In law firms, more zeros are better than fewer zeros. For example, announcing, “look at me! I just closed a $100,000,000 acquisition” impresses your colleagues more than saying, “I just did a deal worth $10,000,000.” A deal that was only worth $965,000 is not even worth mentioning. There just are not enough zeros. Frankly, it is almost embarrassing to have been involved with it.
Similarly, a lawsuit for $100,000 is kind of boring. But suing someone for $50,000,000 is something to announce at the next partners meeting.
Big Law tells young lawyers that they will have better jobs, and be better lawyers, if they work on larger deals or bigger lawsuits. I get that. They have chosen to focus on criteria that make them look good. That is human nature.
What I don’t get is why the rest of us buy into that.
Now my bias is obvious. I spent my career at a mid-sized firm. The largest deal that I ever worked on was in the range of $100,000,000, and most of my transactions were for significantly less money. Some were for less than $5,000,000. You know, the type of stuff you hand over to an Associate in a larger firm.
I happen to think that I was a spectacularly good lawyer. Maybe I was, and maybe I wasn’t. But do I really believe that the number of zeros was an indicator of the quality of my work compared to the quality of the work done by lawyers at bigger firms?
Well, maybe. I do get that where more money is at risk, clients seek out the best possible representation. And I also understand that if a lawyer has developed a reputation that attracts the biggest deals, it may be that it is because they are a great lawyer. (Of course, it could also be for a myriad of other reasons, such as, for example, family or political connections, but let’s not quibble.)
But certainly, even if one or two lawyers brought in the humongous file because they are the best lawyers in the world, that cannot possibly mean that each of the other ten lawyers working on the transaction is a genius simply because of all of the zeros in the purchase, price, can it? And yet, that seems to be how lawyers working on large transactions see themselves. The more zeros, the greater their career.
There are a lot of things that I don’t get about the desire that so many young lawyers have to work for Big Law, and the whole zero thing completely eludes me.
Of course, I am not an idiot (although some people who know me really well might disagree) so I do understand the attraction of having even one extra zero on your pay cheque.
But the other zeros? I just don’t get it.
And it is not as if the cost of that extra zero on your pay cheque is zero. Frequently it is quite expensive because of the most important zero of them all – the amount of time that is spent by some zero worshipping lawyers nurturing their physical and mental health, and their personal relationships.
Zero truly may be the loneliest number.
This article was originally published by Law360 Canada, part of LexisNexis Canada Inc.