Welcome to another edition, thinking like a lawyer, I'm Joe Patrice.
Hey there, Joe Patrice.
Hi.
You know, and we are also joined by Chris Williams.
Hello, hello.
And we are all from Put The Lawn.
We do our usual thing here, which is we talk about the weekly stories on, above the
law from the week that was the first we, you know, show the little personality with
spa talk, spa talk, spa talk, hey, what's up, everybody?
Hey, it was a pretty exciting week of college football after sort of the cupcake schedule
of the previous week.
There was a Texas at Alabama.
Nice.
Yeah.
Yeah, you know, now we're going to get to hear that Texas is back for a couple of
straight weeks.
That'll be.
It's really interesting because it's going hand in hand with the Cowboys, utterly obliterating
the Giants on Sunday night football, which was awful.
It literally was the worst game of football, and I don't see this just because I'm a Giants
fan, although I am, but oh, my word was it just a terrible display of the sport.
But alone, it certainly was not one that deserved primetime billing.
It was just the, just an utter disgrace.
It looked like you had like third graders playing against a professional football team.
Yeah.
It was wildly bad.
Well, you know, hey, you all have given a long-term contract to that quarterback.
So she's a terrible idea, a terrible idea, man, that's the, that's the crappy part about
being a fan of any team, right?
Is that you're bound by these like millionaires decisions that are not always smart.
Wait until you would expect to be a citizen.
Yeah.
So that was how I spent a good deal of my weekend was watching the old football, how about
yourselves?
I watch a bit of it too, although I also was dealing with power outages and stuff.
It's been storming in the Northeast.
So I struggled with that.
I went to a housewarming party and I saw what may have been the best costume ever.
They were a biblically accurate angel.
So they had wings and like, googly eyes, super glued all over their face and like on a torso.
And I was like, one, this is amazing too.
Please tell me to super glue, googly eyes to your face.
Was it a costume party where other people in costumes or is this a house party world
in one person?
What is the thing?
I don't think a housewarming is costume appropriate most times.
I mean, it's it's it's it's October approximate, I guess.
And like if you throw it out, that is that is pushing it that that is some September
erasure going on right there.
Listen, listen, people play, people play Christmas music in May at this point.
It's your way.
He's wearing a Christmas shirt now.
This isn't about me.
Okay.
This isn't about me.
This is about the biblically accurate angel who was not the only person in costumes.
There was one person who was wearing a black turtle neck, some jeans and some like non
specific shoes.
So I was like, oh, Steve Jobs.
And he were like, no.
And I was like, oh, you're beauty Foucault.
And they were like, no again.
So the next of that is stop guessing people's costumes.
Well, putting aside the weirdness of costume parties in September, we're going to conclude
our small talk period and move on to the topics of the week.
So let's talk about big law, summer associate gigs and how to schedule them.
Sure.
Sure.
You were a summer associate.
I was a summer associate.
What happened there?
It was so much fucking fun.
Oh, yeah.
It is the reason why it's just a good time.
It's absolute great events, lots of expensive food and drinks and general marimen, all to
trick you into thinking that being a big law lawyer isn't going to be the worst.
Yeah.
But it is.
Yeah.
No.
It's great.
I mean, you have a lot of...
But was your favorite summer associate event when you were a summer associate?
That's a great question.
I'm not even sure I can remember all of them.
In many ways, it was the after party stuff.
There would be an event like a ball game or whatever and you'd bond with a few people
who were middle-level senior associate, whatever.
And afterwards, five or six of you would go all to a place and just be able to chat in
a bar or whatever about what the job was like and build those connections.
Stop it.
The after party.
Oh, yeah, you were.
Stop it.
Well, yes.
No, absolutely, because you were complaining about the various partners and what they give
it to you.
But that's still talking about the job.
You had to see this way.
I guess.
Obviously, there were a lot of plays and sporting events.
I remember doing Shakespeare in the park, but we also, when I was a summer associate, we
did a fishing event out on the Long Island Sound and that was ridiculous and fun.
Yeah.
It was not, it was not in Alaska, so no, he didn't, he didn't make the trip out, but.
You know, where you don't go on summer associate events, generally speaking, lots of places
I imagine are probably you shouldn't do.
Yeah.
Well, strip clubs to be one of them.
Yeah, yeah.
It's pretty clearly.
So this came up on on Reddit to be like, let's foreground this.
This was not in fact a strip club trip from what we've been able to gather, though it
was kind of build that way on Reddit.
On Reddit, it came out that Gunderson Dettmer had taken summer associates to a place and
there was video and that video showed women in states of undress dancing.
That's enough.
I don't care if they don't have, they're technically a strip club.
That's bad enough.
You don't, I don't care what their license says.
Exactly.
And that is kind of the point of the story we wrote about this that, you know, this was
probably in a perfect place to be taking folks in any event.
My initial read on this story was that it probably, even though it was not, it was still
inappropriate, it was probably something that wasn't official, but rather one of those
after parties that I was alluding to earlier, though it now seems based on more digging
that it probably was somewhat official, because this particular club is the actual hotel
bar at the hotel that apparently they did an outing at.
They all went to seemingly, went to Harris in Lake Tahoe, which is a thing you might do
if you're in San Francisco office, and this is the club that's in the hotel.
Well, okay.
Not that this is good at all, but was it perhaps a situation where they thought they were
just going to the hotel bar and, oh, no, people are taking off their clothes, and which
case should be like, hey, guys, I don't think that this is the right, I don't think this
is right.
How about we close out and take the party somewhere else as the right response?
Yeah.
Well, I mean, I, I, and perhaps this speaks to the kind of problems with lingering ways
in which Vegas Reno Lake Tahoe operate that think that the showgirl lifestyle is kind
of the way things are supposed to be, because that's probably how you end up in a situation
where the hotel bar operates like this.
That said, it's not particularly useful for professional trips.
So yeah, maybe Lake Tahoe's just not where you should be having the event at all.
And if you somehow inadvertently walked into this situation, wouldn't you, and immediately
would know that this was not appropriate for a summer event, and then, you know, even
if you got people out relatively quickly, you would still say something I would anyway
to like that some, some senior partner would be like, hey, we need to address this with
the group because obviously this is not something we want on some place like above the law
or, or, yeah, you don't, you don't want this getting some legs.
So address it, be like, hey, this is not our intention.
We had no idea.
Blah, blah, blah.
We like to say something.
Yeah.
So the, the extra layer of this is, Gunderson obviously has been like a lot of the big firms
that serve primarily or at least substantially, shall we say tech clients.
They are in some degree of financial distress within that they've been delaying start dates
and laying people off.
They know offered several of these summers, which you know, is always a sign of trouble
for a firm.
It's not a good look.
Yeah.
Unfortunately, that one of the no offers was the person who pointed out to HR that this
was inappropriate.
Wow.
It's not about, not a good look.
Yeah, no, I, I, deep down, I have, I have very little reason to believe that this was
your tallyatory.
I mean, they clearly are laying on, you know, no offering tons of people.
But it doesn't look good.
Yeah, at the point, yeah, at the point that somebody has already pointed out, hey, there's
a sexual harassment issue here and the response is that you don't get to work here.
Even if it's for other reasons, it never looks good.
Yeah.
So yeah.
So this is a little life lesson.
Don't, don't do that.
My story on this, you can read it in the, in the notes that will be a link to that and
you can read about it.
I have a couple of zingers in there, I think, you know, you do, I mean, I, I don't like
to compliment you.
It goes against.
I know.
It goes against my green, but you do it a couple of, a couple of winning lines.
Yeah.
What's the recommendation for next time?
Have the associated event at a 24 hour marriage bar in Vegas?
So yeah, let's, yeah, let's just avoid the trips to, to that kind of, that, that, that
world.
I mean, you're already in, you're already in San Francisco.
There's a lot closer that you could go to that would not involve people taking clothes
off in any scenario.
I guess, I remember, like, we went to, I mean, I've done firm events at like Atlantic City
for sure.
Not summer events.
Yeah.
Firm events.
And I'll bet Atlantic City has something similar to that.
Oh, I mean, I would, I guess I don't know.
I don't really go to Atlantic City much.
I, I view it as kind of like, you have self-respect, yeah.
I view it as like sad Vegas and maybe it's, yeah, maybe it's so sad that they don't have
that at all.
I, I don't make a regular habit of frequenting Atlantic City, but when I went, I did not,
I did not feel like I was going to inadvertently stumble upon women taking off their clothes.
That was not the vibe I got.
When I went, I was very concerned that somebody would strike a match and blow up hundreds
and hundreds of oxygen tanks because that's what, that's mostly what I saw there.
Yeah.
I thought it was more likely to have like, you know, a scab floating in a beverage than,
then.
Oh, thanks for taking this.
Oh, great imagery.
That was more than the vibe, then.
Oh, no.
Is this a strip club that I've wandered into inadvertently?
The sad thing is you're not wrong.
Like, I can't even fault you.
So on that note, we will mercifully get out of the scab drink conversation and have
a break.
Hey, Guy, what's up?
Just having some lunch, Conrad.
Hey, Guy, do you see that billboard out there?
Oh, even that guy out there in the gray suit?
Yeah, the gray suit guy.
There's all those beautiful, rich leather bound books in the background.
That is exactly the one.
That's JD McGuffin at law.
He'll fight for you.
I bet you he has got so many years of experience.
Like decades and decades.
And I bet Guy, I bet he even went to a law school.
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All right, we're back.
What are we talking about next?
Well, we have a follow up last week's turn.
We talked a little bit about Burning Man as legal podcasts are want to do.
We'll call that former acting solicitor general, Neil Cotill, attended Burning Man.
And there was those terrible rains and flooding and because of the nature of the soil there,
it turned into this kind of slick muck and it's hard to get out.
And he recommended ways to get out that may or may not lead to trench foot.
It was a whole vibe.
But in addition, so we talked a little bit about the trench foot stuff and people responding
to Neil Cotill's revelation that he went and how he got out and all that kind of stuff.
And Jeffrey Clark entered the conversation.
Oh, great.
Yeah, and it's a generic name.
So maybe it doesn't ring too clear of a belt.
But he is one of the 19 co-conspirators in the Georgia Rico case, an unindicted co-conspirator
in the federal case.
And he weighed in on Neil Cotill's post and said he called Burning Man a neo-pagan ritual
and says that he praised that these folks, meaning Neil Cotill, come to the light and realize
the only path is through our Lord.
We are all fallen in need God and need to repent as a nation.
The best part is that Neil's a rather quick, witted individual.
And Hindu pointed that out and obviously the very Christian ideology that Clark was peddling.
Do you not think I belong here sort of a vibe?
But also pointed out that instead of pontificating about his soul, perhaps his time would be better
sent studying the criminal code.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Jeff's in some trouble.
The interesting thing about Jeff, of course, is he is prolific on going on the Twitters
and trying to pick fights with people.
Ellie Mastal has often been tagged by this guy who now has bigger issues.
So it's fun to see, it's fun to see trolls end up on the wrong side.
Yeah, George Conway thinks that a more appropriate signature is your most excellent inmate PO number.
Right.
Yeah, no.
So yeah, interesting stuff, obviously, you know, kind of a bow to put on this story that is a little fun.
But it was a little surprisingly when I wrote that much about Burning Man.
An event is not really my back.
We didn't send any reporters there this year, weird.
So strange.
I sent in the application.
Yeah, no, I was ready to go.
We would have seen Neil.
It would have been a great thing.
This is what happens when you ignore Chris.
Yeah.
Yeah, it was, it was a lot of Burning Man coverage for an average, for a legal blog.
Let's just say that.
I think that's fair.
But, you know, when someone wants to spout off, you know, we're going to be there for it.
Okay, we're back.
Let's talk a little bit about big law.
We have.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I guess we already were in there.
So an interesting story that came out over the last week or so is it gives an introduced
a new feature, which is that they would be tracking when people are in the office by doing,
by having a system where you can look up and see, hey, is somebody here today?
Sure.
Yeah.
Good win Proctor.
Yeah.
Good.
Yeah.
G.
Yeah.
G firms.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
They have a new system called Colleague Connect.
And you can find out who is in the office.
So.
All right.
So here's the deal.
What do we feel about this?
There's a range of feels from what I gather.
I mean, I think gut check, you know, initially is big brother, right?
You know, they want to know who's the office, they're tracking it to make sure that you're
in the office so that you can get your full bonus and they're going to penalize you
if you're not.
Mm hmm.
Well, I think that that's kind of the initial sort of complaint people have about it.
But, you know, as our colleague Stacy Zoreski wrote about this, it points out, you know,
they always are able to monitor if you're there because you have to swipe to get in the
build again, almost every location.
Right.
So like, they already had the data of if you came in.
I've been a kind of a defender of this because like, look, I don't think anybody likes being
monitored.
That said, the data of did you come in?
They already had because everyone swipes because we live in a world where you have to have
that kind of security in places.
What I see and while this is not like some of the other programs that and hotel programs
that I've talked about in the past for law firm offices in a hybrid world.
This struck me as kind of a proto-hotelling concept where people basically put publicly
blast out, hey, today is one of the days I'm coming into the office so that people know,
oh, they're going to be there today.
Oh, maybe I'll come in if they're going to be there or maybe I won't come in because
they aren't there and somebody else can use my office, whatever.
I think this is, look, it's not great, but the alternative is everybody show up Monday
nine to five, you know, they were nine to nine as the case may be in big law.
Yeah, I mean, some folks definitely kind of pointed to that and I think that their point
in creating this program is that you get to know who, not just the firm doesn't just
know who's there, but associates, partners know who's there.
So if you're in the office and you're like, oh, gosh, I want to, you know, do a quick
run.
Oh, so and so is the office.
Let me go by their office see if we can grab a coffee together or oh, oh, I wanted
to, you know, bounce something off someone, someone who knows about this, let me see who's
around.
Yeah.
So we talked about this.
We got in a fight about this on legal tech weeks, journalist round table that I'm on.
I took the side that this seems regrettable, but the lesser of two evils when it comes to
either being in the office every day or not come, and you know, or not, what are the
counters to the, oh, let's just see who's in the office to go for a run is once you're
in the office, you know, you also had the opportunity to call them or send them a chat
to find out if they were in the office.
And so they thought there's not really a value to this at that level because you could
have reached out to them in other ways.
And I kept saying I think it's more for the, it's not a tool that really helps you once
you're all in the office, but it can be a very valuable tool before you go to the office.
You know, we're talking about firms that have global presences before you start your
three hour commute, which is living like half a mile away from someplace in LA.
Before you start that commute, you can look and see, oh, somebody's going to be there.
So I will, I will endeavor to trudge in today.
I mean, I will also say that sending, you know, calling, calling some who calls that
seems wildly old and formal, right?
Like, oh, ding, ding, ding, ding, bring, bring, bring, bring, like, like, that seems weird
and formal and like, a lot more to it than kind of casually, like, walking by their office
or, you know, we're like, oh, let me just pop up upstairs.
That seems a lot more casual than see that's an interesting question.
See, I view the phone as a, as a ubiquitous way to contact people within a law firm.
Like it's awkward to call somebody out that in the real world.
But like within a law firm, I view it as like, you just hit their extension and I mean,
I don't think, I think particularly post COVID, right?
When people were in the office and hitting extensions, I don't think that that's how.
Then anybody even try it.
That's true.
Yeah.
Plus, you know, the, the advent of, or not the advent, but the Gen Zs now be coming lawyers.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, how time works.
I think that that is not a generation that, you know, made phone calls as part of like
they're, you know, adolescent right of passage, the way, you know, Gen X and ultramarlenials
did.
Yeah.
Right?
Like making a phone call was, was important and, you know, you wanted a phone in your bedroom
and, and that kind of stuff and, and that's not how it is anymore.
But, but I do think that this sort of post COVID world is a part of why firms like this
are, are, are trying to, to do this and to encourage folks to come to the office, albeit
in, in maybe a little bit of a ham-fisted way, you know, there was a bunch of surveys
that law.com did about the sort of Zoom associates meeting folks who joined the firm
during or since COVID.
And you have big law managing partners saying that they're, that those associates aren't
where they should be.
They have not developed.
They do not have the skills X number of years out from starting at the firm that they,
that historically associates at that, you know, point to have.
Yeah.
And that, you know, that is a real concern, right?
If you have a third year associate who can't third level do that work, that, that's why,
that's why I think we are seeing some firms react by like you have to come into the office
because they don't know how, the only way they know how to teach people is in person.
Right.
And I think that's, that's a failing on their part.
But I have taken the stance against fully remote.
I think that there is a value to this kind of soft training that happens by just kind
of osmosis of being around folks.
But I also don't think you need to mandate four days, the specific four or third year
four days a week, everyone needs to come in.
You just need them to, you need there to be a healthy presence in the office multiple
days of the week.
It doesn't have to be all of them.
It doesn't have to be any specific ones.
That just needs to happen.
And I feel like I've championed efforts to make the office a destination people want to
go to.
And this is one of those.
If you can have a system that allows people to find that, we had the recent, there was
a recent study that showed that the number one motivating factor to get an associate to
go to the office is knowing that people they like are there.
Or so then the work and the training and whatever.
And that makes sense to me.
And that also seems like that is how the training happens is by being there.
And so so long, it doesn't matter why they're coming in, so long as they're coming in.
So you create conditions that make them want to be there.
A system where you can see if your folks are there, these are good start.
Having fun things there, having perks, having a cafeteria, like all of these, all of these
cool little office perks are where money should be invested rather than trying to mandate
people come in.
And frankly, you can get a lot of those things on less square footage if you were smart
about this, which I know we always joke about law firms, lawyers not being the best business
people.
But if they were a good business people, they could create a really cool office on a lot
less space if they set their mind to it.
Yeah, I just think that this is going to be a continuing conversation.
Another one of the revelations from the surveys are that partners saying that they just
think that new associates are lazy.
Fundamentally, they don't work as hard as previous generations of lawyers.
And without getting into sort of the specifics of that, one way to disabuse them of that
notion is to get to see them in person, to really sort of see them not just as, you
know, this is the number of hours you build in a day, but I can, you know, know how you
work because I see it, which is part of it as well.
And I thought it was going to range from men to, I hope that there are initiatives
put in place to prevent harassment, because I know that there's, it's easy to talk about
who I want to make sure that my, see if my friends are working there, but what if there's
a person you're actively trying to avoid, you know, and now they have access to, now
they know if you're in and out, because I have no issue with, like, say a manager, somebody
you know, if I'm in an office, it looks good for that on me if I'm in the office, there's
my, I'm actively trying to avoid, knows where I am, and it's deliberately coming in
in the days that I'm working, I wouldn't like that, you know, and to think about, see,
like, we have HR departments, right, yeah, but they don't always work, you know, and like
with, like, was pinging people, like, you have these, I have the option to say, like, I'm
away, so like, people know they're not ignoring what I have you, but let's say you have
this thing on, they know where you are, they decide to come knock on your door, being,
being annoyance, like, I would hate for that to happen, and it seems like this would
enable that.
Yeah, I mean, I just feel like the alternative is everyone come in every day, and then they
definitely know where you are, right?
Like, at a certain point, at a certain point, if there's toxicity in the work environment
that there's not a great way around it, without without without without HR, without proactive
steps, yeah, like, yeah, avoiding it, I mean, is, and obviously the, the, the primary harassers
are the, the managers, so, you know, you're having partners yelling at you, so, you know,
that, that you can't really avoid.
Sure.
But still, it, it's an interesting problem, and I, I don't, I don't love the kind of surveillance
here, but I also think that it's better.
It is a better solution than mandate it, but we'll see.
Lesservivals.
Yeah, you know, and, and I think it provides some really good data.
Not that they couldn't have necessarily gotten this data from swipes, but, you know, swipes,
who sees those, right?
Like, somebody is kind of on the staff side, probably, but, you know, you can have with
this a practice group in a certain office can look and say, you know what, my team, 90%
of my team always wants to be in on Mondays, that's when we're going to have our team meeting,
you know, like the first Monday of every month, because that's when most people are in, rather
than having it on Thursday when a himfisted, everyone comes in Tuesday through Thursday
might have done it.
You can look and see, might people prefer Mondays or might people prefer whatever and so
it's those kids are in, literally, yeah, because people might be coming in for various reasons
and childcare being a huge one of them.
You can, individual practice managers can figure out what the best option is by having,
it democratizes this data a little bit in a way that can be leveraged or should be
anyway.
Hopefully office managers are doing the same thing and wrecking, you know, if the lease
is coming up, recognizing what they don't do and don't need, anyway, I, I don't hate
it as kind of my takeaway, even though I know that a lot of people are, does it feel good
at least initially?
We'll see how it all winds up getting implemented, I guess, and, and, you know, in a year, check
in with the good one folks, see where they feel about it, I guess, but I get the initial
Ick factor for sure, but, but you make some, some good counters that things are going to
be changing.
Yeah.
One point that people made was that it opens the door to kind of a bad form of peer pressure
that, like, if everyone can see if you're in on that Tuesday when you've wanted to be
a home for little league, now you're coming in because now everyone can see you were trying
to be at home.
Maybe, but the alternative is you had to be in any way, like it, it's, we're not going
back to fully, whole offices are unlikely to do fully remote work because of the sort
of learning gap that we're talking about.
So in a world where something, they want some sort of office presence, this seems like
a more benign form of it.
It's more benign than mandates for sure.
Yeah.
Anyway.
That's the week.
You should be subscribed to the show so you get new episodes when they come out.
You should leave us reviews to help out the, our position in the algorithm, O legal podcasts.
You should be reading above the loss so you read these and more stories as they come out.
You can check out us on various forms of social media.
The publication is at ATL blog on the Twits, Catherine's at Catherine one, Chris's at
rights for rent.
I'm at Joseph Patrice there.
I'm also on Blue Sky at Joe Patrice and Catherine's at Catherine one over there also.
You should be checking out the Jabo, Catherine's other podcast that she hosts.
As I mentioned, I'm a guest on the weekly guest on the legal tech week journalist round
table, having our 100th episodes spectacular this week because I'm not going to be able
to be on it for the whole duration, but we'll see.
You should check out the other offerings of the legal talk network and with that, we
will check back in next week.
Bye.
Peace.
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