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.
“Let me have men about me that are fat; Sleek-headed men and such as sleep o’nights: Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look; He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.
Shakespeare, Julius Caesar
I used to think too much. About my files. About my billable hours. About marketing. About how to run the firm better. And mostly, about how much in common I had with Cassandra.
I once represented a doctor who wanted to stop being a doctor. He absolutely hated it. He was a nervous type, and he just could not cope with the responsibility of practicing medicine. The stress was killing him. I helped him disentangle from another doctor with whom he had set up a clinic. As far as I know, he never practiced medicine again. I also know another fellow who became a doctor, hated it, and became a paramedic working on ambulances.
One of the best compliments that I ever received when I was practicing law was that I had the ability to ‘see around corners,’ meaning that I was often able to predict where problems were going to arise out of a proposed course of action. That comes with general knowledge, thoughtfulness, experience, and a healthy (or unhealthy?) dose of paranoia.
Speaking of paranoia, some years ago I underwent one of those psychological assessments, where you answer a whole bunch of questions, and the computer tells you whether or not you are crazy (something that your loved ones can do without the testing.)
I used to be the type of lawyer who woke up early and headed into the office. On my commute, my head would be full of ideas about my files, firm management, and marketing. I would call and leave messages for my staff and associates or call clients and referral sources to say hello and stay ‘top of mind.’ My commute was part of my workday, and I tried to make it as productive as possible. When the calls were about files, I would be sure to remember to docket the time when I got back to the office. I would do the same on the way home and put my dockets in remotely when I arrived.
In my early years of practice, I received a phone call from a friend who practiced union side labour law. He had a question about Civil Law and having recently graduated from McGill with a Civil Law degree in addition to my Common Law Degree, I was able to answer his question. He appreciated my help. Or so he said.
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.
Since I retired, I have been writing articles about the legal profession “from the safety of retirement”. It occurred to me recently that many of them may have been a bit negative in tone. Someone carefully studying my growing body of work (and I do realize that absolutely nobody is doing that) might conclude that I have a negative view of the profession in which I worked for 40 years.
There is a well-known quote which has been attributed to various people to the effect that “if you are not a socialist at age 20, you have no heart, but if you are still a socialist at age 30, you have no brain.”