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.
Once again, since I am all about giving back and public service, I offer these translations from legal talk (“LT”) to plain English (“PE”) to help lawyers communicate effectively with opposing counsel. I hope that you find them helpful.
Law firms give lawyers minimum billable hours targets to meet. There is nothing wrong with setting expectations, I guess. The theory is that you make the lawyers aware of the firm’s expectations, and they then work to achieve them. Transparency is good.
Yet another public service. Lawyers are busy people and often do not have the time to get to personal stuff, so I thought that I would help by providing a first rough draft of New Year’s Resolutions for you. Of course, feel free to use this as a precedent and edit for your personal circumstances.
I recently authored an article about law firm compensation systems, lamenting how they are usually laser-focused on billable hours and business brought in, but not so much on all of the other skills required to build a great firm. Of course, there is a great deal of lip service paid to the so called ‘soft factors,’ but the conversion rate of lip service to cash for ‘soft factors’ is not particularly great.
I met Paul at my very first job as a lawyer. Paul was a commercial real estate lawyer. He was hard-working and extremely capable. Paul thought quite a bit of himself and other people who he considered to be intelligent and diligent. However, Paul did not suffer fools gladly.