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.
It is a poorly kept secret in the legal profession that some lawyers are much better than other lawyers. Marketing would have you believe that the lawyers at large firms are better than lawyers at smaller firms, which is sometimes true and sometimes not true, and belies the fact that incompetence can hide in a crowd. Pity the poor clients who have to try to figure out how to choose the best lawyer to represent them based on who has the biggest marketing budget and the best marketing consultant.
When I started practicing business law immediately after being called to the Bar, I had just been rejected for hire-back with the firm where I had done my articles. I was told that the reason that I was not hired back was that I had not shown sufficient self-confidence. Compounding my insecurity was the fact that I was younger than most first year lawyers, having entered law school after just one year of university. Worse still, I had no prior business experience.
In my first four years of practicing law, I learned how to be a lawyer through the “sink or swim” approach. I did this by working 12 hours a day and 6 ½ days a week, without supervision, mentoring or training. I was also worrying 24 days a day, 7 days a week, and waking up screaming at night. I do not recommend this approach to learning the practice of law.
In my first year of practice, a client asked me to advise him concerning his plan to build a sign for his restaurant. The sign was to sit at sidewalk level and would be 6 feet high and 20 feet long with flashing neon lights. It did not take long for me to determine that the sign would contravene the city’s by-laws and to tell him not to do it.
The client was furious with me. He angrily explained to me that it was not my job to give him business advice. In his mind, my role as the lawyer was simply to tell him what the law said and what the penalties were for breaking the law. It was his job to make the determination whether it was a good business decision to break the law.
That was my introduction to business ethics and how the practice of law fits in.
In law firms, partners are represented by two separate yet equally significant groups. The innovative partners who drive the firms forward, and the old guard who advocate for the status quo to protect their incomes. These are their stories.
Lawyers are not generally known for their accounting expertise.
It is not that accounting concepts are too difficult for lawyers to learn. In fact, a lawyer can be a very quick study when working with accounting concepts which are relevant to their files.
The problem arises when it comes to matters which affect their own income. In these cases, lawyers tend to apply their creative talents and their persuasive skills to cloud the issues in their favour.
There is an old saying that a jury consists of twelve people who are selected to determine who has the better lawyer. Whatever the truth of that saying, there is no doubt that the people who prevail in legal disputes are not necessarily the people who are legally “right”.
Law firms can be peculiar work environments. To start with, lawyers tend to be quite intelligent and very independent, and often have very well-developed egos. Add to that mixture that lawyers are professionally trained to argue with each other and usually work in a high-stress environment for multiple clients with competing priorities. Finally, keep in mind that law firms typically operate as partnerships, without the more hierarchical and well-established structure of corporations.