Public Service Announcement: As a lawyer, or an aspiring lawyer, please do not discuss your clients or the partners you work for in public. Especially if you have an issue with the concept of “inside voices” (see, e.g., editors Elie/JoePa).
There is a long and storied history on this very website of folks getting called out for talking loudly and publicly about private matters. There was “Acela Bob,” the Pillsbury partner that revealed forthcoming layoffs by being chatty on a train. Then UVA law students trashed a Biglaw hiring partner, by name, in LaGuardia airport.
Now seems as good a time as any to remind our readers that if you find yourself in proximity with someone who failed to heed this warning, feel free to send us a tip about it. You can use this form or email us at [email protected] or send an SMS/text message to (646) 820-8477. As always, we’ll keep your name strictly confidential.
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Which brings us to our current tale. On the Ask a Manager website, a sort of business etiquette version of Dear Abby, one London reader found himself on a train with lawyers that couldn’t keep quiet.
Halfway down the carriage from me were three young lawyers, who talked for 45 minutes in very posh voices about problems in their company, with their cases and so on – especially about how much they disliked one of the company partners in particular, with enough information that despite trying to just get on reading my book, I knew if I typed three words into google I could find them all. They were beyond indiscreet, and being so in a really stupid public place as the train ended in my city and in this carriage at this time, everyone in it lives, works or both in the city.
Indiscreet indeed. Beside the very real possibility that as a lawyer you may be violating your ethical obligation by discussing client matters in this fashion, it is just rude. No one wants to hear you bitch.
But these lawyers really took it up a notch.
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The people down my end of the carriage were rolling our eyes at each other every now and then and grinning at especially loud/egregious parts (“I’m nothing if not a team player”, screeched the one who had been especially indiscreet and rude about the management), but when a guy nearer them asked them if they could keep their voices down a bit, they spent the next hour coming back to lambasting him, and talking about how everyone around them was boring, etc. and being even more obnoxious, just, it seemed, to prove the point they could be.
So they are bullies, too. Awesome. Spoiler alert: these lawyer bros totally get their comeuppance, and it is so worth it.
So, next day, I typed my three words into Google, found this partner’s details immediately, and rang up and spoke to her secretary about overhearing them giving away enough information about the company and clients that I thought the partner needed to know this was how her staff were representing them. The secretary was pretty horrified, said that there’d been drinks at the main London office that day, and that she’d definitely alert the partner.
The advice seeker wants to know if he did the right thing by tattling on these obnoxious lawyers to the partner, as his circle of friends is split on the issue. I say this was 100 percent the right move. People only learn lessons when there are natural and logical consequences to their actions. This seems to fit the bill perfectly.
Maybe they’ll figure out they need to ease up on the whole “being a douchebag” thing — lawyers get a bad enough rap as it is.
was I right to call the employer of some obnoxious, trash-talking jerks on my train? [Ask a Manager]
Earlier: Students Making Fun of Biglaw Interviewer Overheard By MOST OF THE AIRPORT
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to New York (Or: Pillsbury associates, brace yourselves.)