I am very much a member of the target audience of Billions, the Showtime drama about the intersection of law and finance in New York. As a corporate lawyer with the professional background to decipher at least some of the dense jargon, I sometimes have to suspend disbelief at the plot twists, including a U.S. Attorney who doesn’t recuse himself from a criminal investigation of a hedge fund that employs his wife, as well as a coordinated FBI mass arrest of politicians at a funeral service.
Pushing Back Against the SEC on Finders Rules
As I’ve blogged about in the past, the SEC in recent years has taken a relatively strict position against payments to “finders” who are not registered broker-dealers, as compensation for introducing investors to companies. The SEC’s focus has primarily been on “transaction-based compensation,” i.e., payment to the finder that is contingent on investment by the introduced investor, which according to the SEC is a hallmark of broker-like activity that requires registration.
Early Payment Discounts for Law Firms
So, the good news for the law firm of Andrew Abramowitz, PLLC is that business has increased steadily over the past few years. The bad news is that there has been somewhat of a greater tendency among clients to be slow in paying invoices. There is a hassle factor associated with this, as it requires frequent follow-up, but the real issue, as anyone who runs a small business will know, is that lumpy income creates financial challenges. My firm has regular expenses that can’t be contingent on the timing of my clients’ payments, and the owner of the firm (yours truly) has personal expenses that are equally not capable of being deferred while I wait for payment. (All of this sounds very self-pitying, but I’ll get to the point soon. I’ve been very fortunate in life and cannot complain.)
At-the-Market (ATM) Offerings
Bloomberg Law’s Corporate Transactions Blog recently posted an item entitled “At the Market Offerings are Again Wildly Popular.” (I should note that I am in favor of trying to spice up securities law articles by using words like “wildly,” though if we’re being honest, there is nothing remotely wild described in that article, or this one either.) ATM offerings are a way for already-public companies to raise further capital by selling newly issued shares. They are particularly popular among life sciences companies, which often need to continually raise capital for research and regulatory clearance efforts before having significant revenue with which to fund those activities.
Should Aspiring Lawyers Take Career Advice from Older Lawyers?
On Twitter recently, a journalist asked for suggestions from other journalists on what advice one should give to college students looking to pursue that field. The TV critic Emily Nussbaum replied “I tell them not to take advice from anyone over 50, bc the industry has changed so much that our career paths aren’t replicable and our advice doesn’t match the landscape.” Is the same true for established lawyers advising students considering law as a career? (If true, I have about a year and a half left, as of this writing, in which I am capable of providing relevant and useful guidance to the young.)
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