Your weekly dose of legal absurdity, courtroom chaos, and mandatory fun, now with extra billable hours. Let's get into it. ⚖️😂
Hold onto your TimeSolv logins, fellow legal peasants, because BigLaw just got BIGGER and more soulless! McDermott Will & Emery and Schulte Roth & Zabel are in merger talks that would create a $2.8 billion revenue behemoth with 1,700+ lawyers. That's enough attorneys to staff a small country's worth of document reviews!
The math is simple: McDermott's $2.2B + Schulte's $618M = One Giant Legal Death Star potentially cracking the AmLaw 100's top 15. Because apparently, being in the top 50 just doesn't stroke the ego quite enough anymore.
The Real Reasons Behind the Madness:
This merger would create "one of Manhattan's largest office presences," which in BigLaw speak means "we're going to need ALL the conference rooms for our zoom calls." Nothing says "efficient legal practice" like paying Manhattan commercial real estate prices for lawyers who work from home three days a week.
Industry observers are calling this "one of the most strategic and high-performing legal combinations in the industry's history." Translation: "We need to justify our consulting fees with superlatives that would make a used car salesman blush."
Strategic? Sure, if your strategy is "get bigger and hope nobody notices we still can't figure out legal project management."
This follows the Allen & Overy/Shearman Sterling merger, because apparently legal industry consolidation is more contagious than a summer associate's enthusiasm. Soon we'll have five mega-firms handling all corporate work while the rest of us fight over traffic tickets and landlord-tenant disputes.
For Associates: More layers of bureaucracy between you and any meaningful work. Enjoy explaining your practice area to 47 different managing partners!
For Clients: Congratulations! Your legal bills just got more expensive because "synergies" somehow never translate to cost savings.
For Competitors: Time to start your own merger discussions or prepare to become the "boutique alternative" (aka the legal industry's participation trophy).
For Legal Recruits: Good luck figuring out which office you're supposed to report to and which email system to use.
In a world where law firms are getting bigger than some countries' GDPs, remember: it's not about practicing law anymore, it's about practicing business with a law degree. The only thing consolidating faster than BigLaw firms is the number of lawyers who actually remember why they went to law school in the first place.
Stay tuned for next week's issue, where we'll explore how AI is replacing junior associates faster than you can say "document review."
Legal LOLz: Making the legal industry's dysfunction slightly more bearable since never.
Welcome to our Monthly Celebrity Roast where legal meets lethal (but in a fun, defamation-free way). Legal LOLz readers have spoken, and Spencer Sheehan, the "Vanilla Vigilante" who's turned grocery shopping into a legal battlefield, is getting roasted harder than a Pop-Tart in a broken toaster.
Brace for a roast so brutal it'll leave you wheezing harder than Sheehan explaining why strawberry Pop-Tarts are consumer fraud.
🔥 The Grocery Store Grim Reaper: Spencer Sheehan walks through supermarkets like a legal terminator. Vanilla extract? LAWSUIT! Strawberry Pop-Tarts? LAWSUIT! Coffee with potassium? You guessed it: LAWSUIT! He's filed 500+ cases and won about as many as the number of real vanilla beans in artificial vanilla flavoring.
🔥 The Sanctions Superstar: Sheehan's been sanctioned at least six times since March 2022, making him the legal equivalent of a frequent flyer program, except instead of earning miles, he's earning judicial contempt. One judge found he "engaged in a concerted effort to defraud courts." That's not a legal strategy, that's a cry for help!
🔥 The Copy-Paste Crusader: Why draft new complaints when you can just find-and-replace product names? Sheehan's lawsuits are so formulaic, ChatGPT probably trained on them. His legal briefs have more recycled content than a middle school book report on Wikipedia.
🔥 The $180K Comeback Kid: After getting slammed with sanctions and owing Big Lots $180,000 in attorney fees, most lawyers would reconsider their life choices. Not our Spencer! He's like the legal Energizer Bunny: he keeps going and going... straight into more sanctions.
🔥 The Vanilla Whisperer: Sheehan filed over 120 lawsuits specifically about vanilla products. That's not legal advocacy, that's a fetish with a bar license. Somewhere, there's a vanilla bean farmer wondering if he created a monster.
🔥 The Judge Whisperer (But They're Not Listening): Federal judges have called his cases "patently implausible," "unreasonable and unactionable," and suggested he "can't seem to read the tea leaves from the judiciary." One judge literally said his losing streak "should tell you something." Spoiler alert: It didn't.
🔥 The Geographic Genius: When courts dismiss his cases, Sheehan just files the same lawsuit in a different state! It's like legal whack-a-mole, except the mole keeps popping up with identical complaints about breakfast cereals and coffee labels.
🔥 The Consumer Protection Prophet: Sheehan truly believes American consumers are being deceived by... checks notes... the fact that strawberry Pop-Tarts contain pear and apple flavoring. Because apparently, we live in a world where people expect their processed breakfast pastries to contain actual fruit. Revolutionary!
🚨 Final Verdict: Sheehan's legal crusade has turned him into the most sanctioned lawyer since someone tried to argue that pineapple belongs on pizza in federal court. This grocery store gladiator's next move? Probably suing the roast industry for calling this a "roast" when no actual meat was involved. Stay tuned for the class action!
Disclaimer: No vanilla beans were harmed in this roast, though several judges' patience was. All zingers are satirical (unlike his 500+ lawsuits). Spencer, if you're reading this, please don't sue us over our use of the word "roast."
Seen on X:
Law firm announcement: "After 147 years, we're rebranding. We're dropping the ampersand."
Seen on Reddit /r/LawFirmLife:
Q: Can I bill for stress caused by my own email?
A: Only if you CC yourself.
Seen in real life:
Partner: "Let's circle back."
Associate: "We've circled so much I think we're forming precedent."
Objection? Hit reply and argue your case!
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P.S. This newsletter is 100% billable if you read it on the clock. Just saying.