July 24, 2019

Did O'Melveny ruin Vault's honor system?

       The career advice website Vault released its "best firm to work for" and "best firm for diversity" rankings. These are released each year and, as I explained in a prior post, they rely on the honor system. A firm's score is based on the opinions of the firm's own lawyers, and only the firm's lawyers. The idea is that if asked about their firm's diversity or quality of life -- lawyers would be conscientious, thoughtful and ethical enough to answer honestly.

       The problem with this approach is that O'Melveny would pressure its attorneys to give positive reviews -- so that it could receive a high ranking. Pressure works. Pressure was reportedly how Trump University achieved a 98% student approval rating, and I suspect it's how authoritarian regimes achieve curious 100% approval ratings. (For comparison, O'Melveny's approval rating was 99.5%. Remember, this is a firm that reportedly hired investigators to identify associates who criticized the firm online.) Beyond employer pressure, attorneys might themselves choose to lie, especially if they're part of an unethical and rankings-obsessed culture. Vault knows how unreliable this approach is. That's why for its most widely-read ranking, the "Vault Law 100" ranking -- it does not allow attorneys to rank their own firm. 

       So when reading Vault's diversity and "best firm to work for" rankings, it's important to know if the respondents were being honest. In prior posts, I offered a way to do that. First, you can compare the "best firm for diversity" ranking with actual diversity data. Second, you can compare the "best firm for compensation" sub-ranking with actual compensation data. Third, you can compare the "best firm for hours" sub-ranking with actual hours data. If a firm ranks itself high on diversity, compensation, and hours -- when the objective data states otherwise -- you can conclude that the firm's attorneys were lying when they filled out the Vault survey.

       This year, O'Melveny again graded themselves at the top of the rankings, and issued a press release congratulating themselves. But this may have been for naught, because the rankings have lost some relevance. Last year, a reporter told me that she doesn't write about Vault's diversity ranking, because it's self-graded. A few weeks after this year's results came out, I did a Twitter search for the words "Vault" and "law" to see all tweets about them. I did this so that I could take a minute and reply to the tweets, to let them know about the flawed methodology. But only a handful of people mentioned the rankings in that two-week period. Almost nobody cared. Gamesmanship may have ruined what could have been a useful tool.


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July 3, 2019

O'Melveny's opioid "pipeline"

       The first in a series of opioid trials is being televised. (And for good reason. An article suggests that hundreds of thousands of people might have died because judges sealed evidence of pharmaceutical companies' wrongdoing.) The plaintiff in this trial is the State of Oklahoma, and they seek funds to mitigate and abate the crisis. The situation is dire, as one study estimates that opioids could kill half a million Americans in the next decade. 

       As I predicted, O'Melveny and their local counsel are the only attorneys billing hours to fight the state, as the other law firms negotiated settlements for their clients (Purdue and Teva.) One can only imagine how big O'Melveny's opioid pipeline must be. ("Pipeline" is O'Melveny's word for the number of hours they expect to bill. Here is a quote from their chair Brad Butwin, explaining how settlements reduced their 2017 pipeline and revenue.)

       By the way, if you're wondering how the few lawyers you see in court can bill many millions of dollars' worth of hours -- remember that O'Melveny's partners profit mainly by collecting a 300% mark-up on their junior attorneys' time, and there are likely dozens of attorneys billing behind the scenes. Also, keep in mind that O'Melveny may have planned for years of revenue from these cases and appeals. For example, O'Melveny billed time on the Exxon Valdez tragedy for over a decade, from the verdict in 1994, until the last appeal fourteen years later. They know how to milk a case.

       If you want to get a sense of the trial . . . Here is a video of a state employee in tears, because an O'Melveny attorney repeatedly tries to get her to say something she finds offensive - while refusing to let her show a Johnson & Johnson chart that maps out their plan to boost opioid sales. Or here is a Johnson & Johnson employee testifying about how the company incentivized its sales force to boost opioid prescriptions. I have only watched a small bit of the trial, but I suspect it's that sort of thing all day long.

       [Addendum: Here is O'Melveny's chair, Brad Butwin, boasting about the money his firm made on the Oklahoma opioid trial, as well as the money he expects to make on future opioid trials.]

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