I recently celebrated the 17th anniversary of one of the most significant events of my life.
Back on March 21, 2005, I came to what was, at the time, a stunning realization. I had accidentally fallen in love with a woman with whom I had been working very closely for six years. Luckily for me and all the other potential Defendants in this situation, she came to the same troubling realization about me at the exact same time.
Few lawyers would disagree with the statement that “law school does not teach you what you have to know to be able to practice law.” I imagine that the general public would find that to be surprising. It is called “law school” after all.
I have many thoughts about family business succession. Here are a few of them:
Many of you will be familiar with the old saying (sometimes attributed to John Adams and other times to Winston Churchill) 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.”
Let’s say that you represent a 40% shareholder in a corporation. You are reviewing a shareholder’s agreement which says that in certain circumstances (death, disability, termination of employment) your client is required to sell his or her shares at fair market value. So far, so good.
Over my many years practicing business law I formed some strong opinions. Here are two of them which relate to shareholders agreements:
Death: My favourite topic in a shareholders agreement.
What I like about the death provision is that it is usually not controversial, especially if the shareholders do not have an inkling about who is likely to die first.
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.