Archive for February, 2009

Small law firms, and other privately held companies, face another threat in this struggling economy: rising employee fraud. According to James Ratley, president of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, employee fraud – from billing and expense fraud to skimming and check tampering – tends to rise during tough economic times.

In a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal, Ratley says employee fraud tends to rise during tough economic times, when workers are feeling financial pressure in their personal lives. And small companies are especially vulnerable because they often lack stringent internal controls to prevent fraud. Sometimes, management at affected companies attribute lost funds to lower revenue … never even suspecting foul play.

“A lot of times a small business will close its doors,” says Ratley, “And never know they were defrauded; that the problem wasn’t the declining economy but that (one or more) employees were stealing.”

In a recent two-year survey of more than 300 small companies, the six employee fraud schemes centered most frequently on billing, check tampering, skimming, expense reimbursement, payroll, and fraudulent financial statements.

Business owners were advised to be alert to employees who seem to live a lifestyle beyond their means, and who guarded access to the firm’s accounting software. In addition, business owners should review every canceled check (including the signature on the back), and they should review bank statements each month and check for unusual transfers.

First, the good news: Cobra health coverage just got easier for some of the more than 8,000 lawyers – and millions of other Americans – laid off since last September. As part of the economic-stimulus package Congress signed into law last week, the Fed will provide a nine-month subsidy covering 65 percent of the Cobra premium for people who qualify. The bad news, of course, is that for those more than 7,000 lawyers fired since last September – and the lawyers who haven’t yet received a pink slip – the current legal job market is the worst in decades.

Now for the details: The new Cobra subsidy applies to employees involuntarily terminated between Sept. 1, 2008 and Dec. 31, 2009, and applies individuals with a maximum adjusted gross income of $125,000, and $250,000 for married couples filing jointly.

According to the New York Times, fewer than one in 10 eligible workers applied for Cobra insurance coverage in 2007. The reason for the low rate is that workers must pay the entire premium – plus a two percent administrative fee. The average cost of Cobra coverage for a family is $13,000 a year. The new law should make it easier for people to protect themselves from ruinous medical bills, but also from the inability to get new insurance due to a pre-existing medical condition.

For more information about your health insurance options, go to www.coverageforall.org, and www.nahu.org, two nonprofit, industry-sponsored sites that lay out many private and public insurance programs. In addition, you can compare individual health plans at sites like www.ehealthinsurance.com, an online insurance broker licensed in 50 states.

Wall Street Journal columnist Sue Shellenbarger writes that economic downturns leave enduring marks on the career prospects and aspirations of children. Some youngsters will face lasting setbacks, while others will emerge more focused and motivated, based on studies of past recessions. The outcome, she writes, depends partly on a child’s age, on the example set by parents, and on whether young people can be empowered somehow to help their families through the crisis.

Shellenbarger, writing in a recent Journal column, cited the research of sociology professor Dr. Glen Elder, author of “Children of the Great Depression.”

She says Dr. Elder found in studies of the Great Depression that the self-image of small children of 1930s was shaped by the morale of their same-sex parent. Young boys suffered most, seeing their fathers deprived of work and a sense of identity. Preschoolers and pre-teens too young to understand the causes of the downturn, or to help out financially, suffered, too; they risked growing up with “a lack of initiative, of confidence, or self-efficacy.”

According to Dr. Elder’s findings, those who fared best were Depression-era teenagers old enough to help out by working. But they also paid a price: Depression-era hardships led youths from hard-hit families to grow up faster, and many of them committed to a vocation shortly after high school, earlier than offspring of more prosperous families.

Shellenbarger’s column concluded that “what’s past isn’t necessarily prologue.” The children of the Crash of ‘09 may ultimately experience the downturn differently than what occurred in the 1930s. But even if the new generation wanted to help their families financially, teen employment opportunities are at record lows.

Dating often begins with hearts, flowers, and Valentine Day cards, but it’s been known to end with harassment, retaliation claims … even jury trials. To protect themselves against lawsuits, a growing number of law firms and other employers are asking dating co-workers to sign so-called “love contracts” that define the nature of their relationship as consensual and to restate the company’s harassment policies.

While love contracts are proliferating, they are not new. The National Law Journal reports that the idea seems to have originated nearly 10 years ago by a San Francisco law firm whose client wanted protection from claims of sexual harassment.

In honor of Valentine’s Day this week, LawyerAvenue went in search of “love contracts” and found these excerpts …

“ The undersigned have entered into a romantic relationship. Both (subordinate and manager) understand and acknowledge that neither party wants their relationship with each other to affect their jobs or the Firm in any way. So, we, the undersigned parties, agree as follows:

“We desire to engage in a personal, romantic relationship, and this personal relationship is entirely voluntary, welcome, and consensual.

“We agree we will each make every effort not to allow our personal relationship to impact our work, and agree that if despite our best efforts the Firm concludes our personal relationship has a negative impact on our work, the Firm may address such negative impact as the Firm deems appropriate, including but not limited to discipline and/or discharge of either or both of us.

“We agree not to engage in any romantic or sexual behavior in the workplace. The personal aspect of our relationship shall remain outside the workplace and work-related functions.

“(Partner) will not supervise (associate) at any time during the relationship or after the relationship if the relationship ends while we are both employed with the Firm.

“We agree that, if the relationship ends, either of us may choose to date others and that we will not react with jealousy, spite, reprisal, retaliation or in any manner that is less than professional with respect to the other person’s decisions or actions.”

What’s in your “love contract”?

The risk factors for heart disease are well-established: high cholesterol, high blood pressure, smoking, diabetes, abdominal obesity, and sedentary living. Earlier this year, though, New York Times health columnist Jane Brody reported that researchers are unraveling the biochemical reasons for most heart attacks, and the advice for avoiding them is changing … and may surprise you.

Brody reports that a relatively new factor has emerged that may be even more important as a cause of heart attacks than, say, high blood levels of artery-damaging cholesterol. That factor is C-reactive protein, or CRP. She writes that it is a blood-borne marker of inflammation that, along with coagulation factors, is now increasingly recognized as the driving force behind clots that block blood flow to the heart.

The Times columnist reports that the heart-healthy Mediterranean diet is especially effective at reducing CRP, and that among the most helpful foods are cold-water fish (salmon, tuna, mackerel), flax seed, walnuts, canola oil, and canola-based margarine. Other aspects of the Mediterranean diet – vegetables, fruits, and red wine (or purple grape juice) are helpful as well.

Brody quoted Dr. Michael Ozner, medical director of the Cardiovascular Prevention Institute of South Florida, as saying, “When the diet is stripped of lots of processed floods, you ratchet down inflammation”, the driving force behind clots that block flood flow to the heart.

In fact, one study found that within four years, the so-called Mediterranean approach reduced the rates of heart disease recurrence and cardiac death by 50 to 70 percent when compared with the traditional heart association diet.

By Dr. Fiona Travis

In recent years, some of America’s most popular TV programs and films depicted lawyers winning in court but losing in love. A distortion of reality, or do lawyers really have problems building and sustaining relationships? Regrettably, the image is accurate.

It’s not that lawyers lack relationship-building skills. But, overworked, overburdened and squeezed by time – and now, the worst downturn in two decades – lawyers do exhibit communication and intimacy breakdowns peculiar to their education, their professional training and work environment.

More to the point, the same traits that bring lawyers success in the workplace also interfere with their achieving meaningful, intimate relationships in the home. And the profession works a special hardship on women lawyers. According to an ABA study, a third of all women lawyers have never married as compared to eight percent of male lawyers, and nearly half of the women lawyers report being unmarried, compared to 15 percent of the men. Furthermore, compared to female physicians and college professors, women lawyers are less likely to be married, have children, remarry after divorce and are significantly more likely to become divorced.

As a psychologist who has counseled lawyers and their families for more than 20 years, it seems to me that lawyer marriages are in trouble … perhaps even more trouble than other professional couples.

There is no one explanation, but when one combines the lawyer personality with the lessons learned in law school, the combination makes for great courtroom drama … but is also counter-productive in an intimate interaction with one’s spouse. The biggest obstacle is the so-called lawyer personality.

Individual lawyers may not have all the characteristics, but – when they’re honest – they will recognize that they possess such marriage-straining attributes as ambition, narcissism, skepticism, defensiveness, perfectionism and the need to be in control. Furthermore, on personality tests, most lawyers score high on the “thinking” scales and low on the “feeling” scales. And it’s not something that happens only after a lawyer passes the bar. It goes all the way back to law school, where one learns to argue, cross examine, stonewall, delay, outwit, and avoid showing weakness to opposing counsel.

According to Susan Daicoff, author of Lawyer, Know Thyself, “Some of the traits compromising the lawyer personality appear long before law school, suggesting that those who are suited to practice law self-select into the profession.”

In short, a disproportionate number of people who are less emotionally astute gravitate into the legal profession. Ironically, it is this same personality type that creates great lawyers.

Let me repeat, the same qualities that persuade juries and win cases can also work like acid on marital relations.

For example, a prosecutor or defense attorney comes home on Friday nights all hyped up and argumentative, as if they were still in court. Or a corporate or real estate lawyer engaged in intense negotiations finds it hard to switch to a different mindset at the end of the work-week. But regardless of the environment in which lawyers work, the demands on their time put even the strongest marriage to the test. In the words of Chief Justice William Rehnquist, “ … Lawyers who work harder (to make partner, to earn more money), and then tell themselves they don’t have time now for family and friends, are on a very slippery slope. They may think they are only postponing the opportunity (to be a better parent, a more loving spouse), but in fact they are sacrificing that opportunity.”

Non-lawyer spouses have their tasks, too. They must learn to deal with the sacrifices of time and intimacy that the spouse’s law practice demands. Such sacrifices may include cancelled or postponed vacations, time spent with the children and involvement in child-rearing decisions, minimal emotional support, lack of deep conversations about feelings, and little patience for working through emotional problems. Of course, another major threat to lawyer marriages is substance abuse, and many an attorney’s filial difficulties begin with after-hours drinking with colleagues. It’s a lawyer’s way of dealing with the high stress, but the practice also creates more stress for spouses.

Lawyers who choose not to become aware of how their work interferes with having a healthy intimate relationship at home are at a higher risk for becoming a divorce statistic.

So, how can lawyers be better spouses?

– Listen with interest and without interruption. Don’t be a lawyer at home. Marriage should not be adversarial. It is not about “win at all cost” and “hardball ultimatums.”

– Become aware of your style of argumentation. You do not have to win at home. Take note if your critique of spouse and children comes across as if your belief is the only truth, and there is no other way to view the issue at hand.

– Make room for emotional support (especially if your spouse is a non-lawyer). Most lawyers are great problem-solvers, and they tend to rush in to solve family problems without considering their spouse’s feelings. This results in a disservice to the spouse, who feels that he or she hasn’t been heard or understood.

So, how do you leave certain behavior patterns in the office and adopt a more conciliatory behavior at home? To begin, it would be helpful to acknowledge that certain lawyerly goals and techniques are at cross-purposes with the behaviors that foster good marriages – for example, win (compromise), doubt (trust), cross-examine (discuss), argue (admit error), attack (accept fallibility in self and others), avoid vulnerability (concede), think for others (respect partner’s opinions and ideas), deny weakness (allow for vulnerability), hinder and delay (cooperate).

Lawyers, take note: Be aware that the adversarial, argumentative style that works at the office and in court works against you if used with your spouse and children. Awareness is the first step to successful change. So, practice taking a deep breath at the midway point between home and office, and as you exhale, let go of that lawyer style until you inhale it back again tomorrow on your way back to work. You are good at practicing law, try practicing love!

Dr. Fiona Travis, who practices in Ohio and is married to a former prosecutor, is the author of Should You Marry a Lawyer: A Couple’s Guide to Balancing Work, Love & Ambition. To order a copy, go to www.LawyerAvenue.com, and click on Bookstore.