Now that you have had several weeks to reflect upon the year that was 2008, it is time to select the Big Law Word of the Year for 2008.
"Bailout" was the Word of the Year for 2008, according to Merriam-Webster and the American Dialect Society. Runners-up included words related to the presidential election such as "Obamamania" and "maverick." Merriam-Webster based its selection on the word that received the "highest intensity of lookups on Merriam-Webster Online in the shortest period of time."
Based on Merriam-Webster's methodology, I suppose the Word of the Year only represents the word the largest percentage of Web-users didn't understand without the aid of a dictionary.
But I like the idea of capturing a year's worth of events and emotions in a single word, and I think we need one word to summarize Big Law in 2008. I have no ability to evaluate the number of Big-Law-related words Internet users looked up last year, so I think the Big Law Word of the Year for 2008 must be unscientifically determined by a poll of those from Big Law World reading this column.
I am sure this is a statistically insignificant sub-set of those who live in Big Law Land, but hey, it's something. Pass this along to the Big Law Cogs, partners, paralegals, legal assistants, secretaries, clerks, summer associates, help deskers and anyone else touched by the Big Law machine in 2008, and we will see if we can't find ourselves a good word to summarize 2008. Send your votes to snarkatlanta@yahoo.com.
To get us started, I have a few recommendations of my own, in no particular order:
FREEZE
This one relates not to winter weather, but to the pattern at Big Law to freeze salaries. This one seems to have started in late 2008 and may be like that Oscar contender that just heats up at the wrong time of year -- or cools down.
But I think if we were able to search all firm-issued e-mails in 2008, we would find a high percentage of them include the word "freeze" -- as in "We were drunk on record profits from our financial institution clients when we jacked up salaries beyond any rational basis. Now that all of our clients can't pay our obscene rates, we must freeze all hiring, salaries, bonuses and computer upgrades." Alternatively: "Our costs have increased well beyond our anticipated profits, so we are shutting off the heat. Ttry not to freeze and consider working from home."
WHIPLASH
This word summarizes the feeling many of us Cogs employed by Big Law experienced this year after starting the year enjoying unprecedented raises and ending the year hoping for continued employment -- or at least a decent severance.
Other words in this category include "roller coaster," "instability" and "what-the-$#@!?"
DE-EQUITIZATION OR DE-EQUITIZED
For those of you who may not be familiar with this concept, de-equitization is the process by which an equity partner who shares in the profits of the firm is demoted to a glorified associate:
"John has been a partner with us here at Mega Law LLP for 20 years, but all of his clients have gone belly-up, and he has not opened a new matter in three years. He just works on other partners' matters and must be de-equitized to keep our profits-per-partner at an acceptable level. Sorry, John. You can stick around if you bill more hours than the Cogs, but you will be paid far less than you have been getting when you were mooching off the rest of us. You may want to find a new career path."
Or something like that -- what do I know, I am a Cog. Worse than a freeze, de-equitization is a move downhill and out the revolving doors of Big Law.
Related terms are: "layoff," "expulsion," "fired," "smart-sized," "severance" and "shafted." Do people still say shafted?
BILLABLE
This word is no doubt the most frequently used word every year at every major law firm to modify all sorts of other words such as "hour," "time," "conversation," "travel" and "minimum." But that is not unique to 2008, and it is just boring.
Other words in this category of words over-used in Big Law year after year include "profits," "rates," "realization," "actualization," "fees," "cash" and "money."
POOH-POOH OR POOH-POOHED
This word gets my vote. I first heard it used by a partner well over a year ago, but I thought it may have been an isolated incident. He said, "I need to call the client and ask what he thinks of my proposed strategy, but I am worried he will 'pooh-pooh' it before I get a chance to explain." I thought it odd to hear a grown man, a highly-educated partner at a large law firm, use 'pooh-pooh' as a verb to describe the actions of an in-house lawyer from a Fortune 100 client.
When I heard it used earlier this year by a fellow Cog, I thought maybe it was just spreading internally. But by the end of 2008, by my internal calculations, I had heard "pooh-pooh" or "pooh-poohed" used by highly-educated adults at least 34 times. Last week, when I heard a published and nationally recognized economist use 'pooh-pooh' as a verb relating to the economic crisis, I realized this word had become a legitimate verb used by America's best and brightest.
I think "pooh-pooh" should be the Big Law word of the year because it captures the spirit of all that has happened in 2008, whether used as a verb or a noun:
"Big Law management pooh-poohed the holiday party this year ... and raises ... and bonuses ... and many employees ... ."
"The smart-sized Cog felt like pooh-pooh."
"The government pooh-poohed the Big Law client's request for a bailout."
But that is just my vote. We will see what the Big Law world thinks is the single word that captures 2008 for them. And don't worry, your vote will be kept strictly confidential.
Do you have dirt to dish? Do you have a column idea? Or do you just need to vent in six-minute increments? Email the Snark at snarkatlanta@yahoo.com.
