In prior parts of this series, I wrote about the advantages and disadvantages of becoming an equity partner in a law firm. In order to complete the picture, I really should address the fantasy of a non-equity partner (“NEP”) as well.
Author: Murray Gottheil
In this Part, I would invite you to live in an imaginary world where you respect and appreciate all of your partners, each of them is a phenomenally talented lawyer, who is also productive, respectful, collaborative, ethical, and has an amazing client base. And they all love you too.
If you are a typical law firm partnership, you will not be content to let things be. No, the firm must grow and increase its profits and the prestige of each of its partners. You need more partners! And to be fair, you don’t want to lose your bright young associates who are chasing the Holy Grail, and you cannot keep all of them satisfied with non-equity partnership gimmicks indefinitely. So, grow you must.
Becoming a partner in a law firm is easy enough. You pay your money, you take your chances. But what exactly have you bought into?
We all know that what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. Partnership meetings are much the same. Partners can disagree in a meeting but when you leave the meeting room, everyone supports the decision. As far as the associates and staff are concerned, every decision is unanimous. That is the theory. Of course, theory does not always align with reality.
In the real world, people talk. They don’t only talk, but they advocate. They not only advocate, but they criticize. And politic.
In Part One of this series, I said that becoming a partner in a law firm is no longer the goal of every young lawyer. In Part Two, I wrote about the advantages of equity partnership.
Now, let’s talk about the disadvantages of equity partnership.
In Part One, I explained that when I was a young buck, becoming a partner was the ultimate goal of every young lawyer. I suggested that this type of thinking is, for good reason, falling out of favour.
There are both good and bad things about being a partner in a law firm, and today’s young lawyers would be well advised to understand them all before accepting a partnership invitation.
When I was younger, and did not have a house or a family or need to fund my children’s education, or want to travel the world, I used to say that if I was a professional athlete who was awarded a contract for some multiple of $10,000,000, you would be able to measure the length of my career in games played, not years.
At my first law firm, there were three partners. When one of them moved on, and the other one passed away, the remaining owner announced to all of the associates that he had no intention of making anyone a partner any time soon.
So I left.
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Moving on Up
One of my former partners checked out my profile on LinkedIn the other day. Since he is a litigator, my paranoid streak honed to perfection during my forty-year career got me thinking that perhaps he was trying to find an address for service. More likely, he was just checking to see if I am still alive and writing annoying things about my time in the legal profession.
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Whose Client is it Anyway?
The people who make the most money in law firms are not necessarily the smartest lawyers, or the most strategic lawyers, or even the highest billing lawyers. It’s the lawyers who bring in clients who rake in the largest slice of the profit pie. We call these people the “client lawyers.”
I understand that newbies to the legal profession who have student debt and no client base often feel locked into jobs that they hate.
I do not understand mid-level and senior lawyers who are financially stable and have a client base who stay in law firms that make them sick. I should understand them because I was one of them, but that is another story. Do as I say, not what I did.