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The brouhaha over Paul Hastings associate Shinyung Ho has been all over the law blogs this week and points up some of the key issues for not only pregnant “life stylers” seeking a life along with a law careers, but also the way large firms handle layoffs.

To recap here - Shinyung was laid off on the alleged ‘pretense’ of performance, but she alleges in her email to her bosses (see below) that it was due to the prospect of a further pregnancy.  The firm denies that - naturally. 

Oh, a commercial litigation lawyer, told the WSJ Law Blog that she sent her email because she didn’t want other associates to be laid off due to firm downsizing, rather than any alleged problems with their work performance.  “I want them to feel like they’re not completely alone and not to worry about their own performance when it’s the firm doing something for economic reasons” and because of a “desire to increase partner profits,” she said.

Oh said two other associates who were widely believed to have been fired recently from her office had “left the firm with their tails under their legs,” and that she didn’t “want to walk out under the guise that I’d done something wrong.”

The WSJ Blog also published a link to her performance review  and to an interview with Oh.  The offending email:

 From: [Redacted]
Sent: Monday, May 05, 2008 10:14 AM
To: [redacted]
Subject: My departure

The circumstances surrounding my departure from Paul Hastings have been deeply disappointing. It is one thing to ignore an email sent as a colleague is waiting to have her uterus scraped after a miscarriage, but it is wholly another level of heartlessness to lay her off six days after that. [Partner X] is the only one who expressed any sympathy after my miscarriage, and I am grateful to him for that.

A business is a business, but it takes very little to convey some level of humanity to carry out even the most difficult business decisions. We are human beings first before we are partners or associates. Had you simply explained that the department is unable to sustain the number of associates in the office, I would have completely understood. Had you explained that the office had been directed to reduce the number of associates and I was chosen because of my high billable rate and low billable hours, I would have appreciated such directness, even though the consequences of blindly raising billable rates to an unsustainable degree is plainly predictable. What I do not understand is the attempt to blame the associate for not bringing in the business that should have been brought in by each of you and to hide your personal failures by attempting to tarnish my excellent performance record and looking to undermine my sense of self esteem.

The last few months have been surreal, at best. Just last year, I had celebrated my engagement and marriage with many of you. In fact, during the engagement party, the head of the department took my then-fiancée aside to express to him what a great attorney I am and what a great future I faced. Indeed, less than a week before this year’s bizarre performance review, I was again told by the same partner that my work is great and that the slow business in no way reflected on my performance. A week later, I was given a mediocre performance review and told that I should worry about whether I have a future at Paul Hastings. When I asked for specific examples of my alleged deficiencies, I received no response. When I asked for an explanation as to why I had been downgraded in so many performance categories when I received absolutely no criticism throughout the year and my prior year’s review was stellar, I was told that my prior year’s performance assessment may have been “over-inflated.” What a startling response.

After my miscarriage, I had discussed my concern with several associates that Paul Hastings may use that opportunity to lay me off quickly before I have a chance to get pregnant again. Those associates thought it unfathomable that a firm would be so callous and assured me that Paul Hastings isn’t that kind of a place. What a lesson this has been for them - and for me. I would not have anticipated that a partner would tell me one thing and completely renege on his words a week later. I would not have anticipated that a female partner (whom I had looked to as a role model) with children of her own would sit stone faced as I broke into tears just days after my miscarriage. Even a few words of sympathy or concern would have made a world of difference. What kind of people squander human relationships so easily?

If this response seems particularly emotional, perhaps an associate’s emotional vulnerability after a recent miscarriage is a factor you should consider the next time you fire or lay someone off. It shows startlingly poor judgment and management skills — and cowardice — on your parts. If you should ever have the misfortune of suddenly losing something or someone precious to you, I hope you don’t find similar heartlessness as I have.

As for your request for a release, non-disclosure, and non-disparagement agreement in return for three months’ pay, I reject it. Unlike you, I am not just a paid mouthpiece with no independent judgment. I will decide how and to whom to communicate how you have treated me. I find it ironic that you would try to buy the right not to be disparaged after behaving as you have. Your actions speak volumes, and you don’t need much help from me in damaging your reputation.

I attach the proposed release for any associate who may be interested in reviewing its details.

[Redacted]

A raft of issues emerge - such as the allegations Oh makes about Paul Hastings.  But whether the personal issues she repeatedly refers to are necessarily professional in a tough, litigators’ world is another thing.  But putting aside questions about Oh’s judgment, what about a top employment litigation firm that conducts a seemingly hasty performance review before tossing an employee on the unemployed lawyer heap - ain’t that asking for a fight?  What sort of judgment is that coming from a firm like Paul Hastings?

Celebrities with one name are pretty big - that’s why they have one name - but what about the lawyers who act for them or, in Oprah’s case, the Chicago attorney she found because she liked his tie.

William L Becker got the call in 1988 because Oprah had been searching for a lawyer.  They met, he liked her and she liked, well she liked his tie at that stage, and the rest is legal history for Becker.  He’s now Harpo’s general counsel, and Harpo is Oprah’s all-encompassing media collossus. 

His practice at Laner Muchin Dombrow Becker Levin and Tominberg, where he was serving as managing partner when Oprah’s agent called in the late 1980s, was focused on employment law and entertainment law. And WTTW-11, Chicago’s public broadcasting station, was among his clients, as reported by Chicago Lawyer magazine.

In 2005, Becker moved in-house full-time. Today, he heads Harpo’s law department of about 25 people, ten of whom are lawyers.

For the general counsel to the company that has Oprah as its chairwoman, no two days are alike.

”She’s always a challenge because she’s very creative; has lots of new ideas,” Becker said. ”Lawyers tend to be stodgy folks who like to see things handled in a certain rigorous, consistent way. So when you’re dealing with a creative butterfly like Oprah Winfrey, it’s always a challenge. But that’s what’s fun about the job.”

At Harpo (Oprah, spelled backward), Becker is responsible for anything legal that has to do with any of the company’s affiliated entities — such as Harpo Productions, which produces ”The Oprah Winfrey Show” and the women’s lifestyle web site, Oprah.com.

”I can’t think of a legal issue that hasn’t come across my desk,” Becker said. ”Legal issues that occur anywhere, among any of our affiliated companies, that have impact on Harpo Inc., would come across my desk. And everything is intertwined very closely. They’re not like separate companies.”

Still, ”If I were in law school now and somebody said to me, ‘After law school, you’ll become managing partner of a boutique law firm, and then you’ll become general counsel for Harpo and Oprah Winfrey,’ I would’ve said, ‘You’re out of your mind,”’ Becker said. ”But I’m sure if someone asked me what would be my dream job, I think those would be dream jobs.

The Lawyer have a story on the new partners entering the fray - ah, we mean partnerships - in the UK.  Hammonds take the cake for the most new partners, as you can see from The Lawyer’s pic, below. 

The firm now has nine per cent of its total partner as ‘new chums’, compared to most of the other firms which were around the five per cent figure for new promotions.

The Lawyer notes that an air of subprime caution may be in the wind and firms are taking their promotions just a little slower.  Maybe, although the workload for most of the firms remains high with increasing work coming from the petrodollar deals out east.  However, interestingly, there were new alternatives to the partnership prospects, with Addleshaws and Denton Wilde having lower partnership promotions, which coincide with the launch of their alternative career progression paths - in the case of Addleshaws the new role of legal director, and Dentons making their first-ever “managing associates”.

The good old State Bar of New York has come out with a work/life balance report that shows that the holy grail of work/life balance is as elusive as ever, with lawyers missing out on the chance to play a part not only in the community, but also in their own families. 

The report paints a gloomy picture.  Lawyers remained upbeat about their choice of profession but less so when it came to talking about the inflexibility of their work schedules and sheers hours spent at the office. 

Although email and the Internet provided greater efficiencies, they also lead to greater pressure - the pressure of being on-call 24/7, 365 days a year.

The answer?  The recommendations incuded:

• permitting greater flexibility in hours worked by implementing programs better suited to the lawyers’ work
• educate lawyers better about the expectations upon them when they enter the profession so they don’t labor under any illusions
• greater education on stress- and time-management
• establishing ‘boundaries’ as to when lawyers should be contactable.

The committee is also looking at the position with small firms who have less flexibility and are also to look at court schedules and flexibility that might be offered there.

We posted an item from the The Bureau of Labor Statistics National Compensation Survey from June 2007 showing the top paying jobs (by hour) in the US.  So which position do the lawyers occupy?  Top 3?  Nope.  How about some mid-level position?  Nope.  Law teachers do come in at an equal number six with general practitioners.  What about towards the bottom of the top 10?  Nope.  We do have judges at Number 8, but no lawyers in sight.

No, the BLS stats don’t show lawyers in the top 10 - they come in at an average $54 hourly, putting them in the next bracket (bearing in mind these are June 2007 figures).  All those Wall Street and Magic Circle bonuses and pay rises still don’t lift the average lawyer up to the top of the rankings, alongside the CEO’s at Number 1.  Sorry about that.

The places where lawyers - or those with law degrees anyway - can take you can be as interesting as looking at where lawyers go in the law itself.  For Sheryl Sandberg, her ‘non legal’ path has taken her through the hallowed halls of the World Bank, the Treasury, on to (more colorful now) Google and now she’s Number Two at Facebook.

That’s a long way for the 38-year-old Harvard graduate who in fact forewent law (we fibbed on that one, sorry) to take up some stuff she thought was more interesting.  Socially conscious, she went to India to work on a leprosy project before going to McKinsey Consultants and on to her public sector work.

 What’s interesting about Sandberg, who’s profiled in a Fortune article, is that while she worked in the Google money machine, specifically working on Google Adwords, she also developed their philanthropic program.  Many of these achievers, and we can see it now with Skadden Arps’ diversity initiative, are balancing huge economic success with philanthropic activities.  Her work with Facebook will hopefully yield the same balance - after all, being part of the world’s most successful social networking site is the ideal platform for Gen-Yers and others to help balance the world’s books too, right?  Isn’t that real work/life balance?

Thelen Reid is the latest firm to announce layoffs, confirmed by AbovetheLaw reporting a layoff of 26 associates and 85 staff firm-wide.  That’s a layoff rate of around four per cent of Thelen’s total headcount of 600 lawyers.

Thelen co-chair Stephen O’Neal told ATL that the layoffs were spread out among groups, but with “some areas more impacted than others,” including certain parts of capital markets and cap-markets-related real estate work. He noted that other practice areas are “thriving and increasing in scope,” including renewable energy, cross-border M&A, China practice, litigation, and workouts / bankruptcy.

However, recession is not the only reason for the layoffs. Thelen Reid merged with Brown Raysman at the end of 2006, which produced some consolidation.  “It was a year of building, coordinating, and consolidating. We wanted to understand how best to organize this new entity,” Mr Brown said. Now that the firm has a better understanding of its staffing needs, and is in the process of consolidating multiple offices in the same cities (e.g., New York), it is reducing staff redundancies.

Want to step into a law job that places you in the very epicenter of ‘cool’?  I wrote in ‘Briefcase’, the NZ Law blog about the fact that different areas of law have different levels of ‘coolness’ to them, undoubtedly now lead by Climate Change, as the hot area, pun excused.  We’ve had many other ‘hot’ areas of course, like M&A, private equity big money deals (big money deals are always cool for lawyers), sports law and others.  But climate change, with all its threat to our existence may be the coolest of them all.  We’ve got this right, right? 

We know that executives and consumers are displaying equal concern about climate change issue with 80% of global executives evidently considering regulation a distinct possibility within five years, according to a McKensey report.  Lawyers are moving into the field rapidly, occupying the higher ground of laws surrounding climate change like carbon trading along with various environmental, regulatory, administrative, corporate and securities law issues.

My ‘Briefcase’ not related to kiwi firm Bell Gully whose Simon Watt is a world-recognized climate change lawyer. Internationally firms all over are stepping up their climate change work.  It’s an area for the young lawyer to look at closely, perhaps marrying different discplines to bring to the table when they’re job-seeking.

The ‘coolest’ law firm?  Well, there are plenty of places for law jobs and plenty of surveys of law firms, but it’s AboveTheLaw that is taking votes on the coolest law firms - down to the final four bracket, as below.

Voting shows the firms headed for the final four are Cleary Gottlieb, Davis Polk, Latham & Watkins and Simpson Thacher.

Polls close Sunday, midnight.

Despite all the pessimism about the downturn in the legal jobs market, LegalRecruitment’s Jonathan Fagan reports from the UK that the legal job market is quite buoyant still, and despite a slow down around the early Easter, he’s found plenty of quality candidates with a good outlook on the permanent front and less good for temporary positions.

Check the posting.