How new lawyers use E-voice to drive firm compensation: The “greedy associates” phenomenon

Discussions and Conclusions

How can we distinguish the GA phenomenon from unions? Unions’ raison d’etre is employee representation through collective bargaining, supported by a permanent institutional structure of professional officers and business agents and a revenue base from dues. The GA sites are idiosyncratic, based on the voluntarism and self-interest of secret founders, and lack any sort of disciplined approach to negotiation. Both unions and the GAs have adversarial relationships with management. Rather than bargaining, however, the GAs engage in concerted and surreptitious sniping. Both gather and share information, but unions use it to advance the interests of the collective whereas the GAs are left to their own individual devices when dealing with their employers. The GA sites suffer from problems of possible disinformation being posted by partners and others in the firms, and there have at times been false postings. The sock-puppet issue not only masks identities but also distorts the communication flow such that it is difficult to distinguish real conversations from ersatz relationships.