I first met Lauren when he was a partner in a large Buffalo law firm which had a significant cross-border practice with an office in Toronto. Lauren practiced business law, although by the time that I met him he was spending a great deal of time on business development. His job involved significant travel between Buffalo and Toronto. Lauren was also quite active in an international legal association and travelled internationally as well.
Back in the day, the practice of law was considered to be a profession first, and a business second. Over the years, there was a great deal of talk about how lawyers had to recognize that the practice of law was also a business, and to become more business-like in their approach. I expect that this had a lot to do with some combination of law firms becoming less profitable and law partners, like many in the corporate sector, becoming greedier.
I once had a partner who I will call Marvin. Marvin was a capable lawyer who had a specialty in a particular area of litigation. Marvin was personable. He could bring in lots of work in his specialty and hold onto clients. Marvin was also smart. He could look at a complex problem, boil it down to its essentials and identify the most practical solution. Marvin was particularly good at developing litigation strategies and he was also very good at negotiating with other counsel and at persuading judges to rule in his favour on all sorts of issues.
Back quite a while ago somewhere in Ontario, a fellow who I will call Sam started a law firm, which he quickly grew to be a decent firm of about 20 lawyers.
Sam was a fairly progressive guy for his time, in a number of ways.
One of Sam’s philosophies was that it takes all types of personalities to build a successful law firm. When other partners would complain that some partners brought in more clients or produced more billable hours than other partners, Sam would say “we need to have diverse personalities and skills to build a strong firm. We can adjust for differences in productivity in compensation.”
Lawyers typically bill in 6-minute intervals (one-tenth of an hour). So, a lawyer with a $500.00 hourly rate bills $50.00 for 6 minutes of work.
Say a lawyer billing $500.00 per hour spends 6 minutes for a client on one day, consisting of four tasks, being a two-minute phone call, one minute reading an email, one minute leaving a voicemail message, and 2 minutes drafting a quick letter. Six minutes. One-tenth of an hour. At $500.00 per hour, that’s $50.00. Right?
Maybe.
Some time ago there was a fellow who I will call Jack. Jack had invented a product and had found a large company to be his partner and finance the start-up of a business to manufacture the product. The business did not do well. The partnership did worse. The day came when a deal had to be struck for the partnership to be dissolved.
Back quite a few years ago, I was out for lunch with one of my associates who for today will be called “Samantha”. We were having a quick meal at one of those sandwich places where you line up at the counter and order your meal and then take it to a table, gobble it down for 15 minutes and get back to work as quickly as possible so that you do not waste too many billable hours.
I attended my first closing of a commercial transaction when I was an articling student. It was a rather large share transaction. The closing started around 2 pm and I imagine that the lawyers thought that they would be done by late afternoon.
It was not to be.
Legend has it that years ago in Toronto there was a law firm which embarked on what was then a somewhat unusual exercise. At the urging of their marketing consultant, this firm surveyed their clients to ask them what they thought of how the law firm delivered its services.
When negotiating an agreement, clients are often happy to hear that the other side’s lawyer is going to do the drafting. They assume that their lawyer will spend less time reviewing an agreement than he or she would have spent drafting the agreement in the first place, and that allowing the other side’s lawyer to draft the agreement will be cheaper for them. Lawyers who are overwhelmed with work, or who are inexperienced, or who are lazy, or who are just not that bright, will readily agree with this approach.