A Lawyer’s Legal Dilemma: What would you do (Part II - End)?
The meeting went well. They have just agreed on declaring the bankruptcy. You saw your law firm partners shaking hands with the CEO of the said company and with the investment bankers. The CFO is talking with a junior partner from your firm. They were all smiling and laughing. Right after they sealed the deal that would destroy the lives and hopes of so many people. They did not even appear the slightest bit concerned. They are now talking about dinner at
You imagine the CEO going back to his office. He was greeted by the warm smile of Bob, the doorman, 15 years loyal to the company. The CEO nodded and smiled and asked how Bob was doing. He took the elevator to his majestic room and was greeted by the radiant smile of Jane, his secretary. He asked how her grandchildren were doing. Jane excitedly told him how they had already started walking. He pretended like he cared. They do not know about the plan to declare bankruptcy yet. In the back of his mind he knows that he has sealed the fate of these people. The very people whom he worked with on a daily basis and who respect him every single day. All for personal gain. Yet he keeps smiling contently.
Your thoughts drifted back to you. What should you do? Can you sleep peacefully knowing what you now know? Should you quit your job or should you kiss your conscience good bye? You remember that you have racked close to $150,000 in debt for financing your law school education. And this job pays that much amount every year. Without this job, it will probably take you more than ten years to pay off your debt. You think of moving to another law firm. But you quickly realize that news travels fast. You will be branded as the goody two shoes, and probably no Wall-street firms would hire you. You can potentially take other, non-legal jobs, but that would be more than just a massive pay cut.
Can you really leave this kind of lifestyle, with all the money, prestige, and fame behind? You have never earned this much money in your lifetime. You can now afford to take your parents on vacations, your significant other to visit the romantic places that he/she always desired. Now you can even afford to live up your dreams, to buy anything you have always wanted. A dream car? Your dream house? Designer items? You now command the respect of people, something that you never had before. People are envious of you. For the first time in your life, you feel like you become a somebody. Your dad is so proud of you. He has already told all his buddies that his son/daughter is now a corporate lawyer working for the nation’s top Wall-street firm in
After all, it is not your fault, is it? You did not decide to ruin the lives of these people. You called no shots. You had no choice. You were simply assigned a menial task of document reviews. It wasn’t your hands that were covered in blood. You very well know that had you refuse to do it, someone else will be assigned to it, and the fate of these people will not change one bit.
What would you do? Please tell us.
Blazing Redfish
posted by Domain of the Blazing Redfish at 10:26 AM
16 Comments:
I was actually thinking on this kind of dilemma before. Never been there first hand, but soon or later the evil will present itself on my face. My response? don't know! Never been there in the first place as I said before.
If I were one of the small fish in the pool of sharks, I would just be the yes-man for a while. Quitting won't do any good since another small fish will just come on board to replace me. The trade-off? My conscience? I suck it up as long as I can. Meanwhile, I'll give my money from the place that rip apart my conscience to those whom in need. Easier said than done but I am hoping it will cover my sin a little bit.
11:07 AM
I'd keep the job. Like you said, no matter what I choose, the fate of those people will not change one bit.
Although, is it possible to give an anonymous tip to those workers? At least the sooner they find out about it, the sooner they can think of what their next step should be.
12:22 PM
Thanks for the comments guys. I believe that good actions would generate an increase of "goodness" in the universe. Think of "goodness" as currency in the universe. Lets say that you are the partner of that law firm. You are partly involved in causing the tragedy. Sure, you have done something bad (partly). You have, if you would, reduce the amount of "goodness" in the universe. But you can definitely make that up by adding "goodness" in the world.
For example, the partner of that firm can set up a charity foundation and donating part of the millions that he got from that deal, to lets say, Indonesia. His foundation can specialize in providing scholarship money to needy (yet more gifted) children in rural Indonesia (there are thousands). He then, would provide life and opportunity to these children. These children whom previously have no chance of making it in the world. Now they have a chance of becoming somebody (they can go to college). And by becoming a somebody, these children will be able to touch the lives of more people, providing chances to more people (ie, their children. Their children will have a better life and better chances if their paretns are college graduates). This would create a domino effect and the partner would have completely changed the lives of hundreds (or thousands)for the better.
He would have added more "goodness" than he took from the employees of the said company. These children probably need the money more than those employees. It sucks for the employees to have their pension fund taken away, but a great majority of them will still survive. However, without the funding, the children will absolutely have no chance of making it in their lives.
1:38 PM
if i were dat person, i wud kept da job. call me selfish, but hey, there must be some other way, if there arent, y do u hv to make a useless sacrifice?
4:18 PM
I'm glad there are still many honest people around...
10:26 PM
Dude: This is such a great blog.
I agree with vinna. There should be another way to solve this poor lawyer's dilemma. But, it's ok. I will stick to the choices provided: either quit the job or suck it up.
In reality, if I am that lawyer right now, I would have no doubt that I will still stick around with my firm, not noticing about what's happening "behind the scene". But, given this fully-detailed scenario, I now have more responsibility to make a moral decision.
blazing, you pointed out in your explanation that I wouldn't want to discourage my father who has been bragging about me. However, if I'm a father I would be more discouraged to learn the fact that my son has helped in the signing of a lucrative deal in expense of a great number of good people. And, ... How am I going to tell my father about my life in the workplace, if it's full of conspiracy? It's not a nice thing to talk about.
There's a huge amount of money that I can earn with my knowledge as a lawyer. I don't need to worry about that. It's time to earn my integrity, and I'll quit this job.
10:28 PM
Hey: I think your conversation has gone further than what I talked about in my last post.
I'm trying to catch up:
How can you convince any of your partners that take part in this "evil" deal to donate money to the needy? Yup... they may agree with your proposal. to make themselves seem holy. But, how then are you going to handle the reaction of the employees who are laid off, when they heard the news that their old boss has just sent part of their salaries to Indonesia. Poor employees!
Just something to think about.
10:46 PM
Mr. Awijasa,
First of all, thank you very much for the comment and the good words. There will always be more great entries most every two days.
True, you would have played a part, albeit a very minor one. You only do the lowest level of the grunt work, and you make no decisions. Can you be called responsible for the tragedy? Probably not. If you quit, the option is to move to a smaller city and start with a law firm there. You probably will only experience 50% salary cut instead of 80% cut if you were to join public service.
About my comment, it is not to persuade the partners to donate his money. There is probably no way under the high heaven that is going to happen. It is just meant to illustrate my philosphy on "goodness".
11:13 PM
Morality should not be judged based on concepts or ethics, but first and foremost what we allow to happen.
No matter what the employee does, it would still happen. If as a collective we do not have the sense, awareness or willpower to put in place safeguards against such abuse, then it is not that individual's dilemma. It is a societal one.
- Becomethedragon
6:03 AM
By the way, by "no matter what the employee does, it would still happen", I mean that if he acted in any other way he would be squished like a bug and nobody would give a shit.
^^
6:04 AM
Dear Dragon,
Thanks for your comment. Very insightful. Indeed, the society (the government) allows that to happen. Everything was done in accordance to the law. In fact, the law is designed to have loopholes that can be taken advantage of. A partner of a prestigious law firm once told me this. If you cannot find a loophole, its either you dont are not experienced enough, or you dont know enough about the law.
So the fact of this case clearly meets dragon's principle. But, do you think it is a valid principle? (I am making further inference here) That it society should be responsible for the actions taken by the individuals, instead of the individuals themselves, since society allows this to happen?
12:20 AM
Well, first off. Are we allowed to challenge the basic premise of your question ? That is, whether seeking bankruptcy protection to relieve the company from the humongous legacy cost should be considered "evil".
The corporate pension plan is another example of how good intention created an absolute mess because it was not backed with a solid foundation. The theory at that time was the company should employ the workers from the time they enter the working force until they retire then provide retirement benefit aka "cradle to grave The theory says that this would tie the workers to the company, making them loyal and work harder, better for the company. Take care of the workers and the workers will take care of the company. Everybody wins... or so they thought.
This retirement plan, which is used by a many companies and governments around the world have some flaws, some examples :
1. It was concocted in a time when manufacture (read: auto) industry were booming, therefore it naively assumes that the company will experience perpetual growth.
2. It failed to predict that life expectancy will increase. It used to be that the workers only receive retirement benefit for a few years then they die. Nowadays, when retirement age is around 65 and the life expectancy is 80 and rising, the company is going to pay pension for decades.
3. It doesnt forsee the shift of paradigm from labor-intensive to capital-intensive. To be competitive, the company HAS to be capital intensive. But at the same time, having fewer employee means each employee have to support several former employee who are now receiving retirement benefits. It is said each General Motors employee support 2.5 retired employee.
I think it should be clear now that the pension plan is in trouble. Now governments who find themselves in this situation (i.e. Germany, France and other welfare state
Older and larger corporations often find themselves unable to compete with newer companies that do not need to pay for the burdensome employee benefit aka legacy cost. This allows the newer corporation to put a more competitive price tags on their products.
4:50 AM
Oh boy, accidentally pressed the send button.
Dang, the previous post was still a rough draft :-(
Anyway, I was going to say that many welfare state in western Europe are having exactly the same problem. But for now they can simply shift the cost to taxpayers (tax or budget deficit). This will of course create all sort of problem but hey, they are still better off than companies. Few people will choose to leave their country because of it. Companies that shift the pension cost to their consumers, something that they WILL have to do, they will begin to lose market share.
This vicious circle has to be stopped. The options range from worker buy-outs, debt restructure, et cetera. And yes, sometimes bankruptcy protection is necessary.
So in short, the client in the story might have been seeking bankruptcy protection, which would keep the company from being declared insolvent by it's creditors. It will enable the company to undertake the painful but necessary restructure, including ditching the legacy cost that is the very very broken pension system.
So if you call this evil, then it should be called a necessary evil.
--
mpa
5:45 AM
mr. anonymous,
Thank you for the comment. However, as pointed out in the story, according to the person involved in this particular case in the real life, there are other alternatives that are not as devastating. Therefore this is not necessarily a "necessary" evil. Conincidentally, this is the one option that gives the bankers, lawyers, and senior management millions of dollars.
8:38 AM
Well then do tell us just what exactly these other alternatives are.
For another, how exactly does seeking bankruptcy protection result in senior managements get millions of dollars ? This is -bad- for the management, that is unless the management is newly formed in order to clean this mess. They would be hard pressed to get another job if the last thing on their resume was being in control of a bankrupt company. But yes they will have to keep outwardly cheerful attitude since it is necessary to convince the creditors to restructure the debts.
And speaking of creditors, banks -should- get their money no matter what the case. If a company is in trouble, its a good bet they have some outstanding debt to a credit institute such as banks. Denying creditors their money in favor of former employee would result in credit institute tightening their loan standard and raising interest rate to cover this new risk.
Without bankruptcy protection, the company is insolvent, that means thousands of unemployed people and another thousands unemployed whose jobs depended on these people (think Mr. Joe Cafe in front of the office).
With bankruptcy protection, there is a damage control, there is hope that the crisis can be weathered.
But again if you do have a great idea so a company can pay the huge legacy cost, still being competitive, pay their debts and still make a profit then make sure to let Wall Street know ! Hey, they might want to make you a CEO :-)
--
mpa
6:47 PM
Mr. Anonymous, I think you should read Mr. Agedashi Dofu's comment on the first part of the story. He is the one directly involved with this case and he shed a lot of the light on the details of this matters, of which I have no knolwedge of. I did ask Mr. Dofu of the alternatives, he mentioned, unfortunately, at the moment I lacked the legal/financial knowledge to understand his explanations so I did not retain any of that.
Perhaps, if Mr. Dofu reads this comment he cares to explain more?
7:51 PM
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