New Job
Things have been a little quite around here lately. I switched jobs, and well, to be frank, just haven’t had the motivation to sit at the computer and blog. That isn’t to say I don’t have things to say. I do.
I finally left Greenberg Traurig. I can’t say that I am going to miss it. I don’t have anything negative to say about the firm per se (although I wouldn’t take my work there because it is way too expensive), but the interoffice politics had become nasty over the last year and I was over it. It was apparent something needed to change when shareholders in my own group weren’t on talking terms and the associates were the ones caught in the middle like teenage children in a nasty divorce. Needless to say, it wasn’t pleasant.
Moreover, they really got my goat with the salary/bonus/hourly rate issue. Greenberg really hounded the associates about their profitability. Associates typically don’t have much say with respect to their profitability. Associates don’t set their salary, their rate, or have any voice in the allocation/decision making of overhead, nor do the associates have any control when the time they bill is cut.
So it came as no surprise this year when they jacked my rate from $335/hr to $370/hr, and especially in this climate where collections are difficult, and told us that we would be lucky if our salary didn’t decrease. I suppose the rate increase anticipates the fact that collecting 75% of bills on average is great, so why not just boost the bottom line of the bill so that 75% translates into more dollars. I digress. For the second year in a row we got a song and dance about how nobody was going to get bonuses and things were really tight and the folks in New York and Miami were not going to be able to afford a private jet and would be relegated to first class on commercial jets and blah blah blah (kidding about the jet stuff, but I would be lying if I didn’t think the sob story song and dance was motivated by such **altruistic** motivations).
I am usually a guy who is grateful to have a job, but I was a little miffed that they raised my rate 10 1/2%, and told me to be grateful even if they cut my salary. Bear in mind that as your rate increases, so does the pressure and stress to produce high quality work. As an attorney, you have a good idea of the cap that can be charged for a given project and you try not to exceed the cap or your time gets cut and they give you an even harder time about your profitability. So typically, if your rate increases substantially, you expect your salary to jump a little to make up for the added hassle your life has just become. Instead, Greenberg threatened to cut salaries while raising associate rates, and blamed it on the associates themselves. Jaded as I was, this only seemed like a plot to put more money in the shareholders pockets at the expense of the associates. Not exactly a warm and fuzzy climate to work.
So when the two shareholders I work with decided they were gone, I saw it as an opportunity and sought a job at the same firm: Luce Forward Hamilton & Scripps. Instead of a large multinational firm of 1,800 attorneys, it is a regional firm (California offices only) of about 200 attorneys. I am optimistic the move is a good one. We are starting a Technology Law group and the firm is giving us the resources we need to be successful. The move has been stressful, but as I said, I am optimistic.
Here is my bio and picture . I got to pick the background… hey, when did male pattern set in? I could swear I used to have less forehead.