Thread regarding Chevron Corp. layoffs

What is absolutely ridiculous is that we would use AI to get rid of our own people, and despite having AI to do a lot of things, we are fine with hiring incredibly expensive consultant lawyers billing at $1000+/hour and continue to use them. We could have our own people do that work and use AI to easily stop the consulting fees and save millions.

But our senior executives have to work with the most powerful firms in the world because they all got there because of relationships. To he-l with the Chevron bottom line, as long as the consultants help them get where they are.

Wait until the ship law overseas. You’ll be begging for those law employees to come back. You get what you pay w.

How many in-house lawyers do we have right now around the world? Anyone know what our total external counsel spend per year is? I have to think we are overstaffed vs competition.

@v1 I pay the bills, I don’t approve them. That’s currently the Law Department’s responsibility. They hit my budget but I have no control like I do my own contractors. I periodically discuss better oversight by in-house counsel but it seldom lasts long.

Don’t suggest feedback to the lawyer. It’s never worked.

Don’t forget to add in the $50,000 stock options they reportedly receive each year. One slipped and told me. It’s one of those well known secrets.

@qs -- You are right about more of a coordinator role when outside counsel involved, which varies heavily based on nature of what is being worked on. But that's not what @F8 said, and in-house type functions are not "absolutely gutted" by AI (some of what outside attorneys do, and especially paralegals, is in bigger danger).

Also, you might want to read your bills more closely. Travel costs and paralegal time are all separately billed, not bundled in with the attorney rate. You are right that travel time is rarely a separate line item, but a narrative like "prepared for and participated in meeting" will in practice usually include the full travel time as long as the lawyer worked on the matter when working was feasible during the travel (e.g., bill time spent driving to the airport and going through security, but must be reviewing relevant documents while sitting on the airplane).

@qs sounds like you need to get a better handle on your people.

@ks I pay their bills and sit in out of town meetings where both in- and outside counsel travel. The heavy lifting is always by outside counsel. Outside counsel hourly rates generally include travel cost and time in their hourly rate as well as overhead of routine paralegals/support staff. I pay it all individually plus the hourly rate for in-house through cross charges. My experience is in-house counsel are nothing more than coordinators. There are exceptions, especially if they came from a top law firm themselves.

In-house are not even good coordinators. I often get invoices in bunches going back several months that hit my budget in one big bundle that I had no idea was coming thus ruining my plan. Especially hard to swallow in January for a stack of previous year billing.

A lot of people in this thread who have no idea what in-house attorneys do (@f8), what they get paid (@e3), or how much more it costs to hire external lawyers (@c5).

You are lucky if they give you a severance package, take it and run.

@ey Better chance you have an incurable case of TDS.

AI AI AI AI AI

Whats the severance package offer?

A lawyer with 3 years experience starts Chevron at PSG26 and it goes up from there. Have a look in the Whitepages how many there are around the globe. It is nuts.

AI has absolutely gutted law as a profession. We used to pay an army of people to research, read, digest, summarize docs and generate new ones. Now AI can duplicate 90% of that in a couple clicks. We no longer needs many hundreds of attorneys.

Good chance these MOFOs erroneously believe Daddy Trump is going to shield them from any lawsuits or judgements.

The lawyers get paid much more than regular "Career Ladder" employees. They insist on getting paid on the guide curve. Thus, they are paid 3-5x more than a PSG24 Employee.

Time to cut the fat.

You she see what they pay big law firms for consulting on every CVX legal issue, lol. They waste CVX money on lawyers to review meals with government officials.

I was never impressed with Chevron lawyers. Big expense for little value.

MW thinks that AI can do all the law functions. If he really needs legal work, he goes third party. Then it's one and done.

we dun need so many lawyers
just need legal coordinators to facilitate between external contract lawyers and CVX on a case by case
cheaper

Because they hired more lawyers after laying some off. I’m not sure if it netted out, but the optics were bad.

With outside counsel doing all the real work, they might as well hire lawyers through ENGINE to do the oversight role our in-house counsel does.

Everyone is in scope for the next 5 years at least.. 5% will be laid off each year through forced ranking. The ELT has not been transparent about this at all but you can read between the lines based on recent HR communications and changes to the PMP process.

OP
The way of the employee is gone. Employees are expensive long term and contractors are an expense on the accounting records, deducted in the year the expenses are incurred. Chevron will continue to release employees every year when they can contract resources to perform the work.
It's all about the "Benjamins"