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You Move the Mountain, No Questions
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Transcript
Relaxation at the Beach House
00:00:00
Speaker
All right, hey guys. Good evening, everyone. Jason, I think we should get this out of the way at the top of the cast here. You look like you're at a different location there. I am at a different location. I'm at a different location with a different setup. And you know what? I've just been relaxing a lot this week. It's been great.
00:00:16
Speaker
Oh man, that must be nice. I'm at my parents' house, which ordinarily people wouldn't think of as relaxing, but my parents' house is at the beach, so that helps. Yeah. And we also, Hannah and I snuck away for two nights without our children and left them in somebody else's care, which is extra relaxing. So when we can get rid of those three little heathens, it makes for a nice week.
00:00:42
Speaker
That's the reason to have parents, like, honestly. Yeah. That's the reason to have them. To have them at all. Right. Okay. Yeah. And also, you know, the
Podcast Introduction & Disclaimers
00:00:51
Speaker
biological aspect of being born, that parents help with that. Yeah. That probably would have been better if that didn't happen, honestly. Oh, Jake. Oh, Jake. Come on.
00:01:09
Speaker
All right, sometimes you just got to cut Jake off before he goes any further with the not wanting to be born stuff. But hello and welcome, inspiring minds. Grim note, man. Episode 14, April 6, 2023. Show us three lawyer friends goofing around for your enjoyment. Nothing we say should be taken as legal advice. I'm one of those friends. I'm Andrew Leahy. I'm a tax and technology attorney from New Jersey. I joined as hot. Hey, Jason, how are you? I'm joined by Jason on vacation. You're on vacation. You're not doing work, right? So this isn't work. No, I'm always
Balancing Work and Vacation
00:01:37
Speaker
doing work.
00:01:38
Speaker
I did do some work today. I had, I tried to book everything into like a three hour period where I was going to have every phone conversation and do every like, you know, miscellaneous filing that I needed to do this week. I was going to do it all today. And then everybody decided that they didn't want to have their calls at the scheduled time. So, you know, it's fun. Yeah. Does that improve your day or just make your tomorrow worse?
00:02:07
Speaker
Well, it makes me start drinking earlier. Oh, okay. Yeah. I mean, I was going to say, I like, we can hear the clinking of the ice in your glass. It's a good little ambiance thing. It's like, this is an audio medium, but people can really feel like they're on vacation too. Now, you know, or Dean Martens there with you. If this is the only, uh, vibe of vacation that you get, I'm really sorry. If it's the ice cubes in my Yeti cup are the only thing that you get a vacation. Like I'm really sorry. Look,
00:02:31
Speaker
Now I can also, so I have wine and that doesn't make a clinking sound, but I can just like gulp really loudly into the microphone a lot whenever I drink the wine. I'm sure everybody would love that. That is an A++ podcasting right there. Yeah. It's not, is it ASMR? What is the thing that people that... That is ASMR. ASMR. Yeah. I have tea. I can slurp that. I was about to start doing ASMR, but that's not...
00:02:54
Speaker
That's not this podcast. That's your other show. Yeah. That's your only fans page. The other voice we're hearing is somebody who's not on vacation. That's Jake. Actually, I kind of am. Hi, I'm Jake. I'm a local government and land use attorney. But yeah, so I'm off tomorrow because of my, you know, as a Jew, I take Good Friday off. But also I have a pre-planned
00:03:21
Speaker
Uh, I had a, I scheduled my, I was like, I know myself. I'm not going to give myself time off. I'm going to schedule three days off, uh, in the upcoming week. And I did that like two months ago. And so I am out until next Wednesday as of right now. So awesome.
00:03:39
Speaker
Yeah, kind of, though. Mazel tov. Thank you, though, as it so happens, as always happens, the world's going to collapse if I don't get back to people by Wednesday, stuff that needs to be done. So, you know, I'll be working a little bit, but I'm also going to be playing a lot more video games, doing a lot less. So that'll be nice. Boy, boy, you deserve it.
Trump's Legal Challenges and Media Portrayal
00:04:04
Speaker
Thank you. Absolutely. And speaking of working a lot, I think we're both we're all looking forward to digging into this sort of mini topic. That is our is it our first thing we're getting to today? Are we talking about Donald Trump working a lot on getting arrested? Yeah, I guess we'll do that. Yeah. I mean, it's really the same about I mean, the indictment being unsealed. Does anybody have anything really interesting? I like the tax angle. I've been looking at it that there might be some sort of state and local or state income tax issue there that's like the underlying
00:04:34
Speaker
Felony or whatever and so there's been a lot of hay made of that but I don't know. Did you guys find it particularly interesting? I did find it very confirming of my priors in terms of the media just really really really wanting something interesting to happen and
00:04:52
Speaker
try hyping it up in a huge way, but is actually a pretty boring court court procedure. And then nothing happening. Right. And you could tell they're like trying to justify all the time they spent on this thing. And yeah.
00:05:09
Speaker
The will, he, won't, he stuff. And then even like all the speculation that was like, you know, will he, will DeSantis, I mean, we did it a little bit, but we're mostly joking. Will DeSantis, you know, not refuse to extradite him or whatever? I heard someone make an observation that I thought was great. It would be funny if Trump had baited DeSantis into saying that he wouldn't extradite him and that this was all bananas and stuff. Just so like in their first debate, Trump can say like, you're a lawless hack.
00:05:33
Speaker
You have no respect for the rule of law. I mean, I don't think that that's what's going on. That doesn't play well, I don't think. No, I don't think it plays well. But I mean, the whole thing, I watched it, I tuned in, I was doing other stuff, but I put on the news and watched it. And they were covering it like it was the OJ Simpson chase. All these shots from outside of Trump Tower and shots from in the Manhattan DA's office and little analyses of the security guard that didn't hold the door and everything. It was all
00:05:59
Speaker
Seemed to be much ado about nothing, really. And then no mugshot. I was very disappointed in that. You know, well, you know, I well, it's technically he's charged with like what, 40 felonies or something. The.
00:06:14
Speaker
You know, it was not uncommon for people charged with misdemeanors when I was a criminal defense attorney to not get arrested at all if they were charged from, you know, from far away. They just get a summons and they turn them and they show up in court for their arraignment and that's it. They don't get processed or anything.
00:06:31
Speaker
So get i mean donald trump doesn't seem like he's gonna flee this is pure you know uh this pure personality armchair psychologist stuff he seems too ingrained in the america
00:06:48
Speaker
uh part of his image to ever run away so like you don't gotta arrest him he's not he's he's not gonna false i mean he i'm sure he'll be falsifying records all the time uh but uh that's you know you don't need to keep him locked up to stop him from doing that
00:07:04
Speaker
This is an interesting case where you find out the the political alignments on pretrial detention are kind of warped. You can kind of tell who because, you know, there's been a I want to it's kind of been a joint progressive and some conservative cause of lowering rates of pretrial detention. So when you get arrested, do you stay in jail during that before trial?
00:07:30
Speaker
Because with cash bond being the predominant method of release, it really sets a different... Whether or not you're released before trial is very much based on whether you have money to pay your bail, which I think isn't a great system.
00:07:51
Speaker
you know, some you've seen people who argued against pretrial detention like that. And also we're like, why isn't this guy getting arrested and held in jail? And you know, I can see I can see justifications for that. But
00:08:05
Speaker
Yeah, it's been interesting to watch. One fun thing that came out of this, sorry to just move right into another thing, is that did you guys see the all the people that had scheduled themselves to get married on the on the day that Donald Trump got? No, because it happened in the same courthouse where people get married.
00:08:23
Speaker
Oh, not like as a celebratory thing. They weren't like, I will marry you the day Trump is. No. Oh, OK. This was like just happened to be there in there. Yeah, trotted through. Oh, yeah. So like there's all these like wedding photos of people, you know, taking having their just married in front of helicopters and like people screaming at them. It's a lot of that's a fun aspect of this. That's apparently why I'm in New York City, right?
00:08:49
Speaker
Yeah, you never know what you're going to see. Only in New York. That's apparently one of his favorite things to do at Mar-a-Lago, too, is like basically crash people's weddings and, you know, take pictures. And so because every once in a while when he was I don't know if he was president or maybe just after like the first. Yeah, I think it was just after he was out the first sort of photos you saw of him and he wasn't looking so good. He was like at the buffet line at Mar-a-Lago during somebody's wedding, just like getting eggs or something. Yeah.
00:09:14
Speaker
Um, the other not looking great was there was that one photo of him sitting, you know, with his attorneys in, in the courtroom. And, uh, I don't know, I can't attribute what channel this was. It might've been, um, CBS news said that, uh, in the absence of a mugshot, that photo of him looking sort of grim and a little bit haggard, that was going to be the defining photo of the, of the Trump era or, or, you know, of the, of the 21st century or something. And like, I haven't seen it reproduced anywhere. It's over. I mean, the whole story is already over basically. Yeah.
00:09:41
Speaker
You know what's more defining than that picture the AI generated picture of him running from the cops. Oh, absolutely. Those are much better. That's been everywhere. And that was really that was moment defining to me. That's true. I was like, I'm going to tell my kids that's Trump really getting it. Exactly. That's how it went. Yeah. Because at the time it's both.
00:10:03
Speaker
the fact that it's at the time that everybody's freaking out slash excited about AI, and also a false image that people spread as real and emblematic of the hype that was going on about what was going on with Donald Trump, and also it's Donald Trump getting arrested. Are you thinking of the one where he's leaning against the phalanx of cops that are trying to hoist him up? Is that the one that you would imagine as the
00:10:30
Speaker
No, I was thinking of the one where he's like running away from cops towards the camera like a 90s action movie VHS cover. I thought you were talking about the one that looks like he's doing a trust fall where the officers are catching him by the arms. Oh, that's a good one too. That's a good competitor for sure. The running is less believable because I would be interested to know like what do you think
00:10:54
Speaker
What is the more recent thing Trump has done? Run at like a good clip, like really molted, right? Or like gone up more than, say, two flights of stairs? Like what? Over under. And then which was the most recent? He does exercise a lot. Golf is an exercise of some kind. Is it though? Is it? With a cart? Yeah. I'm tired when I've played 18 holes. Yeah. Yeah.
00:11:19
Speaker
But and but you don't know what clip he was running in that AI thing. He could have been go lump in in his. Oh, that's true. You're right. You could just be doing that. Like that thing you do when you're crossing the street and a car is coming and you want to make them think you're moving faster, but you're not. Yeah, like that kind of. Yeah. You move your arms quickly and you're moving your body kind of quickly. Yeah. Yeah. The
Twitter Algorithm and Musk's Influence
00:11:38
Speaker
rest of you is not moving that quickly. Yeah. Yeah. That's true. That's why the police were like the police weren't even trying. There was this kind of like, you know, like what's he doing? Right.
00:11:46
Speaker
he's gonna keel over at the end of the block anyway. So he's not getting anywhere. I don't have any real sympathy for anything that Donald Trump went through with his arraignment because he had the option to do it by Zoom.
00:11:59
Speaker
He invited him to do it by Zoom. So all of this notion that, oh, we were so persecuted. The Marjorie Taylor Greene and George Santos showing up there being persecuted by the people who were banging pots and pans next to them to interfere with them. There's zero sympathy because none of that had to happen. All you had to do was dial into this Zoom call
00:12:26
Speaker
uh, and get arraigned that way. And now you chose the spectacle and okay. No, sir. Are Marjorie Taylor green and George Santos like allies? What is her? I don't actually know what her thoughts on him are because they, because that would be, there's a 60 minute Leslie stall interview with her for probably covers that and everything else. Uh, but like, I thought he was like, nobody liked him. I thought everybody was, was out on him.
00:12:57
Speaker
Uh, that might be her too. I mean, I don't know that she has a ton of, I mean, does the, does the Republican base in like Congress like her or she's sort of her own thing. She, during the whole McCarthy, uh, speaker of the house debacle, she like cozied up to McCarthy and I think they're, she and McCarthy are best buds now, or at least she would like it to be thought of that way. And so she's saddled up to the seat of power in, in the house of representatives right now. Now,
00:13:24
Speaker
Santos, I think. Is that your rep? No, no, no, no, no, no. My rep is equally as bad. It's Andrew Clyde.
00:13:33
Speaker
And he's the guy who wears the AR-15 pin on his die. Oh, nice. You're going to have to be more specific. Yeah, I suppose. Andrew Klein, not a great dude. No, Madge is up in northwestern Georgia, like the Rome, Georgia area. If you ever find yourself driving down between Chattanooga and Atlanta on I-75,
00:14:00
Speaker
There is a, in my mind, iconic billboard that I think is right in the heart of her district. And it says in the channels, this Bible verse, so it's speaking to my people. Uh, but it says every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. And then dot, dot, dot, dot, dot. And then at the bottom, it says even the Democrats and the T in Democrats is a pitch is a red pitchfork. Uh, it's something special, man. That's the kind of district that elects Marjorie Taylor Greene. So,
00:14:30
Speaker
I think we might have some of that in Orlando. Oh, I bet you do. Oh, yeah, we got a dusting of all that. We got fun billboards. Billboards are the place for fun. Yeah, yeah, we have that. We have a couple of attorneys that are at war with each other. There's like Morgan and Morgan.
00:14:47
Speaker
you know that you know the the big you know the big whatever the personal you don't gotta tell me about Morgan and Morgan I'm in Morgan capital but he made the mistake of putting up a billboard in in Philadelphia making use of the term John are you guys familiar with John JAWN as a term for every John Federman no JAWN is a
00:15:10
Speaker
a noun in Philadelphia. I'm not from Philly, so I can't really, I'm just an outsider. I'm like an ethnographer telling you about some culture I visited. John is everything, like who is this John? That could be a person. What is this John? Could be a venue. I'll have one of those Johns that could be some sort of food. This Morgan and Morgan guy made the mistake of putting up a billboard that made use of John and another attorney
00:15:34
Speaker
Rosenbaum who's also a personal injury attorney similar kind of like ambulance chasing kind of that sort of type of I'm sure a very nice gentleman put up a billboard right across the highway from him saying like Morgan and Morgan is not a real Philadelphia attorney I'm a real Philadelphia attorney and then Morgan and Morgan put up a billboard that said like this John doesn't like that I'm you know telling it like it is or whatever and so there's this little war going on yeah
00:15:59
Speaker
That's a little bit of local flavor. That's what we're up to up here. You guys have pitchforks for your teas. We have attorneys that are or are not Philly enough. You can always count on Philadelphia to keep it classy. That, my friends, is irony.
00:16:15
Speaker
OK, so if we don't have anything else to say about Trump, we have another billionaire that's making a fool of himself in Elon Musk. And so I didn't follow the story initially. I didn't realize that the algorithm was released by Twitter. Yeah, or not. I thought this was not all of it. OK. It was published by Twitter. Supposedly the important parts. I just saw this in the tweet were not published, but a lot of stuff about what they front end
00:16:44
Speaker
and downgrade Squelch was in there. And so a lot of people, so they published it to GitHub and you're going to have to tell me more about how GitHub works to understand what they were doing when they're doing this. So one thing is that somebody looked through all of it, found stuff like posts about Ukraine are given one one hundredth of the weight of other posts.
00:17:11
Speaker
So they're really taking down posts about Ukraine. And then they were increasing posts by specific people. There was a group of like 20 people that automatically got boosted. I don't know. Elon Musk, Kat Turd, LeBron James,
00:17:36
Speaker
Yeah. Like lit, like across the political spectrum, but people, if you've seen, they're like the big tweeters that people, I don't know if it's a chicken and the egg kind of situation, but, uh, yeah, the algorithm, make the big tweeters for some reason. Gotcha. Um, yeah, but people were posting modifications to the algorithm to like eliminate everybody that has Twitter blue, uh, to eliminate, you know, Elon Musk, et cetera.
00:18:06
Speaker
And I don't know, what is a GitHub pull? GitHub push? Yeah, GitHub pull request. Yeah, a pull is when you're retrieving some code that's been committed to GitHub. And a push is when you're depositing code onto GitHub. So it's like, that's the save, and a pull is like an open. Yeah. And so a pull request is like, let's say, Jake, you had
00:18:30
Speaker
a piece of software on GitHub and you had written it and you open sourced the source so you put the source on GitHub here it all is right this thing is a mastodon client that runs on esq.social right and you published it and I find as just some person I find a bug in it and I say and you know between lines 85 and 90
00:18:47
Speaker
You have a semicolon where you should have a colon. I can request, I can make that change and then issue you a pull request, which is saying like, Hey, take a look at the changes I made. And then if you agree with them, pull it in and make the changes to the code. So I assume that's what somebody was doing with these. They were sending pull requests basically for like, Hey, how about, yeah, how about you eliminate all the Twitter blue?
00:19:06
Speaker
Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. Well, so I saw that the blue extending the reach was by a factor of four, I think, right? If you're Twitter blue, two to four more likely, or like whatever their waiting system is, it was bumping it up significantly.
00:19:23
Speaker
Yeah. And this is only the I don't know how you pick. Is it two or is it four or is it three or three point five? Like you judge that. Is it because you, you know, have had Twitter blue for longer? That's that's befuddling. But whatever. Yeah, it's all seems very arbitrary. Like Facebook, when they like some of their details came out, it was like they clocked anger emoji reactions to statuses as five times more important.
00:19:52
Speaker
Five is such a fit like they're just they're just making stuff Yeah, like there's no there's no science behind that five Some level of zeroing it in I mean like I'm
Critique of Big Law Culture
00:20:05
Speaker
not I'm not countering what you're saying I agree the science but I assume what they did was at some point They probably had it at 10 at some point. They probably had it at two. I
00:20:12
Speaker
And they found that to be, you know, better maximizing engagement. Yeah. Yeah. Because I guess if you push it too much and you and you only show things that people are reacting with anger to, obviously, you know, eventually people go like, I don't like going on Facebook. It does nothing but enrage me. You know what I mean? Right. Yeah. Or only the very worst ideas come to the top. You don't want that. You want like the top, not the top 20 percent worse, but maybe like
00:20:36
Speaker
the between 20 and 30%, that little 10% worst ideas, right? Just enough that people are gonna get angry, but not that they're gonna be like, oh my God, this is a, you know, some sort of hellscape. I think it's easier to like AB test the anger emoji, the angry reaction and stuff like that than it is to test the Ukraine post.
00:20:55
Speaker
stuff where you're like doing topic specific squelching of stuff that the Ukraine thing might be this straight up like political like oh yeah it absolutely is yeah there's no way that they're testing the Ukraine thing there that is just straight up Elon saying I don't want so much Ukraine on my bird app yeah dog app yeah yeah yeah yeah and so yeah it boosted stuff for him and then I mean the stuff that was a little more pedestrian was like it was interesting you know to the extent that
00:21:25
Speaker
I was ever interested in Twitter. It's interesting to know that like a like gets a 30, 30 X boost apparently, whereas a retweet is only a 20 X and a reply was just like doubling, like just, you know, one X, which I guess is either nothing or I don't know. Again, I don't know what these X's really, what these mean. Like the, what these multipliers are is, is a one X for reply. Does that mean it doesn't do anything? It is neither positive nor negative. Or does that mean it is twice as I don't know, to the extent that any of this is all that interesting. It's only interesting to me back when I would have used Twitter.
00:21:55
Speaker
I'm not going back, but I mean, it is funny that he released the code and like, and then, so then he said he didn't know that his name was in there and he's not surprised that it was, he's, you know, it's a little bit embarrassing and he found it weird. It's just, it's, it's what's going on at Twitter all the time now. Like he's just continually like slipping in dog crap and like rolling around on the ground in it. He, like all of these disasters are of his own making.
00:22:22
Speaker
Or to the extent they're disasters. And the other story today, obviously, was that he removes the W in Twitter on the side. Why? If only somebody thought about a good joke about that. About Twitter no longer. Hold on, let me get my room shot ready. Can you think of a joke? Hold on. I can't steal the valor for this.
00:22:48
Speaker
Stolen valid. You were invited to steal the valor. I was. What told you to steal the valor? It's a metaphor for Twitter's complete lack of W these days. Great job. That's from Brandon. Good job, Brandon. Friend of the podcast, Brandon. Friend of the podcast. We need a better term than that. It's going to be like podcaster of counsel or something like that.
00:23:10
Speaker
Yeah, I like that. Yeah, I like that too. We're going to workshop this offline, come up with something really good for next week. With our of Council Brandon. With of Council Brandon, yeah. That's right.
00:23:22
Speaker
I don't think we have much to say about Twitter either. You want to move on to the real meaty, juicy, fun story? Yeah, let's move on because I have, I don't know if I've got a lot to say about this topic, but I have a lot of feeling about this topic. So, uh, I'm, even though Andrew, you are ordinarily the introducer. No worries. I've got a lot of, uh, I got feelings about this. So Paul Hastings, big law firm, big, big law firm. Uh, they had a meeting.
00:23:48
Speaker
that I think as far as my investigation has disclosed, yes I did, a little bit of homework, I broke the rule. It seems as though there was a meeting, a presentation that was done within the private equity and mergers and acquisitions group at Paul Hastings. I don't know if it was just one office, I don't know if it was like cross office, all of the PE and M&A folks,
00:24:17
Speaker
But there was this PowerPoint presentation that was put together and delivered at this meeting. And there is a slide that has been making a big, big splash in the legal community. The lawyers read it, the big loss subreddit.
00:24:34
Speaker
It's been a real spicy week to talk about this. And it lays out a series of non-negotiable expectations. Now, Paul Hastings has come out and said, this wasn't really our idea. This was prepared by an associate. And the views expressed do not reflect the views of the firm or its partners, which is completely unsurprising that they would throw this guy
00:24:58
Speaker
under the bus. It does read like an associate associate who's way too into his job, his or her job. It reads like a like a mid level associate who's like fully indoctrinated. That like carries the bag that has Paul Hastings on it and drinks coffee out of a mug that says Paul Hastings. You know what I mean? Just like really like it's like it's a team. You know what I mean? They wear Paul Hastings like hats on vacation and stuff like that. Exactly. Yeah.
00:25:27
Speaker
I would say that he's probably like the captain of the Paul Hastings softball team or something like that. Oh, yeah. You know, you can't have a life to play on a Paul Hastings softball team when you work for Paul Hastings. And this list will tell us about why. Well, I would like to say that is not Jason being a misogynist start by saying he and assuming it's a he. It is absolutely a he. This is this has guy written all over writing this list. That is that he's not Jason's not assuming that a woman can't be in big loss. He is rightly predicting that the person who makes a list like this is a guy that looks like us.
00:25:59
Speaker
I think this could cut, I can imagine this coming from basically anybody in Big Law. I think the Big Law, the Big Law culture is universal. That's the predominant thing. Okay. That's like the dominant cultural marker. Okay. Yeah. When I say guy, I mean it in the Midwestern sense, which neither of you will probably understand. I did this accidentally with some people this week where I said, you guys, when I meant y'all or the group of you, but you guys as like the
00:26:30
Speaker
Illinois, Indiana way of just saying all y'all. Yeah, that's how it is in California too. But California didn't have y'all. Like you guys was our y'all. And also boys is also somehow gender neutral in some circumstances. Really? Okay. But this really does read like it's an amped up testosterone filled big law associate. So yeah.
00:26:59
Speaker
I guess, without further ado, let's kind of go through these non-negotiable expectations and offer comment about big law in general and about these particular things. So, non-negotiable expectation, number one, is PH is an AmLaw20 law firm. So, for those people who are not interested in big law, I'm not interested in big law except for hating it. PH is an AmLaw20 firm. That basically means that it is one of the 20
00:27:26
Speaker
biggest, most important, highest rated law firms in the United States. AMLAW, American Law 20, top 20 law firm. So, P.H. is an AMLAW 20 law firm. You're in the big leagues, which is a privilege. Act like it.
00:27:41
Speaker
Do you want to stop and talk? Do you want to do like one point point by point that this is a? Yeah, I think point. I think we have to point by point for this because I have I have I have a fun little quiz show for you guys. I look this up. Would you like to guess what Paul Hastings ranking is in the Amlaw 20 list? It's 20. It's 20. It's 20. OK, so I was going to say 19 because it'd be too embarrassing to say 20 top 20 if you're 20. But OK, it's exactly 20.
00:28:10
Speaker
Yeah. This conjures, if they were 21st, then it would be the Amlaw 21. Yeah. I have won 11 of my last 12 games. Oh, okay. That's, you're starting out with a banger because you're like already, we're better than everybody else because of our Amlaw ranking, which is okay. That's, you know,
00:28:35
Speaker
And it's a little bit humbling, a little bit like you're in the big leagues and it's a privilege, right? You're attempting to use the language of the era to kind of convey, like, look, you know, you folks are in a great position here and not everyone has this great advantage that, you know, to work for Mr. Hastings. And, you know, so you should act like it. It's very, it's, yeah, it's not good. We're not starting well here. Yeah. Yeah. This is a like, this is send from a tone of like somebody who's like,
00:29:05
Speaker
has the, has the, uh, has like a kind of survivalist mentality where they're like, they're like, I'm just trying to tell you what you need to survive because it's brutal out there. And it tells you more about their own perspective of the, of the legal field than it does how the legal field actually is.
00:29:25
Speaker
I've got plenty of survivalists. Nobody will care about you unless you'll answer the phone at 3am. And the truth is, they will deal with it if you don't answer the phone at 3am. I'm jumping ahead. My favorite is also those people, the survivalist thing you're talking about, is they'll tell you these things that you know only happen to them. So it'll be like, listen, the first time you give an assignment to a partner,
00:29:48
Speaker
He's going to ball it up. He's going to throw it in your face. And you're going to cry like a baby. OK? And that's just how it is, because we're Paul Hastings. And no, no. I believe you that that was your experience. I'm not sure that that's everyone's experience. But yes, survivalist. OK, so that's one.
00:30:02
Speaker
We're ready for two? Yeah, let's go for it. Number two, we are in the business of client service. Client service is bold and underlined, although I don't know who underlines things anymore in 2023. You are the concierge at the Four Seasons, a waiter at Alinea. Alinea is a restaurant. I looked it up. The client always comes first and is always right.
00:30:23
Speaker
If a client wants a mountain moved, we move it, no questions. There's a sub point, but we'll stop right there. So you are the concierge at the Four Seasons. I imagine that you all know this. The Four Seasons is one of those like,
00:30:39
Speaker
uh bend over backwards to wow the uh wow the visitor there or it's four seasons total landscaping and it's really juliani with shoe polish running down the side of his head it's one or the other but well i think they're probably referring to them a hotel i will i will concede that here they're probably referring to the hotel based on the elenia reference which is one of the most fancy restaurants in the world uh yeah chicago right yes chicago yes um
00:31:07
Speaker
I didn't Google that. You Googled that. Yeah. It's very famous. The head chef for a long time got tongue cancer anyway. Oh, no. Yeah. Often you hear about tongue cancer. No. This point was actually the most offensive to me. Okay. Because it's wrong. Because that's not how I think a good attorney, client, boss,
00:31:37
Speaker
Underlaying relationship goes right? That's not no questions. You move the mountain. No questions. Yeah, you move the mountain. No questions. You don't think well, like that's why are you hiring me if I'm not supposed to think like right that's That's kind of a
00:31:56
Speaker
Well, it belies what you're saying. The person saying this is they're in a slightly elevated position. Exactly. You don't think. I am the thinker. You're nothing. You're a pawn in this game. This is an associate that doesn't like being told they're wrong, especially by anybody junior to them. And I bet that's the way they've been treated before. Because some of my best relationships with clients were ones where I got a deeper relationship with them because I started saying like,
00:32:26
Speaker
I'm not sure this is a good idea because blank, blank, blank, I'll help you with it. But, you know, giving them feedback, people really want a lot of people really want guidance or want at least some if they if they've hired you, they want you to think and they want they want your thoughts on it. Right. Even if, you know, even if ultimately they obviously what they say goes. But unless you have a very sensitive ego, in which case you don't want to be questioned. Right.
00:32:55
Speaker
sort of to your point, the sub point here as a junior, your clients are the associates and partners on the deal team. So that's the, that's the rest of that, right? Is that this person is saying, well, you know, you, I am your client as the senior associate that is making this PowerPoint and giving you instructions. I'm your client. So you just do what I say. You don't ask any questions. You move the mountain.
00:33:15
Speaker
Right. And this is the bullet point right after he says the client always comes first and is always right. Right. And then the bullet. Also, that's a junior, your client. I'd like to introduce myself to you. I'm the client. Yeah. Yes. This is also right. Move the mountains that I say to move and you don't ask questions. Like, right. This is also like the most hellish thing I can imagine as a associate is not only having no client contact, having no partner contact.
00:33:45
Speaker
So you're like three levels removed from the actual client. Right. And you have no idea what the client wants because you're you're getting your client feedback through two levels of telephone. That sounds awful. This is a reference that I'm embarrassed to make, but it seems so appropriate. Have you all seen the movie The Devil Wears Prada? Where? OK, OK. So there's the evil devil who wears Prada. It's Glenn Close, I think, plays the
00:34:14
Speaker
Uh, plays that character who's modeled after a real person. And I don't know who that real person is. There you go. In the magazine business. Uh, and then she has two assistants, one of whom is played by Anne Hathaway. The other is played by Emily Blunt, I think. Is that right?
00:34:32
Speaker
I don't know, I'm not good with names, but like there's a hierarchy among the assistants and the senior assistant gets real pissed when the junior assistant starts to like exceed her parameters and exceed her boundaries and like not chart things through the senior assistant. And this is just like the main version of you don't, you dare talk to a partner.
00:34:58
Speaker
all of your stuff goes through me. No questions. You move the mountains that I tell you to move. This is a hellish scenario. I agree, Jay. It's awful. And also I would add that it concerns me that this is how they view waitstaff at the Four Seasons and Alinea, right? The idea that
00:35:18
Speaker
if there's no question. I don't think that that's the job of the concierge of the Four Seasons. I will admit I have never stated the Four Seasons and I haven't walked up to the concierge and asked them to help me dispose of a body or something, but I don't think that that's their job, is to just do whatever it is. No questions asked. Same thing with a waiter. I bet you they ask questions and there are probably limits to what they'll do. Yeah. No. Okay.
00:35:41
Speaker
Number three, Jason. Number three, this is bold and underlined again. You are online 24 seven. Online is in quotes. I don't know why, but you are online 24 seven. No exceptions, no excuses. I assume that this also means that you're online 365 days a year and next year online 366. And so like no vacations, no sleeping, no undisturbed
00:36:07
Speaker
No, you know, dinner with your family. No, no, you know, going uninterrupted to your house of worship. This is you are online 24 seven. This is not only just jerkish
00:36:25
Speaker
Uh, it is super unhealthy. Uh, you, we are not humans do not exist in a capacity where you can go 24 seven and be online 24 seven. We need rest. Yeah. When I first read this, I thought online.
00:36:41
Speaker
Like you are online 24 seven was like, you know, no, I've like, you're on
Reedy Creek Updates and Personal Anecdotes
00:36:48
Speaker
Twitter. You're seeing, you're seeing what people are talking about. You're, who's the main character of the day. You're on TikTok. You're, you know, you're keeping with dad before he didn't open the can of beans. Exactly. You're in, you're, you're, you're, you're stitched into the, you got your pulse, your finger on the pulse of culture. But no, I think, I think Jason's right. I think it's about, yeah, you're checking your email, you're answering phones, whatever.
00:37:10
Speaker
Yeah, I'm sure which is terrible. Yeah, but I definitely like, that's, that's, this is not a Paul Hastings specific mentality, even if other firms won't put it in the email. Like, no, yeah. Like, I mean, big, it's that's right. And big law where like, they just kind of expect you to answer the phone, whatever they call you. That's the thing.
00:37:35
Speaker
And they expect you to answer emails quickly. Yeah. That's not isolated to big law either. I mean, you can get a job at a tiny little law firm and I've never had one, thank God. But I've never had a job where you were expected to respond to stuff at four in the morning. But like, this is, it's not just a big law problem. It is much more highly prevalent in big law. Seems to me, I've never been in big law. There's
00:38:02
Speaker
reasons on both sides for that. But gosh, this is just a terrible boss, a terrible work culture thing too. It's also one of those things where you are setting up a standard that is like, if you take it literally, or a rule that if you take it literally, it's impossible to abide by. So you're also creating a rule set that immediately everyone that it falls under it is breaking.
00:38:24
Speaker
And so just from like, even if you wanted to sort of achieve the ends you're looking for, which is to get people to really like, whatever Elon Musk said, like hardcore or whatever, you know, nonsense. He was yelling at people as he was dragging beds into their offices and making them stay there. You're failing at it because you're setting a stand. Like if you just simply said something like you need to respond to any email you receive before midnight within 20 minutes, that's still a horrendous standard to set for people or a rule to place on people. But like it's. Yeah.
00:38:52
Speaker
technically doable, you can, you know, get you can achieve those and you know, I mean, you can you can follow that rule. This is just all you're doing is you're saying to the associates basically hide the fact that you do anything else. I should never know that you do anything else. And that's not good. No, I, you know, people, I talked to big law partners who have better policies than this. And they're, they still can't keep their associates because of burnout. So yeah,
00:39:20
Speaker
people are just burning out like crazy these days. Yeah. And this is number four, number four, timeliness slash quality clients expect everything to be done perfectly and delivered yesterday. Sometimes you just do things and you just demand things that are literally not possible. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is, this is a hyperbole and I think
00:39:44
Speaker
probably this is the first time that I can say that I genuinely believe this is hyperbole because I think the online 24 seven thing is probably intended and truthful. But obviously you can't have things delivered yesterday when they articulate them today. But clients expect everything to be done perfectly and delivered yesterday. You know what?
00:40:04
Speaker
I don't think that this point is as offensive. They want it done very well and they want it done now. And I think there was a point made in here or somewhere in the content that I read about this that said, when you're paying somebody, when you're paying a junior associate $850 an hour for their work, you know, I'm probably inclined to expect that to be pretty darn good and
Episode Wrap-Up
00:40:26
Speaker
pretty darn prompt. Well, that's point five.
00:40:30
Speaker
Oh, look at me jumping ahead. Sorry, I would agree with that. Remember, clients have been defined now as being the senior associates as well. So the clients that are demanding perfectly yesterday, that's me who wrote this PowerPoint, hi, I'm the client. So that bothers me a little bit.
00:40:51
Speaker
And the thing is, it takes time to perfectly write an email. There's no such thing as perfect. You are trading off perfectness with promptness anytime you're doing it. There's no way around that. You should be good as a person making a lot of money per hour
00:41:18
Speaker
You should be very good at your job and definitely some people will take some people can almost never produce something perfectly and some people can never be prompt. So you should be on the better end of that.
00:41:30
Speaker
Uh, but, uh, yeah. Um, I, I don't, I, I think the offensive thing about this point is that it's not really saying anything more profound other than be good at your job because it's not a real, you're, that's a trade-off. You're saying they want both X and Y when you're trading off X to get Y. You're not helping me figure out which one you want.
00:41:56
Speaker
Well, the other thing is the clients, like let's drop the part where the clients are the senior associates and make the clients actually outside clients. Who interfaces with the clients? It's the partners. If their expectations are unreasonable and I'm a junior associate and you're a senior associate or you're a partner, that's up to you to manage those clients' expectations to something that's possible to get done. Don't come and tell me, that's why you, senior associate or you partner, get paid what you get paid. Go deal with the clients and tell them, yeah, sorry, we can't get this done in,
00:42:26
Speaker
Uh, you know, this is about a work you want done in a weekend. We can't get that done. So it's a little bit of like offloading to, well, the clients have these demands, you know, these demands of us. Okay. But you are telling them that that's acceptable. Yeah. The client's expecting might save this because clients often expect the impossible, uh, which is, you know,
00:42:44
Speaker
Uh, you just deal with it as it comes, but it's not very client. You're basically just saying clients have unreasonable expectations, which is true, but also you're a client under this rubric and you should be reasonable with your expectations. So, so the client wants them out moved, we move it and we ask them questions about it because someone's paying you $850 per hour or more to move. Uh, so 0.5 they're paying you a lot of money.
00:43:08
Speaker
Think about that and everything that you do. All communications and work product need to be prompt, professional, polished. Hey, you know what? Communications and work product should be prompt, professional, and polished. That's probably true across the board. What does prompt mean? Prompt, I think most reasonable lawyers understand that to mean
00:43:31
Speaker
Prompt is probably within 24 hours. Professional means you're not acting like a child. And polished means that you're articulating yourself well. I think those are reasonable expectations, especially when you're making that much money. Yeah. Well, let's cut the rest. Let's move five to number one. And we got the first one that we would keep on this PowerPoint, probably. Yeah, that's fair. Yes.
00:43:56
Speaker
And I think, I don't know if every state does this, but in Indiana, when I first passed the bar, you have to take this applied professionalism course where they do a special thing for newly minted lawyers. It's the first CLE you have to take. And like, this is basically what they talk about. The judges say, somebody comes in from the disciplinary commission and says, the two most common reasons that I see lawyers getting disciplined are stealing clients' money and not communicating with their clients. So don't steal your client's money and communicate with your clients.
00:44:25
Speaker
Great. Fair enough. We can keep this one. Congratulations, Chicago Paul Hastings, mid-level associate. You're one for five so far. Eventually, you can have unprofessional emails. Eventually, once you have that rapport with the client, you can send them Naruto gifts and that's okay. Don't do that right at the start. It takes a while. Yes. You got to reach that level of cache with the client before you can send the Naruto.
00:44:55
Speaker
All right, number six, take ownership of everything you do. Once you touch a document slash work stream, you own every mistake in it, fair or not. It seems to me, it seems to me like the partner owns every mistake in it. But occasionally we've, you know, and like,
00:45:17
Speaker
There's like a three, three person litigation, regular litigation team at my firm. And sometimes all three of us miss something. And, you know, all of us really feel like we should have caught it. We all feel like we own it. So, you know, that happens.
00:45:32
Speaker
I'm not too offended by this. You own it, maybe it's not yours specifically. Okay, so here's, I'm just thinking about this as I'm talking. Is this senior associate yelling at the baby associate saying, yeah, I made this mistake, but you saw it. You noticed, you didn't notice either, so it's your fault.
00:45:54
Speaker
That's my problem with it because then if you scroll back up and go to number five and talk about that someone is paying $850 an hour for one hour of your time, how much is the senior associate chart billing being billed out at, right? Like there is some sort of, like, well, I don't know, some people are getting paid a little, some people on this call are getting paid more for this document than I am.
00:46:13
Speaker
And so maybe you should be taking ownership. Maybe the ownership should be based on how much work was put in or how much experience you have. It depends on who you're talking to with this. I forgot. I don't know if Jason, if you said it was where these first years that were being subjected to this or just junior. Yeah, it's it's juniors, but I don't know what a Paul Hastings junior means. I don't know what that vocabulary term is there. I thought it was summer associates because of
00:46:37
Speaker
because of one of the points later, point number eight. Oh, okay. Summer associates. And that's, that's inexcusable, I think, to be yelling at them that if there's a mistake in one of these things, you own it or fair or not. But that's solely based on, so Jim being not, not going to do all of number eight, but the last four words are talk to your classmates. Oh, gotcha. Yeah. So that's why I thought it was summer associates. Hmm. Hmm. Yeah. Culturally, I don't know what that means. Classmates in that context, but take ownership of everything you do.
00:47:07
Speaker
Yeah. Once you touch a document work stream, you own every mistake in it. Like basically this is you're going to be scapegoated by the partners and by the senior associates. So be ready for it and take your medicine and like it. Be comfortable under the bus. Yes. As advice to not blame shift, I love it. Like after a mistake is discovered, don't start pointing fingers. It's not helpful.
00:47:34
Speaker
Oh, yeah. A lot of this is based on context. Like I hate a lot of this because of PowerPoint being presented the way it is. If this is one associate pulling a new associate aside and just saying like sort of quietly saying like, listen.
00:47:45
Speaker
I don't know if you want to stay here long term, but if you do, here's the things you have to do, then a lot of these are not that bad. Even down to the clients expecting everything to be done perfectly. That can be framed in a way and told to somebody in a way that's like, I'm not defending this, I'm just telling you, I have been chewed out for taking 25 hours to get back to somebody on something. If you don't want that to happen to you, here's some advice. But this being thrown up on a PowerPoint and shown to some associates is a little different.
00:48:10
Speaker
Maybe it's unfair, but I definitely get a big Alec Baldwin and Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross vibe. This person wishes they were that cool. Coffee's for closers only. Coffee's for closers. All right. Moving on to number seven. WFH, work from home is a luxury. Don't take advantage of it. Buy a full home setup, two monitors, docking station, keyboard, mouse, and a working phone. Oddly prescriptive. Or come into the office. No poor connections, no excuses. See number three and number five.
00:48:40
Speaker
Uh, you know what, aside from the heavy handedness, I, I'm fine with that. Uh, you know, working home is a lot. Why doesn't Paul Hastings boy buy their lawyers this stuff? They're billing them out for $850 an hour. Yeah. That's my question. I mean, during COVID I had friends that were in big law and they
00:49:02
Speaker
had to purchase all their stuff down to phones, ethernet phones and stuff. Did they get reimbursed? No. It's very strange. I don't know. It's a very weird. It's like these things are set up. There are these tracks for expensing things like parking and dinner and stuff like that. And then there are ones that just haven't been considered. And they don't seem to be willing to. As times change, they're just not interested in making changes. So it could just be something like that. I still think it's sort of inexcusable, more or less.
00:49:33
Speaker
I mean, if you're going to have people working from home, it just seems like an extension of office, of office expenses. I wasn't going to try to make my office pay for my, you know, 2070 super at home, you know, build a PC. But if I, I wouldn't think it'd be, it would be that ridiculous to have them pay for a docking station.
00:49:57
Speaker
for me to work for long. No, I mean, especially when you think about like ethernet phones and things like that, I don't know that I would know, I mean, we're, everybody on this call are reasonably technically savvy. I don't know that I would know what sort of phone to go purchase to just suddenly be able to connect to my work, you know, line or whatever. So even just from a sort of practical standpoint, you would think that this would be something to be provided, but I guess not. Yeah.
00:50:21
Speaker
Yeah, the other thing is it's this, I say he, this senior says specifically C number three and number five, where it says number three is you are online 24 seven. If you are going to expect me to be online 24 seven, and you're going to command that I have this full home set up here,
00:50:41
Speaker
why the heck aren't you paying for it? Work for home is not a luxury. You're expecting me to be online 24 seven. And so you'd better facilitate that. That's a good point. The labor lawyer in you is like, Oh, you want me to work from home, but you're not going to pay for my work expenses. Work for home is not a luxury. It's an expectation unless you're expecting me to live in the office. God help us if you're expecting that hardcore hardcore. Come on, move the beds in. Yeah. Hardcore parkour.
00:51:10
Speaker
Uh, number eight, no questions until you've tried to figure something out for yourself. Google unfamiliar concepts, search the DMS. I assume that's document management system. Yeah. Uh, read statutes, read the instructions, et cetera. Still can't figure out the answer. Talk to your classmates. I assume that classmates is like. Non-seaweed.
00:51:35
Speaker
Yeah, I expect that associates are entering the firm in waves, graduating classes. And so that's probably the classmates that we're talking about here is like, Oh, yeah, you're talking about first year, second year, third year. But like, this one is not bothersome, aside from the heavy handedness. Google unfamiliar concept. Yeah, like, yeah, definitely do that.
00:52:01
Speaker
There's absolutely no reason why you should walk into a partner's office and have the partner say, let me Google that for you. You should not have that happen. Search the DMS, if that's what I assume, like a knowledge base or a knowledge management system.
00:52:18
Speaker
Prior deals, you're just looking back at prior deals, right? And you're looking to see if, you know, has this been done before? Have we done something for this client before? Maybe I can find the answer in a prior deal. Like, yeah, I'm with you up to that. Read statutes makes me think that this associate might be an idiot, the senior associate, because in transactional law, I mean, the odds are like, what do you read statutes? What am I looking at? What statute is going to be on point for this, this, what, an M&A thing, right? Come on, read statutes.
00:52:46
Speaker
how often would a statute have the answer for what we're doing in this deal or what we're... I don't know. Yeah, he broke the rule of threes. I was like, maybe it was a rule of threes thing where you always want to list three things. But no, he made that four things. Read the instructions. Yeah. What am I, assembling an IKEA cabinet? What instructions?
00:53:10
Speaker
Is the rule of three's thing something that exists in society in general? I thought it was just a Presbyterian thing. Oh, the rule of three's is definitely a thing. It's a thing. Yeah, it's like a mental, almost compulsion, right? Like to list, to do three things and that thing. At least three, I would say. 30 Rock had a thing about the rule of threes that I'm basing this on.
00:53:37
Speaker
Now, I have to go back and rewatch the whole series. Yeah. Jake's recommendation for the week. I agree with this point. You shouldn't be bugging senior people with basic questions that you can figure out by yourself. Yeah, I agree.
00:54:00
Speaker
a self-reliance or an independence thing. Is this good for you to figure out, like, getting that habit of trying to figure out what's going on before you go and ask it? Or if you're going to ask a senior person, confirm what you think you know. Like, so I had this question. Here's what I think the answer is. Does that sound right? And then they can correct you if that's not right.
00:54:27
Speaker
Yeah, so I'm not, I'm only mad about the, not mad, only bothered by the, by the attitude of it or the- Yeah, I'm with you. Yeah. Okay, what are we on, number nine? Number nine. I don't know is never an acceptable answer. And it says C, number six and number eight.
00:54:55
Speaker
This is terrible, especially for junior associates where you're saying, I don't know is never an acceptable answer. I don't know is absolutely an acceptable answer. Probably the best, the better way of doing this is the way that I think they taught basically everybody in law school.
00:55:15
Speaker
is I don't know, let me find out for you. Or I don't know, let me look into that. Or it depends. Yeah, I mean, that's basically right. But I don't know is never an acceptable answer. I'm just not okay with that. There needs to be room for, I don't know yet. I'm gonna be the defender of this one, I think. Okay, go for it. Which is, so this is something that happened with,
00:55:43
Speaker
My current firm they it's not that you can't not know because obviously you cannot know things and you don't have to hide that but if you're getting getting answer if you're Well, I guess this is a little little bit of a different a little bit of a different situation it depends on the context but like the
00:56:06
Speaker
So imagine you're asked what the answer is to this. You can say, I'm not sure, but here's what I think it is. I can confirm that. I can look that up for you. But here's what my basic, my common sense would say. My understanding of this area of law would make me think is the answer or my understanding of this
00:56:28
Speaker
of this company or this person would make me think is the answer. So you can at least have a baseline of what they think the answer is. Yeah, it shouldn't be your final answer, but to Jason's point, I think that it can still be
00:56:44
Speaker
I mean, it shouldn't be your final answer in a vacuum, just the phrase, I don't know, and then nothing more. But I think you could still conclude you don't know. I mean, you could still, like, you could do all the research. You can have basically what the answer is. And the answer could be like, yeah, I'm not sure. Here's the two ways it could go or here's the two things we could do. And I don't know which is right.
00:57:03
Speaker
This is a matter of first impression or something of that kind. Foreclosing that entirely to me is just basically saying, I'm not interested in hearing you say I don't know. So pull a chat GPT on us and just be confident in everything you say. Whatever you're going to say, say it confidently and don't ever tell us you're uncertain. I want certainty turned way down on the AI that is the super associate.
00:57:28
Speaker
This just really gives a shark tank, not the TV show, but a shark tank vibe here where you can never put blood in the water. You can never show any weakness and admit that there's something that you don't know. And that's totally consistent with my understanding of Big Law, of the reputation that Big Law has, from talking to my friends who are in Big Law.
00:57:51
Speaker
It's just don't ever put any blood in the water because the other sharks will. It's telling that it's paired with C number six and C number eight, which are take ownership of mistakes and no questions until you've googled it, which is like a lot of the time that's not going to solve the I don't know problem. So, you know, and it's not a mistake. Yeah, not to be a downer with the blood in the water thing, but like those sorts of things have like
00:58:19
Speaker
trickle down or ripple effects in terms of if you don't feel comfortable saying to somebody you don't know, there's other things you may not feel comfortable saying. You may not feel comfortable saying you feel as though you are burning out or you, you know, are not in a good place mentally or you need a break or something. Right. And it is all of this might be a felony or this might be a felony. Yeah. This all and from a from a sort of self preservation perspective from the senior associates, maybe less senior associates, but partners as well. You don't really want
00:58:48
Speaker
I'm going to very cautiously make this reference. I'm going to reference Hitler, but in a bad light, it'll be fine. You don't want to be Hitler where none of your generals are willing to wake you up and say, D-Day is happening and it's not going to go well for us. We need to do something because they're all afraid of what he's going to say. It doesn't work out well for him either. I don't want to spoil the end of World War II for you, but it's not good. It gets married, but then the last few minutes are not good for him.
00:59:13
Speaker
Um, so you don't want to be the partner that like, no one will come and tell you at Jason's point, like, yeah, this is a felony or this is not the way to do this or, or whatever. So even if just from a self preservation standpoint for the senior associate or whoever that is, you know, showing this, um, not a good idea, not a good general rule.
00:59:29
Speaker
let people say they don't know, let them be honest about what's going on with them, et cetera. There's an article recently about a consulting group that goes to businesses to test the health of their organization. And one of the ways they test the health of the organization is how much the upper management fraternizes with the staff.
00:59:56
Speaker
and how willing the staff are to go to the upper management with problems, because if they aren't willing to go to upper management with problems, then it is very prime for organizational collapse. So yeah, that's kind of the situation here is shut up if you don't like hide your, hide your problems, right? Hide your problems, kid.
01:00:17
Speaker
or you're going to get lit up out there. Yeah, trust me. I'll get you. Moving on. Moving on to number 10. This is a series of like hyper aggressive type type a platitudes isn't right. Just sayings. This is your career. You're in all caps. This is your career. Embrace that reality and always put your best foot forward. If not for the firm or your deal team for yourself.
01:00:47
Speaker
Yeah, put your best foot forward. This is your career. At the end of the day, it's bold, underlined. It's your reputation that will carry you. Whether that's here or in house or elsewhere. Make it count. Yeah.
01:01:03
Speaker
Great. This is like the Big Law equivalent of live, laugh, love being etched on somebody's wall. Right. I like that firm is capitalized. Just the word firm is capitalized. That's because even if you're just referencing Paul Hastings obliquely, you need to capitalize the term that is used to reference Paul Hastings. That sort of is telling.
01:01:24
Speaker
This is really like the, you know, the abusive relationship, the wrap up of the abusive relationship in a nutshell that is this slide, because it's like ultimately comes back down, comes back to I do this for you, man. I want this for you, man. I'm I'm trying. I'm just trying to help you when I am but a shepherd. I'm just trying to and don't think and answer my phone whenever I whenever I call you even if 3 a.m.
01:01:53
Speaker
I'm just trying to help. Right. It also has a little bit of the sort of middle school permanent record thing. Do you remember? I mean, I don't know if that was common where you guys. Oh, yeah. The idea that everything was going on your permanent record. Right. From like sixth grade. That's it. Right. After elementary school, everything goes on your print. Any children listening to this, I can't imagine why you'd be listening. I'll tell you now, though, there's no permanent record. Oh, my God. And you're going to correct the kids.
01:02:19
Speaker
It's your reputation that will carry you? No, it isn't. I mean, if you do Paul Hastings and you spend five years there, you're going to go someplace else on the strength of those five years and that being on your resume. That's it. It's not your reputation, really. I mean, if you're really just absolutely egregious in your behavior, then sure, maybe that your reputation, it can be your undoing for sure. But I don't think it's going to carry you. If you just keep your head down and you manage to just keep your job for a certain amount of time,
01:02:47
Speaker
The world will be your oyster to the extent that's what you want. And this whole thing is window dressing. Just as Jake said, to make them, you know, to, to close this out on like, actually we care about you. We're doing this for you. This whole presentation is for you. Uh, you know, dragging the beds into the offices so you can sleep there. That's for you to abusive relationship all the way through. Yeah. So in summary, uh, big law bad. Yeah.
01:03:15
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, like any hardworking, any law firm that tries to convince you that working you to death and having no life outside of the law firm is what's best for you. They're just doing it for you. Right. Or whatever else. I mean, it's startup culture. I'm sure you guys see it if you go on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is just replete with this sort of basically repackaged, yeah, hustle culture, this sort of version of this. It's other versions of this show. Rise and grind. Rise and grind, baby. Yeah.
01:03:44
Speaker
I like the ones that are the fake ones where it's like, you know, I missed my kids. Have you seen all those like sort of at the end? Who are you? You're not my father or whatever. Um, yeah, but yeah, this is, there's a whole bunch of different, I think this is a sort of distinctly American thing. I mean, I'm sure it's been exported elsewhere, but my understanding is that like this definitely this working yourself to death thing, uh, in these sorts of jobs, these white collar jobs is something that sort of
01:04:09
Speaker
came about here and sort of is most well exemplified here. And yeah, certainly here in Japan, maybe. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Germany, maybe Russia, all the Axis powers. Yeah.
01:04:29
Speaker
I don't think of it. That doesn't sound right. I don't know. What stereotypes can we think of? Anyway, I don't know. But let's not do the stereotypes and move into follow up. So Jake, do you have anything to share with us about Reedy Creek? Just that so after so last week we covered the
01:04:55
Speaker
development agreement and the restrictive covenants that Disney got in place before the Rhea Creek got taken over. And the press that ended up coming out when the district realized that this had happened. The governor has asked for a criminal investigation
01:05:12
Speaker
and the Attorney General has started investigating, I have no idea what they are investigating. I have an idea, but there isn't a lot of law that supports it even invalidating the agreements, which is that it was somehow self-dealing.
01:05:32
Speaker
Or Disney, they mentioned we need to find out how involved Disney was in these decisions. And the answer was Disney was extremely involved because they were the other party to the contract. So they had to be extremely involved.
01:05:49
Speaker
We'll see, we'll see how that goes. If, you know, if the procedural stuff with those contracts was messed up, then hey, they might be, that might be a reason to invalidate them, but I'm betting Disney had its sex in a row when it came to that.
01:06:04
Speaker
It sounds like we might be needing your continued expertise then for some time forward. You'll still have a Disney, Reedy Creek expert job for a little while longer as this develops, right? Yes, apparently. I put out another piece on Bloomberg Tax. It's just basically the same breakdown from last week, but in written form for people who don't read our podcast. Don't listen to our podcast.
01:06:32
Speaker
So yeah, read it if you like. The audio jake down. Good deal. We'll put it in our show notes. I'm adding it right now so I don't forget. Yeah. The Trump indictment, the Paul Hastings things, those were hot jakes. Hot jakes, of course. And the reading thing was the jake down.
01:06:51
Speaker
All right, I think that's it for follow-up, right? Yeah. In terms of what's going on, I don't have anything really this week. My what's going on is I'm going to let you guys go quick so that Jason came back to his vacation. Well, you can both get back to your vacations. Yeah, my new working vacation. Yeah, so what's going on with you guys? I'm still playing Resident Evil 4. It's still really good. I don't know. Can I do that three weeks in a row? That seems like cheating, but it's very good. I think so. I'm going to get it now. Now that you've done it three weeks in a row, I'll buy it. Fine. I'll do it.
01:07:22
Speaker
What's going on is I'm on vacation. It's great. I strongly recommend taking a vacation. You recommend a beach? Yeah. What beach are you at?
01:07:31
Speaker
Or where in general, well, OpSec, he can't don't. Yeah, I know you don't. I'm going to, I'm going to come for you. I'm going to control OpSec a little bit here, but, uh, it is a coastal Carolina and Georgia beach. So it's barrier Island beaches. Uh, you end up with these, uh, it's, I think it feels different than a Florida beach because the beach is long and it goes on forever. When the tide is low, it can be like,
01:08:00
Speaker
150 yards to get out to the water from where you set up your chairs at high tide. And it's just like vegetation and wildlife and a quiet, slow life here while you're on vacation. None of the kitschy Panama City beach type stuff. There are no airbrushed t-shirts. It's just nice and quiet and serene. Strong recommend.
01:08:27
Speaker
Very cool. So last year, I went to a conference. And my wife and son came. And my son is autistic. And he's got very specific preferences. And he hates crowds. And so we were trying to find something good to do with him. And my wife took him to a very desolate beach. And he loved it. And so we tried to find, when we were driving back from
01:08:54
Speaker
This was in the Fort Myers area, and we live in the Orlando area. We were driving from Fort Myers to Orlando, and we were like, let's, you know, let's find a beach. And my wife put in a beach, and we get there, and it is absolutely jam-packed, the most crowded place I've ever been. Turned out it was Siesta Key, which I don't know if you've heard of it, but it's like literally a reality show beach.
01:09:23
Speaker
And the only reason I thought of it was that, yeah, no. And he hated it because it was tons and tons of people. But also I thought of it because the beach is like 300 yards long between where the beach starts and where the ocean is. And it's all packed down like rock hard sand from people walking on it for how the people walking on it.
01:09:52
Speaker
Yeah, it's not my favorite beach. I'll put it that way.
01:09:58
Speaker
No, I'm with your son. I'm not a fan of crowds. I like the beach. So I grew up on the Jersey Shore. I'll be quick. I grew up on the Jersey Shore. But the advantage to that was townies never went onto the beach or anywhere near those towns during the summer. Because of the toxic waste. Because of the toxic waste. You never swim in the water, you fools. You don't go in the water. But you go in the winter. And it's lovely in the winter. But in the summer, it's insane. I mean, yeah, from crime to everything else.
01:10:26
Speaker
I like your recommendation. A nice, quiet beach. And I hope you both get to continue to enjoy your vacations. Thank you. I haven't started yet. I'm about to start now. Smooth jazz.
01:10:49
Speaker
What was that? I have no idea what's happening right now. I was trying to do a radio guy playing that. Don't worry about it. But you gave up on a big English? I gave up on English because words weren't coming. Immediately it was just gibberish. It's okay.