Author: Gerald Potkin

Asking productive questions is a key element to an effective negotiating strategy in business, politics, and card rooms.—where I have spent a fair share of my spare time.

Children frequently blurt out whatever questions come into their heads, unnerving adults by their brash simplicity and clarity. More often than not, they ask basic questions designed to understand facts, and context  or to challenge parental authority: They easily inquire, “Why are you asking?” and “What do you mean?” These queries are among the most powerful probes.

At virtually every negotiating table,  gaining leverage and making deals is dependent in large measure by proficiency in the use of the PEP Principle.  Job seekers, especially senior level candidates are equally well-served to pay close attention to this principle, as errors are generally more costly  in direct proportion to one’s age, experience, and perceived sophistication.

Put the PEP Principle to Work

Probe, evaluate, and perform accordingly—PEP—combines the use of appropriate questions for specific situations, with analysis of answers from different vantage points. PEP calls for logic and common sense in the development of information. It also emphasizes the use of practical strategies to gage the relevance and credibility of responses. Lawyers are known to be faithful to this principle,  on behalf of clients; not so much on their own behalf in the career transition process. 

The keys to mastering the PEP principle, as a job seeker, reside in the career journey. “Seamless presentation of  the major decisions along the way unlock opportunities  for the broadest range of new adventures, ” says Wendeen Eolis, CEO of EOLIS.   In a new  interactive seminar series open to the public as well as one-one one collaborative aching sessions for senior level lawyers and leading executives, Wendeen explores the power of the PEP Principle  at every stage of the search process.  For further information on interactive workshops and coaching options contact at  emead@eolis.com.

Matching your negotiating strategies to  your negotiating personality is as critical to client development as it is making a deal or winning a case. There are four basic negotiating strategies.

They can be likened to poker principles; betting with  the goods (“the nuts”) a hammer, betting with comparative strength  (value betting),  betting with potential (a semi-bluff), and betting with maximum information (in position).  Depending upon life environment, experience, and activities you are likely to adopt one or two strategies as your favorites, and the others will take more thoughtful consideration.  Wendeen Eolis Enterprises now offers innovative coaching techniques designed to define your negotiating DNA with a view toward exponential results in client marketing efforts.

For further information, please contact emead@eolis.com or call (1) 212-472-4000

NEW YORK (December 2013) Results of EOLIS’ survey of senior partners (over the age of 60) at New York law firms indicates a large scale schism with law firm management over the time table for compulsory retirement of partners. One of the harshest criticisms leveled at law firms in their responses is firm failures to provide transition service’s funding and/or in-house programs to assist these lawyers in exit strategies that will allow them to pursue new adventures (productively). A follow-up survey is in progress. It solicits a senior lawyer’s top frustrations in looking for new positions with a view toward making a major report on recommendations to law firm clients. If you are a lawyer over 60 in an Am Law 200 law firm or a specialist in mid-size boutique, we are eager to obtain your views. Your comments will be maintained confidentially and included in our January report. Please contact A. Minster to provide information for this important survey, if you have not been contacted, already, by our office.

Eolis analyzes and commentates on the likely trajectory of the most recent online gaming bill introduced by Congressman Joe Barton—H.R. 2666 dated July 12, 2013. Obama might be willing to sign a bill with a revenue component.

The challenge is getting the Congress on board to pass legislation favorable to such gaming..  Meanwhile,The growing opportunity for gaming law practice is clear, as states continue to pursue gaming options in the face of floundering efforts to move federal legislation.  Click here to read the article.

(NEW YORK, NEW YORK  April 18, 2013)  With increasing frequency, law firm partnerships are pondering  protocols applied to the departures of highly productive partners-especially rainmakers.  Last week, Weil Gotshal and Manges faced the planned defection of two of its partners quite differently from the norm.

Traditional wisdom has been to circulate a memo wishing such partners well with implicit gratitude for the Firm’s greater strength without them.  WGM’s managing partner, Barry Wolf employed a harder nosed strategy—calling out two partners who are en route to Quinn Emmanuel as disloyal, as if they were traitors and proceeding with a strategy designed to compromise their expectations of a quick and easy transition.

The vast majority of major law firms  have traditionally waived whatever requirements of notice that have existed  their partnerships,   However, in the past several months, numerous partners at other firms have suggested  this is a bubbling issue.

A few have reported  partnership agreement amendments that call for  longer notice, notably  including Greenberg Traurig which changed its rules late last year according to one partner who is  quietly exploring greener pastures.

There is also an increasing focus on integrating the practices of incoming lateral partners with a view toward holding business relationships that arrive with them in the event that they depart once more.

It is undeniably good business for both firm and client to widen and deepen the access points for suitable talent. It is generally unrealistic for a Firm to presume that the Firm is more important to clients than the lawyers they have come to count on as their point persons for their legal matters.

And, it is folly for a Firm to make the sacrifice that is caused by restraining a partner, or even allowing a partner to leave on a delayed timetable.  Almost inevitably, to do so is to poison the environment and dissipate morale instantaneously.

Gaming lawyers with regulatory experience are in unprecedented demand in the Middle Atlantic States with New York, New Jersey Pennsylvania Delaware and West Virginia scrambling  to bring about legislation to legalize online poker and more gambling fare.

The black sheep of online gambling  companies are the off-shore enterprises that operated after enactment of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 which prohibited online bets in America.  Is there a morality play underway or just economic warfare?  “A bit of both,” says Wendeen Eolis about the  the ongoing  ruckus in New Jersey that has pitted the American Gaming Association against PokerStars.

In an article titled “American Gaming Association v PokerStars; PokerStars Strikes Back–Especially at Caesars,” Ms. Eolis sums up the questions and listens to lawyers opine on the AGA’s bid to participate in  the PokerStars  New Jersey casino license hearing.  See the full article online.

As  law firms have made more definitive transitions to operations as big businesses, they have become increasingly receptive to adopting a celebrity and worker bee mentality with much wider gap sin compensation between the chief rainmakers and service partners.

An evolving trend is significant  effort on the part of highly regarded service partners is to pressure their clients–partners with huge books of business–to share more graciously in origination fees they generate for new matters

Bottom line: lawyers in today’s legal marketplace need clients outside or inside their firms to prosper.

EOLIS offers one-on-one coaching to partners who seek to amp up their “sales” skills.

Maximizing one’s chances of landing a dream position requires plenty of skill and an undeniable element of good luck–for lawyers in any form of transition. Make that luck quotient higher if you are seeking a position as a business executive after 20 years as a partner with a blue-chip law firm.

The fourth quarter of every year is invariably rife with gossip as to the anticipated year-end fortunes for law firms and the fate of their lawyers–up and down in the food chain.

There is no other time during the year, in which the flow of information is as fast or as furious, and prone to unreliability.  It reminds of the critical role  and inherent hazards of  gossip, if unchecked.

Indeed, megabytes of data, more often than not, are surrounded by tidbits of gossip; the latter is the most dangerous common denominator in the chain of intelligence that defines negotiations and hiring decisions.

When it comes to the assessment of gossip, EOLIS  consultants live by 6 basic commandments:

1. Keep notes contemporaneously on the gossiper’s tidbits.
2. Determine the gossiper’s motivation in giving the information.
3. Maintain records on proven accuracy of the gossiper’s information.
4. Question the gossiper’s access points.
5. Probe the gossiper’s knowledge of his/her sources.
6. Inquire as much about the gossiper as the gossip provided.

In evaluating information for clients concerning the credentials, and experiences, and reputation of lawyers and law firms, the foundation is built on verifiable facts (law school, degree verification, Bar admission validation, confirmation of employment, clients, duration of the relationship and other concrete data), but ultimately it is the evaluation of opinions and the interpretation of information provided, that must be effectively integrated to produce well-reasoned decisions in hiring a lawyer or a law firm.  The treatment of gossip by all those in the process is as critical as the black and white data that can be instantly verified.

With the onset of the 2008 recession came increased vigilance by companies on their outside legal fees. However, over the past three years our studies of corporate legal fees spent indicates that less has been achieved in cost savings than generally anticipated. Indeed, a substantial number of our clients have noted, if not complained, that legal costs over the past three years have dramatically increased in litigation matters and have moderately increased in other legal disciplines.

This year, C-Suites are no longer taking this state of affairs in stride, according to our latest trend survey on the role of the corporate law department.  Instead, general counsels across the board particularly including those in midsize companies and startups are being pressed hard to step up their game as full-fledged members of the corporate policymaking team.

Equally significant are the efforts in large companies to make general counsels more accountable than ever before, as demonstrated by evolving compensation plans with new incentives based on the quality of strategic advise offered by the Chief Legal Officer and measurable cost savings provided by his/her legal department.

Today’s law schools and tomorrow’s lawyers are well advised to add to their curriculum enhanced business studies.  As lawyers in law firms can no longer rely strictly on their technical expertise, we are now turning the corner in the corporate law departments as well.  In the years to come, in-house lawyers will undoubtedly become more valuable in direct correlation in their business acumen.