A compilation of news clippings to help you understand this firm. By a former O'Melveny attorney, law professor and Wall Street Journal Lawyer of the Year.
One of the most interesting things I saw in my stint in the legal profession was how gleeful partners became when a client was sued or investigated. Normally, people are happy if something good happens to their client. But these partners were happy when something awful happened to a client. They couldn't contain their joy as they thought of staffing attorneys on the matter, billing, and growing their partner distributions. One partner joked about this at lunch, noting how much money another group had made after a deadly explosion at a client's plant. Yes, if there was a massive explosion at your plant that killed people, forcing you to call your lawyers at O'Melveny -- know that their eyes are probably welling up with tears of joy as they think of the millions they will make off of your tragedy. This is the business of O'Melveny.
And of course it isn't only O'Melveny. All law firms probably love it when their clients get sued, because that's how they make money. For example, a partner at another firm, Akin Gump, couldn't even wait for the lawsuit to be announced. He was so impatient that he stole secret documents about impending government enforcement actions. After his arrest, he said he did it to “identify clients to solicit for business when I was in practice and, thereby, to make myself more successful at Akin Gump.” Life at big law firms is an endlessly desperate quest to get hired and bill hours, and none of that can happen until someone sues someone.
A new lawsuit is big news at law firms. And O'Melveny appears to be salivating at the thought of the next administration's enforcement actions (to borrow their "eat what you kill" metaphor.) The Biden administration hasn't even taken office yet, and O'Melveny is already giving a presentation anticipating the lawsuits it will file.
Just like the Akin Gump partner, the nine speakers at this event all worked in government until a public servant's salary was no longer enough. I haven't heard of them stealing documents to get a leg up on the competition, but they have other sales techniques. One of them claims that he can get better results because he knows people at the Department of Justice. Another constantly tells people that he knows Vice President Kamala Harris. (Links one, two, three, four and five, among others. What's funny is that a partner at another law firm is actually married to Ms. Harris. If anyone can credibly drop her name, it's him. But he resigned his position rather than have people think that he was trying to profit off of the relationship.)
[Addendum: They scheduled a second such event, centered on the antitrust lawsuits they expect (hope for) from the Biden administration. Hurry it up with the lawsuits President Biden. O'Melveny's partners need to make money.]
omm, omelveny, o'melveny, Daniel Suvor, Ben Singer, Doug Emhoff, DLA Piper
A few weeks ago I took a trip to the beach. It was depressing near the Santa Monica Pier, which has turned into a homeless enclave. Here’s a man sleeping, here’s another man sleeping, and here’s one folding up his tent. The expressions on their faces were heartbreaking, a mix of bewilderment, anger and worry. It’s a testament to the city’s privileged leadership. I could just see Mayor Eric Garcetti talking to one of the homeless:
Sorry dude, you were born to the wrong person. My dad's Gil Garcetti. He was politically connected, so I get to be mayor. Your parents were nobodies, so you’re a bum. You never heard of my dad Gil? How dare you. He rose to prominence by hogging the camera after his office botched the O.J. Simpson murder trial. So I live like a king, and you live like this.
Before getting to the topic of this post, please let me explain why I left the law, because they're loosely connected. I'm still licensed and pay bar dues every year. Not sure why; the bill comes and I pay it. But I haven’t worked on a legal matter in years.
After leaving O'Melveny in 2017, I tried government work. I had already worked in plaintiff’s class action, at the Gottesdiener Law firm. I didn’t like opportunistic and unjust cases we filed, and the office was a nightmare. I told him that and my employment ended. I also worked in legal academia, as an adjunct professor of law at Fordham University School of Law. I enjoyed that and my student review score was 4.75/5.00, but I didn’t want to be part of the law school industrial complex, the law school scam. I had anonymously won the Wall Street Journal Lawyer of the Year award for exposing that very scam and I couldn't imagine being a part of it. (I’ll elaborate on the former two later. I think I have to, to add enough detail to avoid a defamation lawsuit.) After Fordham I did defense-side work at O’Melveny, an experience so jarring that led to this website.
But I didn't leave the law after O'Melveny. I wanted to try one last area -- government. I went to the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office. Los Angeles is my favorite city in the world and I wanted to serve it. I volunteered to be a pro bono attorney. Not lucrative "pro bono" like O'Melveny's David Lash -- who views pro bono as a corporate marketing job -- and who appears to have sucked so money out of those programs that he lives in a $5 million house in Beverly Hills. This would be real pro bono, working for free. I had gotten into the law for justice and public service. The city is where I’d find decent people. Government -- that's where the good lawyers went. Finally, I would find a home as an attorney.
The program started with six weeks of training. I expected a welcoming kumbaya vibe, but that's not what happened. The trainers were passive aggressive, belittling and sometimes they overtly mistreated us. One pro bono attorney said it was the standard "hazing" you experience when joining a new group. Maybe. Another revealed odd interactions with the city's attorneys. For example, they told him that merely doing his unpaid job wasn't enough, because they only work with people they drink with. So I guess we had to entertain them at bars too? And there were the belittling comments. One trainer said she likes volunteers, because we’re desperate and will stay up until 2:00 AM. Another trainer repeated this theme, noting that a volunteer once stayed up to write an unrequested memo on a topic the trainer mentioned in passing on his way out the door. Another trainer complained that a former volunteer, who this trainer didn't like, had asked him for a letter of recommendation.
Then there were the cases. We were going to prosecute the homeless for shoplifting food, street prostitutes charging $40 for sustenance (or more likely, because she was human trafficked), people sleeping on the street and other tragic misdemeanors. (Serious crimes go to the Los Angeles district attorney, as opposed to the city attorney.) That wasn't the worst of it. We wouldn’t get the cases until the day before the trial. I expected to handle a case from start to finish, but their approach gave us little time to prepare and avoid the risk of a mistrial or prosecutorial misconduct (something that had befallen former head city attorney Carmen Trutanich.) This lack of preparation time made no sense. An attorney said it was an internal office rule.
As I got to know the other pro bono attorneys, I learned that they weren't really volunteering in the way one normally thinks of volunteers. They were mostly recent law grads, hoping to volunteer their way into a paying job. One person, a bright recent graduate who drove a thirty year old car and who was struggling to support himself, described the herculean efforts he made to "volunteer" at various offices in hopes of getting a full-time job. Another repeated a similar story. Another had been volunteering for a year at this exact office hoping to get a job, with no luck. Another was working at night as a bouncer or bartender to help cover his expenses during this program. When we got back from lunch, we discussed the city's new $15/hour minimum wage law, noting how the people who served our sandwiches would be making that soon, making so much more than we did. A female pro bono attorney said she had never made $15 an hour in her life, and that she didn't know what she would do with her excitement when she gets her first real paycheck.
In light of this, the lack of pay made no sense. The Los Angeles city attorney's office is one of the highest paying public organizations in the country. Had the city's 500 attorneys taken a mere 2% pay cut, they could have paid this group a much needed small wage. Were they so greedy that they would deprive others of a core human right -- the right to be paid for work -- in order to boost their own salaries by a mere 2%?
None of this made sense. What was going on here?
After some research, I discovered what was going on. The volunteer attorney program was created in 2009. The city's management wanted to take advantage of the glut of lawyers created by the aforementioned law school industrial complex. They didn’t want to pay attorneys for their work, so they created this “volunteer” “pro bono attorney” program. It was opportunism, pure and simple. And it didn’t go smoothly. The city’s paid attorneys filed a grievance, accusing the volunteers of stealing their union jobs. This background is in the grievance's briefs. (After I told the city that I found these briefs, the Los Angeles City Attorneys Association redesigned their website to remove them from public view. Fortunately I still had the set I downloaded from their old website in 2017.)
Milton Friedman had warned us about this scenario, and I was seeing it in practice. The city's paid attorneys hated the volunteers so much that they even gloated to the press when a volunteer made an innocent mistake. Yes, your own teammate gloated to the press when you make an inadvertent mistake. It appeared to be a cut-throat office. I overheard one city attorney say they were going to file a bar complaint against another city attorney. One city attorney had filed a restraining order against a human resources manager. It didn’t take long to realize that this place was bad news. I resigned after two weeks and just left the law, giving up any hope of finding a decent place to work in the legal profession. I also did one other thing, I wrote the office’s head Mr. Michael Feuer about all of this.
How does any of this relate to the theme of being born to the right parent, and O’Melveny & Myers? Well, I recently learned that Mike Feuer’s daughter Danielle Feuer works at O’Melveny. She doesn’t work in the office he runs, where you’re either a pro bono attorney treated with hostility, or a union attorney who has to worry about a pro bono attorney taking your job. No, she works at O’Melveny, where she will be treated well because she's the daughter of the city attorney.
O'Melveny believes in favoritism. They do not treat associates equally. For example, in 2017, a fifth year associate -- David Dorey -- was reportedly paid $541,000 by the firm in "salary/bonus," far exceeding what other fifth year associates made. I was surprised when I learned this, because I worked in his practice group and never heard of him doing anything remarkable. I don't know why he had secret clout within the firm. Some might say it's because he's a white male, but a lot of associates are white men, as are many of the homeless. Being a white man can mean little if it's all you have. It was something else; I don't know. Whatever the cause, it happens at O'Melveny; some associates are treated much better than others, and not necessarily for meritocratic reasons.
So Ms. Feuer will be treated very well. She's not going to have to deal with what this associate went through, or this associate, or this associate, or these three alleged victims of discrimination (case one, two, three), or what others, whose stories aren't public, went through. They know who she is.
I wouldn’t have written about this if Ms. Feuer was the only example. She’s not. For example, an attorney once boasted to me that Jaime Quinn, the daughter of the head of Quinn Emanuel, worked at O'Melveny. Do you think O'Melveny is going to mistreat her?
In fact, they might have gained something through her. Back in 2018, O’Melveny tried to whitewash the USC sexual abuse scandal. Concerned that O'Melveny's sham investigations could harm the victims, I warned the school and the press (and the matter turned out as I had warned – and not the way O'Melveny promised it would.) In researching that matter, I noticed that her dad John Quinn represented USC in the related litigation. Of course I don't know if his daughter’s connection had anything to do with that. But it’s fair to wonder about the coincidence. If someone hires your daughter, you might team up with them against victims.
Or another person boasted that Caroline Garner, the daughter of influential lexicographer Bryan Garner, works at O'Melveny. Or there was the lunch when a partner boasted that the daughter of a really important Los Angeles police official was a summer associate at O'Melveny. It was the first thing he said about her, as she sat with us. Her demeanor suddenly turned from affable to indignant, as if she was wondering, “did you hire me because of my talents or because of my dad?” I forgot her name so I just skimmed the associates in the Los Angeles office to find it, and didn't see her picture. I guess she left.
Or there was the story another associate shared. When he started, an associate in his class invited him and others to a cigar bar at some exclusive club. He got the group access, because his father was a member. He went on to complain that O'Melveny treated this person much better than the other associates, probably because of his family connections. You heard these sorts of things. And remember, I didn’t talk to that many people so if I heard this many examples, there must be many more that I'm not aware of.
In closing, I do wonder if O'Melveny thinks they can gain something by hiring and favoring the children of prominent people. It's consistent with what I've seen elsewhere in the firm. It's the same corrupt "who you know" mentality that goes into O'Melveny's strategy of "monetizing government positions."
The rest of this post is just me adding detail to reduce the risk of being sued for defamation when I use terms like, “scam,” “opportunistic,” or “unjust.” Under defamation law, it’s safest to explain why you use a derogatory term, as opposed to letting the audience imagine a reason.
More on the term, “law school scam,” and my time at Fordham
My first exposure to the profession came in law school. I entered with the idealism of all law students, but eventually realized I had walked into one of the biggest scams in existence. Motivated by greed, law schools graduated far more lawyers than society needed, leading to scores of indebted and unemployed graduates. I’ve always been someone who tries to fix things when I discover they’re broken. So I did something to help fix that problem – by letting the public know. And this act of amateur journalism was successful. As undergraduates learned the truth, law school enrollment declined for a decade.
Of course this begs the question, why would law schools choose money over what’s best for students in the first place? I thought educators were idealistic “bleeding heart” "ivory tower" types? What kind of educator would be so low and opportunistic as to trick students into taking out loans and harming their lives -- just so the educator could put a few bucks in their pocket? An educator that was formerly a lawyer that’s who.
I saw the same problem when I worked as an adjunct professor of law at Fordham University School of Law. Even at a decent school like Fordham, some indebted students couldn’t find paying work. They would complain to me about it, not realizing I had won a national award a few years prior for trying to fix this problem. Although the life of a legal academic is idyllic -- I couldn’t imagine being part of the law school industrial complex that ripped these poor students off – having to deal with this every semester.
More on my experiences at The Gottesdiener Law Firm
At the Gottesdiener Law Firm, I worked on cash balance whipsaw cases. I need to get into a little math to explain how opportunistic and unjust these cases were. A cash balance pension plan gives each employee an account balance. This account balance grows over time with contributions and interest. This isn’t unusual; it’s also how your savings account grows. You make contributions and the balance grows with interest. Of course, different employers paid different levels of contributions, and they paid different interest rates -- depending on how generous they were.
But there was a hidden issue. The thing about a cash balance plan is that under ERISA law it’s a “defined benefit” pension plan. There was a counter-intuitive rule in the law of defined benefit pension plans: if the employer paid an interest rate that was above a certain threshold, they had to pay an additional windfall. Let me repeat that. If an employer offered no pension plan, they were fine. If an employer offered a cheap cash balance plan with a low interest crediting rate, they only had to pay that amount and they were done. But if an employer was generous and offered a cash balance plan with an interest rate that exceeded the threshold -- they had to pay the employee an additional windfall. The rule punished generosity.
The problem is that this surprising rule wasn’t stated clearly. It required mental gymnastics to put two and two together and figure it out. I learned of it back when I worked at Mercer Consulting as an actuary, when I had to help design a cash balance pension plan. But a few naively generous employers missed it. Unaware of this windfall, they gave their employees a high interest crediting rate without paying that additional windfall. So a decade or two later, Mr. Gottesdiener went through government filings, found the plans that had made this mistake, and filed class actions lawsuits against them to collect the windfall – taking a huge 30%+ or so cut of each deca-million dollar settlement. Even the preeminent law firm of Skadden Arps missed it in their own plan, and had to pay Mr. Gottesdiener millions after one such lawsuit. He became a very wealthy man from these lawsuits.
How did uber-wealthy Mr. Gottesdiener treat his own employees? He was a notoriously cheap and abusive employer. I saw it with my own eyes. In his office, the room for the paralegals didn’t even have its own air conditioning. There was one air conditioner in the room for lawyers and the paralegals would get the runoff of cool air. One of the paralegals sat by the screen door and she complained that she would get bitten by some kind of insects, I think mosquitos. Forget other benefits, like medical. Mr. Gottesdiener wasn’t going to give his employees the kind of generous benefits the companies he sued gave their employees. What kind of a profession would let a person, who treats his employees this way, sue good American companies who treat their employees well, because the companies were naively generous and missed an irrational rule? The legal profession that’s who. (And don’t bother bringing any of this up in a legal brief challenging cash balance whipsaw cases. You will get sanctioned as the points above are legally irrelevant.)
When I was in law school, a Chinese LL.M. student introduced me to the Opium Wars. Back in the 1700s and 1800s, the British empire made a fortune by selling opium to the Chinese. Seeing all the death and waste it caused, a succession of Chinese administrators tried to restrict the drug starting in 1729, with no luck. Eventually, in 1839, the Daoguang Emperor put his foot down, naively thinking he could finally rid his country of the drug. No, the British attacked and after a series of victories, they forced him to continue allowing the import of opium for decades. This chain of events had a devastating impact on China, one that will likely haunt its memories forever.
Although such profiteers can no longer rely on colonialism and military attacks, they have other tools -- and new victims: American victims. For example, when Johnson & Johnson wanted to make money by selling opioids in Oklahoma, it did the following: First, it created a "'super poppy' that was particularly rich in opiates" to maximize its drug's addictive punch. It then designed an intricate plan, an "influence map" -- which it used to change the viewpoint of everyone who could interfere with its planned opioid sales, government officials and private sector folks alike. It also paid its employees bonuses for targeting doctors and getting them to write more opioid prescriptions.
As in nineteenth century China, this led to countless deaths and waste, forcing the government to step in and try to fix the problem. This was an expensive fix, so the State of Oklahoma asked Johnson & Johnson to pay a fraction of the cost. But the drug maker refused, and used O'Melveny to fight the state in court (see these background posts on that trial, which Johnson & Johnson lost: one, two, and three).
Law360 reports that O'Melveny just filed its opening brief on appeal, "assailing" the state as "radicals." I didn't read the brief. I read the first page, saw it compare opioids to "the health hazards of corn syrup and red meat" and realized I had more enriching things to do with my time. The Chamber of Commerce is also fighting for Johnson & Johnson. Their strategy is to threaten that businesses will leave Oklahoma if the court doesn't rule for the drug maker. That's scary; what's a judge to do? Rule for the victims and risk a boycott of your state's economy, or get in line?
It's a shame that history is allowed to repeat itself. And I may have grown cynical, but this opioid racket will repeat again in the future. If there's a way to make money by victimizing others, some unscrupulous person will do it -- and O'Melveny will be eager to represent them. 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 and appeals.
Back when President Trump was running for office, he had an awful case around his neck. Former students of Trump University had sued him and the school for fraud. So he asked O’Melveny & Myers to get rid of it. Mother Jones just released a video of a break in one of the case’s depositions (rejecting O'Melveny's demand that they destroy the video.) During the break, Mr. Trump told an O'Melveny lawyer, Mr. Daniel Petrocelli, that he was concerned about the judge’s "Spanish" background.
Sometimes people don't know what's legal or illegal, or what's right or wrong, and part of a lawyer's job is to counsel their client. But just like when a sexual assaulter reportedly threatened his victim in front of Mr. Petrocelli, he appears to have relinquished that role. Based on the tape, Mr. Petrocelli did not chide him, correct him or even just tell him not to say such things for appearances' sake.
A few months later, Mr. Trump went public with this thought, stating that the judge was biased because of his "Mexican" background. This time, he was roundly criticized by dozens of republican politicians -- leading a regretful Mr. Trump to say his comments were misconstrued. These fellow republicans did in public what O'Melveny could have done in private.
Later, Mr. Trump and Mr. Petrocelli talked about 68-year-old investor Thomas Barrack's new wife. Mr. Trump asked if she was beautiful, and Mr. Petrocelli said yes, because she was "young . . . 38, 37." Of course there’s nothing unethical about saying younger people are more attractive than older ones. But since I’m writing about the article, I’ll include this amusing exchange as well.
And actually, while I'm on the topic, I've heard of lawyers using the profession itself to find young partners. For example, there was an attorney in Mr. Petrocelli's Century City office who was known to "date" (to quote one person) or "f***" (to quote another), the summer associates. Both of these comments were made among a group of people, none of whom protested and some of whom laughed at his cheekiness. In the first case, he himself was there and laughed about it. I include this story despite worries about O'Melveny's threat to sue me for defamation, because it was so open that I can't believe they would try to deny it. And on that note, I should add that no one said he used force or coercion. These were presumably fully consensual relationships, that the young women would have entered into even if they weren't summer associates at his law firm.
Mr. Reeves called a female associate into his office after going to lunch with her and having several glasses of wine, people familiar with the matter said. He locked the door, dropped his pants, pushed her into a chair, put his hand on the back of her head and made her perform oral sex, they said, adding that she emerged crying after a partner knocked repeatedly on his office door. An attorney for Mr. Reeves said Mr. Reeves “adamantly denies that any such incident occurred and is shocked by the allegation.” A Gibson Dunn spokeswoman said the firm “promptly investigated allegations when they were brought to our attention in December and acted swiftly” in response, resulting in Mr. Reeves’s departure.
Jesus. At least the 37-year-old billionaire's wife got a family and, who knows, perhaps true love. This young woman reportedly had to perform sexual favors, and all she got was a miserable junior attorney job at Gibson Dunn. Three years of law school, top of your class, only to get abused while working at the kind of firm that would have been the "evil lawyer" in movies like Erin Brockovich. The only redeemable part of this story is that Gibson Dunn did something once they discovered what happened. Do not expect the same from O'Melveny. For example, when O'Melveny's Adam Karr "investigated" whether a junior attorney was forced to perform sexual favors, he reportedly accused her of lying (he said he "couldn't corroborate" her allegations) and then he tried to use a nondisclosure agreement to prevent her from telling anyone what happened.
These places can be awful. And I want to reiterate that you should feel free to contact me if you are being sexually harassed or assaulted at a firm. I'm obviously not a powerful person, but I'm also not tainted by a profit motive, and I will do what I can to help free of charge. In the past I've called the perpetrator's firm on behalf of the victim, leading to departures. Or, if that's too big of a move, you can contact me anonymously and I'll do my best to listen and offer advice - with a focus on helping you deal with the situation with as little disruption to your life as possible. "Dating" young associates might have been a perquisite of being a senior lawyer in the old days, but times are different now.
On June 1, O'Melveny announced their recruitment of Adam Rogoff, and legal periodicals also covered the move. (Links one, two and three.) O'Melveny's Chair Brad Butwin said he was "delighted" by Mr. Rogoff's arrival. When asked why he left his old firm, Mr. Rogoff praised O'Melveny and listed its advantages. . . . Two months later, Mr. Rogoff has returned to his prior firm of Kramer Levin. Nothing unethical about this on its face, but I include it because I've never heard of such a thing in professional services.
John Rapisardi, Nancy Mitchell, Peter Friedman, Steve Warren, Maria DiConza, Matthew Hinker, Daniel Shamah, Joseph Zujkowski
Before I get into the details of the story, please let me provide some background on Michael Walsh, because I worked with him at O’Melveny. He was one of the people who wrote my final review there. My impression was that he was another of the firm’s over-promoted associates: associates who had used political connections to get promoted to partner, and who were now making millions of dollars per year even though they didn’t really have much work or clients of their own. Of course, O’Melveny’s other money-grubbing partners are not keen on paying someone who isn’t pulling their weight -- and so I wasn't surprised to see him leave for government in 2018 after only five years as partner. I assume he’s trying to use the O’Melveny strategy of “monetizing” government positions to build a large private sector income stream for himself. Anyway, onto the story.
Back in September 1, 2019, President Trump tweeted that Hurricane Dorian would hit Alabama. Alabamans became scared, and to quell those fears the Birmingham office of the National Weather Service (“NWS”) issued a tweet saying that Dorian would not hit Alabama. This led to news articles and social media comments criticizing President Trump’s apparent error. Then on September 4, President Trump (or someone in his office) used a Sharpie marker to redo an NWS map, to show that Dorian would hit Alabama -- presumably to prove that the president was right all along -- for which he was again mocked. Taken together all of this is fine so far. No harmful result. Just some entertainment; a way to pass the time with comedy and banter.
But that wasn’t the end of it. Thinking it would help President Trump, Michael Walsh reportedly sent “crazy in the middle of the night” texts and phone calls to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (“NOAA”) -- allegedly threatening their jobs. The NOAA is the federal agency that houses the NWS, in other words they’re the bosses of the NWS's Birmingham office. (Mr. Walsh denies threatening anyone.) Frightened by Mr. Walsh’s threats, the NOAA issued a statement on September 6, rebuking the Birmingham office and validating President Trump’s original tweet. This was no longer entertaining banter; now scientists were being threatened and told what to say. Fortunately, there are still decent people in government, and the inspector general recently issued a lengthy report on the matter. Pages 21-37 of the report have the details that I summarized above, but more important is the report’s conclusion, which states that:
“[T]he rebuk[e] [of] NWS Birmingham . . . created the possibility that forecasters would second-guess or delay their public safety tweets or warnings — an issue with life-and-death consequences[.]” Report at p. 45.
“Mr. Walsh . . . failed to fully understand and prioritize NOAA’s and NWS’s public safety role.” Report at p. 46.
I think Mr. Walsh understood what was going on quite well, but his personal pecuniary and career goals overrode those public safety concerns. That’s kind of the point of this blog. When you interact with an O’Melveny attorney, there’s a good chance you’re interacting with an opportunist who will say and do anything to help themself, without any concern about how they might harm innocent people. Please be careful. I'll update this article if the Department of Commerce responds to my request for comment. [Addendum: An editorial argues that this anti-science attitude foreshadowed the administration's handling of the covid-19 pandemic.]
One of O'Melveny's marketing efforts concerns their Director of Career Development, Jim Moore. They push articlesabouthim and, in writing the May post, I saw O'Melveny list him as an advantage in recruiting materials. So I thought I'd write about an interaction I had with Jim.
One day at lunch in the cafeteria, a bunch of partners suddenly sat down around me and the few other juniors as we were having lunch. I remember most of them; Rich Goetz, Carla Christofferson, and Seth Aronson were in the group. And Mr. Moore also joined. Eventually, Jim talked about a trip to Asia, and how he was focusing his career development efforts there. He described a lunch he had with someone, and an altercation with a waiter. The details aren't important. Any way, at that time I was trying to blend in and ingratiate myself to the people at O'Melveny. So I said something along the lines of how interesting it must be to travel all over the world as part of your job.
He agreed, and then said, "but I would never go to Iran," with a glare directed right at me. I'm Iranian by the way. Rich Goetz added that an O'Melveny partner was from Iran, and that he probably chanted, "death to America" in his youth. Carla agreed. My attempt at small talk had suddenly gotten very uncomfortable. But I couldn't abruptly leave, so I sat quietly until the lunch was over. (And, by the way, I have never spoken with the Iranian partner and don't know anything about him.)
Now, O'Melveny doesn't have an office in Iran, and there's no reason why Jim would fly there. His reply was a non sequitur. And of course, such comments weren't that unusual. A partner made an issue of my background during my first week at O'Melveny. A female associate chided him for it, and I later got along with him. These things happen and I don't mean to make too big a deal of it. But after this encounter, I generally avoided Jim.
The reason I avoided Jim wasn't so much because of that lunch, but mainly because he didn't seem to be that great at his job. I say that because associates shared stories about the difficulties they had at O'Melveny, and none of them pointed to Jim as a helpful resource. Why would they? Jim had spent his career jumping from firm to firm in junior attorney positions, until finally landing this no-billable-hours job. He also had an edgy personality, as shown above, or in this article I just read about law firm career development personnel. While career development managers from other firms describe the services they offer and list stats on number of attorneys they placed -- Jim calls lawyers "paranoid" and claims he's "like [a] therap[ist]."
I could share so many other anecdotes about O'Melveny's human resources and administration folks. Indeed, this website exists solely because of them. You can read the first post to see how a foolish decision to contact them started an unforeseen chain of events that led to that post. Seven months later, someone sent me the sexual assault story to add. After a few years, I had added so many posts that I registered a new domain name around the unifying theme of ethics. But it all grew organically. Initially, I didn't know about the troubles others had with O'Melveny.
Even through my last difficult year, I always gave my best on projects and it shows in my final review. I would never think of hurting matters I was entrusted with; I don't need that on my conscience. But with the human resources folks, it almost seemed like they were trying to sabotage things, trying to make everyone's life more difficult than it needed to be. I wasn't the only one who thought this. Who knows, maybe Dilbert was right about Catbert, the "evil director of human resources."Any way, that's what I know about O'Melveny's Director of Career Development.
James Moore, Career Development, Salary, O'Melveny, omm, human resources, compensation, hiring, recruiting, Richard Goetz, George Demos
O'Melveny's Chair Brad Butwin gave an interview to the American Lawyer. In the interview, Mr. Butwin said that O'Melveny did not cut pay during the covid-19 crisis. This is big. Attorneys and clients are keeping track of firms that announced pay cuts, because it sends a signal, e.g., about how the firm treats employees, and the firm's financial condition. Mr. Butwin is providing them with useful information when he tells this reporter that O'Melveny did not change compensation.
Mr. Butwin went on to say that the partners "cherish" their employees and will do "all [they] can to protect them." This is amazing. Who wouldn't want to work for such a firm? Those other firms treat you like an employee, but O'Melveny's partners cherish you and will do anything for you. The problem is that just a few weeks prior, law students were in an uproarbecause O'Melveny did cut summer associate pay, in a private e-mail to them. Their pay was cut by about $10,000 over the summer. These pay cuts will boost the partners' income by an estimated 0.24% ($10,000 pay cut per summer associate multiplied by an estimated 80 summer associates, divided by 170 partners, divided by $2,000,000 profit per partner = 0.24%). Remember, these are students. They need that money for living expenses, more than partners need an extra 0.24% of income. And the partners know they need the money. That's why O'Melveny offered the students a $10,000 loan to make up for the lost income. So it turns out there's one thing O'Melveny's partners cherish more than their employees -- a 0.24% increase in income. If the partners can make an extra 0.24% by cutting employee wages, they'll do it. This is a small story, but I write about it because it's an amusing amalgam of the money-grubbing and disingenuousness you might expect from this organization. Brad Butwin, O'Melveny, OMM, summer associate, recruiting, pay, compensation, annual bonus, winter bonus, Brandon Jacobsen
Back in 2017, O'Melveny ran a publicity campaign proclaiming their adherence to the Rooney Rule a.k.a. the Mansfield Rule. That rule requires "at least 30 percent of the candidates considered for various law firm positions, including ... lateral positions, [to be] women and attorneys of color." Out of curiosity, I just skimmed O'Melveny's press releases, and clicked on every release announcing the hiring of a new partner. According to these press releases, the last nine partners O'Melveny hired, Mr. Adam Rogoff, Mr. Michael Hamilton (who was sued for discrimination at his prior firm), Mr. Tim Evans, Mr. Todd Boes, Mr. Christopher Owens, Mr. Terrence Dugan, Mr. Michael Dreeben, Mr. Jeffery Norton, and Mr. Jason Kaplan, are all white men. Not that there's anything wrong with hiring white males; I'm a white male. But I wonder if O'Melveny actually considered any women or minorities for these positions.
Diversity Lab is the organization that created the Mansfield Rule, and "certified" O'Melveny's compliance. So I wrote them to see what goes into such certifications.
Unfortunately, I haven't heard back and, after looking into them, I don't expect to. I say that because I took a moment to search the IRS website for Diversity Lab's financials. All nonprofits who receive $50,000 in annual contributions must file Form 990, which is made available to the public. But I couldn't find Diversity Lab in any listing of nonprofits, even though they appear to function on more than $50,000 of revenue a year. They have a staff of thirteen people and one of their efforts seeks $5 million from law firms. That's because Diversity Lab appears to be a for-profit company, registered at its owner Ms. Caren Ulrich Stacy's $4 million home (to confirm this, search for "Diversity Lab" here, after selecting the "LLC" option.) I wish I didn't have to say something so cynical, but I hope Diversity Lab isn't some cash cow that provides dubious diversity imprimaturs to law firms that contribute to Ms. Ulrich Stacy's pocketbook. There are other organizations that do that. For example:
MCCA, the Minority Corporate Counsel Association, validates firms if they pay $1,500 to $150,000 a year (they have eight tiers of contributions, see pp. 1, 2, 3.)
But these organizations don't claim that firms complied with an objective metric like the Mansfield Rule. It's one thing to give firms a vague "you value diversity" gold star, but Diversity Lab is certifying compliance with a hard and meaningful rule. Imagine two consumer websites: One gives automakers a nebulous "quality" award, in exchange for money, and the other gives automakers a "99% defect free" award, in exchange for money, without actually checking defect rates. Both would be problematic, but the latter especially so. And these other diversity organizations are actual nonprofits with publicly disclosed finances (and notice that their Presidents, Robert Grey, Joel Stern, and Jean Lee received salaries of about $400,000, $320,000and $370,000 from organization funds respectively -- which makes you wonder how much Ms. Ulrich Stacy is paying herself, that she would rather have her organization pay taxes than become a nonprofit and disclose her compensation. Apparently there's a lot of money to be made by providing diversity marketing materials to law firms.) I will update this post if Diversity Lab responds to my request for information.
One topic that keeps reappearing here is the Vault rankings, specifically the best firm to work for, best summer program, and best firm for diversity rankings. As explained previously, they are self-graded. Law firms give themselves a grade, and Vault uses these grades to rank the firms. For example, if a firm gives itself the highest possible score on diversity, Vault will rank it as the #1 firm in the world for diversity. I know that sounds incredible but that's how it works. Vault is using the honor system, expecting honesty and sincerity from lawyers.
I can't go so far as to say that O'Melveny lies when grading itself, as I do not have the data, but in the past I gave you a way to check their sincerity. 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. And this wouldn't be a trivial discovery. If lawyers would lie to win an award -- what would they do in other situations? With that background we can get into the substance of this post. Due to the coronavirus crisis, law students are worried about their summer associate programs (these are essentially paid internships, where they work for law firms over the summer.) To calm their worries, they prepared a public chart listing every firm, and what it did with its summer program. They updated the chart every day as they received letters from their firms. Of particular concern was whether firms cut pay. It's only three months of pay but, remember, these are students so every dollar counts. Since O'Melveny is ranked as Vault's #1 summer associate program, equivalent to the Rolls Royce of programs, you would think that its summer associates have nothing to worry about. No, of course they do. A self-graded ranking has little predictive power. And the students learned this. According to their chart, O'Melveny cut summer associate pay. If the students want the same amount of money they would have received in prior years, they have to take out a $10,000 loan against their future income. The law students were not happy:
Another student responded by "shaming O'Melveny [because they took] weeks to give a substantive update and then [reduced summer associate pay] when most others in [their] tier are offering full salary." They also criticized the "facade of [Vault's] 'highest-rated summer program' and 'best culture'" ranking.
A third law student did their own ranking of law firms, based on how they treated summer associates, and used an expletive to rank O'Melveny in the fourth of its five tiers (pages one and two).
A fourth student said it was "really not a good look for ... O'Melveny."
A few days later, O'Melveny issued another press release noting that they are "a repeat winner in Vault’s Law Firm Rankings, most recently earning #1 across three key measures—'Best Firm to Work For,' 'Best Overall Diversity,' and 'Best Summer Program'—a trifecta of honors that no other law firm has achieved."
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