I recently had lunch with a lawyer who works at a top 20 Am Law 200 firm. It had been a few months since we last spoke and it struck me as I took my seat at our table that his “How are you?” was tinged with concern. He sounded genuinely worried. I asked him why.

It turns out that with all the news I had been publishing lately about firm closures, layoffs and endless cycles of geopolitical tit-for-tat, he figured that I was having trouble getting people to talk to me. Apparently at his firm, at least, I was not anyone’s “favorite” journalist.