“Work hard, earn a great living, get whatever you want out of life, have all the stuff you want. But there should be a ceiling on it-enough is enough!”
~ Sandy Duncan
I used to think that I was a fairly sophisticated guy. I got me an education. I was a partner in a law firm. I advised some successful clients. But since I retired, moved to the country, and bought a pick-up truck, I have been rethinking some things and I realize that perhaps I am, and have always been, more of an Okie from Muskogee, or in Canadian terms, a hick from Temiskaming. And I am happy to be one.
What has me ruminating about the excesses of law firm culture and has resulted in this diatribe was an exchange on LinkedIn with a retired Big Law partner who was, in the eyes of most of the world, a much more successful lawyer than I ever was. He referenced, in passing, hourly rates of $1,700 and partners with an annual income of $6,000,000. A light went on in my head. It turns out that despite spending 40 years in the legal profession and thinking that I understood it, I had never contemplated that people charged that much or earned that much.
I certainly never made close to $1,000,000 in a year and would have been deliriously happy if I had earned that much (unless one of my partners was earning more.) And yet, despite having had a domestic reorganization and the financial set-back that comes with that, I retired with more than enough money to feel secure, live how I want to live, and travel as much as I want to travel. I figure that having one or two more millions of dollars than I have would be nice. But would having many more millions of dollars make me happier? I doubt it.
I imagine that it is possible that you can get to the stage of earning well over $1,000,000 in the legal profession without succumbing to the mental health problems that afflict so many lawyers. But surely, the pursuit of that type of money must explain more than a little bit of the alcoholism, drug addiction, stress, burnout, breakdowns, and divorce which are rampant in the profession. And let’s not kid ourselves – it is not only the super-high earners who risk suffering the effects of this culture of greed. It is also all the people at the bottom of the pyramid who work ridiculously hard to support the mega-earners while they try to claw their own way to the top.
If practicing law is ever going to become a healthy endeavor, people need to start saying that enough is enough. They need to scream, as Howard Beale did in the movie Network, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore.”
Instead, I imagine that any managing partners from Big Law who read this are going to be thinking, “The natives are getting restless again. Time to hand out some bonuses, organize a lunch and learn on mental health, and crank up the old marketing machine to remind everyone why they love being at the leading end of the profession.”
You can have it. I am going for a drive down to the lake in my pick-up.
This article was originally published by Law360 Canada, part of LexisNexis Canada Inc.