“Glass, China, and Reputation, are easily crack’d, and never well mended.”
Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1750
Diary of My Disastrous Law Career: From Harvard to Heaven Help Me
Chapter 7
Have you ever had a job so disastrous you didn't put it on your resume? I've had two.
I'm going to tell you some details of one of them today. I left my job as a lawyer at one of Chicago's most prestigious law firms, which I thought of as a white-collar sweatshop, and went to a job as a lawyer at another large law firm in Chicago, which turned out to be a blue-collar junk shop, to use some of the parlance of the day. This latter job (Lawyer Job 4) proved to be in some ways a worse experience than the prior job (Lawyer Job 3), which was itself plenty disastrous, and I do not include this latter job 4 on my resume because I do not want my good reputation tangled up with that firm's bad one.
Have you heard the phrase "out of the frying pan, into the fire," basically: going from one bad situation to another? How about the phrase "don't cast pearls before swine," which means don't offer something valuable to people who can't appreciate it? These are themes of this installment of my legal memoirs, which I am writing in order to share with you why I left my career as a lawyer. Basically: I left to save my life.
If you've been following this blog, you know some of the disasters of my time at the prestigious Chicago firm. All disasters must come to an end, and, it's time for us to leave Lawyer Job 3: Chicago and New York, due to misery and misogyny, illness and agony, and lack of purpose or fulfillment. That's right: I (finally) quit. Oh but don't worry (or: do worry), because there are more disastrous lawyer jobs still to come in these memoirs, starting with Lawyer Job 4: Chicago, in this very installment.
Before we embed into new disasters, here's how I exited the previous ones:
Awkward
Back to Lawyer Job 3, if you've read the previous post or two, you know that a few of the major problems for me at that firm were finding out women were paid less than men at the same level, getting demoted after an excellent review (so the firm could take my raise and give it to a man?), and being so exhausted from overwork that I fell asleep in a restaurant on a date with a man who may have been very nice but we'll never know.
The moment when I made up my mind to find a way out came when a partner I did a lot of work for shouted at me for not changing my outgoing voicemail to say I wouldn't be checking messages over the weekend that I was recovering from a general anesthetic after having emergency surgery because of a miscarriage. He knew I was headed to emergency surgery because I stopped by the office to tell him. I didn't tell him it was because I was having a miscarriage; would that have mattered? In any case, as I left the partner's office after getting shouted at, I said to myself that I would leave the firm within another six months. And I did, after working at that firm for around two years. I called it my WNL plan: Whole New Life. This included getting healthy, getting positive, and getting out of there. The one part I hadn't figured out yet: getting out of the law altogether, as I went from one law firm to the next; out of the frying pan and into the fire, as the old saying goes.
Through a recruiter, I found a job down the street at another large firm, where the partners said they had some exciting things going on, with a less crazy schedule, and needed an associate like me to help move things forward. The female senior partner whose office was on my floor warned me that this other firm was "very blue-collar." I didn't know what she meant, but I would find out: I was not a cultural fit and the lawyers there didn't accept me. More below on the disasters that flowed from that!
On my last day at Lawyer Job 3, the partner who shouted when I came back from the miscarriage came to my office to ask me to stay. He came around and stood behind my desk, where I was sitting. It wasn't sexual; it was awkward; was he trying to be friendly? Senior partners never went to associates' offices; maybe he just didn't know where to stand in this small and unfamiliar environment? (Hint: sit in one of the two guest chairs with which every associate's office was furnished.) I had actually learned a great deal about good lawyering from this partner, and I thanked him for that, and told him I simply didn't think I had a future there, what with the demotion and all. Even if this little chat hadn't been extremely awkward, it was too late. I felt disrespected, and saw that I indeed had no future or goal or chance for a happy life there. They couldn't have paid me enough money to stay, and they weren't going to try. I wanted something more than money in any case: I wanted meaning.
Would I find meaning in my next job as a lawyer, when I took my Harvard College and Harvard Law School diplomas off the wall at one law firm and hung them on the wall at another law firm just a few blocks away on the same Chicago street? (Spoiler alert: of course not!) At this next firm, and indeed also the next job after that, the disasters were so disastrous -- and the low quality and in some instances illegality of the work done by people at these next two jobs were intolerable -- that I found myself nostalgic for the prior firm. A very bad sign.
Here we go:
Lawyer Job 4: Chicago
My new job in the year 2000 was as a lateral-hire 4th-year associate at a large Chicago law firm that had just merged with attorneys from another firm's corporate department. Today, the firm has twice merged with other firms and is even larger, even after the lawyer layoffs and rescinded offers of the 2008 recession and other disasters that the profession experienced after I left. The idea at the time was that I would be part of a fast-growing transactional practice inside a firm that had been better known for its litigation practice. This sounded exciting to me because I was told that while the new partners brought over clients and work, there would also be opportunities for me to get involved in business development, even as an associate. I was also told that they didn't believe in the punishing pace and over-workload of my prior firm. I knew that I could contribute my legal skills such as contract drafting, and people skills such as listening and negotiating. I wasn't worried about coming into a 2-firm merger, because in Hamburg I had helped in a 3-firm merger, creating a contract template database that helped unify the firm and its brand. Maybe I could contribute something similar here. We talked about all of that in my interviews, and the head of the corporate department -- who was from the parent firm so to speak, into which some of the corporate group from another firm was merging -- was very active in recruiting me and said he hoped I would join the firm.
That was the idea. When I accepted the job offer, I found that the reality was different.
Paperclip
The reality was that the firm had almost no corporate work, not from old clients, nor from new clients. In fact, there were apparently no new clients, not from the new partners, nor from the old ones. Here's how I found out:
I was excited on my first day. I went around to the head of the corporate department and his partners and let them know I was ready to get to work. They said that's great and I should come around tomorrow and they'd have something for me. I thought it was odd that they didn't have a pile of work for me to start drowning in from day 1, as had been the case at my old firm, and thought maybe they meant it when they said they didn't believe in overwork. Then again, I knew I was expected to bill a certain number of hours per year, and there wasn't really a day to waste; plus, I wanted to work on interesting deals and I was ready. Without work to do, I took time to get to know some of the associates and staff on that first day, and I came back around to the partners on my second day. Guess what: no work. I know you see the pattern that I saw.
Bits and pieces of small projects started to trickle in, through my incessant asking I think, but nothing like the flood of deals I had just left at my old firm. My desk was barren except for my trusty dish of chocolates, and two tiny partial-projects so small they didn't need a Redweld or even a file folder, just one paperclip each. These pieces of parts of small projects weren't interesting to me, and were almost paralegal work, but I did my best and completed them, getting scolded by the partner who gave them to me (uh oh) for taking too long. I guess work expands to fill the time available, as Parkinson said. And then I had no more work again.
I went work-hunting again. Some of the work I was given was paralegal work, and it was unfair to bill a client associate rates for what a paralegal could do, so I supervised a paralegal in completing such projects. One partner tried to give me non-billable work: a client wanted free work, and if I did that free work, I couldn't count the hours that I spent toward my billable hour requirement. That seemed unfair of the client to ask of the partner, and unfair of the partner to ask of me. I told the partner as much and said again that I would supervise a paralegal. The partner said no; he couldn't ask a paralegal to work for free. But he could ask me? What would be next: washing the client's car and the partner's car, for free? I was not above doing any type of work that a client needed, but if it was not billable work, and I would basically be neither paid nor respected for the work, that could start to be a bad habit. And why wasn't there any billable work that needed doing?
This all seemed very ramshackle to me; a shaky structure on a shaky foundation. In fact, let's just call the firm "Ramshackle Misogyny" as my then-boyfriend (a non-lawyer) and I did privately. This was my first solid boyfriend after my divorce a year or so prior; we dated for around 9 months and he was super smart and sweet, as well as sympathetic to my disastrous law career.
Maybe you are thinking I should have been glad I wasn't overworked at Ramshackle Misogyny. Maybe you are wondering why I wanted corporate law work when I didn't like corporate law work. I was glad of course to get more than the 5 hours of sleep per night I got at the prior firm, and I knew that this work wasn't my reason for living. But I didn't have a clearer view of my life's mission in front of me yet; being on the wrong path was, in a sense, part of the path.
Importantly for the short term, I saw the dangers in this new environment: getting sucked into non-billable work and getting in trouble when I didn't meet billable hour requirements; doing really boring work and not contributing my skills and not growing as an attorney or as a professional; spending time fighting off non-lawyer work -- spending such time is also non-billable; or spending time supervising paralegals. Where was the meaning or goal or ikigai in any of this? When I went to Harvard Law School, I thought practicing law meant I would be working with smart people on interesting projects that made a difference. What was I thinking?
Pipeline
I went work-hunting yet again. The partners all said work was "in the pipeline." They all used that phrase; did they agree on it at a partners meeting? What did it mean? Supposedly that work was on the way. I started to suspect that wasn't true, and that maybe there wasn't even a pipeline.
I enthusiastically asked the head of the corporate department if I should start helping out on business development as discussed during interviews, if perhaps some of the promised clients hadn't come over with the new partners, or whatever the issue was. I suggested the firm join the Executives' Club, the Economic Club, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, and the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce, all good places to meet the kind of clients any big firm lawyer would want, and that I could attend events there with him or another partner, to build the corporate group's visibility in the community. My suggestions were poorly received; maybe the head of the corporate department thought that an associate shouldn't tell him how to run his department? Maybe in the interviews when he said I could be involved in business development, he said that just so that I would accept the job? But why did he want me to accept the job if I wasn't going to get to do what we talked about for that job?
I realized that I wasn't developing a very positive relationship with the head of the corporate department. Frankly, I came to believe that he, his department, and possibly his whole firm were frauds, and if you continue reading you'll see more examples of why. I hadn't given up yet, though, and thought that maybe I could salvage this professional relationship, this job, and this career. (Spoiler alert: I couldn't.)
Darkness
In an attempt to be transparent and create a sincere relationship and a positive work situation, I went on to share with the head of the corporate department that I was worried that I wasn't contributing. I basically asked him: If you don't want me to help get new business, and you don't have any current work for me to do, how can I contribute, and won't there be a problem if I don't make my billable hours? He told me that the reason I didn't have any work or any good work is that I didn't get to the office early enough. He said the good work is handed out at 8:15 or 8:30 am or so.
Wait, what? Could this be true? I told him that the reason I had been coming in at 9:30 am was that this is what I did at my prior firm; corporate associates generally came into the office at 9:30 am, because the bankers who were our clients started at around that time or later. Plus, we were going to stay in the office until 9:30 pm or longer, so 9:30 am to 9:30 pm gave us that expected 12-hour work day. Without thinking about it, I had stuck to that starting schedule. At first, I actually believed the head of the corporate department when he said he and his partners would have good work for me earlier in the mornings, and I replied that I didn't have a problem coming in as early as needed, that I was sorry I hadn't been there earlier before, and that I would be there at 8:00 tomorrow. How was I still so naive? Here is what happened next:
I arrived at the office at 8:00 the next morning. No one was there. No lawyers, no staff. I had to turn the lights on. I was shocked. Then I realized the head of the corporate department must have been speaking sarcastically, or trying to be mean to me, or making fun of me, or criticizing me for coming in at 9:30 am? And I fell for it. How would you have interpreted this, and what would you have done about it? I called him and left an upbeat voicemail: Hi, it's Valerie, it's 8:04 am, and I'm here early for the good work that you mentioned. Let me know! Thanks!
I did the same thing every day for a week: arrived at 8:00 am, turned on the lights, left a voicemail. My voicemails were never returned, and that good early morning work never appeared.
Incompetence
Harvard was about excellence, so was my prior firm, and so was my attitude of always trying to do my best. The ramshackle firm was not about excellence. When the corporate department had work, it was clear that sometimes partners and associates did not know how to do the work properly, and that often in that situation, instead of finding out how to do it right, they just did it wrong. This was unfair to clients, and to principles of pride in one's work, and I could not tolerate that. I did not want my name to be associated with poor quality. Even though I didn't enjoy the work or find meaning in it, I couldn't stand to see it done poorly or see clients not given their money's worth.
Here is an example of work that I saw done poorly:
A partner and I worked on a financing deal, representing a local bank. Our job was to write a contract that would bring our client into an existing lending arrangement between a company that was already borrowing money from another bank, so that our client could also lend money to the company and would get paid back ahead of the first bank. I got to join the partner in a meeting with the client, which was nice, so that I could hear the bank's goals in this transaction. I remember that the banker we met with was incredibly excited to be doing this deal!
The partner had already written a first draft of the contract from the term sheet (the list of items agreed upon by the bankers and business people, which the lawyers are supposed to flesh out and put into legal agreements for the parties to sign), and I was to polish up the partner's draft and any future drafts while the parties negotiated, until we reached the final agreement. The problem: the partner's draft didn't accomplish what the term sheet said it should; specifically, and crucially, it didn't provide for our client to be paid back first. I pointed this out to the partner, along with a suggestion of how I could fix it. The partner said: don't worry about it. I paused. I replied: Our client hired us to reach a specific goal, and this contract doesn't reach that goal and puts the client at risk. The partner said: It'll be fine. I was shocked. I knew that the client wasn't reading the drafts of the contract, and so wouldn't know that the contract didn't do what it was supposed to do; the banker was relying on us to make sure the contract did what it was supposed to do.
So what was I supposed to do: go against the partner's orders to protect a client who had made the mistake of hiring a firm that wasn't protecting them? Follow the partner's orders and do shoddy legal work? Be a snitch and tell the Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission that my boss was failing a client, and then have a reputation as a snitch? Choose some other course of action? I continued trying to reason with the partner, and started to think that he just didn't understand what the contract should say or how this deal could work, as he was getting mezzanine and subordinated debt confused with senior debt. Worse, he didn't seem to care. Did he just want the fees from the client, without giving the client what they were paying for? I rewrote the contract to do what it was supposed to do, and told the partner I was doing that. The partner changed it back to not doing what it was supposed to do, the parties signed it (did anyone but me really read it?), and that was that.
Duress
This next example of seeing the firm do bad work is the example where I decided to quit. The core of the matter: a partner tried to bully me into becoming a scapegoat for bad work done by others, and to sign documents assuming liability for the entire firm, or to be fired if I didn't agree.
Outrageous and unconscionable, you say? Unethical and possibly illegal? I agree. Here is what happened, first in legal terms: a partner tried to force me as an associate to sign an opinion letter, and when I wouldn't (because only an equity partner can sign such a letter and bind the firm), he shouted at me to sign a side letter saying I wrote the opinion letter, or else I'd be fired.
If you are a corporate lawyer, you probably read that with pure horror. If you are not a lawyer or not familiar with opinion letters, let's clarify:
An opinion letter is one of the most important documents that a law firm writes, because it says that the law firm guarantees that everything in the transaction it just completed is correct, that the client was authorized to enter into the transaction and is not violating any laws or other contracts by doing so, and that if any of this turns out not to be true then not just the client but also the law firm can be held responsible. In other words, an opinion letter is like a law firm's official seal of approval, and money and reputation are at risk. Only an owner of the law firm, that is, an equity partner (also called a senior partner or sometimes a shareholder) has the authority and power to sign an opinion letter. An opinion letter signed by a non-owner would be worthless, because someone who doesn't own something can't promise it to back a guarantee, so to speak. It would be like agreeing to sell Microsoft for example, or putting up shares in Microsoft as collateral, when you don't own Microsoft or any Microsoft shares.
What was really going on here? It seemed to me that the corporate partners were inexperienced at corporate law, had never been asked to write an opinion letter, were terrified that they had not done a flawless deal (or knew for certain that they had not?), and wanted to pin any blame on someone else (in this case yours truly) even though I hadn't even been involved in the deal at issue. The partner asked me to draft an opinion letter, which I did, and which was fairly standard procedure, although it did seem unusual to me that he didn't have his own opinion letter template and that he was asking an associate (in this case yours truly) who hadn't been on the transaction from the start.
(For the full and fully proper standard opinion letter procedure that my prior firm followed, and a comparatively funny and lighthearted moment in connection with a beautifully done opinion letter there -- almost too beautiful, as lipstick was involved for a moment -- see two posts back, "Misogyny, misery, screamers, strippers: all in a day's disastrous work at a top Chicago law firm," and scroll down to the opinion letter episode.)
After I drafted the opinion letter for the Ramshackle partner, he tried to bully me into signing it, which I did not. I told him that at my prior firm, no partner would have wanted or allowed an associate to sign an opinion letter, not only because it this would be completely unacceptable and utterly unthinkable because thoroughly invalid, but because the partners stood behind the firm's work. This seemed to anger the partner; he and others at this firm had an almost unhealthy reverence for my old firm, without evidently any of the same belief in actually trying to do excellent work themselves. I told him that anyone on the other side of a deal would never accept an opinion letter signed by an associate! I tried to lighten the situation with a bit of levity -- this never worked before and still didn't -- and said: Oh, so are you saying you want to make me, a 4th-year associate, an equity partner all of a sudden; what a great promotion that would be! No laughter. More bullying: the partner was standing over me at my desk, shouting in my face to sign the agreement. I continued to refuse, thinking: What on Earth am I doing in this nightmare of absurdity?
The partner changed tactics, but didn't stop shouting, and demanded I sign a side letter agreement saying I wrote the opinion letter. If this sounds shady to you, and almost certainly unenforceable, your instincts are correct. Side letter agreements between partners and associates are definitely not standard operating procedure; I had never heard of anything like this, and I could hardly believe my ears. Somehow I continued to maintain a mostly calm exterior, although I was shaking a bit, and felt like I was absolutely boiling inside, with rage at being bullied and disrespected, and with disgust at the awful actions this partner was trying to take in scapegoating me to protect himself from his own mistakes.
I explained that a side letter agreement in this situation would very likely be unenforceable, and would not absolve the firm of liability or shift it onto me, and that if the side letter came to light (I thought about sending a copy to the local papers, the ARDC, the Bar Association, and the firm's malpractice insurer, as well as binding it into the closing book), it would show that the firm had made a serious misstep in trying to turn an associate into a scapegoat, while possibly encouraging review of the deal to find whatever mistakes the partner seemed so frightened that he or his colleagues had committed. Can you imagine your boss wanting to blame you and make you pay for something he and others did wrong? If you can, are you going to quit and write your memoirs too? I pointed out that if the firm was concerned about liability, and did not feel confident standing behind its work, the proper way to address that would be actually to review the deal and make sure everything was done right! Sigh. What was I thinking? Doing a deal right did not seem to be an option at Ramshackle Misogyny, did it?
The partner screamed at me that if I didn't sign it, I was fired. I considered this for a moment. This might actually be a good offer under the circumstances! I had heard that this partner had threatened to fire other people before, though I didn't know for what. Looking back: If he really fired me for refusing to break the rules, that could give me leverage, if I wanted to use it. For example, if I were fired and sued the firm for wrongful termination, I would have evidence. If I exposed the firm over fraud or other wrongdoing, I would have evidence. Did I want to go through a lawsuit though, especially in those days when that was seen as basically ending your own career because no one else would ever hire you? Did I want to be a "tattle-tale," a whistleblower, in this situation? I have no problem standing up for what is right. (Some people seemed to think that was my problem.) But here, what was the goal, what exactly would I be standing up for? If for myself, I could do that by walking, couldn't I? Getting fired could at least get me out the door, which is where I wanted to go, far away from a bully like this. You've heard of the fight or flight response, in a stressful situation? I wanted to fly out of there immediately. But I wanted to leave on my own terms.
And although I'm a quick thinker, this was all happening terribly fast. I wasn't making detailed calculations, but it was obvious that what the partner was doing was wrong. I felt very rushed and pressured with this man leaning over me and screaming. There was no way I was going to sign the opinion letter. With my hand shaking, and the partner breathing over me, his face red and a blood vessel in his neck looking like it was going to burst, I signed my name to a side letter saying I had drafted the opinion letter. Indeed, that part was true. The part was not true, however, that I accepted responsibility for the deal. I didn't think any judge or court would believe that I had or could accept responsibility for the deal, as again an associate simply had no power to do that because an associate is not an owner of the firm but an employee.
Moreover, I signed the side letter under duress -- pressure and threats to get someone to do something they normally wouldn't do -- and this alone would likely make the side letter worthless, invalidating any assumption that I had really wanted to take responsibility for any mistakes committed by lawyers at this firm, whom I had come to view as a ramshackle band of posers, even if it were possible for an associate to take such responsibility, which it wasn't.
I was also indignant that this lawyer apparently knew he and his firm were doing bad work, yet they did it anyway. They took clients' money, and didn't give the clients what they paid for. That had not been the case at my prior firms, and I couldn't stand by this lack of excellence and lack of integrity from a business, legal, or human standpoint. Plus, if people at this law firm were going to be disbarred at some point -- stripped of their license to practice law -- I did not want to be among them.
Applied Lesson:
One of the somewhat depressing-sounding yet practical lessons I learned at the previous firm was valuable here at Ramshackle in a much starker way: CYA, which means Cover Your (ahem) Ass(ets). In other words, protect yourself. If someone with a bad intention wants to hurt you or blame something on you, or even if there's no ill intent but someone is going to be blamed for something, don't let them blame you, and make sure you have documentation to protect yourself. Here there was indeed bad intent. What are a couple of specific things you can do to CYA? Take notes at or after every meeting, and keep copies of documents, including in hard copy when needed. These are things I did.
What to do next? Should I contact the ARDC? Should I tell the client? The media? Would any of that make a difference, or would it make things worse? What that partner did was wrong, but would becoming a snitch be right?
There wasn't really another partner I felt I could discuss this with or get advice from; they all seemed either hostile, like the head of the corporate department, or ineffectual, like the partner in the pencil episode below. I did try to approach one partner who seemed friendly, but he said that people at the firm didn't think I was committed. That took the wind out of me. Here I was trying to save the firm from itself (why??), and I was supposedly the one who wasn't committed? Was that code for: You are not a fit? Well I knew I wasn't a fit. To me, the problem was what to do about the problems I saw at the firm. But apparently to the firm, the problem was me, for turning the lights on to the fact that there were problems at the firm?
What I did decide was to start looking for another job. More on the exit process later, which held its own disasters.
Terrible lesson: I was working with people who didn't know what they were doing, and who wouldn't hesitate to sacrifice me to their own recklessness, incompetence, and greed.
Positive lesson: I had quit firms before, and could quit again. How is this the most positive lesson? I guess we could reword it for more positivity: I worked hard to stay true to my own values. And I implemented CYA.
But wait, there's more -- here are just a couple more of the disasters from this firm:
Pencils
My secretary at Ramshackle Misogyny came over with a partner from the merged department at another firm, and she apparently brought a bad attitude and bad habits with her. For example, I asked her if she could please go to the supply room at some point during the day and bring me a new box of pencils, which I used to draft documents (I learned the old-school pencil style of drafting). She said No! Not just no, which would itself have been the wrong answer, but No! with anger and feeling! I paused. What do you mean by no, are you ok, is something wrong? She replied: I never do that for the partner, get your own pencils.
She had a bit of a crazed look in her eye, as though she were unstable in some way, or just very agitated. I don't know for certain what was in her mind when she got upset over the pencils. But I did know that if we were going to work together, we should establish expectations. I explained that my job as an associate was to do billable work, and that for me an important part of the job of my secretary was to support my ability to do billable work, including by doing non-billable tasks such as keeping the office supplies flowing. (This is pretty basic and was never before controversial.) Did she not know how this was supposed to work? Whether she did or not, she didn't care. Instead, she turned and marched out of my office.
At the old firm, I would have simply picked up the phone and had the floor coordinator reassign her immediately, and it would have been up to the floor coordinator to investigate, talk with the partner, and see if any other steps needed to be taken. An associate's job was to bill hours, many many many hours, and not to stop to do much of anything else including engage in lengthy discussions with staff, eat, sleep, or have a social or spiritual life.
At this firm, there was no floor coordinator. So I went to the partner, who seemed to be a nice person, and who for a reason or reasons I didn't know was always sickly-looking and gaunt with a green pallor to his skin. He was a corporate partner, but never had work for me, so I don't know quite what he did. In any case, I told him that our secretary had just belligerently refused to get pencils for me, and asked if he had any insights into that or how he thought I should address her attitude. I figured he had worked with her longer than I had, and I wanted to respect their relationship, while also finding positive solutions. Unfortunately, it seemed I was wasting my time. The partner replied that he always got his own office supplies and never asked the secretary to do much of anything for him. He added that she talked to him rudely too, and said he was sorry but he couldn't help me. My goodness. How was I supposed to respond to that? This partner allowed himself to be bullied by his secretary. And what was I supposed to do with a secretary who wasn't doing her job, while I had no power to impose consequences, or to get another secretary?
Furthermore, I found that the secretary did poor work, with her signature bad attitude, when I gave her revisions to type or any kind of work at all. I spoke with her about all of this, with no change in results or in her attitude. My only sort-of solution was a workaround: I let it be known to other secretaries and paralegals that if they didn't have much to do and wanted to stay busy, they could come to me and, if I had any work, they could do work that my own secretary couldn't manage. Like getting pencils or typing accurately.
I sure missed my secretary from the old firm, who was a professional, and who did first-class work, with a positive attitude. We treated each other with respect and kindness, and became friends and remain friends today. I missed the night secretaries from the old firm too, who called me "the nice one" (meaning: the one nice lawyer in a firm of hundreds of lawyers). I didn't like that prior job either, for different reasons, yet together we always got the job done. At the ramshackle firm, it seemed no one really cared if the job got done, and no one wanted to do it right.
Pearls
Not only did I not fit into the firm's culture of doing substandard work, I didn't fit in optically either, you might say, because I dressed too nicely. Yes, you read that correctly. The head of the corporate department told me I dressed too nicely and that everybody thought so and I needed to stop it.
When he said this to me, at first I didn't know how to react. I was 30 years old and suddenly felt like I was back in junior high school or high school, where kids observed, dissected, and discussed each other brutally, and where what you wore was a big definer of your social status. I remembered this one kid who told me I didn't wear my jeans tight like the popular girls and I was always busy reading a book. From the way that kid said it, I actually got the sense he had a secret crush on me that he couldn't act on because of course no boy could date "brainiac" girls in non-tight jeans (or biracial girls of any variety, of which I was the only one at my mostly-white high school). That was the 1980s and the era of the first designer jeans, worn tight tight tight. Would my mother have let me leave the house in anything like that back then? Not not not.
Somehow when I was at college, 1986 - 1990, graduating at age 20, I had a break from that type of cliquishness and gossip; after all, at Harvard, pretty much all of us undergrads were busy reading books. I graduated from Harvard Law School in 1996, and the environment there was very different at that time from the environment at the College in many ways, and I had noticed that people paid much more attention to what women wore than to what men wore (for example, as a first-year law student, I had a friend who kept track with a quick sketch of everything our one female law professor wore -- notably, our woman professor was a visiting professor, not a tenured Harvard Law professor, as it is not controversial to say that the Law School at that time lacked an environment of equality or diversity; staff later told me they refer to that era as "the nasty Nineties"). Still, this incident at the new firm of finding out that people were discussing my clothes had a distinctly high school feel to it.
I do not think the head of the corporate department had a secret crush on me like my teen classmate. I think he resented me, because ironically I looked like a lawyer and knew how to do good lawyer work even though I didn't enjoy it and at heart didn't want to be a lawyer, while his crew of lawyers didn't look like lawyers and did poor legal work and weren't going anywhere. It felt horrible to think of myself as back in a high school-type environment, and it felt kind of creepy to know that people were discussing my clothes.
I had been told this firm was "business casual" which was a growing workplace dress trend of the 1990s and which seemed to mean casual Dockers brand pants for men. No one back then knew what it meant for women. My own interpretation at the time: instead of wearing the skirt suits I had worn at my previous firms, I replaced the jacket with a cardigan. I thought this was a good idea, because I was paying off student loans so wanted to be somewhat frugal, and while I made what most people would consider a good salary, in the low six figures (although I guess the men who made 30% more wouldn't have been happy with my salary), I didn't think I had money for a whole new wardrobe, saw no reason to be extravagant, and didn't want to wear men's clothes anyway (reverse drag? Fine if that's your thing but it isn't mine.). My plan was to make do with what I already owned, and to make my outfits look more casual without the suit jackets. Evidently, this was not a good plan.
I explained my outfit strategy to the head of the corporate department, and asked him what he thought would be more appropriate for business casual for a woman. And yes, it felt very weird to be discussing my fashion choices with this man. My attempt at transparency of intention, and of being accepted as myself, failed here as it had so often in my disastrous legal career: the head of the corporate department said he didn't know what I should wear, but I shouldn't wear what I was wearing, because it was still too formal and if clients saw me they might think I was trying to be snooty or something. I said I hoped clients would think I took my work seriously and dressed to reflect that while adjusting to the business casual movement as best a young woman on a budget could. He said it wasn't clear what people should think when they saw my clothes. I tried to make a joke by saying that if I wasn't in a ballgown, we could take it as clear that I wasn't dressed formally. This joke went over poorly, and my relationship with the head of the corporate department seemed to continue to deteriorate, if in fact it had ever been good. I don't know why he seemed to have pushed so hard to hire me when from the moment I started working there, we had trouble getting along. Nor did I seem to be able to find a way to help us get along better.
After this exchange, I looked around the firm and made a more detailed study of what people wore. Here is what I saw, compared with what I had seen at my prior firms:
Most of the lawyers at this firm were men, as at all of my prior firms. But the lawyers at my prior firms wore suits and ties if they were men, and usually skirt suits if they were women, and in general people looked polished, professional, and pulled-together. At the German firms some of the men (leg-oglers as you'll recall if you read early posts) were rather peacocks, you might say, in English suits, colorful checked shirts, and vivid ties, as Hamburg emulated the London style of the day, if you want to get into that level of sartorial history and detail. At the Chicago firm I had just left, most of the lawyers were very quiet dressers, in dark suits, white shirts, and calm ties, with some partners choosing Brioni suits and wearing their money a little bit more visibly.
At my new firm, the lawyers embraced the growing business casual trend of the day, with an emphasis on casual. The more polished men often wore golf shirts and khakis, and to give you a sense of the less-polished end of the scale: one partner didn't wash, and to have to enter his office was to have to hold your breath and exit as quickly as possible. When it was time to inhale, I would say: Excuse me, I have to leave now.
So, it was ok for a male partner not to bathe, but it was not ok for a female associate to dress in a skirt, top, and cardigan, with low heels and pearls.
What did other women at the firm wear, you might ask; weren't there any role models? I studied them, and they were not role models. There was one woman junior partner in the corporate department, and she wore shirts and pants, no jacket, no makeup, no hairstyle; her clothes often seemed ill-fitting and unflattering. I don't mean to sound judgmental; she simply gave the appearance of not caring about her appearance. There were no women senior partners in the corporate department. There was one in the litigation department whom I saw around the firm sometimes; she was an older lady in the kind of boxy pink-and-white Chanel suits popular in the 80s and into the 90s. Such suits are collector's items today, but If I'd worn what she wore, well, not only was it not in my budget, I'm sure that's not what the head of the corporate department in his khakis and golf shirts had in mind either.
At my previous firm, a woman junior partner with whom I worked well wore skirt suits, low heels, and quiet gold jewelry, with very light makeup. The female equity partner I worked with had a similar look, and I noticed her low-heeled Ferragamo shoes, a brand I have always admired too. I fit in with their look, and, if you know me, you might know of my longtime fascination with pearls (about as longtime as my fascination with chocolate, actually!). Even as a child, I loved pearls. They are the only gem that comes from a living creature, and from the sea, and I find their luminosity and infinite variety inspiring and enthralling. So, my jewelry usually consisted of a simple pearl necklace, small pearl earrings, and a gold-rimmed watch on a leather strap. My makeup was lipstick and mascara. We had a quiet preppy elegant professional look, you might say. Or you might say we had a boring look :) but that's the way it was.
I was too dressy for the new firm, and my attempts to adjust were unsuccessful. I do believe that my Harvard pedigree added to the perception some seemed to have that I was snobby. Maybe some folks didn't like my silver dish of chocolates on my desk either, who knows. I was an upscale person in what was thought of as a blue-collar firm, and I wasn't accepted. Clothes were a powerful signifier. Yes, I like looking nice, am grateful I had the opportunity to go to Harvard, and kept life-saving chocolates in a silver bowl I got for a few dollars at a second-hand store in Boston. Perhaps what my coworkers didn't know is that I didn't evaluate them as much by their clothes or where they went to school, as by whether they did good work and treated people with respect. Those are the areas where I saw very troubling deficiencies.
Lesson: I didn't fit into any part of the culture at this firm. And I didn't want to. I wanted to preserve my own reputation, and contribute someplace where people believed in quality work.
Another phrase: "Birds of a feather flock together." I didn't want to be part of this flock.
I quit that ramshackle firm after around a year (did I really stay that long?), and can hardly wait to tell you a few more disasters from that job, such as getting over the illnesses I developed at the prior firm, only to develop an eye tic at the new firm, which also went away when I quit. Then there were the absurd disasters of my very last day there, which involved the head of the corporate department.
Wait too until you hear about a sort of delayed disaster, you might call it, or disaster aftershock, in which nine (9!) years after leaving this firm, a disaster emerged and tried to engulf me based on a project that had taken place at this firm, and it wasn't any of the projects I've already discussed above. It was a project involving the head of the corporate department. Somehow I wasn't surprised that something like that could occur with a firm like this.
After I left Ramshackle, I became an in-house lawyer at a company that was shut down due to its role in one of the biggest corporate scandals of all time. And, I exchanged the eye tic for a new malady, while exchanging one job I didn't want to put on my resume, for another job I didn't want to put on my resume.
More to come...!
Valerie Beck
Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1750
Diary of My Disastrous Law Career: From Harvard to Heaven Help Me
Chapter 7
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| From Harvard to Heaven-help-me: why I quit being a lawyer. |
Have you ever had a job so disastrous you didn't put it on your resume? I've had two.
I'm going to tell you some details of one of them today. I left my job as a lawyer at one of Chicago's most prestigious law firms, which I thought of as a white-collar sweatshop, and went to a job as a lawyer at another large law firm in Chicago, which turned out to be a blue-collar junk shop, to use some of the parlance of the day. This latter job (Lawyer Job 4) proved to be in some ways a worse experience than the prior job (Lawyer Job 3), which was itself plenty disastrous, and I do not include this latter job 4 on my resume because I do not want my good reputation tangled up with that firm's bad one.
Have you heard the phrase "out of the frying pan, into the fire," basically: going from one bad situation to another? How about the phrase "don't cast pearls before swine," which means don't offer something valuable to people who can't appreciate it? These are themes of this installment of my legal memoirs, which I am writing in order to share with you why I left my career as a lawyer. Basically: I left to save my life.
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| The glow before the next storm of disasters: on my last day, at my not-last firm, in the year 2000. Note the silver dish, in which I kept chocolate, at every lawyer job I ever had. |
If you've been following this blog, you know some of the disasters of my time at the prestigious Chicago firm. All disasters must come to an end, and, it's time for us to leave Lawyer Job 3: Chicago and New York, due to misery and misogyny, illness and agony, and lack of purpose or fulfillment. That's right: I (finally) quit. Oh but don't worry (or: do worry), because there are more disastrous lawyer jobs still to come in these memoirs, starting with Lawyer Job 4: Chicago, in this very installment.
Before we embed into new disasters, here's how I exited the previous ones:
Awkward
Back to Lawyer Job 3, if you've read the previous post or two, you know that a few of the major problems for me at that firm were finding out women were paid less than men at the same level, getting demoted after an excellent review (so the firm could take my raise and give it to a man?), and being so exhausted from overwork that I fell asleep in a restaurant on a date with a man who may have been very nice but we'll never know.
The moment when I made up my mind to find a way out came when a partner I did a lot of work for shouted at me for not changing my outgoing voicemail to say I wouldn't be checking messages over the weekend that I was recovering from a general anesthetic after having emergency surgery because of a miscarriage. He knew I was headed to emergency surgery because I stopped by the office to tell him. I didn't tell him it was because I was having a miscarriage; would that have mattered? In any case, as I left the partner's office after getting shouted at, I said to myself that I would leave the firm within another six months. And I did, after working at that firm for around two years. I called it my WNL plan: Whole New Life. This included getting healthy, getting positive, and getting out of there. The one part I hadn't figured out yet: getting out of the law altogether, as I went from one law firm to the next; out of the frying pan and into the fire, as the old saying goes.
Through a recruiter, I found a job down the street at another large firm, where the partners said they had some exciting things going on, with a less crazy schedule, and needed an associate like me to help move things forward. The female senior partner whose office was on my floor warned me that this other firm was "very blue-collar." I didn't know what she meant, but I would find out: I was not a cultural fit and the lawyers there didn't accept me. More below on the disasters that flowed from that!
On my last day at Lawyer Job 3, the partner who shouted when I came back from the miscarriage came to my office to ask me to stay. He came around and stood behind my desk, where I was sitting. It wasn't sexual; it was awkward; was he trying to be friendly? Senior partners never went to associates' offices; maybe he just didn't know where to stand in this small and unfamiliar environment? (Hint: sit in one of the two guest chairs with which every associate's office was furnished.) I had actually learned a great deal about good lawyering from this partner, and I thanked him for that, and told him I simply didn't think I had a future there, what with the demotion and all. Even if this little chat hadn't been extremely awkward, it was too late. I felt disrespected, and saw that I indeed had no future or goal or chance for a happy life there. They couldn't have paid me enough money to stay, and they weren't going to try. I wanted something more than money in any case: I wanted meaning.
Would I find meaning in my next job as a lawyer, when I took my Harvard College and Harvard Law School diplomas off the wall at one law firm and hung them on the wall at another law firm just a few blocks away on the same Chicago street? (Spoiler alert: of course not!) At this next firm, and indeed also the next job after that, the disasters were so disastrous -- and the low quality and in some instances illegality of the work done by people at these next two jobs were intolerable -- that I found myself nostalgic for the prior firm. A very bad sign.
Here we go:
Lawyer Job 4: Chicago
My new job in the year 2000 was as a lateral-hire 4th-year associate at a large Chicago law firm that had just merged with attorneys from another firm's corporate department. Today, the firm has twice merged with other firms and is even larger, even after the lawyer layoffs and rescinded offers of the 2008 recession and other disasters that the profession experienced after I left. The idea at the time was that I would be part of a fast-growing transactional practice inside a firm that had been better known for its litigation practice. This sounded exciting to me because I was told that while the new partners brought over clients and work, there would also be opportunities for me to get involved in business development, even as an associate. I was also told that they didn't believe in the punishing pace and over-workload of my prior firm. I knew that I could contribute my legal skills such as contract drafting, and people skills such as listening and negotiating. I wasn't worried about coming into a 2-firm merger, because in Hamburg I had helped in a 3-firm merger, creating a contract template database that helped unify the firm and its brand. Maybe I could contribute something similar here. We talked about all of that in my interviews, and the head of the corporate department -- who was from the parent firm so to speak, into which some of the corporate group from another firm was merging -- was very active in recruiting me and said he hoped I would join the firm.
That was the idea. When I accepted the job offer, I found that the reality was different.
Paperclip
The reality was that the firm had almost no corporate work, not from old clients, nor from new clients. In fact, there were apparently no new clients, not from the new partners, nor from the old ones. Here's how I found out:
I was excited on my first day. I went around to the head of the corporate department and his partners and let them know I was ready to get to work. They said that's great and I should come around tomorrow and they'd have something for me. I thought it was odd that they didn't have a pile of work for me to start drowning in from day 1, as had been the case at my old firm, and thought maybe they meant it when they said they didn't believe in overwork. Then again, I knew I was expected to bill a certain number of hours per year, and there wasn't really a day to waste; plus, I wanted to work on interesting deals and I was ready. Without work to do, I took time to get to know some of the associates and staff on that first day, and I came back around to the partners on my second day. Guess what: no work. I know you see the pattern that I saw.
Bits and pieces of small projects started to trickle in, through my incessant asking I think, but nothing like the flood of deals I had just left at my old firm. My desk was barren except for my trusty dish of chocolates, and two tiny partial-projects so small they didn't need a Redweld or even a file folder, just one paperclip each. These pieces of parts of small projects weren't interesting to me, and were almost paralegal work, but I did my best and completed them, getting scolded by the partner who gave them to me (uh oh) for taking too long. I guess work expands to fill the time available, as Parkinson said. And then I had no more work again.
I went work-hunting again. Some of the work I was given was paralegal work, and it was unfair to bill a client associate rates for what a paralegal could do, so I supervised a paralegal in completing such projects. One partner tried to give me non-billable work: a client wanted free work, and if I did that free work, I couldn't count the hours that I spent toward my billable hour requirement. That seemed unfair of the client to ask of the partner, and unfair of the partner to ask of me. I told the partner as much and said again that I would supervise a paralegal. The partner said no; he couldn't ask a paralegal to work for free. But he could ask me? What would be next: washing the client's car and the partner's car, for free? I was not above doing any type of work that a client needed, but if it was not billable work, and I would basically be neither paid nor respected for the work, that could start to be a bad habit. And why wasn't there any billable work that needed doing?
This all seemed very ramshackle to me; a shaky structure on a shaky foundation. In fact, let's just call the firm "Ramshackle Misogyny" as my then-boyfriend (a non-lawyer) and I did privately. This was my first solid boyfriend after my divorce a year or so prior; we dated for around 9 months and he was super smart and sweet, as well as sympathetic to my disastrous law career.
Maybe you are thinking I should have been glad I wasn't overworked at Ramshackle Misogyny. Maybe you are wondering why I wanted corporate law work when I didn't like corporate law work. I was glad of course to get more than the 5 hours of sleep per night I got at the prior firm, and I knew that this work wasn't my reason for living. But I didn't have a clearer view of my life's mission in front of me yet; being on the wrong path was, in a sense, part of the path.
Importantly for the short term, I saw the dangers in this new environment: getting sucked into non-billable work and getting in trouble when I didn't meet billable hour requirements; doing really boring work and not contributing my skills and not growing as an attorney or as a professional; spending time fighting off non-lawyer work -- spending such time is also non-billable; or spending time supervising paralegals. Where was the meaning or goal or ikigai in any of this? When I went to Harvard Law School, I thought practicing law meant I would be working with smart people on interesting projects that made a difference. What was I thinking?
Pipeline
I went work-hunting yet again. The partners all said work was "in the pipeline." They all used that phrase; did they agree on it at a partners meeting? What did it mean? Supposedly that work was on the way. I started to suspect that wasn't true, and that maybe there wasn't even a pipeline.
I enthusiastically asked the head of the corporate department if I should start helping out on business development as discussed during interviews, if perhaps some of the promised clients hadn't come over with the new partners, or whatever the issue was. I suggested the firm join the Executives' Club, the Economic Club, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, and the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce, all good places to meet the kind of clients any big firm lawyer would want, and that I could attend events there with him or another partner, to build the corporate group's visibility in the community. My suggestions were poorly received; maybe the head of the corporate department thought that an associate shouldn't tell him how to run his department? Maybe in the interviews when he said I could be involved in business development, he said that just so that I would accept the job? But why did he want me to accept the job if I wasn't going to get to do what we talked about for that job?
I realized that I wasn't developing a very positive relationship with the head of the corporate department. Frankly, I came to believe that he, his department, and possibly his whole firm were frauds, and if you continue reading you'll see more examples of why. I hadn't given up yet, though, and thought that maybe I could salvage this professional relationship, this job, and this career. (Spoiler alert: I couldn't.)
Darkness
In an attempt to be transparent and create a sincere relationship and a positive work situation, I went on to share with the head of the corporate department that I was worried that I wasn't contributing. I basically asked him: If you don't want me to help get new business, and you don't have any current work for me to do, how can I contribute, and won't there be a problem if I don't make my billable hours? He told me that the reason I didn't have any work or any good work is that I didn't get to the office early enough. He said the good work is handed out at 8:15 or 8:30 am or so.
Wait, what? Could this be true? I told him that the reason I had been coming in at 9:30 am was that this is what I did at my prior firm; corporate associates generally came into the office at 9:30 am, because the bankers who were our clients started at around that time or later. Plus, we were going to stay in the office until 9:30 pm or longer, so 9:30 am to 9:30 pm gave us that expected 12-hour work day. Without thinking about it, I had stuck to that starting schedule. At first, I actually believed the head of the corporate department when he said he and his partners would have good work for me earlier in the mornings, and I replied that I didn't have a problem coming in as early as needed, that I was sorry I hadn't been there earlier before, and that I would be there at 8:00 tomorrow. How was I still so naive? Here is what happened next:
I arrived at the office at 8:00 the next morning. No one was there. No lawyers, no staff. I had to turn the lights on. I was shocked. Then I realized the head of the corporate department must have been speaking sarcastically, or trying to be mean to me, or making fun of me, or criticizing me for coming in at 9:30 am? And I fell for it. How would you have interpreted this, and what would you have done about it? I called him and left an upbeat voicemail: Hi, it's Valerie, it's 8:04 am, and I'm here early for the good work that you mentioned. Let me know! Thanks!
I did the same thing every day for a week: arrived at 8:00 am, turned on the lights, left a voicemail. My voicemails were never returned, and that good early morning work never appeared.
Incompetence
Harvard was about excellence, so was my prior firm, and so was my attitude of always trying to do my best. The ramshackle firm was not about excellence. When the corporate department had work, it was clear that sometimes partners and associates did not know how to do the work properly, and that often in that situation, instead of finding out how to do it right, they just did it wrong. This was unfair to clients, and to principles of pride in one's work, and I could not tolerate that. I did not want my name to be associated with poor quality. Even though I didn't enjoy the work or find meaning in it, I couldn't stand to see it done poorly or see clients not given their money's worth.
Here is an example of work that I saw done poorly:
A partner and I worked on a financing deal, representing a local bank. Our job was to write a contract that would bring our client into an existing lending arrangement between a company that was already borrowing money from another bank, so that our client could also lend money to the company and would get paid back ahead of the first bank. I got to join the partner in a meeting with the client, which was nice, so that I could hear the bank's goals in this transaction. I remember that the banker we met with was incredibly excited to be doing this deal!
The partner had already written a first draft of the contract from the term sheet (the list of items agreed upon by the bankers and business people, which the lawyers are supposed to flesh out and put into legal agreements for the parties to sign), and I was to polish up the partner's draft and any future drafts while the parties negotiated, until we reached the final agreement. The problem: the partner's draft didn't accomplish what the term sheet said it should; specifically, and crucially, it didn't provide for our client to be paid back first. I pointed this out to the partner, along with a suggestion of how I could fix it. The partner said: don't worry about it. I paused. I replied: Our client hired us to reach a specific goal, and this contract doesn't reach that goal and puts the client at risk. The partner said: It'll be fine. I was shocked. I knew that the client wasn't reading the drafts of the contract, and so wouldn't know that the contract didn't do what it was supposed to do; the banker was relying on us to make sure the contract did what it was supposed to do.
So what was I supposed to do: go against the partner's orders to protect a client who had made the mistake of hiring a firm that wasn't protecting them? Follow the partner's orders and do shoddy legal work? Be a snitch and tell the Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission that my boss was failing a client, and then have a reputation as a snitch? Choose some other course of action? I continued trying to reason with the partner, and started to think that he just didn't understand what the contract should say or how this deal could work, as he was getting mezzanine and subordinated debt confused with senior debt. Worse, he didn't seem to care. Did he just want the fees from the client, without giving the client what they were paying for? I rewrote the contract to do what it was supposed to do, and told the partner I was doing that. The partner changed it back to not doing what it was supposed to do, the parties signed it (did anyone but me really read it?), and that was that.
Duress
This next example of seeing the firm do bad work is the example where I decided to quit. The core of the matter: a partner tried to bully me into becoming a scapegoat for bad work done by others, and to sign documents assuming liability for the entire firm, or to be fired if I didn't agree.
Outrageous and unconscionable, you say? Unethical and possibly illegal? I agree. Here is what happened, first in legal terms: a partner tried to force me as an associate to sign an opinion letter, and when I wouldn't (because only an equity partner can sign such a letter and bind the firm), he shouted at me to sign a side letter saying I wrote the opinion letter, or else I'd be fired.
If you are a corporate lawyer, you probably read that with pure horror. If you are not a lawyer or not familiar with opinion letters, let's clarify:
An opinion letter is one of the most important documents that a law firm writes, because it says that the law firm guarantees that everything in the transaction it just completed is correct, that the client was authorized to enter into the transaction and is not violating any laws or other contracts by doing so, and that if any of this turns out not to be true then not just the client but also the law firm can be held responsible. In other words, an opinion letter is like a law firm's official seal of approval, and money and reputation are at risk. Only an owner of the law firm, that is, an equity partner (also called a senior partner or sometimes a shareholder) has the authority and power to sign an opinion letter. An opinion letter signed by a non-owner would be worthless, because someone who doesn't own something can't promise it to back a guarantee, so to speak. It would be like agreeing to sell Microsoft for example, or putting up shares in Microsoft as collateral, when you don't own Microsoft or any Microsoft shares.
What was really going on here? It seemed to me that the corporate partners were inexperienced at corporate law, had never been asked to write an opinion letter, were terrified that they had not done a flawless deal (or knew for certain that they had not?), and wanted to pin any blame on someone else (in this case yours truly) even though I hadn't even been involved in the deal at issue. The partner asked me to draft an opinion letter, which I did, and which was fairly standard procedure, although it did seem unusual to me that he didn't have his own opinion letter template and that he was asking an associate (in this case yours truly) who hadn't been on the transaction from the start.
(For the full and fully proper standard opinion letter procedure that my prior firm followed, and a comparatively funny and lighthearted moment in connection with a beautifully done opinion letter there -- almost too beautiful, as lipstick was involved for a moment -- see two posts back, "Misogyny, misery, screamers, strippers: all in a day's disastrous work at a top Chicago law firm," and scroll down to the opinion letter episode.)
After I drafted the opinion letter for the Ramshackle partner, he tried to bully me into signing it, which I did not. I told him that at my prior firm, no partner would have wanted or allowed an associate to sign an opinion letter, not only because it this would be completely unacceptable and utterly unthinkable because thoroughly invalid, but because the partners stood behind the firm's work. This seemed to anger the partner; he and others at this firm had an almost unhealthy reverence for my old firm, without evidently any of the same belief in actually trying to do excellent work themselves. I told him that anyone on the other side of a deal would never accept an opinion letter signed by an associate! I tried to lighten the situation with a bit of levity -- this never worked before and still didn't -- and said: Oh, so are you saying you want to make me, a 4th-year associate, an equity partner all of a sudden; what a great promotion that would be! No laughter. More bullying: the partner was standing over me at my desk, shouting in my face to sign the agreement. I continued to refuse, thinking: What on Earth am I doing in this nightmare of absurdity?
The partner changed tactics, but didn't stop shouting, and demanded I sign a side letter agreement saying I wrote the opinion letter. If this sounds shady to you, and almost certainly unenforceable, your instincts are correct. Side letter agreements between partners and associates are definitely not standard operating procedure; I had never heard of anything like this, and I could hardly believe my ears. Somehow I continued to maintain a mostly calm exterior, although I was shaking a bit, and felt like I was absolutely boiling inside, with rage at being bullied and disrespected, and with disgust at the awful actions this partner was trying to take in scapegoating me to protect himself from his own mistakes.
I explained that a side letter agreement in this situation would very likely be unenforceable, and would not absolve the firm of liability or shift it onto me, and that if the side letter came to light (I thought about sending a copy to the local papers, the ARDC, the Bar Association, and the firm's malpractice insurer, as well as binding it into the closing book), it would show that the firm had made a serious misstep in trying to turn an associate into a scapegoat, while possibly encouraging review of the deal to find whatever mistakes the partner seemed so frightened that he or his colleagues had committed. Can you imagine your boss wanting to blame you and make you pay for something he and others did wrong? If you can, are you going to quit and write your memoirs too? I pointed out that if the firm was concerned about liability, and did not feel confident standing behind its work, the proper way to address that would be actually to review the deal and make sure everything was done right! Sigh. What was I thinking? Doing a deal right did not seem to be an option at Ramshackle Misogyny, did it?
The partner screamed at me that if I didn't sign it, I was fired. I considered this for a moment. This might actually be a good offer under the circumstances! I had heard that this partner had threatened to fire other people before, though I didn't know for what. Looking back: If he really fired me for refusing to break the rules, that could give me leverage, if I wanted to use it. For example, if I were fired and sued the firm for wrongful termination, I would have evidence. If I exposed the firm over fraud or other wrongdoing, I would have evidence. Did I want to go through a lawsuit though, especially in those days when that was seen as basically ending your own career because no one else would ever hire you? Did I want to be a "tattle-tale," a whistleblower, in this situation? I have no problem standing up for what is right. (Some people seemed to think that was my problem.) But here, what was the goal, what exactly would I be standing up for? If for myself, I could do that by walking, couldn't I? Getting fired could at least get me out the door, which is where I wanted to go, far away from a bully like this. You've heard of the fight or flight response, in a stressful situation? I wanted to fly out of there immediately. But I wanted to leave on my own terms.
And although I'm a quick thinker, this was all happening terribly fast. I wasn't making detailed calculations, but it was obvious that what the partner was doing was wrong. I felt very rushed and pressured with this man leaning over me and screaming. There was no way I was going to sign the opinion letter. With my hand shaking, and the partner breathing over me, his face red and a blood vessel in his neck looking like it was going to burst, I signed my name to a side letter saying I had drafted the opinion letter. Indeed, that part was true. The part was not true, however, that I accepted responsibility for the deal. I didn't think any judge or court would believe that I had or could accept responsibility for the deal, as again an associate simply had no power to do that because an associate is not an owner of the firm but an employee.
Moreover, I signed the side letter under duress -- pressure and threats to get someone to do something they normally wouldn't do -- and this alone would likely make the side letter worthless, invalidating any assumption that I had really wanted to take responsibility for any mistakes committed by lawyers at this firm, whom I had come to view as a ramshackle band of posers, even if it were possible for an associate to take such responsibility, which it wasn't.
I was also indignant that this lawyer apparently knew he and his firm were doing bad work, yet they did it anyway. They took clients' money, and didn't give the clients what they paid for. That had not been the case at my prior firms, and I couldn't stand by this lack of excellence and lack of integrity from a business, legal, or human standpoint. Plus, if people at this law firm were going to be disbarred at some point -- stripped of their license to practice law -- I did not want to be among them.
Applied Lesson:
One of the somewhat depressing-sounding yet practical lessons I learned at the previous firm was valuable here at Ramshackle in a much starker way: CYA, which means Cover Your (ahem) Ass(ets). In other words, protect yourself. If someone with a bad intention wants to hurt you or blame something on you, or even if there's no ill intent but someone is going to be blamed for something, don't let them blame you, and make sure you have documentation to protect yourself. Here there was indeed bad intent. What are a couple of specific things you can do to CYA? Take notes at or after every meeting, and keep copies of documents, including in hard copy when needed. These are things I did.
What to do next? Should I contact the ARDC? Should I tell the client? The media? Would any of that make a difference, or would it make things worse? What that partner did was wrong, but would becoming a snitch be right?
There wasn't really another partner I felt I could discuss this with or get advice from; they all seemed either hostile, like the head of the corporate department, or ineffectual, like the partner in the pencil episode below. I did try to approach one partner who seemed friendly, but he said that people at the firm didn't think I was committed. That took the wind out of me. Here I was trying to save the firm from itself (why??), and I was supposedly the one who wasn't committed? Was that code for: You are not a fit? Well I knew I wasn't a fit. To me, the problem was what to do about the problems I saw at the firm. But apparently to the firm, the problem was me, for turning the lights on to the fact that there were problems at the firm?
What I did decide was to start looking for another job. More on the exit process later, which held its own disasters.
Terrible lesson: I was working with people who didn't know what they were doing, and who wouldn't hesitate to sacrifice me to their own recklessness, incompetence, and greed.
Positive lesson: I had quit firms before, and could quit again. How is this the most positive lesson? I guess we could reword it for more positivity: I worked hard to stay true to my own values. And I implemented CYA.
But wait, there's more -- here are just a couple more of the disasters from this firm:
Pencils
My secretary at Ramshackle Misogyny came over with a partner from the merged department at another firm, and she apparently brought a bad attitude and bad habits with her. For example, I asked her if she could please go to the supply room at some point during the day and bring me a new box of pencils, which I used to draft documents (I learned the old-school pencil style of drafting). She said No! Not just no, which would itself have been the wrong answer, but No! with anger and feeling! I paused. What do you mean by no, are you ok, is something wrong? She replied: I never do that for the partner, get your own pencils.
She had a bit of a crazed look in her eye, as though she were unstable in some way, or just very agitated. I don't know for certain what was in her mind when she got upset over the pencils. But I did know that if we were going to work together, we should establish expectations. I explained that my job as an associate was to do billable work, and that for me an important part of the job of my secretary was to support my ability to do billable work, including by doing non-billable tasks such as keeping the office supplies flowing. (This is pretty basic and was never before controversial.) Did she not know how this was supposed to work? Whether she did or not, she didn't care. Instead, she turned and marched out of my office.
At the old firm, I would have simply picked up the phone and had the floor coordinator reassign her immediately, and it would have been up to the floor coordinator to investigate, talk with the partner, and see if any other steps needed to be taken. An associate's job was to bill hours, many many many hours, and not to stop to do much of anything else including engage in lengthy discussions with staff, eat, sleep, or have a social or spiritual life.
At this firm, there was no floor coordinator. So I went to the partner, who seemed to be a nice person, and who for a reason or reasons I didn't know was always sickly-looking and gaunt with a green pallor to his skin. He was a corporate partner, but never had work for me, so I don't know quite what he did. In any case, I told him that our secretary had just belligerently refused to get pencils for me, and asked if he had any insights into that or how he thought I should address her attitude. I figured he had worked with her longer than I had, and I wanted to respect their relationship, while also finding positive solutions. Unfortunately, it seemed I was wasting my time. The partner replied that he always got his own office supplies and never asked the secretary to do much of anything for him. He added that she talked to him rudely too, and said he was sorry but he couldn't help me. My goodness. How was I supposed to respond to that? This partner allowed himself to be bullied by his secretary. And what was I supposed to do with a secretary who wasn't doing her job, while I had no power to impose consequences, or to get another secretary?
Furthermore, I found that the secretary did poor work, with her signature bad attitude, when I gave her revisions to type or any kind of work at all. I spoke with her about all of this, with no change in results or in her attitude. My only sort-of solution was a workaround: I let it be known to other secretaries and paralegals that if they didn't have much to do and wanted to stay busy, they could come to me and, if I had any work, they could do work that my own secretary couldn't manage. Like getting pencils or typing accurately.
I sure missed my secretary from the old firm, who was a professional, and who did first-class work, with a positive attitude. We treated each other with respect and kindness, and became friends and remain friends today. I missed the night secretaries from the old firm too, who called me "the nice one" (meaning: the one nice lawyer in a firm of hundreds of lawyers). I didn't like that prior job either, for different reasons, yet together we always got the job done. At the ramshackle firm, it seemed no one really cared if the job got done, and no one wanted to do it right.
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| While at the prior firm, after my divorce at age 29, I sold most of the little bit of jewelry that I had and bought a 24" strand of small white pearls at the old Marshall Field's department store, for $600. I have always loved pearls, and wore that strand often to work; it was simple and went with everything and made me happy, or as happy as I could be while I was sad. (I would have worn the pearls often outside of work too, but I wasn't often anywhere but at work while at the prior firm.) My necklace -- pretty much the only necklace I owned -- fit right in at the old firm, but at the new firm it was part of why some people thought I was too formal. I don't have that strand anymore; some of the things of material value that I acquired while I was a lawyer slipped through my fingers. (Fruit of the poisonous tree? That's an inside joke for lawyers; you can look it up if you like. : ) Yet, lessons remain. This is a strand of multi-colored pearls that I bought later, as an entrepreneur. Love of pearls also remains, as does love of chocolate! |
Pearls
Not only did I not fit into the firm's culture of doing substandard work, I didn't fit in optically either, you might say, because I dressed too nicely. Yes, you read that correctly. The head of the corporate department told me I dressed too nicely and that everybody thought so and I needed to stop it.
When he said this to me, at first I didn't know how to react. I was 30 years old and suddenly felt like I was back in junior high school or high school, where kids observed, dissected, and discussed each other brutally, and where what you wore was a big definer of your social status. I remembered this one kid who told me I didn't wear my jeans tight like the popular girls and I was always busy reading a book. From the way that kid said it, I actually got the sense he had a secret crush on me that he couldn't act on because of course no boy could date "brainiac" girls in non-tight jeans (or biracial girls of any variety, of which I was the only one at my mostly-white high school). That was the 1980s and the era of the first designer jeans, worn tight tight tight. Would my mother have let me leave the house in anything like that back then? Not not not.
Somehow when I was at college, 1986 - 1990, graduating at age 20, I had a break from that type of cliquishness and gossip; after all, at Harvard, pretty much all of us undergrads were busy reading books. I graduated from Harvard Law School in 1996, and the environment there was very different at that time from the environment at the College in many ways, and I had noticed that people paid much more attention to what women wore than to what men wore (for example, as a first-year law student, I had a friend who kept track with a quick sketch of everything our one female law professor wore -- notably, our woman professor was a visiting professor, not a tenured Harvard Law professor, as it is not controversial to say that the Law School at that time lacked an environment of equality or diversity; staff later told me they refer to that era as "the nasty Nineties"). Still, this incident at the new firm of finding out that people were discussing my clothes had a distinctly high school feel to it.
I do not think the head of the corporate department had a secret crush on me like my teen classmate. I think he resented me, because ironically I looked like a lawyer and knew how to do good lawyer work even though I didn't enjoy it and at heart didn't want to be a lawyer, while his crew of lawyers didn't look like lawyers and did poor legal work and weren't going anywhere. It felt horrible to think of myself as back in a high school-type environment, and it felt kind of creepy to know that people were discussing my clothes.
I had been told this firm was "business casual" which was a growing workplace dress trend of the 1990s and which seemed to mean casual Dockers brand pants for men. No one back then knew what it meant for women. My own interpretation at the time: instead of wearing the skirt suits I had worn at my previous firms, I replaced the jacket with a cardigan. I thought this was a good idea, because I was paying off student loans so wanted to be somewhat frugal, and while I made what most people would consider a good salary, in the low six figures (although I guess the men who made 30% more wouldn't have been happy with my salary), I didn't think I had money for a whole new wardrobe, saw no reason to be extravagant, and didn't want to wear men's clothes anyway (reverse drag? Fine if that's your thing but it isn't mine.). My plan was to make do with what I already owned, and to make my outfits look more casual without the suit jackets. Evidently, this was not a good plan.
I explained my outfit strategy to the head of the corporate department, and asked him what he thought would be more appropriate for business casual for a woman. And yes, it felt very weird to be discussing my fashion choices with this man. My attempt at transparency of intention, and of being accepted as myself, failed here as it had so often in my disastrous legal career: the head of the corporate department said he didn't know what I should wear, but I shouldn't wear what I was wearing, because it was still too formal and if clients saw me they might think I was trying to be snooty or something. I said I hoped clients would think I took my work seriously and dressed to reflect that while adjusting to the business casual movement as best a young woman on a budget could. He said it wasn't clear what people should think when they saw my clothes. I tried to make a joke by saying that if I wasn't in a ballgown, we could take it as clear that I wasn't dressed formally. This joke went over poorly, and my relationship with the head of the corporate department seemed to continue to deteriorate, if in fact it had ever been good. I don't know why he seemed to have pushed so hard to hire me when from the moment I started working there, we had trouble getting along. Nor did I seem to be able to find a way to help us get along better.
After this exchange, I looked around the firm and made a more detailed study of what people wore. Here is what I saw, compared with what I had seen at my prior firms:
Most of the lawyers at this firm were men, as at all of my prior firms. But the lawyers at my prior firms wore suits and ties if they were men, and usually skirt suits if they were women, and in general people looked polished, professional, and pulled-together. At the German firms some of the men (leg-oglers as you'll recall if you read early posts) were rather peacocks, you might say, in English suits, colorful checked shirts, and vivid ties, as Hamburg emulated the London style of the day, if you want to get into that level of sartorial history and detail. At the Chicago firm I had just left, most of the lawyers were very quiet dressers, in dark suits, white shirts, and calm ties, with some partners choosing Brioni suits and wearing their money a little bit more visibly.
At my new firm, the lawyers embraced the growing business casual trend of the day, with an emphasis on casual. The more polished men often wore golf shirts and khakis, and to give you a sense of the less-polished end of the scale: one partner didn't wash, and to have to enter his office was to have to hold your breath and exit as quickly as possible. When it was time to inhale, I would say: Excuse me, I have to leave now.
So, it was ok for a male partner not to bathe, but it was not ok for a female associate to dress in a skirt, top, and cardigan, with low heels and pearls.
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| I'm too dressy for my office: here I was in a typical look for me at ages 29 - 30 or so. If you look closely, you can just make out the strand of little pearls I'm wearing. |
What did other women at the firm wear, you might ask; weren't there any role models? I studied them, and they were not role models. There was one woman junior partner in the corporate department, and she wore shirts and pants, no jacket, no makeup, no hairstyle; her clothes often seemed ill-fitting and unflattering. I don't mean to sound judgmental; she simply gave the appearance of not caring about her appearance. There were no women senior partners in the corporate department. There was one in the litigation department whom I saw around the firm sometimes; she was an older lady in the kind of boxy pink-and-white Chanel suits popular in the 80s and into the 90s. Such suits are collector's items today, but If I'd worn what she wore, well, not only was it not in my budget, I'm sure that's not what the head of the corporate department in his khakis and golf shirts had in mind either.
At my previous firm, a woman junior partner with whom I worked well wore skirt suits, low heels, and quiet gold jewelry, with very light makeup. The female equity partner I worked with had a similar look, and I noticed her low-heeled Ferragamo shoes, a brand I have always admired too. I fit in with their look, and, if you know me, you might know of my longtime fascination with pearls (about as longtime as my fascination with chocolate, actually!). Even as a child, I loved pearls. They are the only gem that comes from a living creature, and from the sea, and I find their luminosity and infinite variety inspiring and enthralling. So, my jewelry usually consisted of a simple pearl necklace, small pearl earrings, and a gold-rimmed watch on a leather strap. My makeup was lipstick and mascara. We had a quiet preppy elegant professional look, you might say. Or you might say we had a boring look :) but that's the way it was.
I was too dressy for the new firm, and my attempts to adjust were unsuccessful. I do believe that my Harvard pedigree added to the perception some seemed to have that I was snobby. Maybe some folks didn't like my silver dish of chocolates on my desk either, who knows. I was an upscale person in what was thought of as a blue-collar firm, and I wasn't accepted. Clothes were a powerful signifier. Yes, I like looking nice, am grateful I had the opportunity to go to Harvard, and kept life-saving chocolates in a silver bowl I got for a few dollars at a second-hand store in Boston. Perhaps what my coworkers didn't know is that I didn't evaluate them as much by their clothes or where they went to school, as by whether they did good work and treated people with respect. Those are the areas where I saw very troubling deficiencies.
Lesson: I didn't fit into any part of the culture at this firm. And I didn't want to. I wanted to preserve my own reputation, and contribute someplace where people believed in quality work.
Another phrase: "Birds of a feather flock together." I didn't want to be part of this flock.
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| Here I am today, age 49, earlier this year in Southern California, wearing entrepreneur pearls along with a second beloved necklace. Isn't it nice when you can relax and be yourself! |
I quit that ramshackle firm after around a year (did I really stay that long?), and can hardly wait to tell you a few more disasters from that job, such as getting over the illnesses I developed at the prior firm, only to develop an eye tic at the new firm, which also went away when I quit. Then there were the absurd disasters of my very last day there, which involved the head of the corporate department.
Wait too until you hear about a sort of delayed disaster, you might call it, or disaster aftershock, in which nine (9!) years after leaving this firm, a disaster emerged and tried to engulf me based on a project that had taken place at this firm, and it wasn't any of the projects I've already discussed above. It was a project involving the head of the corporate department. Somehow I wasn't surprised that something like that could occur with a firm like this.
After I left Ramshackle, I became an in-house lawyer at a company that was shut down due to its role in one of the biggest corporate scandals of all time. And, I exchanged the eye tic for a new malady, while exchanging one job I didn't want to put on my resume, for another job I didn't want to put on my resume.
More to come...!
Valerie Beck
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