Joe Patrice is an Editor at Above the Law. For over a decade, he practiced as a...
Kathryn Rubino is a member of the editorial staff at Above the Law. She has a degree...
Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021....
Published: | January 15, 2025 |
Podcast: | Above the Law - Thinking Like a Lawyer |
Category: | News & Current Events |
Sullivan & Cromwell are bringing attorneys back to the office five days a week. The stated reason is to mirror “normal business hours” which is a cruel joke in an abnormal business hour industry. Democratic Party superlawyer Marc Elias faces an uprising at his firm after staff proposed a mandatory arbitration agreement despite many of his top clients openly campaigning on… banning mandatory arbitration agreements. Finally, Wilson Sonsini hands out bonuses but pulls a fast one with special payments.
Joe Patrice:
Greetings and salutations.
Kathryn Rubino:
Hello, how are you? That was a very formal introduction this week.
Joe Patrice:
Yes. I’m Joe Patrice. This is Thinking Like A Lawyer, the show that we put on every week as Above the Law editors to kind of give you a quick rundown of the big legal stories from the week. That was, as I said, I’m Joe Patrice. Kathryn Rubino is joining me here.
Kathryn Rubino:
I am!
Joe Patrice:
As is Chris Williams. And, we begin… Before we dive into the heavy stuff, we begin with a little lighter fare, small talk, which we call our small talk section. Just kind of chat about other things.
Chris Williams:
You know what, I want to start off small talk this time, that way we, for talking about fucking Jones Day in this section. Do you think a thing can be its own metaphor?
Joe Patrice:
Interesting philosophical question.
Kathryn Rubino:
No, it’s not a metaphor then
Chris Williams:
I feel like that is the obvious, maybe even lawyer answer like a metaphor is necessarily when you say something like the peach is a sun or the sun is a impeach, what happens?
Kathryn Rubino:
Right? A metaphor refer to a different means to something else. Taking the place of another thing. So if it’s its own thing, it can’t take the place of it, it’s already it.
Chris Williams:
I hear you, but
Kathryn Rubino:
This also doesn’t feel very light and small talky. I will say.
Joe Patrice:
No, I think it’s perfectly fine.
Chris Williams:
What about this involves the
Joe Patrice:
Law? You’re just
Chris Williams:
Approaching it like a lawyer.
Joe Patrice:
What strikes me is though, do you have some example that’s triggering this question?
Chris Williams:
Well, what happened was, there was a while ago I was thinking about the question of if water could be wet
And they were like, oh, well water can’t be wet because wet is a relational concept. Water wets other things or causes other things to be wet. But I was like, well, can water touch itself? Can water wet itself? And I was thinking about there are times where you ever have a thing and either it is just so good or it’s so bad. It seems as if it stands in for the class of thing that it is. So I was like, oh, this burger is a burger sort of thing where it’s not just a repetition or a thing that feels tautological, where saying the thing again feels like a redoubling that adds meaning to it. Or the fire that is whipping through California is a fire.
Joe Patrice:
Yeah, I see what you mean. Is that a oke at that point? Is that the term for that
Kathryn Rubino:
Where the part reflects the
Joe Patrice:
Whole? Reflects the whole, yeah.
Kathryn Rubino:
Yeah, I think so. Right, because since the California fire represents fire as in the entirety of the concept.
Joe Patrice:
Yeah. Let’s see. That is what that term, I dunno.
Chris Williams:
Yeah. Cynic though is a figure of speech where a parties made represent the whole or vice versa.
Joe Patrice:
Yeah.
Chris Williams:
But can a cenic though be metaphorical?
Joe Patrice:
It’s not metaphorical, but it is a thing like wetness water can be all of wetness I think is how it would work. So it’s not a metaphor because it’s not a comparative to some other thing, but it is the White House as a term can stand in for the whole executive branch.
Chris Williams:
Sure. This is fun. It looks like it is distinct from metaphor, although in the past it was considered a subspecies of it. It’s fun. I was having this conversation with my friend and I was like, he was like, no, what you’re describing as a tautology. And I was like, well, can the tautology be metaphorical If I was like, is there a way to say X is X in a way that makes you feel a different way about X itself or something about its exus. But that was a conversation I thought was fun that had recently,
Joe Patrice:
So okay, I get a lot of flack for my small talk and not that this was a bad small talk, but I get flacked for small talk being too serious. He just said that this was a conversation he had for fun.
Kathryn Rubino:
I just want to be clear at the top of this conversation, I flagged that this was not liked. Why wasn’t it small talk? I didn’t say it was small talk is a
Chris Williams:
Thing I did with my life over the weekend and I just wanted to share it with the group.
Joe Patrice:
I vote that this is perfectly fine. Small talk. I’m just saying I get a lot of flack for my small talks not being appropriately fun as
Chris Williams:
You should. What’s more interesting for me is I feel like Kathryn picked the Joe role we just
Joe Patrice:
Talked about, about metaphors. All right. Anyway.
Kathryn Rubino:
Well, I took my baby to the dentist today. Toddlers don’t love a dentist. As it turns
Joe Patrice:
Out, I wouldn’t think so.
Kathryn Rubino:
I think that I personally have walked away from the experience with bruises as a result. The way that this pediatric dentist does it as you have to, the parent holds the child as they’re in their mouth or whatever, and my baby thought that it was much more fun to just kick me that entire time. So it was a great start to a Monday bodes well for the rest of the week. Getting kicked in the groin repeatedly by a child seems like par for the course for 2025.
Joe Patrice:
Yeah. Meanwhile, I had my event postponed. I was supposed to be in LA for the media and entertainment council annual dinner where I’m receiving an award, but ….
Kathryn Rubino:
Congratulations.
Joe Patrice:
Thank you. But we’ll talk about that more when the new date comes up. It’ll now be in March. So we’ll get to that. But obviously because of the fires, it’s been put off. And with that, let’s move to our actual topics of the week.
Kathryn Rubino:
So a lot happened this week. The first story I think we’re going to talk about is mandatory arbitration related. Oops. It was a big issue in the legal industry, not just because lawyers are the ones that write mandatory arbitration agreements and get other people to sign them. But in terms of the industry as a whole, back in 2018, it came out that some firms were using mandatory arbitration agreements as a condition of employment. That became a topic of conversation. A bunch of firms did away with it after that pressure came out. There was even an advocacy group that people’s parody project that has kept the pressure on, did protests in front of some law firms that had these sorts of cove contracts, is how they frame it on their website to try to keep the pressure on saying that it’s a real problem to have these agreements, et cetera.
Joe Patrice:
Yeah. So let’s get to the actual story and then get back to that background thing. So why is this in the news now?
Kathryn Rubino:
Because at the end of December, the Elias Law Group decided to, an elite boutique law firm based in DC came out and told all their associates and employees that they had to sign the mandatory arbitration agreement by December 30th. They did this on December 19th. So 11 days, including over a holiday when most people are at least mentally checked out for the year that they had to sign a mandatory arbitration agreement.
Joe Patrice:
So now the way these arbitration agreements work, not just in the legal world, but everywhere is they usually are a power imbalance where an employer says if anything goes wrong, we have to go to arbitration. Which in and of itself is not a problem, except oftentimes arbitration is viewed as very friendly to the person triggering it. When the NFL makes people go to arbitration, the NFL gets to choose, set the rules of their own inquiry. That’s a reason why lawyers in particular don’t enjoy being confined this way.
Kathryn Rubino:
And I think it’s interesting because in this particular instance it’s not just, oh, mandatory arbitration agreements, are they good? Are they bad? Because of the nature of the specific law firm involved, the Elias Group was created in order to, from their own website, advanced progressive goals. It is led by the name attorney there is noted democratic attorney, and most of their clients are either Democrats or democratic causes or organizations, something like that. And
Joe Patrice:
This is the spinoff of Perkins that took all of the work of challenging segregated maps and gerrymandering and stuff like
Kathryn Rubino:
That. They do a lot of election mapping work. They do a lot of work to, as they say, advanced progressive goals. Associates at the firm are a little surprised because of that, this mandatory arbitration agreement was very much sprung on them because several of the firm’s clients have actually introduced legislation to ban
Joe Patrice:
These kinds of agreements,
Kathryn Rubino:
These exact agreements. And also it was just very much a change of policy and done in a very quick way. Although eventually the firm did extend the deadline to sign the agreements to January 10th, and if associates or any employee did not return the agreement, then they would not be eligible for their yearly bonus or their increase in salary that they get every year.
Joe Patrice:
So this seems like an unforced error situation. The odds that there’s going to be some sort of a dispute that requires arbitration are relatively low. Having worked in law firms, I’ve seen it very rarely. But by doing this, especially with employees in this kind of manner, rushed manner who are going to talk to the world, specifically us, but also post on boards about what’s going on,
Kathryn Rubino:
And they sent a letter to the leadership of the firm as well, laying out all of these very excellent points.
Joe Patrice:
So what you’ve done as a firm is you’ve alienated yourself from your own staff, many of whom are at least making noise about, all refusing to sign the agreement on mass at least is being discussed. You have alienated yourself from potential clients because as you point out, a lot of these clients don’t want to touch this with a 10 foot pole. So now you’ve botched yourself with them and for what gain.
Kathryn Rubino:
Yeah, it is a very strange development, particularly when they’re falling out of favor even in much larger law firms that theoretically have a stronger need for them.
Joe Patrice:
Yeah, big doings there. We will see how this plays out as we approach the new deadline on it.
Kathryn Rubino:
Well, the new deadline already passed. It was last week,
Joe Patrice:
But we did,
Kathryn Rubino:
Yes, it was January 10th and then they get paid twice a month. So if they hadn’t signed by that day during the first disbursement, they will not get their increased salary rate is what insiders have told us.
Joe Patrice:
Yeah. Alright. Well,
Kathryn Rubino:
And the firm has not provided any comment
Joe Patrice:
In the subject of progressive causes. Unionization is good and I hope they all stick together on
Kathryn Rubino:
That. Yeah, it is interesting though that you make that exact point because one of some insider at the firm had mentioned that the firm was using tactics that they described as union busting, refusing to have group meetings to discuss the issue with the entirety of the employees. Instead trying to isolate and individualize, find out who’s responsible, who’s leading this, who’s behind it in very witch hunty kind of vibes. Yeah,
Chris Williams:
Not Great.
Wait, are you trying to say the progressives were actually reactionary all this time?
Kathryn Rubino:
I think as I said, it was like I think that maybe they’ve found they had more in common with Republicans than they thought.
Joe Patrice:
All right, so let’s talk. This is very law firm, heavy episode. Let’s talk about Sullivan and Cromwell. You wrote an article explaining they are returning to the office.
Kathryn Rubino:
Yes. Eight days a week. Oh no, that’s a song, but it is five days a week that close enough associates have to be back in the office. If you could imagine a story from 2016 being like associates have to be in the office five days a week. Oh no, it wouldn’t even be a thing. But obviously post pandemic, we all learned that we could work remotely and most law firms, most big law firms have opted for some variety of hybrid, certain number of days a week you can work from home some flexibility built into that schedule. I think that firms have largely erred on the more in the office than not three to four days, not sort of two to three days, which is more arduous than other industries perhaps. But Sullivan Cromwell is really the first major law firm that we have documented requiring folks to be back for a full five days a week. I guess they can still work from home on the weekends
Joe Patrice:
And that is a critical distinction. When we talk about the legal industry, they’re working seven days a week anyway right now. They have under this policy, they go to the office five days and they work from home two days. The alternatives are balance that out, but don’t make no mistake that they are working seven days generally speaking at that level. So there’s a tag along story to this, which is that the American lawyer wrote up this decision and quoted that the firm believes that this is the quote that they gave. The firm believes that they’re generally more efficient when everyone’s there for normal business hours. Parenthetical 9:30 AM to 5:30 AM Now this has been corrected to 5:30 PM which I have some thoughts. So first of all, I think correcting it at 5:30 PM that is less believable than it being 5:30 AM No one is leaving at 5:30 PM That is ridiculous. Whoever it is does not get their bonus or shouldn’t anyway
Chris Williams:
Or continue to work there.
Joe Patrice:
So 5:30 PM is not what it is. It’s probably not 5:30 AM Obviously the firm doesn’t expect everyone to be working at 5:30 AM every day. They do expect somebody’s probably there then, but not everybody all the time. But that said, normal business hours for a law firm and the clientele that global law firms service, they’re going to expect you to. No one’s leaving before eight basically. That’s why for me what was so ridiculous about all of this and how this typo all plays in together is there is nothing normal business hour about law. They don’t work those times. They are available to clients at all hours. They do work from home already on weekends. At that juncture, when you have an industry that does not obey normal business hours already, it just sort of puts the whole lie to the idea that we’re more efficient. If everyone’s in from nine 30 to five 30, your industry doesn’t work on those hours. So what is it that’s magic about being there?
Kathryn Rubino:
Yeah, that is a reasonable question. But the other part of it is that law firms have noted a dip in quality of the Zoom associates work product. By that they mean the folks that began their career or spent the majority of their career up to this point doing remote or hybrid work and managing partners of big law firms are saying things like, we don’t think that third years are doing the work that we expect third years to do, and that is a real problem.
Joe Patrice:
Sure. I dunno, I am a little skeptical of that. I do think, look, I am not on team “everybody work from home all the time.” I think there are training opportunities that can only happen in person. I think there’s an esprit corps and networking and career advancement stuff that can only happen in person. That said, I do not see why five days as opposed to four days is marginally any better for those issues. So I’m not opposed to the idea that people need to come into the office. I just don’t see any argument for why it should be five. And I also don’t understand these firms from a perspective of a client. I don’t understand how these firms are getting away with these policies, bringing everybody back when as a client I’d be sitting there going, looking at the office footprint and saying, Hey, that’s a lot of overhead that’s being passed on to me that doesn’t need to be
Kathryn Rubino:
There. Sure. That is certainly part of it. I think the other question is when you’re trying to draw the line between four days in the office and five days in the office, particularly when other firms have already come out as a four day requirement, are you losing something in terms of your recruitment efforts?
If you are the only firm or the first firm or the firm that everyone’s talking about requiring five days in the office as opposed to sort of a list, not an extensive list, but a list of other places that require four days or even more firms that are requiring three days. Why stand out like that? And you listen, SNC is a great firm. It’s a great thing to have in your resume for the rest of your life. So maybe they’ll always have that to sort of fall back on. But it does kind of feel, as we said about our last story, unforced
Chris Williams:
To your point about especially around third year, seeing that they’re not doing a quality work that would be expected of them prior to Covid. I can’t remember the firm off the top of my head, but there was a firm that started marketing themselves as being leaning into remote work. If there are firms that can lean into that as a marketing strategist, get good talent, then I wonder how much of a drop off in quality work it actually is. Or if it’s just a perspective of we don’t that thing where it’s like you go back in time, men were never manly enough. 1870 was happened to the men, 19 hundreds happened to the men. Is that kind of a thing happening? What’s happening to the third year? Is he 30 or
Kathryn Rubino:
Just the bill? I see your point, but I also think that some of the online remote work only firms are not hiring first year associates in bulk. Right? They’re hiring people that have already sort of proven, have already learned something. Maybe they are taking the best of the third year associates, not the average third year associate, but the best year third year associate. And they’re not necessarily investing in that learning curve because law school does not teach you how to lawyer.
Joe Patrice:
Well, and that’s the other thing we saw. There’s a story going around, I think you wrote about this one too, that as a general industry firms are pushing toward a smaller associate model,
Fewer associates, more senior professionals who they’re paying on an income basis, more lateral hires of more senior people. Now what this does is reduce the need for that sort of training, which on the one hand further proves why do you need to have everyone in the office? The whole point arguably is to train the rookies and you don’t really doing that anymore. But also if that is the model, it is going to lead to a situation where we start seeing, and I think we’re already seeing it more of it’d be a lifestyle issue. The firms that are kind of those elite boutiques that siphon off the senior people from big law are going to be places that market themselves as you don’t have to come to the office.
Kathryn Rubino:
Sure. I think that makes complete sense for those smaller elite boutiques. But it is very different when you’re hiring a class of hundreds of first year associates. You don’t necessarily know the right way to you or how each person is going to advance the most efficiently. And what we do now have is a model that existed sort of pre covid that was at least reliable to get a certain number or a certain percentage of associates across the finish line in terms of where you feel they should be at various sort of checkpoints. And this new version is not as effective.
Joe Patrice:
So we’ve got kind of a good news, bad news situation. I think this is a good news. More firms paying the bonuses that that’s a good story. But there is a flip side to
Kathryn Rubino:
Yeah, I wrote about the bonus announcement at Wilson Sonsini. They announced both year end and special bonuses. As we have mentioned numerous times on the show before, there’s two types of bonuses going around. Big law. One is sort of these typical year end and then there’s special bonuses ranging between six and $25,000 based on seniority at Wilson. The year end. In order to qualify for them, you have to hit a 1950 hour threshold, which they’ve had for many, many years. Very known quantity for associates during last week’s bonus announcement, it was noted that special bonuses only kick in at 2000 hours, an additional 50 hours. And this was not something associates knew. So you hear, you are thinking that you’re on track and you hit your hours and then you turns out you’re 50 hours or less short and will not be receiving those special bonus numbers. And it feels really strange to do this. I mean 50 hours, are they hurting for those 50 hours?
Don’t know why they would make that sort of distinction, particularly when it’s not a huge number of hours. It’s only huge because they made the announcement after the end of the fiscal year where people could not figure out a way to bill those hours and already thinking that you’ve tapped out, you’ve hit your threshold, you’d be like, oh, I can absolutely go on vacation or see my family over the holidays. I don’t have to worry. I hit my hours last week. As opposed to maybe doing something else to maybe get your hours. So we heard from a lot of tipster at the firm and not a one of them was happy. We heard from zero people who were thrilled about this distinction and just very, a lot of anger. There seems to be a number of people who will not qualify for those special bonuses because of that additional hours requirement and they are not happy.
Joe Patrice:
Why does it, and you probably can’t say anything about this, but why does this always seem to be Wilson? It seems like it’s always Wilson Sonsini whenever something like this happens. Not unpopular with associates in as some other firms are, but it always seems like whenever there’s a weird nickel and dimmy story, it’s the Make Tech Billions company. I don’t know.
Kathryn Rubino:
Yeah, it is interesting. And one tipster even noted that it was an interesting decision from the firm sort of post the Hogan levels fiasco. We talked about that last week, where when they decided not to do special bonuses, associates went wild and the firm immediately was like, ha, just kidding. Here’s your money. And obviously in the first instance they are saying if you’ve billed 2000 hours, you are going to get your money at Wilson. But it feels strange. It feels like an odd decision. It would almost make more sense. More people would be impacted, I’m sure. But if it was like 2300 hours or some other number, I was like, oh I dunno.
Chris Williams:
Just makes me at least be a hundred. It’s still a dick move, but that feels more substantial. You being 50, why not making 37? Are you really cutting out more people?
Kathryn Rubino:
Yeah, and it’s really weird too because Wilson also counts to their numbers. They count 40 hours of discretionary time off so that people can take vacations. So it’s like a week’s worth of vacation, basically count towards your hours requirement, which is great. And I think does say a good thing about the powers that be at the firm wanting folks to unplug and disconnect and recharge and all those good kind of wellness related words. But then why turn around and be like, actually we did not mean it. If you want your special bonus,
Joe Patrice:
Well good luck to everybody. Hopefully you managed to find an extra 50 hours somewhere.
Kathryn Rubino:
Well that’s the whole problem. They announced it
Joe Patrice:
In 2025
Kathryn Rubino:
After it was done.
Chris Williams:
Yeah,
Kathryn Rubino:
After they could not find the extra 50 hours somewhere, which is not necessarily a great thing.
Chris Williams:
Well if you’re getting into big law, you should have a time turner. So just go back in time, crank out that extra week or whatever and you’re good.
Kathryn Rubino:
Yeah. Special bonuses also at Wilson are going to be paid two bumps after the year end bonuses, which considering that Millbank who started the special bonus train gave their associates the money last summer and these folks aren’t getting until March 31st. Feels like that’s almost a year difference. Yeah.
Joe Patrice:
Alright, well thanks everybody for listening. You should be subscribed to the show so that you get these new episodes when they drop, you should give reviews, write things, stars. That all helps more people find the show, which is always good. You should be listening to some other shows. Kathryn is the host of a show called The Jabot. I’m a guest on the Legal Tech Week Journalist Round Table. There’s also a number of shows on the Legal Talk Network that you should check out. You should be reading Above the Law. So you read these and other stories before we talk about them here. That’s above law.com. You can also follow things on social media. It’s at above law.com. On Blue Sky, I’m at Joe Patrice. She’s at Kathryn one. Chris is at Rights for Rent. We have a limited Twitter presence. Still too though waning constantly as we get buried underneath a bunch of propaganda bots and we don’t have a TikTok presence really. But that’s okay because that’s not going to exist by the end of the week. So…
Kathryn Rubino:
Sad face emoji.
Joe Patrice:
Yeah. Well, alright, so with all that said, thanks for listening. We’ll see you next week.
Chris Williams:
Peace. See you next time.
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Above the Law - Thinking Like a Lawyer |
Above the Law's Joe Patrice, Kathryn Rubino and Chris Williams examine everyday topics through the prism of a legal framework.