There was once a medium-sized law firm in Ontario which had two bright, young, industrious associates. Both of these associates were being considered for partnership, back in the day when all young lawyers wanted to become partners. One of the two associates, who I will call Richard, was a shoe-in. The other associate, who I will call Cynthia, was not.
I sometimes hear from young (and sometimes not so young) lawyers who do not understand the math that supports their compensation in a law firm. They know that they are unhappy and they believe that deserve more. They are thinking of answering the romantic call of the recruiter. However, they often do not have a deep understanding (or any understanding) of how their contribution is measured by the firm, apart from the obvious factor of tracking billable hours.
Law firms give lawyers minimum billable hours targets to meet. There is nothing wrong with setting expectations, I guess. The theory is that you make the lawyers aware of the firm’s expectations, and they then work to achieve them. Transparency is good.
I recently authored an article about law firm compensation systems, lamenting how they are usually laser-focused on billable hours and business brought in, but not so much on all of the other skills required to build a great firm. Of course, there is a great deal of lip service paid to the so called ‘soft factors,’ but the conversion rate of lip service to cash for ‘soft factors’ is not particularly great.
Many years ago, the managing partner of my firm, who I will call Sid because that was his name, had on his desk a replica of a dogsled with a team of dogs in single file. There was a pithy saying attached to the sled which read, “if you are not the lead dog, the scenery never changes.” Think about that for a minute. No, I mean really think about it. Take a moment to focus on exactly what every dog following the lead dog had to look at for the entire trip.
I was once hired at a firm to replace a much more senior corporate lawyer who I will call Carl.
One of a number of things which Carl had done to cause the firm to search for a replacement was that he had gamed the compensation system. Under that system, Carl was paid a bonus based on a percentage of his billings, without reference to collections. This would be a fatal flaw in any compensation system, but at the time the firm was new to that type of thing and had not yet figured that out.
Let’s say that a partner at a law firm has been there for quite a while and is getting older, a situation in which I once found myself.
And let’s say that the partner is done with working lots and lots of hours and wants out. Perhaps the partner has become tired or has had a health scare or no longer deals with stress as well as he or she or they once did or finally realizes that there is more to life, or whatever.
I have two stories to tell. One of them is 40 years old. The other is 4 weeks old. They are remarkably similar and do not reflect well on law firm cultures. Unless, of course, you think that these two stories are atypical. I will leave that to you to decide.
Every so often law firms hold lawyer retreats, which are generally broken into three segments.
In the summer of 1976, I worked for the largest law firm in Montreal, which was Ogilvy, Cope, Porteous, Montgomery, Renault, Clark & Kirkpatrick, as a student doing research. You likely do not know that name, but you may recognize the name of its successors Ogilvy, Renault and Norton Rose.