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.
Let me tell you about a real person, whose real name is not Emily.
Emily is a superstar. She does it all and has been doing it all for an awfully long time.
I have written before about how lawyers are usually fairly good at dealing with their clients in a truthful manner in the course of providing legal services, but not quite as accomplished when it comes to their marketing. Let’s look at this in the context of the most basic element of law firm marketing – how law firms identify their lawyers to the public.
I became a partner of a law firm and attended my first partners meeting many years ago. Since my firm was a medium sized firm, partners meetings were important since the participants actually made decisions (as opposed to what happens in large firms where an executive committee makes most decisions.) Each partner had an equal vote.
Partners need to understand what their associates are saying to them, but Associates do not always have the gumption to express themselves clearly and partners don’t always listen so well. Here, as yet another extension of my desire to give back to the profession, are some translations from Associate Talk (“AT”) to Plain English (“PE”):
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.
Back in grade two, the class bully and I got hauled off the principal’s office who demanded to know why we were fighting in the school yard. I explained, “he said shut up. I said make me. He was making me.” I learned fairly early in life that our words and actions have consequences.
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.
You know me. Always giving back to the profession. Today I want to help associates understand what the partners mean when they use certain phrases. Here is your handy, dandy guide to some translations of partner talk (“PT”) to plain English (“PE”).
One of my favourite clients was an engineering firm. I once wrote a letter of intent for them concerning the purchase of a business. They only had one comment on my draft document. They asked me why I had only taken the numbers to two decimal places, which is not a surprising question coming from a group of engineers. However, I found the question to be quite amusing, since the numbers in question were dollars, where the use of two decimal places is quite an accepted custom. (Did you ever have a store clerk say, “that will be $5.0156?). But at least they read the document, which is more than I can say about many of my other clients.