Sunday, February 6, 2011

Good Luck Tomorrow, and Why This Blog Exists

I wish all associates well during the call that is supposed to happen tomorrow.  The mess at Howrey is far from your fault.  If it doesn't go well, I wish you the best in terms of moving on quickly.

Which leads me to this.  In the last post, there were a few commenters who slammed anonymous blogs that spread the dirt on Howrey because the dirt could attach to the many good people who remain at Howrey.   But the dirt that makes this blog interesting comes from one source:  Howrey's senior management.  Over the years, I have seen Howrey's senior management in DC and elsewhere make blunder after blunder (see the last post and its comments), toy with and in some cases nearly destroy the careers of its attorneys, act in a financially irresponsible manner, and focus too closely on their own self interests at the expense of client service and the interests of their fellow partners.


Yet Howrey somehow managed to stay afloat during the 2000s.  That happened primarily for one reason:  the quality and dedication of its attorneys and staff to handling client matters.  Howrey is sinking not because of these fine people, but because of Howrey's leaders -- they went were leaders shouldn't have gone and they failed to possess the advantage of focus.  May this blog serve as a way to disseminate information that will affect the Howrey community throughout the next several months.  May the dirt exposed serve a cathartic function for those of us who are Howrey alumni and who still remain, document the incredible mistakes of Howrey's senior management, and to set the record straight about the quality of Howrey's people outside of management roles.

Good luck tomorrow, and feel free to post new information or suggest a topic for a new post to keep the conversational threads neat.

6 comments:

  1. I feel really bad for my former colleagues that put in so many years into trying to climb the career ladder -- whether they are associates, staff attorneys, paralegals, non-legal staff, and even junior partners. They put so much time in trying to advance, and now they will soon be left with nothing at all!

    And good luck to them in finding a new job in this economic environment that pays what they were making before. The partners will land on their feet, but junior associates and career staff attorneys are SOL - unless someone takes them along.

    However, I can care less what happens to the higher level management. They treated people like garbage, and did their best to make sure that no one could advance in the firm or try to develop their careers.

    In retrospect, what I think is extremely funny is how Ruyak proclaimed throughout the recession at all those meetings that Howrey was thriving while everyone else was suffering.

    And what people have posted about the office leases seems very on point. I remember visiting the Irvine office in 2009 for a week. It was a ghost town back then -- maybe half full. Paying all that money for space that wasn't even being used.

    The sad thing is that the people that made the poor decisions that ran the firm into the ground, are the ones that will get the golden parachutes and lifeboats to other firms. Everyone else will be left to sink.

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  2. Could not agree more with the post above. Well-put.

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  3. 4:18: You mean you CANNOT care less what happens to higher level management. When you say that you could care less it means you choose to care more. I'm not trying to be a d*ck, I guess you can say that I could care less about linguistics.

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  4. This "leadership" nightmare will go down in the annals as one of the greatest ego-driven failures of all time. I can't believe Ruyak has the gall to show his face in public. At least the nightmare is over... or is it...?

    Tune in to next week's episode of Winston & Strawn; "The Death Spiral"

    Bwhahahahahahahahaaaaaa...!

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  5. Will someone please let us know what happened in the conference call today? Inquiring minds want to know.......

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  6. To the individual who added the first post, I agree 1000% A lot of the people there were great, but management could care less about staff. Good riddens but I feel absolutely aweful for everyone else working there. Good luck to all of you, just remember, when one door closes another one opens. Time for a better opportunity.

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