LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Nearly five years after his arrest in the shooting death of actress Lana Clarkson, music producer Phil Spector is still trying to get a refund of a $1 million fee he paid to his first attorney, according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday.
The lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, marks the second time that Spector has sued Robert Shapiro, claiming the famed attorney cheated him and used their personal relationship to enrich himself unjustly.
Spector alleges that Shapiro's work on the case was inadequate and may have led prosecutors to file formal charges against Spector.
A year after his arrest, Spector fired Shapiro and hired another legal team, which was subsequently replaced by the team that defended him in his murder trial this year. That trial ended with a jury deadlock, and Spector has recently hired yet another lawyer to defend him in a retrial next year.
Shapiro did not immediately return a call to his office Wednesday seeking comment.
Spector dropped the earlier suit in December 2005 with the provision that he could sue again at a later time.
The new lawsuit makes allegations similar to the first, claiming Shapiro "took unfair and unscrupulous advantage of his friendship and position of trust with Mr. Spector, and decided to use Mr. Spector's arrest as an opportunity to make a financial windfall and garner publicity for himself."
The suit also names Shapiro's law firm as a defendant, claiming they "stood behind and vouched for Shapiro's work."
Spector also alleged he was pressured into signing an "engagement letter" with Shapiro and the firm at a time when "he was laboring under a tremendous amount of mental stress that comes with being arrested for murder."
He also said he was under treatment for mental problems and had not been able to take his medication for several days when he signed the papers and paid Shapiro's retainer with a $1 million check.
At the time of the first lawsuit, Shapiro denied Spector's claims. In court documents, his attorneys argued that Shapiro did "impeccable" work and gave Spector "the best possible foundation to defend against his pending charges."
Shapiro's attorney contended that Spector tried to break his contract with Shapiro by trying to get back some of the retainer after switching lawyers
taken from http://edition.cnn.com/2007/US/law/12/20/spector.lawsuit.ap/index.html
Rabu, 16 April 2008
Doctors caught joking during delicate surgery
MANILA, Philippines (AP) -- A video posted on the Internet showing Philippine doctors laughing while removing an object from a patient's rectum may lead to charges against the surgeons and cost them their medical licenses, officials said Wednesday.
The unauthorized, nearly three-minute video of a noisy operating room showed doctors and nurses laughing, giggling and cheering.
At one point, a hand appeared with a cell phone camera taking a close-up picture of the surgery.
As a doctor gingerly pulls out the six-inch long canister from the male patient's rectum, someone shouted, "Baby out!" amid loud cheers.
The doctor then removed the canister cap and sprayed the contents toward the crowd of nurses and doctors viewing the procedure.
It remains unclear who shot the video and who posted it on YouTube, but the person who posted it removed it from the Web site Wednesday.
The video has angered the unidentified patient, who plans to press charges, his lawyer Guiller Ceniza said Wednesday.
The government-run Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center in the central city of Cebu, where the surgery took place, is conducting an investigation, a spokesman said Wednesday.
Dr. Emmanuel Gines said more than 10 people were involved -- including staff and medical and nursing students from a nearby operating room.
He said the hospital took videos of surgeries of peculiar cases, but only with the consent of the patient.
Dr. Jose Sabili, president of the Philippine Medical Association, said the group would conduct an investigation if a formal complaint was filed. Doctors found violating medical ethics could be suspended or expelled from the association, which would result in the suspension or termination of their state health insurance accreditation.
The results of the investigation could also be used by the Professional Regulations Commission to suspend or revoke their licenses, Sabili said.
"I believe what they did was very blatant," he said.
Health Undersecretary Alexander Padilla said the Health Department would conduct a separate investigation.
The 39-year-old patient received surgery on January 3, three days after a New Year's drinking spree and a "one-night stand" with a male partner, Ceniza said.
He said his client was too drunk to remember how the body spray canister ended up in his body.
Ceniza said the man was determined to file charges but would wait for the results of the hospital's investigation, expected later in the week.
taken from http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/04/16/philippnes.doctors.ap/index.html?iref=mpstoryview
The unauthorized, nearly three-minute video of a noisy operating room showed doctors and nurses laughing, giggling and cheering.
At one point, a hand appeared with a cell phone camera taking a close-up picture of the surgery.
As a doctor gingerly pulls out the six-inch long canister from the male patient's rectum, someone shouted, "Baby out!" amid loud cheers.
The doctor then removed the canister cap and sprayed the contents toward the crowd of nurses and doctors viewing the procedure.
It remains unclear who shot the video and who posted it on YouTube, but the person who posted it removed it from the Web site Wednesday.
The video has angered the unidentified patient, who plans to press charges, his lawyer Guiller Ceniza said Wednesday.
The government-run Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center in the central city of Cebu, where the surgery took place, is conducting an investigation, a spokesman said Wednesday.
Dr. Emmanuel Gines said more than 10 people were involved -- including staff and medical and nursing students from a nearby operating room.
He said the hospital took videos of surgeries of peculiar cases, but only with the consent of the patient.
Dr. Jose Sabili, president of the Philippine Medical Association, said the group would conduct an investigation if a formal complaint was filed. Doctors found violating medical ethics could be suspended or expelled from the association, which would result in the suspension or termination of their state health insurance accreditation.
The results of the investigation could also be used by the Professional Regulations Commission to suspend or revoke their licenses, Sabili said.
"I believe what they did was very blatant," he said.
Health Undersecretary Alexander Padilla said the Health Department would conduct a separate investigation.
The 39-year-old patient received surgery on January 3, three days after a New Year's drinking spree and a "one-night stand" with a male partner, Ceniza said.
He said his client was too drunk to remember how the body spray canister ended up in his body.
Ceniza said the man was determined to file charges but would wait for the results of the hospital's investigation, expected later in the week.
taken from http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/04/16/philippnes.doctors.ap/index.html?iref=mpstoryview
Juror: Judge and jury pressured me to convict man
RIVERHEAD, New York (AP) -- A juror who helped convict a black man of fatally shooting a white teenager said he felt pressured by other jurors and the judge to change his vote to guilty during a marathon deliberating session.
The jury convicted John White of second-degree manslaughter Saturday in the August 2006 shooting of 17-year-old Daniel Cicciaro Jr.
White, 54, remains free on bail and plans to appeal. He faces a prison term of five to 15 years.
The case drew national attention after defense attorneys argued that he feared a "lynch mob" had come to attack his family when a group of angry white teenagers gathered outside his home. The teens wanted to confront White's son.
Juror Francois Larche, who is white, said he and another juror changed their votes after enduring "a lot of psychological tactics" from fellow jurors during an unusual weekend session ordered by the judge over jurors' protests.
"It was a huge burden to bear," Larche, 46, told the New York Post in Monday's editions. He added, "I took a lot of heat."
Jury forewoman Maureen Steigerwald denied that the judge, a 12-hour deliberating session on Saturday -- the fourth day of deliberations -- or the holidays played a role in the jury's decision.
"The jury did a very careful, conscientious deliberate job," she told Newsday in Monday's editions.
Judge Barbara Kahn said the jury would have to return on Sunday if they didn't reach a decision. Larche told the Post the judge told them a mistrial would burden the families and the next jury.
"I thought about my family and the families of the other jurors," Larche said. "It was not worth it in the end."
taken from http://edition.cnn.com/2007/US/law/12/24/driveway.shooting.ap/index.html
The jury convicted John White of second-degree manslaughter Saturday in the August 2006 shooting of 17-year-old Daniel Cicciaro Jr.
White, 54, remains free on bail and plans to appeal. He faces a prison term of five to 15 years.
The case drew national attention after defense attorneys argued that he feared a "lynch mob" had come to attack his family when a group of angry white teenagers gathered outside his home. The teens wanted to confront White's son.
Juror Francois Larche, who is white, said he and another juror changed their votes after enduring "a lot of psychological tactics" from fellow jurors during an unusual weekend session ordered by the judge over jurors' protests.
"It was a huge burden to bear," Larche, 46, told the New York Post in Monday's editions. He added, "I took a lot of heat."
Jury forewoman Maureen Steigerwald denied that the judge, a 12-hour deliberating session on Saturday -- the fourth day of deliberations -- or the holidays played a role in the jury's decision.
"The jury did a very careful, conscientious deliberate job," she told Newsday in Monday's editions.
Judge Barbara Kahn said the jury would have to return on Sunday if they didn't reach a decision. Larche told the Post the judge told them a mistrial would burden the families and the next jury.
"I thought about my family and the families of the other jurors," Larche said. "It was not worth it in the end."
taken from http://edition.cnn.com/2007/US/law/12/24/driveway.shooting.ap/index.html
Supreme Court Upholds Kentucky's Lethal Injections
The de facto nationwide moratorium on executions for the last six months is likely at an end as a result of the Supreme Court's 7-2 decision Wednesday upholding Kentucky's protocol for lethal injections.
Two death row inmates had challenged the procedure used by Kentucky and 34 other states, claiming that if improperly administered, it could cause excruciating pain before death, in violation of the Eighth Amendment ban on "cruel and unusual" punishment.
But Chief Justice John Roberts Jr., writing for himself and two other justices in the majority, said the inmates had not established the kind of "objectively intolerable risk of harm" necessary to render a procedure unconstitutional.
Within hours of the decision, Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine (D) lifted that state's moratorium on executions, which he had imposed while the Kentucky case was pending.
The splintered decision in Baze v. Rees leaves open possible future challenges to lethal injection, however, and was notable also for the fact that Justice John Paul Stevens declared that he now views the death penalty as unconstitutional. Stevens, who turns 88 on April 20, becomes the first member of the high court to openly oppose capital punishment since Harry Blackmun's retirement in 1994.
The death penalty represents "the pointless and needless extinction of life with only marginal contributions to any discernible social or public purposes. A penalty with such negligible returns to the State [is] patently excessive and cruel and unusual punishment violative of the Eighth Amendment," Stevens wrote, quoting the late Justice Byron White's views expressed in Furman v. Georgia, the 1972 decision that temporarily halted executions. Stevens was in the majority in 1976 when the Court reinstated capital punishment in Gregg v. Georgia.
The 91-page decision announced Wednesday fractured the Court, with six of the seven justices in the majority writing separately -- all except Anthony Kennedy -- and a dissent by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who was joined by Justice David Souter.
Donald Verrilli of Jenner & Block, who represented convicted murderers Ralph Baze and Thomas Bowling, said he was disappointed their appeals are over, but he found some of the language of the decision "heartening." Verrilli said "the next generation" of challenges is already under way in Missouri and California. Challengers who can show a state consistently does not follow the protocol or that executions have repeatedly gone wrong "certainly have a shot." The Court's new standard "has some teeth in it," Verrilli says.
Even some members of the majority warned that the decision Wednesday wouldn't end disputes over lethal injection.
"Far from putting an end to abusive litigation in this area ... today's decision is sure to engender more litigation," Justice Clarence Thomas said. "We have left the states with nothing resembling a bright-line rule."
Thomas predicted challenges over when the risk of harm posed by the procedure becomes "substantial" and when a reduction of the risk is "significant."
Kennedy and Justice Samuel Alito Jr. joined the Roberts opinion. They agreed that the Constitution does not require totally pain-free procedures, but did acknowledge that under certain circumstances the risk of pain could be unconstitutional.
For example, Roberts wrote that an insufficient dose of sodium thiopental -- the first drug used in the procedure, which renders the inmate unconscious -- would pose "a substantial, constitutionally unacceptable risk of suffocation" caused by the subsequent drugs.
Roberts also seemed to invite states to improve on the current procedures. "Our approval of a particular method in the past has not precluded legislatures from taking the steps they deem appropriate, in light of new developments, to ensure humane capital punishment." A state's failure to adopt readily available and accepted ways of reducing the risk of severe pain could also be unconstitutional, Roberts said.
Stevens' new opposition to capital punishment did not lead him to vote to strike down the procedure. He joined the majority's bottom line decision upholding the Kentucky protocol, writing that his stance against the death penalty "does not, however, justify a refusal to respect precedents that remain a part of our law."
Justice Antonin Scalia attacked Stevens for basing his new stance on his own experiences as a judge. "Purer expression cannot be found of rule by judicial fiat," Scalia wrote. "It is Justice Stevens' experience that reigns over all."
Many of the leading lawyers who specialize in capital punishment cases were coincidentally in the Court Wednesday as Roberts announced the ruling. They were there to hear oral arguments in another death penalty case, Kennedy v. Louisiana, a challenge to Louisiana's law allowing the death penalty for child rapists. In the 1977 case, Coker v. Georgia, the Court seemed to bar executions for rape and other crimes that did not result in death, but that case involved rape of an adult woman.
In the Louisiana case, Patrick Kennedy was found guilty of raping his 8-year-old stepdaughter so brutally that surgery was required to repair her wounds.
Representing Kennedy, Stanford Law School professor Jeffrey Fisher asserted there was a national consensus against executing non-murderers, symbolized by the fact that no rapist has been executed in 43 years.
But Juliet Clark, an assistant district attorney representing Louisiana, said there was something "unique and horrible" about raping a child that warrants the death penalty.
Texas solicitor general R. Ted Cruz, representing states that support Louisiana, also said that "we're seeing crimes [against children] that 20, 30, 40 years ago, people wouldn't imagine."
taken from http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1208342622446
Two death row inmates had challenged the procedure used by Kentucky and 34 other states, claiming that if improperly administered, it could cause excruciating pain before death, in violation of the Eighth Amendment ban on "cruel and unusual" punishment.
But Chief Justice John Roberts Jr., writing for himself and two other justices in the majority, said the inmates had not established the kind of "objectively intolerable risk of harm" necessary to render a procedure unconstitutional.
Within hours of the decision, Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine (D) lifted that state's moratorium on executions, which he had imposed while the Kentucky case was pending.
The splintered decision in Baze v. Rees leaves open possible future challenges to lethal injection, however, and was notable also for the fact that Justice John Paul Stevens declared that he now views the death penalty as unconstitutional. Stevens, who turns 88 on April 20, becomes the first member of the high court to openly oppose capital punishment since Harry Blackmun's retirement in 1994.
The death penalty represents "the pointless and needless extinction of life with only marginal contributions to any discernible social or public purposes. A penalty with such negligible returns to the State [is] patently excessive and cruel and unusual punishment violative of the Eighth Amendment," Stevens wrote, quoting the late Justice Byron White's views expressed in Furman v. Georgia, the 1972 decision that temporarily halted executions. Stevens was in the majority in 1976 when the Court reinstated capital punishment in Gregg v. Georgia.
The 91-page decision announced Wednesday fractured the Court, with six of the seven justices in the majority writing separately -- all except Anthony Kennedy -- and a dissent by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who was joined by Justice David Souter.
Donald Verrilli of Jenner & Block, who represented convicted murderers Ralph Baze and Thomas Bowling, said he was disappointed their appeals are over, but he found some of the language of the decision "heartening." Verrilli said "the next generation" of challenges is already under way in Missouri and California. Challengers who can show a state consistently does not follow the protocol or that executions have repeatedly gone wrong "certainly have a shot." The Court's new standard "has some teeth in it," Verrilli says.
Even some members of the majority warned that the decision Wednesday wouldn't end disputes over lethal injection.
"Far from putting an end to abusive litigation in this area ... today's decision is sure to engender more litigation," Justice Clarence Thomas said. "We have left the states with nothing resembling a bright-line rule."
Thomas predicted challenges over when the risk of harm posed by the procedure becomes "substantial" and when a reduction of the risk is "significant."
Kennedy and Justice Samuel Alito Jr. joined the Roberts opinion. They agreed that the Constitution does not require totally pain-free procedures, but did acknowledge that under certain circumstances the risk of pain could be unconstitutional.
For example, Roberts wrote that an insufficient dose of sodium thiopental -- the first drug used in the procedure, which renders the inmate unconscious -- would pose "a substantial, constitutionally unacceptable risk of suffocation" caused by the subsequent drugs.
Roberts also seemed to invite states to improve on the current procedures. "Our approval of a particular method in the past has not precluded legislatures from taking the steps they deem appropriate, in light of new developments, to ensure humane capital punishment." A state's failure to adopt readily available and accepted ways of reducing the risk of severe pain could also be unconstitutional, Roberts said.
Stevens' new opposition to capital punishment did not lead him to vote to strike down the procedure. He joined the majority's bottom line decision upholding the Kentucky protocol, writing that his stance against the death penalty "does not, however, justify a refusal to respect precedents that remain a part of our law."
Justice Antonin Scalia attacked Stevens for basing his new stance on his own experiences as a judge. "Purer expression cannot be found of rule by judicial fiat," Scalia wrote. "It is Justice Stevens' experience that reigns over all."
Many of the leading lawyers who specialize in capital punishment cases were coincidentally in the Court Wednesday as Roberts announced the ruling. They were there to hear oral arguments in another death penalty case, Kennedy v. Louisiana, a challenge to Louisiana's law allowing the death penalty for child rapists. In the 1977 case, Coker v. Georgia, the Court seemed to bar executions for rape and other crimes that did not result in death, but that case involved rape of an adult woman.
In the Louisiana case, Patrick Kennedy was found guilty of raping his 8-year-old stepdaughter so brutally that surgery was required to repair her wounds.
Representing Kennedy, Stanford Law School professor Jeffrey Fisher asserted there was a national consensus against executing non-murderers, symbolized by the fact that no rapist has been executed in 43 years.
But Juliet Clark, an assistant district attorney representing Louisiana, said there was something "unique and horrible" about raping a child that warrants the death penalty.
Texas solicitor general R. Ted Cruz, representing states that support Louisiana, also said that "we're seeing crimes [against children] that 20, 30, 40 years ago, people wouldn't imagine."
taken from http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1208342622446
The Power of Peer Pressure
eer pressure is one of the less frequently discussed fuels propelling the Big Firm machine. Many Big Firms have figured out ways to harness the power of peer pressure so that they can inspire productivity and improve profits -- at least in the short term. What you, and your firm, should realize, however, is that as with any fuel source, peer pressure has its unintended consequences.
JUST SAY NO
Nancy Reagan first introduced me to the concept of peer pressure during her valiant -- if futile -- War on Drugs. As a pre-teen, I remember her warnings that one day those malfeasors sitting behind me in math class would try to pressure me to smoke some illegal substance, and I should, "Just say no."
Maybe because of Nancy, or maybe because of other similar messengers, when I hear the term peer pressure, I imagine herds of acne-ridden, angry, dope-smoking teens trying to coax other naïve teens into experimenting with drugs, playing hooky or worse.
But no, no and no. At least in the law firm context, it is all so much more subtle than that. While I must confess that peer pressure has contributed to some poor choices in my life (that mullet I sported through much of fifth grade; my memorization of Vanilla Ice's "Ice, Ice Baby"), let's just establish right now that not all peer pressure is considered bad. Experts agree that peer pressure also serves a function of teaching us what is socially acceptable and how to fit into our various roles.
Big Firms and their legions of psychoanalysts on retainer (OK, I'm kidding) understand the value of so-called "positive" peer pressure. You know, the kind of peer pressure that leads ambitious law students -- who had no problem saying no to the evil temptations of their teen years -- to forget who they are and what they want just so they can adhere to the social expectations for smart kids.
For example, prior to graduation, these lemmings will gladly subject themselves to the mind-numbing pain of membership on the Law Review, studying torts on a Friday night in the library and then applying to work for a Big Firm even though they went to law school to save the bald eagle. Why do they do it? Because that's what all the smart kids do.
LIGHTS OUT
Once they become part of the machine, successful Cogs continue to use their savvy sense of positive peer pressure to determine the proper ways to behave in order to succeed.
"All the partners seem to love Cog No. 297 -- she works every weekend and joins painful clubs like Networking Lawyers for Nader ... hmm ... I can handle that!"
The most common forms of Big Firm peer pressure relate to the billable hour. Because your success is largely determined by how many hours you bill, you will obsess about these statistics for your entire career at Big Law. "I can't leave early for that law school reunion happy hour -- I only billed 8.7 today, and if I don't get up to 54.6 billable hours this week, I will fall off my target."
This obsession leads you to compare yourself to your peers. If the Cog in the office next to you arrives before you and leaves after you, you will feel guilty and know you better step it up. And by all means, you must arrive before and leave after the partners on your floor -- if you want to avoid any misconception that you are not billing enough hours.
Cogs do this to themselves regardless of the Firm's "culture." It doesn't matter if your firm is not about "face time" -- you will be all about it because you are a "smart kid," and you want to do what smart kids do.
This sometimes leads to odd behaviors like leaving your lights on after you head home, arranging your office so that your chair is not easily visible to passers-by or coming in early and leaving late, but taking a two-hour lunch to see your kid.
NOTICE TO ALL: COG NO. 297 IS A SLACKER
Some Big Law Firms are reluctant to leave to chance the possibility that you'll cave in to "positive" peer pressure and become a billing fiend. These firms have little ways of harnessing the power of peer pressure. Like posting (or circulating) the billable hours of your fellow associates so you can see how you measure up.
There it is -- right there in black and white -- where you stack up compared to your peers on the most important gauge the Firm uses to determine your future. "Wow, even though I quit my recreational tennis league, worked an all-nighter last Thursday and started billing through lunch, I am still 5.6 hours below the average of my fellow Cogs. I'm dead weight. I better pick up the pace, or I will never make partner -- and my fellow Cog friends will stop speaking to me!"
This is ingenious. Even if all Cogs are meeting (or even exceeding) the "minimum" requirement for billing hours each month, there always will be a gunner and poor sad sack at the top and bottom of the list. As a "smart kid," you have always been in the top-tenth percentile of everything. Seeing yourself on the bottom of a list (even if you are billing plenty of hours) will cause your innate sense of success to kick in, and you'll claw your way to the top of the list. Crafty.
But Big Firms must be careful about using peer pressure to influence behavior. Statistically, if we followed the paths of the majority of our peers, we'd be likely to burn out and abandon billable hours for the greener pastures of government work, in-house gigs, rearing live young or herding goats.
So sometimes maybe you should "just say no" to positive peer pressure and take a long weekend trip to the mountains. "Will it ever stop?" you ask yourself. "Yo / I don't know / turn off the lights / and I'll glow!" I'm sure Vanilla Ice was sending some wisdom to us all when he wrote that line.
taken from http://www.law.com/jsp/llf/PubArticleLLF.jsp?id=1208256429729
JUST SAY NO
Nancy Reagan first introduced me to the concept of peer pressure during her valiant -- if futile -- War on Drugs. As a pre-teen, I remember her warnings that one day those malfeasors sitting behind me in math class would try to pressure me to smoke some illegal substance, and I should, "Just say no."
Maybe because of Nancy, or maybe because of other similar messengers, when I hear the term peer pressure, I imagine herds of acne-ridden, angry, dope-smoking teens trying to coax other naïve teens into experimenting with drugs, playing hooky or worse.
But no, no and no. At least in the law firm context, it is all so much more subtle than that. While I must confess that peer pressure has contributed to some poor choices in my life (that mullet I sported through much of fifth grade; my memorization of Vanilla Ice's "Ice, Ice Baby"), let's just establish right now that not all peer pressure is considered bad. Experts agree that peer pressure also serves a function of teaching us what is socially acceptable and how to fit into our various roles.
Big Firms and their legions of psychoanalysts on retainer (OK, I'm kidding) understand the value of so-called "positive" peer pressure. You know, the kind of peer pressure that leads ambitious law students -- who had no problem saying no to the evil temptations of their teen years -- to forget who they are and what they want just so they can adhere to the social expectations for smart kids.
For example, prior to graduation, these lemmings will gladly subject themselves to the mind-numbing pain of membership on the Law Review, studying torts on a Friday night in the library and then applying to work for a Big Firm even though they went to law school to save the bald eagle. Why do they do it? Because that's what all the smart kids do.
LIGHTS OUT
Once they become part of the machine, successful Cogs continue to use their savvy sense of positive peer pressure to determine the proper ways to behave in order to succeed.
"All the partners seem to love Cog No. 297 -- she works every weekend and joins painful clubs like Networking Lawyers for Nader ... hmm ... I can handle that!"
The most common forms of Big Firm peer pressure relate to the billable hour. Because your success is largely determined by how many hours you bill, you will obsess about these statistics for your entire career at Big Law. "I can't leave early for that law school reunion happy hour -- I only billed 8.7 today, and if I don't get up to 54.6 billable hours this week, I will fall off my target."
This obsession leads you to compare yourself to your peers. If the Cog in the office next to you arrives before you and leaves after you, you will feel guilty and know you better step it up. And by all means, you must arrive before and leave after the partners on your floor -- if you want to avoid any misconception that you are not billing enough hours.
Cogs do this to themselves regardless of the Firm's "culture." It doesn't matter if your firm is not about "face time" -- you will be all about it because you are a "smart kid," and you want to do what smart kids do.
This sometimes leads to odd behaviors like leaving your lights on after you head home, arranging your office so that your chair is not easily visible to passers-by or coming in early and leaving late, but taking a two-hour lunch to see your kid.
NOTICE TO ALL: COG NO. 297 IS A SLACKER
Some Big Law Firms are reluctant to leave to chance the possibility that you'll cave in to "positive" peer pressure and become a billing fiend. These firms have little ways of harnessing the power of peer pressure. Like posting (or circulating) the billable hours of your fellow associates so you can see how you measure up.
There it is -- right there in black and white -- where you stack up compared to your peers on the most important gauge the Firm uses to determine your future. "Wow, even though I quit my recreational tennis league, worked an all-nighter last Thursday and started billing through lunch, I am still 5.6 hours below the average of my fellow Cogs. I'm dead weight. I better pick up the pace, or I will never make partner -- and my fellow Cog friends will stop speaking to me!"
This is ingenious. Even if all Cogs are meeting (or even exceeding) the "minimum" requirement for billing hours each month, there always will be a gunner and poor sad sack at the top and bottom of the list. As a "smart kid," you have always been in the top-tenth percentile of everything. Seeing yourself on the bottom of a list (even if you are billing plenty of hours) will cause your innate sense of success to kick in, and you'll claw your way to the top of the list. Crafty.
But Big Firms must be careful about using peer pressure to influence behavior. Statistically, if we followed the paths of the majority of our peers, we'd be likely to burn out and abandon billable hours for the greener pastures of government work, in-house gigs, rearing live young or herding goats.
So sometimes maybe you should "just say no" to positive peer pressure and take a long weekend trip to the mountains. "Will it ever stop?" you ask yourself. "Yo / I don't know / turn off the lights / and I'll glow!" I'm sure Vanilla Ice was sending some wisdom to us all when he wrote that line.
taken from http://www.law.com/jsp/llf/PubArticleLLF.jsp?id=1208256429729
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