The Case For Sleep: What Happens In Excel After Dark
Today, every associate's worst nightmare came to a merciful end in a New York Bankruptcy Court.
The nightmare started for a first-year Cleary Gottlieb associate on the night of September 18th. The associate was called in for some extra muscle on the Barclays acquisition of Lehman assets. At the request of a second-year associate, the first-year reformatted an Excel spreadsheet of critical contracts to be assumed and assigned in bankruptcy on the closing date of the Lehman/Barclays sale. Predictably, this work was done long after normal business hours, just after 11:30 p.m.
On September 19th, Cleary produced the list of contracts based on the associates' work the night before.
The problem was that the list contained 179 contracts that should not have been included. The Lehman/Barclays sale closed on September 22nd, with the over inclusive list of contracts.
My stomach gets tied up in knots writing that.
The resolution after the jump.
The mistake was caught by Barclays or Cleary on October 1st.
You know what happens next. Motions and affidavits and long meetings trying to explain how you messed up an Excel spreadsheet one late night, and still no sleep.
According to the various affidavits (posted below) the Cleary first-year did not notice that the 179 contracts were marked as "hidden" in Excel, and certainly didn't notice that those entries became "un-hidden" when he globally reformatted the document.
Cleary had to file a motion before the bankruptcy court asking for relief from the final sale order due to mistake or excusable neglect.
You have to feel sorry for the associates involved (as it is now a matter of public record, we have not redacted the names in the motion and affidavits posted below. However, if you refrain from mentioning names in the comments, that will go some small way towards keeping their google footprint clean). Who knows how much sleep anybody at Cleary got between Lehman crashing on the 15th and the 18th when the mistake happened? And, as we all know, they don't teach "Excel" in law school and they really, really should.
S&C's Rodgin Cohen might tell sleep deprived young associates "don't sweat the small stuff," but the whole point is that there is little way of knowing what is small and what is crippling 14 hours into your day.
But lawyers get paid to avoid these kinds of mistakes at all costs.
There but for the grace of God ...
Barclays Relief Motion.pdf
Declaration of 1st Year Cleary Associate.pdf
Declaration of 2nd Year Cleary Associate.pdf
(222) 
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Should have been done by a paralegal or secretary who knew what hell they were doing. First.
Quick question from a non-litigation type, how often are Excel spreadsheets used in court documents, as opposed to converting the information into Word tables? Is the conversion process determined too time-consuming even though you would avoid mistakes like these?
you have to feel bad for the 2nd year who didn't know the stuff was there. embarassing for the 1st year, but he's got a double excuse. the 2nd year is going to catch all kinds of shit, but what could she really do to prevent the boondoggle?
Instead of HR training at law firms and CLE your first year of practice, "they" really need to teach advanced Excel.
Jesus how much do clients bill for excel work again?
The doofus in question is an NYU law grad. If Cleary wasn't so snobby and hired the cream of the crop from TTT schools instead of average top law school grads, this kind of stuff never happens.
God damned I hate elitist hiring practices in BIGLAW. Don't these firms realize the people who want it more will work harder and not f*ck up as much???
Inquiring minds want to know, all of this extra motion practice because of this guy, is that work being billed to the client? Sounds like the firm should pick up the tab to correct all this.
This guy has an MBA. He should know how to use excel.
I hadn't heard. Did Cleary fire all of their secretaries?
Elie makes lots of mistakes.
Although Excel isn't taught in Law School, someone with an MBA should know a little bit more about it. I guess an MBA from Berkley doesn’t really prepare you for using spreadsheets.
The discussion here is just silly. This rush-job mistake will be corrected by the court. And I don't fault either of the two associates who worked on this contracts exhibit; if you read the stuff you see that the contract list had 24,000 cells. There's no way any human being (skilled paralegal or otherwise) can proofread something like that. They needed to do this via a semi-automated process such as an Excel sheet from the business people. But it also has to be reformatted to be acceptable to the court's e-filing system. An occasional screw-up is inevitable, and the court will fix it.
.
No one wil get fired. End of story.
10- Priceless.
I highly doubt Cleary will be charging this extra time to the client.
The second-year associate appears to be hot - she should get a pass.
Interesting notes:
- 1st year has an MBA from Berkeley; also was on Law Review, so clearly not a "doofus" hired from middle of the pack at NYU
- 1st year started in 2007 (presumably, fall of 2007) but the Cleary website says his NY bar admission is "pending" - does this mean he failed the bar TWICE (once in fall 2007, once in winter 2008) and is awaiting results from the third exam??
- 1st year is old(er), so maybe he is not so familiar with Excel as the rest of us
- Why the f*** does Cleary have attorneys reformatting spreadsheets? That isn't even paralegal work - more like word processing department.
In sum, I have too much time on my hands. Thank you.
I'm with 15.
Excel is a pain--and this is not the first time that a hidden column in excel has caused problems. I really feel for the associates involved.
I don't do bankruptcy work (thank god). What is the big deal about including 180 extra contacts?
I don't do bankruptcy work (thank god). What is the big deal about including 180 extra contacts?
If I were Cleary I certainly would charge Barclays for fixing this. Falls under 'what do you expect when you ask us to document a $5BB deal in two days.'
OTOH, they may have billed Barclays so much on this deal they can write this correction motion off.
19, 20: Maybe if you knew it was contracts, not contacts, you'd undertstand why it was important.
My anus is bleeding!
If he would have taken it to the Word Processing Center (provided there is a competent staff and the center is open 24 hours) they would have noticed and queried him about the hidden columns instead of simply printing everything out like he did. Excel is not the most user-friendly program in the world, particularly when it comes to printing. I have seen Excel spreadsheets come in that if they were to be printed at 100% size, we would need paper that is 8 feet wide! The attorneys where I work generally bring us the Excel to print out and/or convert to Word because they know we can format the layout in the best possible way for readability and comprehension.
NYU doesn't put you on Law Review because you are smart, like other schools. The other members select who gets on based on whatever they want.
If he would have taken it to the Word Processing Center (provided there is a competent staff and the center is open 24 hours) they would have noticed and queried him about the hidden columns instead of simply printing everything out like he did. Excel is not the most user-friendly program in the world, particularly when it comes to printing. I have seen Excel spreadsheets come in that if they were to be printed at 100% size, we would need paper that is 8 feet wide! The attorneys where I work generally bring us the Excel to print out and/or convert to Word because they know we can format the layout in the best possible way for readability and comprehension.
NYU doesn't put you on Law Review because you are smart, like other schools. The other members select who gets on based on whatever they want.
If he would have taken it to the Word Processing Center (provided there is a competent staff and the center is open 24 hours) they would have noticed and queried him about the hidden columns instead of simply printing everything out like he did. Excel is not the most user-friendly program in the world, particularly when it comes to printing. I have seen Excel spreadsheets come in that if they were to be printed at 100% size, we would need paper that is 8 feet wide! The attorneys where I work generally bring us the Excel to print out and/or convert to Word because they know we can format the layout in the best possible way for readability and comprehension.
My anus ... is bleeding!
16: passage of bar exam is not the same as admission to the bar. after getting your scores back, there is still a lot of paperwork, as well as the character and fitness "examination." after that, you're in. a lot of people start work and let the paperwork slide for awhile. the firm won't fire you for it, although it's difficult to be emailing clients with the obligatory "law clerk" in your email signature (if you're emailing clients as a first or second year) and eventually it always seems to get done. the firm will fire you if you fail the bar exam twice (usually).
16 - Bar admission isn't immediate after bar exam passage. There are a few other requirements that can take a few months to complete (especially if you don't finish your paperwork in a timely manner). And most of the support staff was probably out of the building at the time of night when the mistake was made - attorneys do have to do the reformatting if it's the middle of the night and it has to get done before the 9 to 5 staff shows up in the morning.
If I were on NYU LR, I'd put on the hotties. Intellectual purity is less important to me than making my "O" face.
O - O - O
Simple rule - lawyers should not use Excel - it's dangerous to all involved! Stick to Word, Westlaw, and anything non-spreadsheet based!
@2...With a list of 220 contracts with multiple fields capturing data you can't use Word for such a task. That is what excel is for.
This associate must be a real fucking idiot not to be able to notice hidden rows/columns!
It would more excusable if it was screwed formula or something but hidden rows? Gimme a break. Drink a red bull and take care of your shit!
"I'm the guy who does his job! You must be the other guy!"
For the love of all that is holy, my anus is bleeding!
He should have just blamed it on Wario.
Elie, can you IMAGINE how many times something like this would have happened to you if you had a real job?
Sheesh. BigLaw must suck ass. God bless my midlaw, secondary mkt firm where I make more $$ than I can spend and never have to reformat spreadsheets at midnight.
Then again . . . I bet those doc review war stories must really impress the ladies.
This is why law firms have programs that scrub metadata.
Sadly here it looks like the Excel reformatting turned the metadata into real data, preventing that safety valve. Which sucks.
The first-year associate passed the July 2007 NY Bar exam:
http://www.nybarexam.org/707_MN.htm
34: Elie, relax and it won't hurt as much.
Why is the 2nd year associate's name spelled differently on the Cleary website v. Her affidavit?
... Having a "z" in the middle of the name is so not cool.
This is rich...
http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202425181214
36 = best comment ever.
15-
Agreed. I would hit it.
35-
Brilliant.
Guys in my high school would miss hidden Excel columns all the time. It was no big deal.
At my firm, we have this innovative new technology designed to avoid errors like this... it's called a "support staff".
cadwalader sean once did this and it was no big deal
Elie, great post.
I kid you not, I did this today (f-ed up a doc based on a massively huge excel file). Thank goodness it was transactional, and a banker noticed a number off when reviewing the doc. We were able to fix it before the irreversible mass distro.
I do this kind of Excel work every day, and I can attest that (a) this sort of task cannot be done in Word and (b) this kind of junk always happens under deadline pressure. Checking procedures should catch it, but they inevitably fail once every few months and something slips through.
GO BLUE!!!!!!
This blog is dead. I was mildly intrigued for a while by trolling here, especially for the UPenn State cause, but I'm done. The intriguing lawyers of the day and associate scandals etc. apparently are a thing of the past. Sigh. I guess it's for the best. I was wasting too much time on this site anyway. Goodbye.
--Former reader/useless commenter
That being said, I wish Penn all the best in its matchup against Wisonsin tomorrow.
6 - You, sir, are a complete moron. A TTT grad like yourself wouldn't even know what to do when the assignment came in. Unless you are even dumber than I thought, you would know that the intricacies of Microsoft Excel's "hide"/"unhide" C++ language is not taught in law school. You target the guy simply because he went to NYU and you couldn't have gotten in even if you were the son of the Dean of Admissions there. And there is a reason why Cleary is not a TTT firm: because they don't hire TTT grads. Do you honestly think that CEOs of Fortune 200 companies want to hire a TTT cockneck like you?
*emails second year associate to tell her how much better of a job i would've done as a 1L sa...waits patiently for response*
-nervous T-10 1L
So corporate associates get paid $205,000 for manipulating Excel spreadsheets? I can do that.
shut
up ya'll
15, 17, 44 - She looks like maybe a 5, maybe a borderline 4. We need better pics. However, tapping that is approved, should you ever find yourself with an opportunity.
36 - I approve of Elie's job here. I give him a B to Lat's A-. However, I nonetheless also approve of your humorous dig. Stupendous.
53 - Cockneck is hereby approved for frequent and repetitive usage on this site.
- THE BOSS
42 - I do not approve of breast-biting. I do approve of the link.
- THE BOSS
Awesome, 10.
Most biglaw attys do not trust a member of support staff to manipulate spreadsheets when adding/deleting substantive material. Never hide cells, never. Someone will always forget they're there b/c attys don't notice obvious things like "numbering". This person should have made a copy of the doc prior to manipulation, deleted the hidden cells, and saved this as a new version.
Documents drive biglaw..they should be teaching excel at t10s...that way you pricks would know what you're getting into, and shi* like this wouldn't happen.
Please, lower your expectations and realize your value. Drone drone drone....
Most biglaw attys do not trust a member of support staff to manipulate spreadsheets when adding/deleting substantive material. Never hide cells, never. Someone will always forget they're there b/c attys don't notice obvious things like "numbering". This person should have made a copy of the doc prior to manipulation, deleted the hidden cells, and saved this as a new version.
Documents drive biglaw..they should be teaching excel at t10s...that way you pricks would know what you're getting into, and shi* like this wouldn't happen.
Please, lower your expectations and realize your value. Drone drone drone....
60 is spot on. This would have been very very easy to avoid just by making one master file with all the data and one baby file with hidden cells deleted.
60 is spot on. This would have been very very easy to avoid just by making one master file with all the data and one baby file with hidden cells deleted.
I don't care what time it was, this is a sloppy mistake. You always double- and triple-check your documents before circulation, no excuses.
They'd both be out the door if it was up to me. In this market, smarter replacements are easy to come by.
Old first years creep me out.
65
Age-ist!
People, even smart, competent people, make mistakes. I don't know why this is so hard for people in the legal profession to admit. What makes this pig-headedness so ironic is that we spend our careers preventing or cleaning up the mistakes of other smart, competent people.
I agree with 67, it's not like clients pay the associates at an "elite" law firms hundreds of dollars and hour to ensure that the work is of the highest quality...
NYC to 190
Proven to not be worth the cost:
WLRK
S&C
Cleary
In fairness, this deal went so quickly that the final purchase agreement was a hand markup (had to beat market opening). So it really wasn't a "triple-check" scenario. If this was the only mistake, it's a MIRACLE.
I fail to see how this is newsworthy. It is a minor mistake. As for all you associates from TTTs on this blog, grow up. Mario is a nice guy who made LR while having to also help take care of his infant son. He made a mistake. I am sure none of you have ever made a mistake before.
I fail to see how this is newsworthy. It is a minor mistake. As for all you associates from TTTs on this blog, grow up. Mario is a nice guy who made LR while having to also help take care of his infant son. He made a mistake. I am sure none of you have ever made a mistake before.
boring. I miss Lat
71,
So the fact that the first year associate had a kid to take care of while he was in law school makes him not suck? I actually think that makes him suck more. People should wait until they are done with law school to start breeding.
Oh, and the second year associate involved does NOT appear to be hot based on the picture. You people must be spending too much time at the office if you think she is. She is not even law school hot.
So many cruel, hateful people on this board. I can't wait to be a lawyer!
OK - this mistake has nothing to do with being sleep-deprived. Even if the associate and paralegal were totally fresh, this still would have happened. You open a spreadsheet, look at it, it all looks right, send it to the paralegal who converts it to pdf, you open the pdf and it looks pretty much the same, so you roll with it.
The real culprit is Microsoft. Word and Excel have become so f-ing cumbersome, with all kinds of "features" that can be turned on or off, hidden or not hidden, etc, that these kinds of things are bound to happen. These programs have a million nonsensical names for their menus, a million toolbar buttons with cryptic icons that are impossible to decipher, and utterly useless "help" documentation.
I think we should have a thread where people can comment on the most irritating aspects of Microsoft Word.
The fault here was the person from Lehman who originally sent the doc with hidden cells to CG. With the amount of data on the spreadsheet, and the exigency of the circumstances, it would have behooved the Lehman contact to make sure that there was no hidden data on the Excel spreadsheet. Did CG make a mistake in not spending more time to proofread the PDF before it was posted? Sure, but under the circumstances, there wasn't enough time to do such a thorough check of every cell in the spreadsheet. The blame lies with Lehman here.
The fault here was the person from Lehman who originally sent the doc with hidden cells to CG. With the amount of data on the spreadsheet, and the exigency of the circumstances, it would have behooved the Lehman contact to make sure that there was no hidden data on the Excel spreadsheet. Did CG make a mistake in not spending more time to proofread the PDF before it was posted? Sure, but under the circumstances, there wasn't enough time to do such a thorough check of every cell in the spreadsheet. The blame lies with Lehman here.
The fault here was the person from Lehman who originally sent the doc with hidden cells to CG. With the amount of data on the spreadsheet, and the exigency of the circumstances, it would have behooved the Lehman contact to make sure that there was no hidden data on the Excel spreadsheet. Did CG make a mistake in not spending more time to proofread the PDF before it was posted? Sure, but under the circumstances, there wasn't enough time to do such a thorough check of every cell in the spreadsheet. The blame lies with Lehman here.
Does anyone know who the fault and blame lies with?
75 -- Hire an admin assistant.
Hi, I'm sure this has been mentioned, but this is no way the 1st year's fault. This is the fault of the partner in charge - that's where the buck stops. If nobody reviewed the 1st year's work, which was clearly very material to the transaction, then it's just another case of the complete lack of guidance young associates get at large (and presumably medium/small) firms.
look, everyone makes mistakes. fucking leave the two alone. it disgusts me that their mistakes are out in the open.
Actually, all of you are idiots. If you put a label in the column's cell next to each contract to not include of something like 'DO NOT INCLUDE' you could hae put everything in a pivot table and manipulated the data a million ways to get to your result and not FU*K up.
TTT 3L top 10%
Actually, all of you are idiots. If you put a label in the column's cell next to each contract to not include of something like 'DO NOT INCLUDE' you could hae put everything in a pivot table and manipulated the data a million ways to get to your result and not FU*K up.
TTT 3L top 10%
TTT 3L is a cockneck
how many times will you write the word night in the first two sentences? why is your writing so awful?
Hahahaha we love these hoes!
what's a cleary gottlieb?
Cleary = TTT
76 and 83 are dead on. The problem really lied much earlier in the Excel process, not as much with these last two associates.
Still, all in all, this sounds like an honest mistake and not a huge deal.
There is a lot of blame to go around. Why were the cells hidden in the first place? Why weren't they un-hidden before passing the document along? Somebody created a trap and then passed it along to a first year. He shouldn't have fell for it. Somebody also should have made sure that he wouldn't have fell for it. They should still give the associates a pass. I guarantee they will never do it again. Every first year drops the ball sometimes. Even partners screw up. If you fired every first year who screws up, no one would make it to their second year.
The real blame lies with whoever was in charge of the project. Even top partners screw up, so the partner running the project has the responsibility of planning around this by having things adequately checked over. Who ever was in charge already must have bungled the staffing if they needed to call up first years in the middle of the night. If you just haphazardly toss people at a project in a mad rush to meet a deadline, you are going to come out with a shitty product.
81 = failure to distinguish between "fault" and "responsibility." Try again.
As Frat Stud might say if he were not spending the weekend drinking cheap domestic mass-produced alcohol-containing substances misleadingly described as "beer", excel mistakes are usually not a big deal. This one is only noteworthy because of the sheer magnitude of the mistake.
35, lol. Or Luigi.
@57- I don't think he does a bad job either. But he is prone to small mistakes. And (w/ all respect, Elie) fun as shit to hate on in comments. But obviously, I'm still here.
-36
teaching a basic productivity application in a professional school would be a sad, sad step backwards.
if you don't know how to use one of the four main software programs, then take a class or learn it by yourself, but don't expect a terminal degree program to waste time on it.
those of us who had real majors in undergrad learned how to use basic tools like excel. maybe this guy should have spent four years learning something instead of taking the easiest A+ classes.
I don't like Elie's politics or how often he mentions them but other than that, he is doing an okay job and people should get off his back.
The really pathetic thing is that people like Elie and his cohorts make a living by attempting to publicly humiliate good people who have made honest and essentially inconsequential mistakes.
The declaration indicates that a number of the contracts marked "N" were not hidden, but were still produced. Don't think you can blame Microsoft here....
Is 11:36 pm even that late?
TTT
Elie is pure garbage. By far, the worst ATL has to offer.
Simpson would be making mistakes like this if they had any clients left to work for.
3, you cannot be a practicing lawyer. To you and other commenters shifting blame to Excel format, doc creator, etc: The 2nd year is PAID WELL to know what stuff is or is not there. Hidden cells are not one of the more "complicated" functions of Excel. Also, how is it that no one PROOFED or at least eyeball the contracts list prior to submission? No matter how small the font, 179 extra items takes up space. Correct to say that people make mistakes. Incorrect to say that it's not their fault.
Lastly, 91: With exception of last sentence of first paragraph, you're talking out your arse. So evident that you've never worked a large corporate deal.
Who cares. It's an easy fix. Shit happens all the time.
It sucks that you assholes at ATL decided to even make a post about this problem. As if the two associates don't feel bad enough already, now every loser that reads this board is taking pleasure in their misfortune.
NIIIIIGGGGGGGEEEEERRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
Part of the problem with BIGLAW is that you spend so much time worrying that the senior associate will reprimand you for misspelling a word or misplacing a comma that you have a lot less energy to spend on avoiding mistakes which actually matter.
wow. big fucking deal. it was a minor mistake. grasping for straws Elie? This site is shit
104,
Shouldn't there be more G's?
104, really?
104,
Seriously dude, it looks like you were trying to write "Niger," that funnily named African country. Epic fail.
104: GFY
104: GFY
3L here. I don't even understand what this mistake was. You'll all be reading about me doing this next year. See you then.
I'm a litigator- I use Excel for a number of things, including some word processing (several of my standard discovery forms for simple cases are in Excel, you only have to enter certain data once, such as case captions).
I'm not too up on what they were doing but it sounds like nothing more complex than "OMG this needs to be a PDF can you convert it to PDF b/c I'm too stupid to do so lol" and he takes it upon himself to diddle with formatting- EXPANDING OUT rows that had been pulled shut- and all of a sudden this stuff is out in the open. She should've looked at her spreadsheet, AND looked at his PDF, which she obviously didn't do because she put it on the website WITHIN ONE MINUTE OF RECEIVING IT.
No it's not a big deal. But it's hellaciously sloppy. I guess that's what you get when you make people work till midnight. Hopefully it won't cost their client too much money.
113 -- Do you use excel to get chicks?
First, you can't ever entrust something like this to support staff, especially the ones who get stuck on the night shift. To the word processing pool, "knowing Excel" means that they've heard of it and can maybe open an Excel document. Second, you can hardly ever trust that the client/consultant/whoever sent you something in printable form. I've worked with bona fide computer scientists who couldn't seem to understand that court exhibits have to be PRINTABLE on standard-sized paper. The associate almost always has to reformat the file. Third, while you'd think that multi-millionare partners would take the time to learn something that's apparently so crucial to their continued income, fact is most of them haven't mastered e-mail, let alone Excel. Whoever was supposed to be supervising had likely never heard of a "hidden column" and had no idea what was supposed to happen to the document before it was filed. The first- and second-years were on their own, and got blamed for the results. The court will fix it and the client won't suffer, but their bonuses and performance reviews will, and they'll have to deal with a thoroughly undeserved reputation within the firm that will affect their ability to get good work. Lawyers are such piss-poor managers I really don't know how they stay in business.
104 - Being anonymous isn't license to be a piece of shit. -36
114,
when I have to.
113
Not at Cleary, don't know these two from a hole in the wall. But anyone bashing them here is an ass, plain and simple.
We all fuck up sometime. All of us. If we're lucky, someone catches it before it goes out the door. If we're unlucky, it gets corrected by a motion.
I guarantee you this - they won't make that mistake again.
I think this is just another example of how the "training" in BigLaw sucks. Most of the seniors don't even know how to do what they are telling us first years to do.
Very strange, it seems like both associates involved were non-whites from those parts of the world where math and spreadsheets should be like second nature in kindiegarden? Cleary should focus more on the low budget races that would be better at this kind of shit, like Injuns and Chinois. I don't think an ITT grad would have made this mistake.
120, I think you meant "IIT"
Guys at my high school would make mistakes in Excel all the time. It was no big deal.
But when gentlemen at my legal preparatory fraternity sought to publicize the actions of the aforementioned secondary education students, they frequently revealed the shallow depth of their character and demonstrated their overall churlishness by disparaging acts that, but for the benevolence of Deity, they too could commit. Alas, it was also not a conspicuous event.
Then guys at my high school became editor-in-chief of Abovethelaw.com. The site went to shit, and it was kind of a big deal.
105: Very well-put. Also, if this document was so important that the firm had to file a 5+ page motion with the court to mend the error (or if they perceived that was necessary), a senior person should've been more closely involved. To pin the debacle on two very junior associates is pretty shitty - as is publicizing their names on this website.
115: Spot-on about the uselessness of partners when it comes to Excel, e-mail, etc. You're essentially expected to babysit for these people and foresee any and all potential pitfalls.
6: I went to BIGLAW from a lower-tiered law school and never felt that I owed the firm any more than my compatriots who went to NYU, etc. The job is shitty and boring for all of us, believe me.
So much for the soft job market for junior associates. I hear there are two new openings at Cleary these days.
Read the declarations, it's the Lehman guy's fault. He's the one that was sloppy.
This lame and boring post has been up for two days as the top story, yet not one post about Max Hardcore.
ATL, deader than the Mccain campaign.
Haven't read the whole comment thread, but I'm assuming we all acknowledge that the blame lands squarely on the head of the partner overseeing this matter, right? This has to indicate that no one who know which contracts should be included and which shouldn't checked the 1st year's work before it went out.
Pure partner or senior associate malpractice.
Publicizing the attorney's name confirms that this site has lost all its CLASS.
Mass layoffs at Cleary to be announced tomorrow.
Oh so amusing. I'm a partner is BigLaw and have to get back to my champaigne and caviar. Continue to waste you money, you will never be like me. And ClrearY Clearly fourth tier But who didn't know
Oh so amusing. I'm a partner is BigLaw and have to get back to my champaigne and caviar. Continue to waste you money, you will never be like me. And ClrearY Clearly fourth tier But who didn't know
I don't think you little bitch associates have any clue how long it takes to wax a Rolls Royce. I have been watching two of my finest go at it for hours. Clean the Goddanm car!
Who gives a shit about this guy's mistake? Everyone makes mistakes. This blog is a joke.
I don't care about the market because Costco's vegetarian burritos are tasty and inexpensive.
Hidden cells are not the same thing as a column set to not display because the width is set to be as narrow as possible.
Hidden cells are the reason for the problem here - and they are really a handy invention 99% of the time and a freaking nightmare the other 1% of the time because of problems like this.
As a bankruptcy lawyer who regularly deals with business/finance types who have little understanding of my world, and are constantly sending me supposedly "simple" charts, exhibits, etc., I am smart enough (and self-confident enough) always to ask, whenever I receive anything, is if there are any "tricks" to the document. I now know enough about Excel to ask about hidden columns, files, etc., but I was always smart enough to know I do not know much about Excel (and still don't) and I don't want to look silly, so I usually ask open-ended questions. Of course, that is why they should have had some level of supervision from someone with the experience to ask these questions. I do not expect a senior partner to have been sitting there at midnight (although I have seen that, particularly in bankruptcy cases), but it seems odd on a multi-billion dollar case that there was not at least a 5th or 6th year associate sticking his/her nose in there. Of course, the first year involved in this is a "second career" lawyer, so he may have lacked the self-confidence to ask such questions, although typically such experience should have imbued such confidence.
126 gets it - it is the responsibility of the guy who passes the doc along to alert the recipient to any deviations in formatting. A mistake, but it has happened to all of us.
I don't see the word "bankruptcy law" in either of these associate's bios. This was a set up to epic fail.
"Here Associate X, you know nothing about Y law but why dont we make you responsible for filing a chart that no one in the firm complied or reviewed and that has monetary consequences for the client. And oh, btw I'm too busy to check the final version but it looks fine to me from just browsing through the spreadsheet. The client has signed off. Just clean it up and make sure it fits on one page. Talk to you in AM and make sure you get all the rest of your shit done by 5 AM or so. 'Night and thanks for all your help! (sucker)"
Yeah, with training in bankruptcy law, this wouldn't have happened. Section 14 of the code covers it. Anyone who has even briefly studied the bankruptcy code wouldn't fall for the hidden cells mistake.
This would never happen to Cravath. A person who is Cravath Material knows never to go full retard. Damn, Cleary, you went full retard.
Excel is awesome. Corporate lawyers need to know it. Helps immensely to communicate with the client. Law firms should definitely provide Excel training to the attorneys and Word Processing.
Excel is awesome. Corporate lawyers need to know it. Helps immensely to communicate with the client. Law firms should definitely provide Excel training to the attorneys and Word Processing department
.
141 -- You make me sick.
I know this guy personally--he is a great guy, very sharp, very detailed oriented. This kind of thing could happen to any one of us.
I know this guy personally--he is a great guy, very sharp, very detailed oriented. This kind of thing could happen to any one of us.
136, these cells were not "hidden" they were simply minimized, and he lengthened them-- look at her affidavit--
"The rows containing information regarding such contracts had largely been minimized, or “hidden,” so that they were not visible when I opened and viewed the spreadsheet XXX had sent me on September 18. The hidden rows each contained “N,” for “No,” in Column Z, labeled “Critical.” . . . Based on conversations with [FIRST YEAR ASSOCIATE], I understand that when he reformatted the spreadsheet on September 18, he globally re-sized all rows to make the row size consistent and deleted certain columns, including the “Critical” column. On or about October 1, 2008, I determined, along with other Cleary Gottlieb colleagues, that the reformatting of the document had erroneously caused the hidden rows containing the contracts Barclays had not designated as Closing Date Contracts (and the other several contracts designated “N”) to appear in the reformatted spreadsheet and the PDF document that was posted to the Website without their accompanying “N” designations.
8. As a result of this error, the list of Closing Date Contracts that was posted to the Website on September 18 inadvertently contained approximately 179 contracts that Barclays did not designate as Closing Date Contracts, and that Barclays had in fact expressly designated not to be Closing Date Contracts."
So he just went through and resized these things before printing. Probably he thought someone minimized the rows by mistake.
She, for her part, didn't even look at the PDF, she just took it as he sent it and uploaded it immediately.
Maybe these two should've thought about just printing from Excel and SCANNING the damn document. It doesn't look as good but it helps avoid this problem, and others. I used to laugh at the firms that always uploaded their PDFs this way-- until I saw people at my firm make mistakes like this one.
I always get two pdf options when i print -- print to pdf and create pdf. I gather they used the latter and had this problem. Had they used the former the excel file would have printed as it would have on paper (i.e., with hidden items hidden) but in a digital format. Any techie care to confirm or pick this apart?
147 & 148 -
Once the document was reformatted, the formerly hidden columns would have appeared in the printed version (unless the user followed fairly complex procedures to "view" but not "print" hidden data - and anyone who knew how to do that would know to look for hidden columns in the first place.) Once reformatted to be visible, formerly hidden cells are not metadata and visually it would make no difference how the pdf document was produced.
Printing and then scanning, besides wasting paper, creates pdf files that are considerably bulkier than pdf files created electronically. Many courts limit the size of e-filed documents, and lengthy scanned documents can easily exceed that limit.
Every associate's nightmare
Sounds like Cleary has some fascinating work for its associates.
The "2nd year" isn't a second year, she's a third year associate. She was a lateral in 2006.
So this is what $400+ an hour gets you....
While I feel for the poor 1st year here (definitely seems like a rookie mistake), I'm very hard pressed to find any sympathy for the 2nd year associate or the partners who should have been supervising. I
f you read the 2nd year's declaration, the 2nd year didn't review the 1st year's work AT ALL. He sent her the spreadsheet and she posted it a minute later. If the 2nd year was able to delegate this kind of work, she should have known to supervise the work as well. Don't even get me started about the partners who should have been supervising this as well.
I doubt that Cleary will do this, but they should NOT be passing on any of the charges associated with this mistake to their client.
Agree with 154, this is basically the reason for supervision. Everyone can make mistakes and it almost always helps to have another pair of eyes review any final work product.
#1 hit the nail on the head. Yet another example of why first year associates should be paid what they deserve - very little.
The 2nd year received rthe e-mail with the pdf at 11:36pm and by 11:37 pm it was out the door again. That means she didn't proof the damned thing (or she did for something less than a minute). I thankfully no longer work at BIGLAW, but I can't tell you how many times a partner used ot tell me to take every single file I was planning to send out on email, print it out and proof it -- even if it was just a pdf conversion of a Word or Excel file. this is especially true with Excel files, because the conversion is sometimes glitchy. Proofing docs on your computer screen doesn't work because you often won't catch formatting issues.
So Ms. 2nd year f--ed up here, under the usual rules of BIGLAW. All of that said, this was a pretty extraordinary situation, so while a f---up, it's excuseable.
Given that apparently the posting of this document was the "final word" on which contracts Barclays wanted to acquire, some extra diligence on the part of the 1st and 2nd year attorneys was required. I know that in a deal, even when clients are screaming in my ear to send out the final version NOW DAMMIT, whenever the document being sent purports to have legal effect or is otherwise a final document, I proof the holy living hell out of it. Even if its 200 pages long.
Agreed that it should have been a corporate paralegal doing this. Why are lawyers from elite schools being billed out at hundreds of dollars an hour to screw around with an excel spreadsheet anyway?
151: Very funny. Honestly - writing the "I screwed up" declaration is probably the most substantive work they've ever done.
********************************************
THIS NEVER WOULD HAVE HAPPENED TO SOMEONE WHO ATTENDED THE UNIVERSITY OF PENN STATE
********************************************
161, I worked at Cleary and I can tell you that's unfortunately true...Juniors and midlevels there become experts in qcing documents and reviewing for privilege and managing discovery requests, but don't get to write all that much, other than interview memos or document chronologies, which isn't exactly persuasive writing.
Here honey, have some lube.
For those commenting upthread about the 2d year associate having a funny name: it's Hungarian. And if you've never met any Hungarian women . . . well, I'm sorry for you.
So just before midnight, no one actually reviewed a first year's work...how do big firms get away with this type of behavior and billing the amounts they do for it?? She forwarded a document from a first year, without even glancing at it. There should have been at least a midlevel, if not a senior associate, whose job it was to look over the spreadsheet before sending it on.
Guys in my high school reformatted Excel sheets all the time...was no biggie.
I agree that the 2nd year is at fault for not looking at the 1st year's work at all if for no other purpose than just for a second pair of eyes since there really isn't THAT big of a difference between a first year and a second year in terms of skills, just that a 2nd will be more likely to catch something having been doing this for a year. However, the blame DEFINITELY lies with the partners. There has to be some supervision especially on a deal of this magnitude. Partners can't just wash their hands and pin things on a junior. Everything should be reviewed up the chain, always!
167 = University of Penn State Alum
The 2nd year's last name means "fox" in Hungarian. Very fitting.
Totally feel bad for the associates, not their fault at all. I once had a similar instance where the client sent us a list of transactions in a spreadsheet. They asked that I "scrub" the metadata and circulate to all parties. They never told me there were hidden columns in the document, but when I ran the metadata program, it unhid all rows and columns. The client was pissed at me, but then realized it was their fault since there was no way I could have known there were hidden columns on such a large document and they had told me it was ready for circulation. My point is, they've been on the job for less than a month, this could have happened to anyone.
I think its Barclays fault, they sent a spreadsheet with 'hidden' text of contracts they didnt want--but said it was a list of contracts they did want.
Only losers are still working at 11:30pm
I don't know that I buy the "could have happened to anyone argument" - why should a client spend $400 an hour on a 25 year old from a T10 school at a V10 firm if he's going to make the same mistakes "anyone" with a TTT law degree working at a 20 person firm billing at $125 an hour is? Isn't the client paying a "premium" for that T10/V10 associate to not make mistakes?
Where's the partner's declaration saying, "I just assumed that my first and second year associates would be able to pull off this deal, so I neglected to supervise them."?
yeah, but nobody's perfect.
175: So true.
174 - no, they're paying a premium for supposedly higher quality legal work (not higher quality clerical work).
'Cause, you know, they don't teach more excel at t10 schools than they do at bottom 10
Why would unintended contracts have simply been hidden, as opposed to deleted from the file in the first place? To be fair, I work in finance so I'm much more familiar with Excel, but I'd NEVER just "hide" something (pretty much for this exact reason) - even if it was going to people on my side of the deal.
MATT DAMON!
He was probably wearing a crew neck t shirt underneath his expensive (but thin/translucent) collared shirt, got too warm and sleepy, and then petered out at 11:30, thus resulting in his error in not checking for the secret coded contracts. The real culprit, therefore, was the t shirt.
Partners do nothing but kiss client ass. Most of the time they never even read document, just ask associate if they got everything in doc [??] Partner is only person who's ass should have been on the line and taken the fire, not first and second year associates. They should never have been "outed" "blamed" or anything else. When mistake discovered, the partners on matter should have said we screwed up and made it right -- never involving associates under their supervision. They should protect their employees. Bad move by Cleary... selling out associates. SUMMER ASSOCIATES MAKE NOTE.
@182 Go F yourself. You should have the guts to stand by your work. If you can't do that, then hit bricks. This economy is in rough enough shape with pikers like you making excuses for Esther and Mario. Any moron knows there are hidden rows in Excel. If I was the partner, I would have lined them up told them to drop trou and then horsewhipped their asses. I would not tolerate this level of incompetence.
182, how did Cleary sell out its associates? Do you have any clue about motion practice, much less in context of bankruptcy? Affs are required and generally from those with personal/actual knowledge (here, the 2 junior associates). Think that partner in charge of deal can submit aff re: something he/she never saw? Imagine that partner took plenty of fire from the client and probably the associates from the partner (and rightfully so, given the pecking order). However, bankruptcy court is another matter entirely.
Partners should not throw associates under the bus publicly. I realize it was required here because they had to go in on a motion, which must be supported by a valid affidavit. But, in general, it is poor form to blame subordinates.
183--not a partner!
182--184 is right in this instance. Cleary is stand up place that had to correct mistake which required full "confession" of who/what/when happened
184, but even in bankruptcy court shouldn't a partner be looking over the work of people who are barely out of law school?
The fact that the partner didn't have to write an affidavit caught that partner red-handed that they are not (1) properly supervising junior associates work or (2) properly staffing a matter and having a senior associate or counsel review their work.
Once again, the "2nd year" associate really was a 3rd year/rising-4th year associate.
Both associates must be hating the fact that ATL took the day off today, keeping their f-up in play all day today.
If that's true than that rising 4th year associate has no excuse for not even spending a minute glancing over what she was passing on from a first year.
For those of you defending the partner saying it's not his business to submit a decl., ur full of shit. Cleary is trying to fix this fuck-up by appealing to "mistake OR excusable neglect." The partner here is plainly trying to pin it on "mistake" only to minimize his embarrassment over appealing to "excusable neglect."
If I was the court, I'd deny it, finding that the 1st and 2nd year associates didn't make a "mistake" -- they did exactly what they intended to do, which is not a mistake. My last line would invite a motion based on excusable neglect.
SO FUCKING ORDERED.
All right...boring!!! Columbus Day = no ATL...COME ON!
I am working until very late and expect some sort of post. Throw something together for those still working all hours of the night!!!
The real stupdity here is that instead of deleting the lines with contracts not to be submitted, somebody decided to hide the lines instead. Hiding lines in this context makes no sense.
If, for whatever reason, someone doesn't want to delete the lines of contracts not to be produced, then that someone should move them to another table in the sheet or somehow mark them "to be deleted."
What's a "rising" 4th year (or any year) associate? When did they start yeasting (instead of roasting) associates?
Oh yeah, good thing for all that 190 is NOT "the court" and just a silly DB.
194: Suck it.
Love,
190
I don't want to name any names (which would be in poor taste), but the attorney listed just after the "2nd year" on the Cleary bio page is even hotter than the "2nd year" in question. Damn!
"I am associated with the law firm of Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP (“Cleary Gottlieb”), counsel to Barclays Capital Inc. (“Barclays”) with respect to the purchase of certain assets of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. (“Lehman”)."
Wow, it's great that they provided all those defined terms. Without them, I wouldn't know what "Cleary Gottlieb," "Lehman," or "Barclays" referred to in the rest of the document.
%!#%#! lawyers are such bad writers.
I wonder if the 1st and 2nd year just didn't know that the contracts marked "N" were supposed to come out.
The declaration says that while some were hidden, others were not, but those were still missed.
196: the hyphenated spiky hair one? if so, you may need an eye exam.
The guys complaining about associate salaries are funny. It is either some ambulance chaser with penis envy, or a GC bitter that they didn't make partner.
Highly qualified people screw up sometimes. If a room full of Marty Lipton's clones ran enough deals, they would bungle something. So, if some GC wants to use this as an excuse to hire Jacoby & Meyers to run their deals, that is Ok with me. Whatever my firm loses from not working on that deal will be made back ten fold when that GC's replacement comes busting into my office because the SEC is about to shut down the company, the DOJ wants to indict the board, and the IRS is auctioning off the CEO's wife.
190 will never be a judge.
200: Love your IRS clause!
will bill gates foot part of the malpractice bill?
I'm reading the affidavits and it really seems like the Lehman guy is the one who screwed up by emailing a list of contracts which he claimed should be included, but which included hidden data.
Why is someone that went to lawschool converting excel spreadsheets into pdf format. Don't they have secretaries there? Oh, that's right, you can't bill secretaries time. (That would be of very little concern to me if my tax dollars were not on some level going to be paying for this BS.)
I do not work in biglaw, but my clients would not pay a bill which included associate time for converting spreadsheet into pdf.
Then again, my clients are not getting bailed out.
Would someone with knowledge of how these things work please explain the fallout. Barclay's motion seems reasonable to me. Will the other side even oppose? These young attorneys don't deserve this sh!t, esp. if this is easily corrected. If this is the only thing that went wrong, I'd say Cleary did very well.
200= overblown sense of self-worth. (although I liked the comment about the IRS and wife).
I wonder if they had to file the document at midnight and thus didn't have time to do a line by line check of the entire schedule. A spot check may have been done, but if there were 179 additional entires out of 1000 (or more), you wouldn't necessarily notice that.
Mistakes like this happen, and some of you are being assholes for no reason. After working on many deals with little to no sleep, I'm surprised there aren't MORE mistakes like this.
I'm constantly shocked and annoyed with how seriously some law students and lawyers take themselves, based on their school, grades, firm, etc. If the sole measure of how "great" or "cool" you are is based on where you went to law school or whether you are at a BIGLAW firm, then I feel sorry for you.
208 - 179 add'l plans out of 1000 is pretty f-in significant.
209 - sorry you couldn't get into a top tier school or law firm. you should try harder. no, take a two week vacation, then quit.
also, generally speaking, 11:30 is not particularly late. grow a pair.
what exactly does "biglaw" mean? Is it like a firm that is big, or a saying? I'm confused
-nervous T-10 1L
197: There are different standards for legal writing and blog-comment-writing. Of course I know that when you write "Lehman" you mean "The company with Dick Fuld and the investment bank and all of that", but there's actually a substantive legal difference between Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and Lehman Brothers Inc. When a lawyer intends to use the short form "Lehman" (a good writing technique to reduce repetition of unnecessary words) his or her audience has to know to which entity the term refers. This sort of distinction is particularly important in the case of, oh, I don't know - a bankruptcy filing of the parent company that coincides with the sale of some of the subsidiaries? I hope that you never have to write a bankruptcy filing for a corporation; you might wind up throwing your BMW and the CEO's personal jet into the deal by mistake.
All you idiots going on and on about how the senior partner should have reviewed the Excel files obviously have never worked in a large law firm. They have other things to do, usually tasks related to negotiating strategy or the purchase agreement or other issues. Maybe the associates made a stupid mistake (My view is that it's 70% the Lehman guy's fault, 25% the fault of the structure and timing of the transaction and about 5% the associates' fault), but it's ludicrous to suggest that more senior people have time to review stuff like this in a transaction like this and that they should have caught it. You reveal yourselves as wannabes and hangerson who don't really know how things actually work.
I blame the client. They should never have emailed such a large spreadsheet without warnings to the firm that it contained hidden cells that must be maintained. In fact, the client should have stripped that information out before the spreadsheet was ever sent to the law firm. Next, I blame the partners. What on earth were they thinking having 1st and 2nd year associates anywhere near a $5 billion deal. Even after that, where was the partner oversight of such junior associates?
214, are you even a lawyer? Pls don't be offended. It's just that your comments reveal lack of understanding of NYC biglaw practice. First, clients are clients and sometimes it's our job, as counsel, to protect them from themselves and not blindly accept whatever they give or say to us. Sure, Clearly lawyers were under the gun - but what do you think things were like for the Barclays people working the deal?
Second, dollar figure attached to a deal is not necessarily indicative of difficulty of particular deal and plenty of jrs get brought in on large deals to support more sr attorneys. $5b not the "wow" that it was several years ago.
yeah, i know - typo re: cleary... it's friday
This is ridiculous. Barclays sent the documentation to Cleary Gottlieb and should have sent a clean copy. The hidden data should not have been sent and it was inherently obvious that the N designation was unclear under the circustances and predictably a source of trouble. Just as lawyers should be able to rely on the accuracy of the accounting numbers, so too should they be able to rely on the accuracy of the spreadsheet being sent by a client as representing what it is the client wants to acquire in a transaction.
_____From the court::
Barclays had in fact marked approximately 173 of these contracts as “hidden” on the original Excel spreadsheet sent to counsel, so that they would not appear on the list of Closing Date Contracts when it was posted. Farkas Decl. ¶ 6, Exs. A, D.
4
These hidden rows contained contracts that Barclays had chosen not to designate as Closing Date Contracts, as evidenced by the “N” for “No” appearing in Column Z of the spreadsheet, labeled “Critical.” Id. ¶ 6, Ex. D.2 In addition to the approximately 173 hidden rows that contained “N” in the critical column, there were several additional rows designated “N” that had not been hidden. The “N” designation shows that, just as with the hidden rows, Barclays had not designated these contracts as Closing Date Contracts, but had expressly chosen not to so designate them. Upon investigation on October 1, 2008, counsel discovered that the reformatting of the Excel spreadsheet before converting it into a PDF document for posting (including the deletion of the column containing the “N” designation) had erroneously caused the hidden rows on the Excel spreadsheet to reappear, and to do so without the “N” designation. Farkas Decl. ¶ 7. Because of this mistake, the posted schedule included approximately 179 contracts that Barclays had not designated as Closing Date Contracts. Id. ¶ 8, Ex. C
This is ridiculous. Barclays sent the documentation to Cleary Gottlieb and should have sent a clean copy. The hidden data should not have been sent and it was inherently obvious that the N designation was unclear under the circustances and predictably a source of trouble. Just as lawyers should be able to rely on the accuracy of the accounting numbers, so too should they be able to rely on the accuracy of the spreadsheet being sent by a client as representing what it is the client wants to acquire in a transaction.
_____From the court::
Barclays had in fact marked approximately 173 of these contracts as “hidden” on the original Excel spreadsheet sent to counsel, so that they would not appear on the list of Closing Date Contracts when it was posted. Farkas Decl. ¶ 6, Exs. A, D.
4
These hidden rows contained contracts that Barclays had chosen not to designate as Closing Date Contracts, as evidenced by the “N” for “No” appearing in Column Z of the spreadsheet, labeled “Critical.” Id. ¶ 6, Ex. D.2 In addition to the approximately 173 hidden rows that contained “N” in the critical column, there were several additional rows designated “N” that had not been hidden. The “N” designation shows that, just as with the hidden rows, Barclays had not designated these contracts as Closing Date Contracts, but had expressly chosen not to so designate them. Upon investigation on October 1, 2008, counsel discovered that the reformatting of the Excel spreadsheet before converting it into a PDF document for posting (including the deletion of the column containing the “N” designation) had erroneously caused the hidden rows on the Excel spreadsheet to reappear, and to do so without the “N” designation. Farkas Decl. ¶ 7. Because of this mistake, the posted schedule included approximately 179 contracts that Barclays had not designated as Closing Date Contracts. Id. ¶ 8, Ex. C
Funny, no affidavits by any of the partners ....
Anonymous posting really does supercharge the freedom of free speech, don't it? And most of these "guests" are regulars here who love ragging everyone else, but don't have the guts to identify themselves. Why bother to post or read all this drivel? I'm outta here!
I believe the judgment was due for Nov 15 but I had heard no news of it.
Any update?
15, good call... id hit that shit hard!