There is an old story about a young man who, after finally meeting the love of his life following years searching the globe for his one true soulmate, took his girlfriend’s hands in his own one starlit summer evening, stared deeply into her beautiful eyes, and whispered to her in a husky, excited voice: “since I met you, I can’t eat. I can’t drink. I can’t sleep… I’m completely broke.”
The story of these two lovers has very little to do with the lesson that I want to impart to you about a law firm scam that I recently came across, except perhaps to illustrate that old truism, that we should always be careful what we wish for.
An associate told me a story that reminded me of the impecunious young lover described above. This young man had also been searching for something. In his case, he was burning out trying to achieve a ridiculously high billable hours target, and had been searching for months for a new firm at which he could live a more reasonable life.
After a long process, he came across a firm which offered him a unique and inviting culture. With great pride, the Managing Partner told him that at their firm he would not have to worry about meeting some arbitrary billable hours target. It sounded wonderful. My friend was thrilled beyond belief. He imagined working reasonably hard to get the job done, without any regard to having to achieve a set number of hours. It would be a great life.
And so the young man started working. And working. And working. He soon learned that the reason that there was no billable hour target was because the firm expected him to work all of the time. Soon he wished that he could simply say, “give me less work. I am already way over my target.” But he could not say that, because he did not have a target. All that he had was an expectation that he toil until the work was done, and the work was never done.
My young friend is miserable. He is working constantly and has no life. He is constantly stressed. He has no way to measure whether he is doing ‘enough.’ He only knows that he has to work every evening and many weekends. Is he pleasing his employer? He has no idea.
The troubling thing about this law firm’s culture is that they sell the “no billable hour target” as a being a good thing, and young lawyers who do not know better lap it up.
When we lawyers represent clients in contractual negotiations, we stress the importance of understanding what the parties are committing to. We ask lots of questions and fret over wording to ensure that it is very specific so that everyone’s expectations are clear. But hiring junior lawyers? At least some firms are content to bait them with stories that they want to hear, hook them, and reel them in.
There ought to be a law against it. But there isn’t. Caveat Emptor, indeed.
This article was originally published by Law360 Canada, part of LexisNexis Canada Inc.