Layoffs - advice for GCs on how to manage them
March 24, 2008
Dallas lawyer Michael Maslanka writes in Texas Lawyer about how to manage layoffs, including suggestions for drafting litigatable releases (hint: simpler is better, and no release is better than a spurned one).
Here’s the drill: If offering two weeks severance only, forget the release, and just give the money. A release offered and refused is admissible as evidence of consciousness of guilt. …
A more fundamental release challenge is that lawyers assume one size fits all; they believe a release used 10 years ago is good to go for today, and they try to sound smart by drafting densely written, 20-page releases. It’s as if there was one release drafted in the misty past, handed down from generation to generation, and used again and again without question.
Here’s the deal:
- Make it simple with bullet points and check marks, and boil it down to a few pages. The goal is to get the employee to sign it, not show legal virtuosity.
- Write in active voice, not passive. Releases saying that the employee has been advised to consult an attorney are invalid; the release must say that the company advises the employee to consult.
- Think ahead: Extinguish any outstanding issues on reimbursements owed and commissions due; but don’t extinguish all obligations, such as an existing covenant not-to-compete, with a merger clause.
(Extra paragraphing and bullets added.)
Law firms as feudal baronies
March 18, 2008
Law-firm consultant David Maister certainly seems to know big law firms:
Listen to David Maister from his new book, "Strategy and the Fat Smoker: Doing What’s Obvious But Not Easy," in which he writes that having a collection of great lawyers is not the same as having a great and effective organization.
Rather, he writes that firms are made up of "bands of warlords, each with his or her followers, ruling over a group of cowed citizens and acting in temporary alliance — until a better opportunity comes along."
Ouch.
Michael P. Maslanka, "GCs Should Treat Legal Fees as Execs Treat Business Issues," Texas Lawyer, March 18, 2008 (link) (emphasis and extra paragraphing added).