “reported” profits-per-partner figure.
Like many things in Biglaw, things are murkiest for firms in the middle of the pack. Particularly if the firm’s partnership is diffuse, and decisions are primarily made through some form of centralized management. In such a “culture,” especially in this “Leaden Age” of Biglaw, any arguments about preserving the long-term viability of the firm that even smell of being anti-rainmaker (senior or not, but at many firms seniority and rainmaking go hand-in-hand) are anathema. Simply put, the idea of doing anything that would convince a senior rainmaker that they would be more “appreciated” at another firm is a toxic one. But that fact does not make the conversation any less necessary for Biglaw firms to have with their partnerships. Nor does it provide a wholesale excuse to the senior Biglaw partners of today, for the betrayal of trust they have perpetrated on some level to the profession as a whole.
And a betrayal of trust it is. Many of the senior denizens of Biglaw today have achieved their positions thanks to precisely the sort of institution-sustaining behavior that they are now turning their back on. They have benefited from senior partners who preceded them at the firm turning over the reins of client relationships, in addition to the mentoring that was part and parcel of the partner experience perhaps just a generation ago. Firms today ignore the cost of this betrayal of trust at their peril. For many firms, it is fair to say there exists an inverse relationship between the “stickiness” (in terms of addiction to compensation and hoarding of clients) of its senior partners and the “stickiness” (in terms of loyalty to the firm as an institution) of its largest clients.
Put another way, a good way to assess the long-term viability of a firm or practice group is to analyze the depth of the relationship that firm or group has with its largest clients. Barring a well-thought-out and executed succession plan, the more those client relationships are dominated by senior partners, the more susceptible those relationships are to being lost. We could learn a lot from firms just by getting some disclosure regarding the age distribution of the firm’s equity partnership. (The fact that such information is not readily available speaks volumes about how Biglaw truly operates when it comes to disclosure.) Perhaps the problem is not the presence of senior (55+, but even drawing the line at particular age can surely spur serious debate) attorneys at firms, but rather the fact that they tend to dominate the equity partnership ranks. As a litigator, I have personally benefited from the training of older lawyers, and continue to enjoy watching (usually with envy, but in a healthy inspiring sense) masterful senior litigators practice their craft in open court. But as much as we have to respect the contributions of the older Biglaw generation, and search for ways to allow them to serve their firms with dignity and while being compensated fairly, we also need to seek out ways to give the next generation of partners its chance.
Many Biglaw firms are grappling with this issue, with varying success. What I find interesting it that while many firms are caught in a bit of inertia when it comes to a real strategic plan that looks at what the firm will be even five years hence, some firms are trying to write their futures for themselves. In this group I put firms like Orrick and Dentons, which may not share much in common other than a lot of lawyers under management and being the subject of ongoing merger talk. They also, however, share something else in common: firm leaders who are young by Biglaw standards, with horizons for their own careers that are forcing them to take near-term steps to ensure the viability of the enterprises they run. Their dissatisfaction with the status quo is undoubtedly shared by a lot of younger Biglaw partners.
The heads of Orrick and Dentons are now in a position to act, and they are doing so. Biglaw firms need to get more serious about addressing the sclerotic effects of failing to transition senior partners, and their clients, out of their equity partner roles so that the younger generation can advance. If they don’t, they can expect to see more younger partners look for alternatives to practicing in Biglaw, just as they can expect clients to look for alternatives to their current Biglaw firms. The firms that get this issue right, with appropriate sensitivity for all involved, will be in a much stronger position as Biglaw tries to exit this leaden age for a new golden one.
What incentives should be offered to senior partners to encourage them to pass along their clients? Let me know by email or in the comments. Anonymous Partner is a partner at a major law firm. You can reach him by email at atlpartnercolumn@gmail.com.
[T]here are those who argue that there have been permanent, structural changes to the legal market that will reduce the number of legal jobs, and there is no denying that law school tuition remains daunting. But the demographic factors suggest the real culprit in the law school graduates’ jobs dilemma of today may be the law school graduates of four decades ago.
Remember Adriana Ferreyr? She’s the 30-year-old Brazilian telenovela star who’s suing octogenarian moneybags George Soros because he didn’t buy her a $1.9 million apartment (or a $4.3 million apartment; the nerve of that old codger). When we last checked in on her, she was busy 
Biglaw firms have a problem. They can’t get their senior partners to retire. Or to pass along their clients to younger partners fast enough.
Perhaps the problem is not the presence of senior (55+, but even drawing the line at particular age can surely spur serious debate) attorneys at firms, but rather the fact that they tend to dominate the equity partnership ranks. As a litigator, I have personally benefited from the training of older lawyers, and continue to enjoy watching (usually with envy, but in a healthy inspiring sense) masterful senior litigators practice their craft in open court. But as much as we have to respect the contributions of the older Biglaw generation, and search for ways to allow them to serve their firms with dignity and while being compensated fairly, we also need to seek out ways to give the next generation of partners its chance. 
[T]here are those who argue that there have been permanent, structural changes to the legal market that will reduce the number of legal jobs, and there is no denying that law school tuition remains daunting. But the demographic factors suggest the real culprit in the law school graduates’ jobs dilemma of today may be the law school graduates of four decades ago.