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“Why don’t we hire some lawyers of our own to manage the legal relationship?” thought the bankers. “If they filter out all our stupid questions, and maybe head off some of the wild goose chases, we won’t burn so much legal expense. And our name will be spelled right on the [[football team]], too: that’s pretty important.” | “Why don’t we hire some lawyers of our own to manage the legal relationship?” thought the bankers. “If they filter out all our stupid questions, and maybe head off some of the wild goose chases, we won’t burn so much legal expense. And our name will be spelled right on the [[football team]], too: that’s pretty important.” | ||
And so the bankers started to hire lawyers from the law firms. Again, everyone won: the bankers got their bigger cars; the firms could parachute under-performing associates into the banks where they could steer deal-flow back to their almae matres, the associates got investment banking bonuses and got to go home at 6pm.<ref>Now this may seem uncharitable to inhouse legal eagles, but it is fair. I say it as ''exactly'' such an underperforming associate, still under-performing, twenty-two years later. The appeal of inhouse legal was that it was better paid ''in the short run'', and the hours were better. And, in the ’90s, there wasn’t much actual law to do. | And so the bankers started to hire lawyers from the law firms. Again, everyone won: the bankers got their bigger cars; the firms could parachute under-performing associates into the banks where they could steer deal-flow back to their almae matres, the associates got investment banking bonuses and got to go home at 6pm.<ref>Now this may seem uncharitable to inhouse legal eagles, but it is fair. I say it as ''exactly'' such an underperforming associate, still under-performing, twenty-two years later. The appeal of inhouse legal was that it was better paid ''in the short run'', and the hours were better. And, in the ’90s, there wasn’t much actual law to do.</ref> | ||
The really heroic associates — the ones who ''liked'' being beasted till 5am and working weekends — stayed at their law firms, became equity partners and cultivated aneurysms etc. But aneurysms are not for everyone. In-house life had its moments, but it was a lot less of a slog, and you got to kick law-firm associates around. Of those who went in-house few returned to law firms.<ref>At least, not till the 2010s when the trend started to reverse, largely due to the rise of legal operations machine.</ref> | The really heroic associates — the ones who ''liked'' being beasted till 5am and working weekends — stayed at their law firms, became equity partners and cultivated aneurysms etc. But aneurysms are not for everyone. In-house life had its moments, but it was a lot less of a slog, and you got to kick law-firm associates around. Of those who went in-house few returned to law firms.<ref>At least, not till the 2010s when the trend started to reverse, largely due to the rise of legal operations machine.</ref> | ||
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Remember our observation above: a very small portion of a colossal number is still ''a very big number''. If you can knock even five percent out of a billion dollar run-rate, you are going to look like fifty million bucks of ''hero''. | Remember our observation above: a very small portion of a colossal number is still ''a very big number''. If you can knock even five percent out of a billion dollar run-rate, you are going to look like fifty million bucks of ''hero''. | ||
“We seem,” the business analysts wryly noted, “to be spending a ''shit''-ton of money on lawyers, and it doesn’t seem to have done us much good. We took a bath on Russia, Enron, Worldcom, and now half the known financial universe has imploded. We seem to have an internal team of three hundred [[legal eagle]] | “We seem,” the business analysts wryly noted, “to be spending a ''shit''-ton of money on lawyers, and it doesn’t seem to have done us much good. We took a bath on Russia, Enron, Worldcom, and now half the known financial universe has imploded. We seem to have an internal team of three hundred [[legal eagle]]s, and we are spending half a billion on external legal firms. And everything ''still'' seems to be blowing up. Can we not ''do'' something about this? | ||
''[[Friedrich Nietzsche|Thus began Zarathustra’s down-going]].'' | ''[[Friedrich Nietzsche|Thus began Zarathustra’s down-going]].'' | ||