Has “Get-up-and-brush-your-teeth” been replaced by “Get-up-and-refresh-the-browser”? Do you find yourself trapped in a Groundhog Day of market collapses, credit crises and impending layoffs? Are you asking yourself, “If fewer people buy what my company sells, what does that mean for my legal team?”

Until 2006, like most of those who started practicing in the 1990s or later, I'd generally only experienced a trend that was up and to the right.

In the semiconductor industry, however, crises are a regular occurrence. Industry recessions occur every few years as multiple customers race to be first to market. The fact that customers (and their financiers) have become a bit smarter about this over time is called “the rational allocation of capital.”