Biglaw, Nauseating Things

Which DLA Piper Office Operated Under Third-World Conditions?

You know how people make jokes about DLA Piper having offices in all sorts of random places and Third World countries -- er, developing nations? Well, if you like those jokes, you are going to love this story. At one DLA Piper office, they ran out of running water. No water to wash your hands, no water to flush the toilets. But the associates still had to show up for work. Can you guess which office?

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You know how people make jokes about DLA Piper having offices in all sorts of random places and Third World countries — er, developing nations? Well, if you like those jokes, you are going to love this story.

At one DLA Piper office, they ran out of running water. No water to wash your hands, no water to flush the toilets.

But the associates still had to show up for work. Can you guess which office?

We’re talking about the Baltimore office of DLA Piper.

If you walk with Piper
It’s gonna pay your bills
But you can’t flush the devil
Way down in the hole.

Our tipsters tell us that on Monday, a water pipe broke, depriving DLA Piper’s Baltimore office of running water. But the associates were told to come into work anyway. Instead of running water, DLA Piper provided Porta-Potties.

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Yes, you can call DLA Piper – Baltimore practitioners of portable toilet law. A tipster puts it this way:

[W]ater out at the DLA Piper office. No toilets, no drinking water, no coffee. Close the office, right? Wrong. Lee Miller, assistant douche, insists that no offices close for any reason. Lots of whining, no leaders show up, but come Monday the office is open, and porta-potties are delivered late in the morning.

Lee Miller is the Joint Chief Executive Officer of DLA Piper. We reached out to the firm, but DLA Piper declined to comment for this story.

Here’s the thing: if you are going to make arguably “Biglaw,” arguably “white-shoe” attorneys work in conditions more suitable to Lawyers Without Borders, it’s got to be a team effort. If the firm leaders aren’t going to show up, the associates are going to feel like they’re working for the worst organization on the planet. The first rule of leadership is that you don’t ask your troops to do anything that you yourself would not be willing to do. Instead, DLA Piper made those associates feel like the five walk-on players Roy Williams shamelessly left on the court after a North Carolina loss while he ran away.

And in this day and age, why can’t associates “remote in” for a day? Why can’t the firm let its people use their own toilets when the firm cannot supply adequate plumbing?

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Man, if these are the conditions in DLA’s Baltimore office, can you imagine how things are at DLA Guadalajara?

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