Back when I was practicing law, I used to say that my greatest skill was doing lunch. I did an awful lot of lunch with some pretty good business development results. I have previously written about how I used my lunch meetings to develop personal relationships. You can read about that here: Eating Your Way to A Great Client Base
During my lunch meetings with potential clients, I often used the power of doubt to sell my legal services.
I have decided not to pick on Big Law today for a change. Let’s talk about smaller firms with entrepreneurial founders instead.
Sometimes lawyers call me and tell me about how they feel about their law firms. They don’t call me if they are happy. They call me when they want out. Out of the firm, out of their practice area, out of private practice, out of the practice of law altogether. Out of something.
I have heard a good number of tales of woe. One interesting theme is around the flaws of law firm founders. Serious flaws. The type of flaws that drive good people to head for the exits. I have termed this Founder Deficiency Syndrome. It sort of has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?
There was once a law firm which had a particular department which experienced some turn-over in its associates. Lots of turn-over, actually.
The department in question was headed by a lawyer with a ‘strong personality.’ I am not qualified to give a psychological diagnosis of this lawyer, but if I were, I would probably say that this person was a narcissist. If I was being nice.
Back when I was practicing law, I was responsible for bringing in business to feed myself and a nest full of hungry associates and law clerks. In my early days I was not able to do that using LinkedIn, because someone had forgotten to invent social media. By the time that LinkedIn was in full swing, I had already fallen into a pattern of relying on networking to develop business. It worked well for me, and I really enjoyed having my partners treat me to lunch four or five times a week.
Here is a warning for Canadian business owners and their lawyers. Your plan to motivate and reward your employees may backfire if the messaging is not correct from the outset. There is no better way for an owner to screw up the morale of its most valued employees than to start talking about offering them shares in the company before figuring out exactly how to structure the arrangements.
Lawyers use shotgun provisions in shareholders agreements way more than they should. Good lawyers recognize when the shotgun is not favourable to their clients.
Shotgun provisions in shareholders agreements work on the cake theory.
Canadian Business Lawyers: You may be negligent if you don’t know that:
Beginner lawyers need to understand Partner Talk (“PT”), which is the language that law firm partners use.
Here to help the newbies are some translations from Partner Talk to Plain English (“PE”):
Many of us think that the legal profession is broken, because too many lawyers are stressed out and miserable. Law firms are throwing money at the problem. Apparently unsuccessfully. A few brave souls are attempting to start solo practices or small firms which operate on different, and more humane and sustainable principles. But apart from that, the profession seems to be lurching along as it always has and continuing to chew up, and sometimes spit out, those lawyers who are determined to have a life outside of practicing law.
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.