ASTEROIDS

By Rich Janney

Your firm probably isn’t going to implode.

However, associates have always fretted that one day they will show up to work and find themselves padlocked out of their offices.  That worry is understandable.  Ever since I graduated in 2000, there have been some pretty spectacular law firm collapses—Altheimer, Brobek, Heller Ehrman, Jenkens, and Howrey, just to name a few.  It’s hard not to take notice when a well-respected firm up and dies and catches most of its attorneys by surprise.

But all in all, it is not common for a firm to die suddenly.  I mean, don’t get me wrong—firms do fail, but it is more common for the failure to come in the form of a slow and painful death, exhibiting plenty of warning signs to the outside world.  And those warning signs give law grads and lateral attorney candidates ample opportunity to avoid the firm.  In other words, the passengers on those ships have known, or should have known, for a long time to head to a lifeboat and to push women and children out of the way to get there if necessary.  They really can’t claim surprise when the hull disappears under the surf.

But the slow painful death of a firm is not what worries attorneys.  Just like the general population is more worried about an asteroid hitting the Earth than they are about global warming, attorneys fret about the possibility of getting blindsided by their firm going supernova. But since there is still the chance that a law firm can get hit by a metaphoric asteroid, wringing ones hands over the subject isn’t entirely without merit.  I mean, hey, that’s how all the dinosaur attorneys got wiped out, right?

That begs the question, then, as to how does one know if a firm is going to blow up?  I mean, they don’t really go without any warning signs, at least not to the insiders.  As such, after conducting a thorough study of firms that have gone out of business over the last two decades, and recording countless interviews of former partners and associates of failed law firms, I have compiled the following list of warning signs that your firm is about to fold like a lawn chair:

1.      You work at Dewey & LeBoeuf

2.      The lights won’t turn on any more

3.      You walk by a conference room and partners are warming their hands around a barrel of burning trash; also, they’re wearing those gloves that have the fingertips cut out of them

4.      All the important partners are rappelling down the side of the building past your window with boxes of documents strapped to their backs

5.      You see the unhappy ghosts of deceased name partners roaming the halls and rattling chains

6.      The managing partner is talking to a loan shark collections guy and is shrugging and pulling his pants pockets out into rabbit ears to show that they are empty

7.       You receive an email saying that Rosasharn from The Grapes of Wrath will be serving lunch

8.       A Trustee in Bankruptcy is walking around the office, measuring things

9.       All the senior partners are going on vacation to non-extradition countries

10.    No more furniture

11.    Wild animals roaming the halls

12.    The partner that kept the tank of exotic fish in his office is eating them to survive

13.    You learn that your firm accounted for its finances based on a Mayan, rather than   fiscal, calendar

14.    There is a recruiter suctioned cupped to the outside of your office window, just waiting

Look, in reality your firm probably isn’t going out of business overnight; it’s a pretty rare event.  But to the extent that you see any of the above-mentioned criteria, you might want to consider moving to another dinosaur cave—asteroid’s a-comin’.