We all know people in a wonderful marriage. We also know people in terrible marriages. Sometimes we attribute this to them having been so desperate to have a life partner that they rushed into things without taking the time to really get to know their partner, or even having been negligent or willfully blind to their incompatibility with their partner.
In prior parts of this series, I wrote about the advantages and disadvantages of becoming an equity partner in a law firm. In order to complete the picture, I really should address the fantasy of a non-equity partner (“NEP”) as well.
In Part One of this series, I said that becoming a partner in a law firm is no longer the goal of every young lawyer. In Part Two, I wrote about the advantages of equity partnership.
Now, let’s talk about the disadvantages of equity partnership.
In Part One, I explained that when I was a young buck, becoming a partner was the ultimate goal of every young lawyer. I suggested that this type of thinking is, for good reason, falling out of favour.
There are both good and bad things about being a partner in a law firm, and today’s young lawyers would be well advised to understand them all before accepting a partnership invitation.
Trust is the glue of life. It’s the most essential ingredient in effective communication. It’s the foundational principle that holds all relationships.
~ Stephen Covey
A Canadian grocery chain has just announced that it will launch a new brand to sell low-priced groceries in Canada. Their announcement is being greeted with great skepticism. The reason? Canadians do not trust them. It could be because we just do not buy it when their CEO says that their increased profits have nothing to do with their increased prices.
Those of you who do not attend partners meetings may not know that a common agenda item is why the associates are not working hard enough.
And those of you who follow the statistics are aware that only 25% of partners in Canadian law firms are female. This means that the problem is primarily defined by men, who identify the mothers of young children as part of the problem. Which indeed they are since they often undertake a disproportionate share of the childcare responsibilities and have less time to bill hours.
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.