TheCorporateCounsel.net

Here’s the third “list” installment from Nina Flax of Mayer Brown (here’s the last one):

1. Email – With three subparts to this item on my list:

a. I enjoy being in a client service industry (and have been since high school, when I worked in a clothing store during my free time, and through college, when I worked at a shoe store in the Durham mall). Getting emails from my clients lets me provide that service – and I feel accomplished when I am able to respond promptly. Also, the emails are like never ending text chats with friends.

b. I can put voices and tones to the communications, understand the questions beneath the questions, anticipate issues based on the communications, update my task lists, etc. They allow me to hone and improve the service I am providing.

c. Email can be so efficient. Which is not a knock against calls or meetings at all, but if you can accomplish communicating a point/resolving an issue quickly through email, it feels like such a separate accomplishment (in addition to just the back & forth/accomplishment of responding from point “a”).

2. Travel – Despite my desire to not be away from my son, it is always exciting to be face-to-face, to present at seminars, to socialize with clients. I love interacting with people – particularly in person. In writing this post, I quickly took an online personality test. It scored me as having a slight preference for extraversion over introversion!

My husband knows that sometimes I come home at the end of long days of calls and want nothing more than to not talk, but I also frequently call him or my parents from the car on my drive to or from work too… Actually, I am always on a phone call when driving. I’m going to say it is also efficient in addition to satisfying my extraversion.

3. Practice Breadth – I get to do so many different things touching so many different industries and jurisdictions and interacting with so many different people. Despite being a partner, I am constantly learning on the job. I do not have any projects that are the same. I do not have two clients that are the same. I do not have any days that are the same. Everything is always different! I love the diversity in private practice.

4. There Is No Break; It Never Ends – Translation: I never get bored! I wholeheartedly disagree with Karl Lagerfeld – I don’t think that work is making a living out of being bored. I’m on “Team Voltaire”: All kinds of jobs are good except the kind that bores you. Or “Team Metallica”: Boredom comes from a boring mind. Or “Team Carlyle”: I’ve got a great ambition to die of exhaustion rather than boredom. Or “Team Chung”: I’m terrified of being bored and not learning. (Side note: I hate the word “bored,” particularly in children’s books.) There is always something to do, even right after a deal closes. There is always something to learn, because the law or the industry changes.

These are my Yangs to my Yins! I truly believe there are pros and cons to everything. But right now there are only pros to eating Oreos for me.

SEC’s OM&A: Walk Down Memory Lane

Mauri Osheroff – who until a few years ago was Corp Fin’s Associate Director who oversaw the Office of Mergers & Acquisitions – was reading the transcript of our DealLawyers.com webcast with the Chiefs of OM&A from the past three decades. Mauri noted that the original office was called “Tender Offers and Small Issues” – they processed tender offers and Reg A offerings. Go figure. We don’t know when Reg A offerings dropped out of the picture.

The Office Chief back then was the legendary Ruth Appleton. Here’s Ruth’s obit, which details her SEC career and the obstacles she faced as a professional woman…

Poll: CEOs Have Too Much Time on Their Hands?

I recently got this astute note from a member: “There never seems a month that goes by that I don’t a survey be published relating to ‘what directors think’ or ‘what CEOs think.’ Who is completing these surveys – do they have time on their hands, do they get cash for completing, etc?”

Here’s an anonymous poll for you to weigh in on this:

– Broc Romanek