Utah Bar Journal

I am a traitor to my own profession. I’ve gone native. I am Colonel Kurtz and the Jordan River is my Congo. I love the smell of Compliance Committee meetings in the morning.

Over the years I’ve recruited others. And it’s time to do it again.

I’ve always enjoyed interviewing and hiring. I got over the guilt of talking bright, shiny young lawyers into a big mistake a long time ago. They all read Faust as undergrads, and they decided to go to law school anyway, so I figure my hands are pretty clean. I mean, it’s not something really evil, like selling mortgage-backed securities. I’d never do that. Unless you want to say my home loan was actually a security I sold to my bank, but I think that’s a stretch, even for the Utah Court of Appeals. And if you’re going to go down that path, my obligations under that divorce decree are probably securities, too. There’s an idea…all the ex-spouses of the world get together, pool their alimony and child support obligations, and sell the securitized payment streams to pension funds. If any nervous Nellie fund managers get scared, I’m sure they could buy a swap from AIG to cover the risk (they could call it ex-wife swapping). I’m surprised nobody’s thought of it before.

Where was I? That’s right – hiring (got to stay on-message, stick to the talking points, re-fill the Ritalin prescription before Dan’s closes).

So we call the headhunter and 72 hours later I’m looking at 114 resumes. And here’s the head-scratcher: why would 114 otherwise intelligent people be so eager to devote their lives, or at least a few slow, under-compensated years of their lives, to the daily legal misadventures of a pesticides company? Maybe it works better as a multiple choice question.

a. a lifelong dream to rid the world of creepy crawly things, amp up crop yields, and alleviate the human drudgery of weeding;

b. the irresistible power and celebrity;

c. law firm life has fewer giggles and yucks than you’d expect;1

d. part of a cunning plan to infiltrate and overthrow corporate America;2 or

e. ask a lemming.

“Why are you leaving your old job?” The question startles some people, as if there were something unfair about it. But if someone’s trying to sell me a used Buick, I always ask why it’s for sale. It’s usually pretty easy to figure out who’s telling the truth – and they never get the job. “Well, where I work now they’re looking for a new general counsel, and it’s pretty clear they aren’t even going to interview me.” I didn’t ask the obvious follow-up because it doesn’t really matter, does it? Whether it was how he embarrassed himself at the Project Toadstool negotiations or at the Christmas party, if he can’t come up with a better answer than that, there is no hope.

I stare at those fresh faces – full of confidence and anxiety – and I get nostalgic…or neuralgic, I get them confused.

I can’t help but reflect on my own experiences as an interviewee. It was only a summer clerkship, but I think it still counts. My landlord, who I will call Fred, worked in the print shop at the world headquarters of the John Birch Society – back in the good old days when they still used people to operate presses. Before the liberal media (not to mention the international banking conspiracy and the Bilderberg Group) made everybody go electronic. He knew the general counsel, who I will call Harry, and told me he could arrange an interview. I accepted because I was curious, and because I didn’t want Fred, or Harry, to think I was some bomb-tossing pinko.

I showed up on the appointed day, and was surprised to find the world headquarters so poorly secured. Why, anyone could have just walked in there and fluoridated the place. Harry was kind enough to give me a tour (and this is the thanks he gets…). I met people and made small talk. “So, why do you work for the JBS?” “Because contrary to what the Libs think, we can’t all be on welfare.” I met the movie reviewer. Yes, the John Birch Society had a movie reviewer. He liked Patton. Harry led me to Robert Welch’s office and told me he thought he could get Mr. Welch3 to spend a few minutes with us. While I waited in the hall, Harry ducked into Mr. Welch’s office. He slipped back out quietly and apologized that Mr. Welch was taking a nap and would not be able to see us. I recall saying “the price of freedom is eternal vigilance,” but no one seemed to think that was very clever.

We went back to Harry’s office and talked about legal stuff. I remember bringing up Gertz v. Welch, since we’d just read it in Constitutional Law (although I no longer have the faintest idea what it was about…the constitution, as I recall). I remember Harry dismissing the case with a casual “We were clearly without malice.” I pointed out the irony of the antichrist William O. Douglas authoring an opinion favorable to the JBS, to which Harry responded with an ambiguous “hmm.”

I actually considered accepting. A summer at the John Birch Society was bound to be interesting. On the other hand, how would I explain it on a resume to anyone I really did want to work for? In the end it didn’t matter – I didn’t get an offer.

And speaking of offers, by the time you read this, I will have sent 113 polite decline letters, and made one person surprisingly happy. The horror! The horror!

1. To be fair, although the giggles are scarce, there is a fair amount of yuck.

2. My first year Property professor announced this as his personal and sincere hope for each of us – just before we learned the rule against perpetuities by reciting it out loud repeatedly as a class. I sense your skepticism, but it worked much better than the Socratic Method. I remember it like it was yesterday, “No interest is good unless it must vest, if at all, no later than 21 years of the expropriation of surplus capital by the bourgeoisie.” Professor K will go down in history as one of the pioneers of the Dogmatic Method.

3. For those readers whose minds have been anesthetized by lifelong exposure to New World Order propaganda and who therefore have never heard of Robert Welch, Mr. Welch was the founder of the John Birch Society. He attended the U.S. Naval Academy and Harvard Law School, but dropped out of both because of their liberal political leanings. He went into the candy business instead, and is generally credited with inventing the Sugar Daddy, Sugar Babies, Junior Mints, and Pom Poms. He retired and founded the JBS. A keen judge of character, he once denounced Dwight Eisenhower as a “conscious, dedicated agent of the communist conspiracy.” (I found that quote in Wikipedia – I never heard him say it, and I don’t want anyone to think I’m maliciously defaming the man…you never know who might be listening.) Robert Welch passed away in 1985, which gives you some idea of how old I am.