Arbitration & Mediation

Negotiating Law Firm Layoffs: Property, Power and Prestige

By Victoria Pynchon

I'd always told myself  I was not interested in or affected by the trappings and perquisites of high-end law firm life.  But those benefits - first class travel; upscale hotels in world-class cities; and, the deference of maître d's, personal trainers and the like  - tends to skew one's view of one's place in the world.

So though I'd just been an associate, I had tasted the rewards of property and prestige.  And I represented people with a load of worldly power.  By the time I was laid off in 1992,  I'd managed to acquire the illusion of what more spiritually minded people tell me are the three primary obstacles to ordinary happiness:  property, power and prestige.

And man, do I need a drink at the end of the day because here come two horsemen of the apocalypse.  

Foreclosure and Bankruptcy.

Then there was my personal life.  Just as the career was cratering, my  post-divorce, mid-life European motorcycle-riding, Morrissey-listening, unemployed artist boyfriend, packed up his canvasses, paint brushes and acrylics and moved back to Holland.

That Lit Major Thing that You Do What You Do to Me

I have said on far more than one occasion that law school is the default career-path for the liberal arts major.  We were philosophy, political science, literature, sociology, and drama majors. If we'd had the guts (or talent we wished we had) we'd be singing, dancing, acting or writing for a living.  But we weren't.  We were lawyers.  Which meant, among other things, that we had precious little time for anything other than the law.

But here's the thing about calamity.  It tends to wake you up.  

I was talking on the telephone to a friend, bemoaning my newly single state, when it occurred to me for the first time in my life that I'd married and partnered with artists because I wasn't doing my own art.  And though my financial circumstances were greatly reduced, so were my job obligations.  I was billing 1800 hours a year instead of 2100-2300.  I had time, motive and opportunity to commit the crime of art again.  I was working in Westwood, just a few blocks from UCLA.  I called their Extension office.  I enrolled in a fiction writing class.

Tomorrow:  sobriety.  

Full post as published by Settle It Now Negotiation Blog on February 19, 2009 (boomark / email).