Many years ago I hired a young lawyer who was not really named Tom. Tom had a few years of experience at one of the large Toronto law firms. This was back in the days when I actually believed the hype that the lawyers in Big Law were smarter than the rest of us, and I was excited to bring this new talent onboard to our mid-sized suburban firm.
My father used to tell a story about when he was a young man with a young family. Unlike many people of his age at that time, he had an automobile since his job was travelling the countryside selling stuff. One day he was pulled over for speeding. He tried to talk himself out of a ticket which he could not afford, explaining that he struggled to support his wife and children on his pitifully small salary, the amount of which he disclosed to the officer. The wise old cop let him off the hook but took the opportunity to teach him a lesson. The police officer said: “Always remember who you are speaking to. I earn less than you do.”
I never met a lawyer who loved to docket their time, but I have met a number of lawyers (myself included) who were very good at it. I met many, many more lawyers who were not so good at it.
Maybe someday we will be completely rid of the billable hour, but even if that comes to pass, it will still be important for lawyers to be able to analyze how they are spending their time, if only to understand how to set fixed fees.
So, there we are. We all hate docketing. We all need to be good at it. Here it is. Fully explained. In small words. At last.
When I was just a wee lad, my father instilled in me the need to be perfect. If I scored 98% on an exam, his only comment was “What happened to the other two marks?”
In law firms, most lawyers typically get paid for two things: (1) billings; and (2) bringing in clients. Of course, there are a few lawyers here and there who get paid just for being brilliant, but then again, too few to mention.
Today I want to focus on lawyers who get paid for bringing in clients. Time and again during my tenure in law firm management, I saw lawyers who were billing and earning a lot of money, but who did not have a sophisticated understanding of the financial implications of their relationships with their clients. Usually this came up when they were thinking about leaving one firm and joining another firm. They would tell the new firm how much they were billing and give their best guess as to how many of their clients would follow them. More often than not their best guess was wrong, and not by a little bit, but by a whole lot. Rarely was the mistake that more clients than expected followed them to their new home.
Many years ago, someone who I was related to was arrested on a relatively minor charge, but one which had potentially devastating consequences for his professional reputation and career development. Having access to money, he hired the late great criminal defense lawyer, Austin Cooper to defend him. That is how I found myself sitting through the only criminal trial that I have ever seen which was not on television or in a movie.
Every corporate lawyer knows that a great corporate clerk is essential to running their practice. However, in order to work most efficiently with their law clerks, corporate lawyers need to be able to communicate with them effectively. Here are some translations from Lawyer Talk (LT), which is the language that lawyers use to speak to their law clerks, to Plain English (PE):
I like being retired. I really do. But someone called a pandemic and everyone showed up.
My plans to travel the world have been on hold for a while. So, now and then I get bored. When that happens, I think about whether I should go back to work. Thankfully, the thought usually passes quickly.
There was this one time that an accountant called me to let me know that our mutual client had called him for advice about firing one of his employees. The accountant suggested that the client give me a call, seeing that what the client needed was legal advice.
My first reaction was to wonder what type of an idiot client calls his accountant when he needs advice about employment law.
Over 20 years ago, the flavour of the month in the legal press was that medium sized firms were doomed. The big firms were coming after our clients and we were going to lose them all. We had to merge with bigger firms or die. And yet, medium sized firms continue to flourish.