Corporate & Securities Law

GM - The Real Transformer?

By John Wallbillich

The New GM emerged this morning, 40 days after a Chapter 11 filing, feeling clean and fluffy after a “quick rinse” of $128 billion in debt.

The joke around Detroit is that GM went through bankruptcy in less time than it took outsiders pre-filing to get a response to voicemails and schedule a meeting. You have to hand it to GM and government lawyers, as well as lead counsel Weil Gotshal. They also benefited from being second in line after Chrysler, changing a few pages in the playbook along the way.

It’s still uncertain how the economy will do, how GM will do in it, and how long the government will have a majority stake.

The GM saga has spawned a cottage industry in speculating how it informs issues in the legal industry like BigLaw firms or legal education.

I tend to think that GM is a special case. Law firms have been spectacularly profitable for years; GM, not so much. I doubt there are many takers in the Am Law 200 to roll the dice with a Section 363 gambit (not least of which because law firms have few real assets save for the relationship partners that walk out the door every night). The biggest challenge facing the largest law firms is peering through their past success and seeing what awaits about 80% of them in the next 18-24 months.

Surely doing something decisive in the next 40 days isn’t easy, given the vacations planned, and Labor Day running late this year…

So let’s leave that messy business for another day; The New York Times notes today that the new Camaro is proving to be a hit; so I guess it’s OK for hard-core import owners to go out and buy one.

Full post as published by The Wired GC on July 10, 2009 (boomark / email).