I don’t consider myself a pessimist. I think of a pessimist as someone who is waiting for it to rain. And I feel soaked to the skin.
~ Leonard Cohen
I have a friend who is a Dermatologist. I will call him Howard. Howard knows a great deal about skin cancer, so he worries about contracting skin cancer. He wears long pants, long-sleeved shirts, and a hat all summer, and covers any exposed areas with sunblock. Some say that Howard is obsessive about that.
Murray (M) at my first rodeo:
Client (C): We need to close this transaction in two weeks.
M: That is impossible.
C: The Vendor said that his lawyer told him that deadline is perfectly reasonable. Why are you creating roadblocks? If you cannot get it done, I will find someone else who is willing to do whatever it takes to get the job done.
Imagine the following scenario:
Jordan is a third year Associate with a mid-sized firm in Calgary who has a billable hour target that is somewhat reasonable compared to the targets in Big Law. He typically achieves that target and receives a bonus of $18,000. He is also paid 10% of the billed and collected business that he brings in.
Unsuccessful people are the ones who are impressed by celebrity, by people’s names and titles.
~ Robin S. Sharma
In the old days, there were Associates and Partners. Every lawyer planned to work ridiculously hard as an Associate for about seven years, after which the firm would invite them to become a partner. Or not.
If you were not invited to become a partner, you were expected to hang your head in shame and slink out of the firm. The system was called “Up or Out.”
Last week I was at the Barnstable County Fair in Cape Cod. At the midway, there was a game called “Dunk the Clown.” Let me describe it for you.
A clown sat on a ledge over a tank of water. People paid a few dollars and received three baseballs to throw at two large buttons on the walls adjacent to the clown. If a button were hit, the clown would fall into the water.
In law firms, more zeros are better than fewer zeros. For example, announcing, “look at me! I just closed a $100,000,000 acquisition” impresses your colleagues more than saying, “I just did a deal worth $10,000,000.” A deal that was only worth $965,000 is not even worth mentioning. There just are not enough zeros. Frankly, it is almost embarrassing to have been involved with it.
I spoke to two law firm partners this week, both of whom told me that their hourly expectation was 2,400 hours per year, consisting of 2,000 billable hours and 400 non-billable hours (administration, firm events, continuing education, business promotion, and mentoring).
I set about to do some math and determine how many hours these people have to spend on their mental and physical health and personal relationships. The law firms are all advertising their mental health initiatives, so I knew that it would be substantial!
I am willing to bet that you did not expect that headline from me! And to be fair, I do not intend it as a general statement. What I am going to talk about is legal research, and it is a fact that Big Law does that better than the rest of us. While Big Law (and occasionally Medium Law) employs specialists to do their research, the rest of us either do it ourselves or give the job to articling students, summer students, or junior lawyers.
When I articled, if lawyers or law students worked past 6 pm, they were welcome to dine at the firm’s expense, as long as they returned to the office to work after dinner.
That sounded like a great deal to a lowly paid student, and I was impressed with how considerate the firm was. Being a slow learner, it took me a while to realize that the firm was trying to encourage lawyers to work late into the evening. It took me even longer to figure out that the lawyers would often work until just after 6 pm, go to dinner until 7:30 pm, and return to the office just long enough to be seen by some partners, and then leave.
Lawyers struggle to attract talent who are both capable and a good fit for a firm’s culture.
If only there were consultants who firms could retain and candidates could work with, who understand the market, the culture in different firms and practice groups, the current salaries being paid by firms of all sizes, and the expectations of law firms and candidates on a multitude of issues, including work from home, vacation entitlement, bonuses, and billable hour requirements.