Pfizer's legal department has had its share of changes and turmoil over the last few months.
First Alan Hesketh, Pfizer Inc.'s vice president and global head of patents was charged with child pornography.
A month later, Pfizer's general counsel, and Kindler-confidant, Alan Waxman, resigned for "personal reasons." (He was just replaced by super-lawyer Amy Schulman of DLA Piper).
So I thought it was time to do some digging and yesterday I got the opportunity to speak to a person with unusual insights into Pfizer's legal department.
The story I got was that Pfizer's legal department is in turmoil and rumors are rampant.
Morale is at an all-time low and people are concerned about their future. Key players in the legal deparment are leaving the company, and for lawyers this is easy, since they are not limited to the drug industry.
I was told that the inside talk about Alan Waxman's resignation is that he is allegedly going through a difficult divorce and people are claiming that his resignation has a connection to Spitzer's prostitution scandal.
This was rather hard to believe, and impossible to confirm, so I set out to find out if those rumors had surfaced outside Pfizer.
And lo and behold, turns out those allegations had already been made . . . on CafePharma:
"Rumor has it that he was "client number 10" in the Emperor's Club prostitution scandal. He resigned for personal reasons at the same time as Spitzer. This is all rumor though, I used to work in the legal division so that's what am hearing."
and
"I heard similar rumors -- except he was client #4. Unbelievable! More ethical Pfizer leaders. You can't make this stuff up1"
These comment on CafePharma were followed by the following excerpts:
"He was f**king someone at Pfizer. The way the situation developed, he needed to exit immediately."
"What are the initials of the object of Waxman's affections?"
"Based on recent events, rumor has it-SP."
Rumors and allegations on anonymous message boards don't prove anything and the nature of these allegations make them especially offensive.
What is important about the postings on CafePharm, however, is the fact that they confirm that the rumors inside Pfizer's legal department exist.
The fact that lawyers spend time on such vile comments about a departing executive is a warning signal about an organization on the verge of a break-down with a complete erosion of trust in senior management. So in that context these allegations inside Pfizer are informative.
And the fact that the legal department is in this situation is even more noteworthy, considering that Pfizer CEO Jeff Kindler is the ex-general counsel.
Something ain't right here, and folks, I think we're seeing the first serious internal signals of distress. (That is apart from an all-time low stock price, the Exubera inhaled-insulin-bong-fiasco, Kindler's torcetrapib PR-disaster, Chantixgate and all the other missteps.)
After all, the lawyers should be jolly happy having one of "their own" as the new CEO.
But they aren't.
I was also told that Pfizer has gone through an exhaustive streamlining of its legal vendors, to save on costs, and lots of big law firms have been dumped wholesale.
In the employment law group Epstein Becker & Green lost out together with many others and the winning firm for Pfizer's nation-wide legal employment business is Jackson Lewis.
This information has been confirmed by Jackson Lewis.
Jackson Lewis is known as a very aggressive employment law firm which does nothing but employment law. In fact, Jackson Lewis represents management exclusively in employment, labor, benefits and immigration law and related litigation. They have about 500 attorneys practicing in 38 offices nationwide, and the firm claims it has "a national perspective and sensitivity to the nuances of regional business environments."
Jackson Lewis also says the firm is "guided by the principle that a positive work environment results in enhanced morale and increased productivity," and that "the firm devotes a significant portion of its practice to management education and preventive programs."
Based on the mood inside Pfizer's legal department it sounds as if Jackson Lewis should focus some of its considerable resources inside the legal department of their #1 new client.
