Lowering the Bar

The Law Accordion to Hanson Bridgett

Would your managing partner wear lederhosen for a marketing video?  If not, maybe you work at the wrong firm.

To celebrate a name change and its 50th birthday, the firm now known as HansonBridgett has put together the video below, which shows a group of lawyers at the firm marching down Market Street here in San Francisco as part of a band.  Managing partner Andrew Giacomini, who also plays bass drum in the video, said the firm "called on the creative skills of people who work here" to put the project together.  Here's what they created:

What does it mean?  I don't know (but I like it).  No one knows.  "That's the beauty of it," said partner Garner Weng in a press release on the firm's website.  "If you're wondering," Weng said, "there is a specific message we were trying to deliver -- but it's a secret."  I'd guess that at least part of the message is, "it doesn't suck to work here," and that is something that should not be underestimated.

Management of Skadden Arps, I think the ball is in your court.  What are you willing to wear?

Link: HansonBridgett LLP
Link: The firm's press release about the video

Indiana Attorneys Work in Firm With Barred Windows

For you associates who sometimes feel like you are stuck in a (high-paying) prison -- attorneys at Woods and Woods in Evansville, Indiana, actually work in jail.

In 2004, the firm moved its office to the former Vanderburgh County Jail, which was built in 1890 and used as a jail until the late 1960s.  It then sat empty until being renovated (to some extent) in 1994.  According to the report, the old jail is now referred to as "the Old Jail," likely to distinguish it from the new one.  (The Old Jail is across the street from the old courthouse, now called "the Old Courthouse.")  The four attorneys and 30 or so employees of Woods and Woods now occupy the second floor of the building.

The firm's former office was near the Old Jail, and Mike Woods said he'd always liked the building and hated to see it deteriorate.  So in 2003 the firm bought the lease (from the "Old Courthouse Foundation") and was instrumental in getting it cleaned up and renovated further.   "We'd come over here every night after work and fill one Dumpster, then the garbage truck drivers would hall it off and we'd fill another," Woods said.  He said they did that 44 times, so hopefully the "we" includes whoever did the 1994 "renovation."

Woods likes the fact that the Old Jail was modeled on Lichtenstein Castle in Germany, a neo-Gothic structure built in 1842.  The resemblance is easy to see -- although it looks like somebody put the Old Tower on the wrong side.  The Old Jail is still linked to the Old Courthouse by a tunnel (also old) that was used to transfer prisoners (of all ages), and was once the "focal point" of a 1903 race riot (the "Old Race Riot" -- okay, I'll stop) that lasted a week and left 12 people dead.  Those facts likely make working in the Old Jail much more [choose one: (a) awesome (b) creepy (c) both].  Also fun: there are still bars on the windows.

Woods said that firm employees are "always joking" that "they can't get away, or saying we're slave drivers."  Yes . . . joking.  Actually, Woods and Woods (and Evansville) sounds like the kind of place where those comments really could be taken as jokes.  As opposed to big firms out on the coasts, where tunnels between the library and the associate compound are common, and parole is all too rare.

Link: Evansville Courier Press
Link: AP via the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette

L.A. Firm Now Employs Attorney Concierge

A concierge for its attorneys, that is, not an attorney who used to be a concierge.

Most of us will be familiar with the role of a concierge because of that Michael J. Fox movie where he plays one, which used to be on TBS all the time.  For those who haven't seen that movie, a "concierge" is a person, usually a hotel employee, who specializes in assisting others.  According to Les Clefs d'Or USA ("The Golden Keys"), the U.S. branch of the international union of hotel concierges,

Clefs d'Or concierges will accommodate every guest request so long as it is morally, legally, and humanly possible. Their services run the gamut from the mundane to the extraordinary, yet each request is fulfilled with vigor to the guest's full satisfaction.  Clefs d'Or concierges handle all duties with zeal: mail and messages, recommendations and reservations, travel and meeting planning, personal shopping and professional communications. They are also supreme social advisors, business expediters, and personal confidantes.

According to Les Clefs d'Or, there are two schools of thought as to the origin of the word "concierge."  Some say the word derives from the French comte des cierges, or "keeper of the candles," the title given during feudal times to the palace official who was in charge of catering to visiting nobility, such as by giving them candles.  Some say it comes from conservus, a Latin word for "slave".  (Members of Les Clefs d'Or prefer the other one.)

The Recorder reported on November 8 that the firm of Liner Yankelevitz Sunshine and Regenstreif now employs two concierges to run errands and accommodate other requests for its busy attorneys.  According to the Recorder, last week's agenda included the following:

• Fresh-cooked breakfast
• On-site massages and manicures
• Getting tickets to see Blue Man Group
• Picking up dry cleaning
• Finding a Halloween costume
• Preventing associates from talking to the FBI
• Arranging oil changes
• Getting auto-repair quotes
• Preventing Blue Man Group from talking to the FBI
• Delivering a tuxedo
• Arranging scuba-diving accidents
• Making bank deposits

Okay, I made up two or three of those.  But they obviously do a lot of useful stuff.

Partners at Liner Yankelevitz were quoted as saying that the service is expensive but is worth it because it raises productivity and employee spirits, as well as being good for retention and recruiting.  Said Patricia Oliver, a recent Heller Ehrman refugee, "It feels like a place of healing.  When I see my friends from Heller, they say 'You look completely different: relaxed and happy.'"

A law firm described as a "place of healing" that offers personal assistants and has "Mr. Sunshine" as a named partner?  That is either the most diabolical lie I've ever heard, or a great place to work.

Link: The Recorder
Link: The Sunshine Firm

Attorney Billboard Stating: "Life's Short. Get a Divorce" Lasts Just One Week

An all-female law firm in Chicago that specializes in domestic law drew fire (and new business) over the past week for putting up a billboard downtown that features the slogan, "Life's Short.  Get a Divorce." 

The billboard also has a couple of racy pictures, apparently suggesting that the people in the pictures are out there waiting for you if you would just get that divorce and live a little.

Corri Fetman of Fetman, Garland & Associates told ABC that "Law firm advertising is boring . . . Everything's always the same.  It's lawyers in libraries with a suit on and the law books behind them.  They don't say anything. . . . So we wanted to try something different."  And there are no suits involved in this ad, that's for sure.

Other attorneys who work in the same field criticized the billboard, saying it trivialized divorce.  They were also quoted using terms such as "grotesque," "undignified," "offensive," "absolutely disgusting," "bizarre," "a disappointment," and "the Academy Award of bad taste."  So there are some ethical domestic-law attorneys out there -- well, either they're more ethical or pissed that they didn't think of it first.

And it was effective -- Fetman also said that calls to their firm have gone up dramatically since the billboard went up last week.  This week, however, the billboard was taken down, after a city alderman who lives nearby claimed that the firm did not have a permit for the billboard and ordered the building inspector to take it down.  Fetman and Garland claimed a due process violation (although First Amendment might be more like it).  "We own that art," she said.  "I feel violated."

A bar complaint has also been filed, but an expert was quoted as saying that the bar committee rarely takes action on attorney advertising because of the constitutional issues involved, unless a clear misrepresentation is involved.  Example: recently it disciplined an attorney who was advertising on a local Polish-language radio station with an ad that featured "jungle noises" and then a voiceover in Polish saying "I am the lion of the courtroom."  And he might have been lion-like, but it turned out he had never tried a case.

Link: ABC News
Link: CBS News