During the spring, Fenwick announced that they were going to pay summer associates only $2,100 per week, which was below the $2,400 that most big firms in New York, LA and Chicago were paying their summers. Yet, right before we arrived in Palo Alto, Fenwick, along with every other Silicon Valley firm, announced that they were going to pay summers $2,400 per week, commensurate with the big firms in other major cities.
What does this have to do with anything? Well, I was almost single-handedly responsible for Fenwick, and basically every other Silicon Valley firm, raising their summer associate salary from $2,100 to $2,400. How is that possible, you ask? The beauty of the internet, and the influence of an amazing website called Infirmation.com.
Infirmation.com is a job-related website that has message boards on it, where anyone can anonymously post anything. The message boards are divided by region, one for New York associates, one for Silicon Valley, one for Chicago, etc. These message boards, called “Greedy Associate” boards, had vaulted to fame in the preceding months as a means for associates at different firms to anonymously share information with each other about salary, benefits, work conditions, anything else. One of the sparking events was when Gunderson, a relatively small firm in Silicon Valley, raised their starting associate salaries from somewhere around the industry average of $100,000 to $125,000. One of the first places this information was posted and disseminated was the message boards on Infirmation.com. From that event, as well as a few others like it, junior associates at all the major firms started sharing information with each other about the relative benefits and detriments of their particular firms on these Greedy Associate boards.
As a result of these developments, partners at all the majors firms monitored these message boards, looking for the latest gossip about their firms and their competitors. They had to stay up-to-date, because a change in benefits at Firm A could mean a flood of associates or law students to that firm, and away from Firm B, before Firm B even knew what was going on.
How does this relate to the story? The summer salaries had already been announced in New York at $2,400, and everyone was waiting for the Silicon Valley firms to announce their summer salaries [Fenwick had three major competitors in Silicon Valley at the time: Cooley, Wilson, and Brobeck (these are abbreviated names of law firms)]. Fenwick was the first to announce; they did so sometime around late April, and they announced at $2,100, which was below New York salaries.
I was unhappy with this, so I immediately posted this info on the Infirmation.com Silicon Valley/SF Greedy Associate board, and then, using four or five different anonymous screen names, proceeded to have a thread discussion on how horrible this was, how Fenwick was insulting its summers, how no one was going to accept their offers because the firm was so cheap it wouldn’t fork over the extra $300 a week, etc., etc. I even used one of my aliases to play the other side. It was beautiful. Of the 20 messages on this topic on the first day, I probably posted 10 of them. I kept this up, at a slightly lower output, for about three days.
About a week after Fenwick’s announcement, and the resulting Infirmation.com message board explosion, Wilson announced they were paying summers $2,400. Each of the other Silicon Valley firms quickly fell in line after that, including Fenwick.
Back to the story: So here I was, sitting with the hiring partner at a major Silicon Valley law firm, talking about the very message boards that I used to influence the summer salary structure, when he let the clincher go.
“Yeah, what kills me is that we had decided to pay $2,100. But as soon as we announced, that message board blew up, and other firms decided to pay $2,400. That thing is something else.”
Holy shit! The whole time I am thinking, “Ha, ha asshole, the joke’s on you, I basically wrote that whole thing myself!” It took everything I had to not laugh in his face.
We all bullshit a little more, when he asks to talk to me in private. He took me into a conference room, closed the door, and began talking to me about my reputation, how I’m starting to get the reputation as the party guy in the summer associate class. Yeah, so? At this point, I’m really unconcerned about my reputation; yes, I liked getting paid $2,400 a week for what amounted to summer camp, but I hated this job, and I hated being a lawyer. Plus, the way he phrased the conversation, I just thought he was talking about unimportant stuff—I am not very adept at picking up subtle social cues, and even though this was not a subtle one, I wasn’t picking it up.
I did a couple of other stupid things in the next few days; I can’t really remember, because they were things that didn’t even register on my radar as “events,” yet others found them to be seismic. For instance, one day, one of the recruiters came into my office when I was on the phone. She asked who I was talking to, and I said, “Oh, I was just calling a porn line.” Obviously, I was kidding; I later found out she was mortified.
The next day I get invited to sit in on a meeting with a prospective client, the managing partner, and a senior associate. The client is a girl who is an aspiring artist, a good one, and is about to graduate from Stanford. A Stanford alumnus VC (venture capitalist) in the area told her she should incorporate herself, and set up what amounts to a startup for her artwork. She came to us for legal advice about this venture. Well, I may have been the junior person in the room, but I’m sorry, she was given some serious horseshit advice, and I proceed to tell her this, point blank. Who’s ever heard of this? Incorporating a new artist? Is this a joke? I’m not even talking about securitizing her future work and selling bonds, like what David Bowie did; he wanted her to literally set up some sort of corporation with herself, and pass out stock options to get people to work for her. I tell her to ignore this VC, he knows nothing about the art world, and for her to get an agent or a manager, or both, and start producing some art to sell and show, that incorporating herself would be against her interests in both the long and short term, and is completely unheard of in the art world, and for good reason—because it’s idiotic. I thought the meeting went well; apparently, the managing partner did not. He was upset that I called the VC’s idea, someone who is apparently very important in Silicon Valley, “idiotic.”
The next day I get a call from John Steele to come see him in his office. I go up there, and he gives me ANOTHER talk about my attitude. Really, don’t let anyone tell you they weren’t patient with me at Fenwick, because they were. But he told me that the good news was that the lawyers I was working with, a senior associate and a partner, thought the work I was doing was great, and that they really liked me. Of course, I took this as carte blanche to keep doing what I was doing (As long as my work was good, that’s all that matters, right? Not when you act like Tucker Max). Then he says, “Oh yeah, I saw your little bachelor of the week thing on sfGirl.com. That was really funny.”
WHAT? How did he find out about that? He continued, “The part about the dog pound, I was in tears reading that. My wife thought it was hilarious. Of course, I wish you hadn’t mentioned Fenwick, or a fat Puerto Rican stripper, but you know, I guess that’s just you.” I didn’t think I had told anyone at Fenwick about that. I felt like Tom Cruise in The Firm, but unlike Tom Cruise, I just willfully ignored the warning signs and kept on being myself.
Friday rolls around, and we have a firm cocktail party at a partner’s house. The liquor was free, and I was drinking, and after an hour or so, I find myself talking to two female partners, “Betty” and “Kathy.” Betty is in her forties, married, a kid or two, and is one of the leading lawyers in the firm. I am my normal gregarious, boisterous self, and these two female partners are eating it up. Loving me. As the cocktail party wound down, I convinced them to join me, ten other summer associates, and a few junior associates in a trip to a local Palo Alto bar.
At this point, I’m just inviting them because I want someone to pay. On the trip over to the bar, I’m in the car with Betty and the other partner, and the conversation turns