Archive for category: The practice

David Maister wrote a fascinating article titled, “Do You Really Want Relationships?”  He suggests that lawyers generally say we want relationships with our clients, long-standing interactions that tend to lead to more work in the future, more referrals, fewer challenges on billing, and more effective working relationships.  This, Maister describes as the “romance” view.  However, in practice, lawyers often act on the transactional view of client relations — “one-night-stands” — in which there’s little commitment beyond the immediate project, little trust, and an understanding on both sides that it’s “us” versus “them.”  Do read the article for a fuller discussion of this very interesting topic; it’s a terrific eye-opener.

What I want to talk about today, though, is a short section of the article that discusses viewing firm personnel in the relationship or transactional mode.

“Are you saying,” they ask me, “that I need to show an interest in my subordinates as people and care about their career ambitions?”

“Only if you want them to respond to you,” I reply.  “If your subordinates feel that you are prepared to work at a relationship with them, ensuring that both sides benefit, then they will give you more of what you want.  That’s human nature, not a political or religious point.

“But if they think that you, their superior, are just trying to get out of the deal more of what you want from them?  Harder work, more billable hours, whatever?  Then they will respond in kind.  They will view you as you are viewing them: useful only to the extent that they can get out of it when they want in the short run.

“There will be no long-term loyalty and no commitment to the larger interests of the firm, because you have set the patten that this is truly a temporary transation, not a relationship.  If you treat people as THEM, as objects, or as ‘other,’ they in turn will treat you instrumentally.”

And that, my friends, is the crux of the associate retention problem in big firms.  Maister nailed it, in my opinion.  Associates view partnership as a distant, likely unattainable goal, perhaps even a goal they don’t want to attain.  Firms offer money as the short-term benefit, “greedy associates” are born, and associates become eager to move on to the high bidder, to the firm where they can get the most short-term benefit, figuring that at some point they’ll end up in a firm where they can and will make partner — but that’s down the road after they’ve switched firms a few times.  (Of course, there’s nothing that will motivate a lawyer toward money like facing $100K or more in law school debt, but that’s another thread.)

What can law firms do to encourage good associates to stay?  Create a sense of mutual loyalty.  Pay attention to associates’ professional development, career satisfaction, and concern for the person.  Make sure associates know that they’re not fungible, that they’re part of a team, that they contribute to something important.  Help them recognize meaning in their work — and I’m not talking the do-gooder kind necessarily (though that often keeps lawyers working in public interest despite low pay, lack of resources, etc.), but the kind that comes from practicing an an area of law that fits, taking on advancing responsibilities, receiving appropriate guidance that promotes professional growth.  Say “thank you.”

If law firms do even some of these things, I suspect that associates who fit in the firm will be motivated to do their best and that they’ll want to stick around.  Am I wrong?  I’d love to find out.

Today’s post is for those of you who are fairly new to the practice and those who hate the idea of networking and business development more than anything else you can imagine.

Is anybody still reading?

Second (perhaps) to legal competence, business development is king of practice.  And to bring in business, it’s important to have a network of contacts who have — or in the future likely will have — legal issues you or your firm can service.  This is not news.

I’ve been doing a lot of networking lately, the formal kind where you go to a meeting armed with business cards and a smile and you leave with a stack of other people’s business cards and a serious question about whether the smilefest was worthwhile.  My take on it is that no “networking” event is, in and of itself, worthwhile.  It’s what happens afterward that makes the difference.  Networking isn’t about getting business on the spot, it’s about developing relationships that will lead to business, directly or indirectly, down the road.  Networking almost always requires the long-term approach. (A foreshadowing: I’ve recently found and will be posting about an article that suggests the relationship view of networking is popular in discussion but almost universally disliked by lawyers in fact.  But that’s for another day.)

A few thoughts on how to network well:

• Make time and do it.  “Someday” and “later” have a way of never happening.
• Be prepared with something to say.  Know what the big news story is, the key sports results, and have a positive or thoughtful comment.
• Be prepared to introduce yourself in 15-20 seconds.  Without stumbling.  This is usually called the “elevator speech.”  Make it interesting.  If it’s boring to say, it’s boring to hear.
• Carry business cards and have them easily accessible…..
• ….But don’t offer indiscriminately them at the beginning of a conversation!  It’s far better to chat for a while, to know someone about the person, and then to ask for his or her business card.  What if, horror of horrors, they don’t reciprocate and ask for yours?  Not a problem.  Send them one when you follow up after the event.
• When someone offers you a business card, look at it before you put it away.  A card is our tangible persona.  Notice it, accord it due respect, and then carefully put it away.
• Pay attention to the conversation.  Don’t be one of these “power networkers” always looking over the shoulder of your conversational companion, looking for someone more interesting.  YECH.
• Listen.  That deserves a separate bullet point.  When your companion is talking, that’s your signal to listen to what they’re saying, not to be composing your witty rejoinder.
• Think about how you can help the person you’re talking with.  Make a contact, offer a lead, or just ask how you might recognize a terrific potential client/customer for her.
• Don’t assume someone you’re talking to can’t help you.  A conversation may not lead directly to business, but you have no idea who that person may know or where they’ll end up next.
• Set your intentions before you go (i.e., I will leave with 3 business cards of people I plan to contact again).  And aim for quality over quantity.
• Follow up afterward.

To make the most of a networking event, it’s important to follow up with the key people with whom you speak.  Because I’m getting awfully tired of breakfasts, lunches, and coffee meetings, I’ve started thinking about other ways to cultivate business relationships (and the perhaps even more valuable social business relationship).  Golf is terrific — for golfers.  But for the rest of us…..

• Golf.  It’s a cliche for a reason.
• I like to follow up in writing with some of the people I meet at a networking event.  And yes, I do mean handwritten snail mail, tailored to the individual.  And then I follow up on my follow-up with articles, etc., that are relevant to that person.  Not so much that it’s obnoxious, but enough to make the person feel that I’ve really taken an interest in who they are and what they’re doing.
• Reserve a table for 6 or 8 for lunch or dinner after your event (if it’s a cocktail party, for example) and invite several of the people you meet to join you.

More soon.

I’ve just read a staggering article (no longer available) by former Notre Dame law professor (then Dean of the University of St. Thomas Law School, soon to be District Judge) Patrick J. Schiltz.  Published in January 2000 (I know it’s old, but what can I say?  I was busy practicing law when it came out), the article’s thesis is that when a young lawyer goes to work at a law firm, the firm’s money-driven culture will permeate the lawyer’s life and the lawyer will descend into a variety of unethical practices — everything from padding her bills to “forgetting” to produce a damaging document.  The answer, according to Schiltz, is to “avoid getting sucked into the game. Don’t let money become the most important thing in your life. Don’t fall into the trap of measuring your worth as an attorney, or as a human being, by how much money you make.”

Excellent advice.  But does every lawyer who goes to a law firm end up being a greedy, unethical practitioner?  I think not.  I hope not.

We lawyers tend to be a competitive lot.  We don’t like it when someone earns more money or bills more hours than we do.  We’re told that money and billable hours are the route to success, so we run harder and bill faster and strive to earn more.  And I’m inclined to believe that’s the root of the profession’s depression: measuring our lives according to someone else’s ruler.  I’m also inclined to believe that most lawyers do struggle when they come up against the temptation to unethical behavior.  Sure, some people do pad their bills, but I have to believe most don’t.  Instead, they work harder and harder to produce the mounting billable hours, and that leads them to be out of balance in their lives.  Out of balance is out of integrity, because our integrity requires us to live in accord with our values and that isn’t possible when our lives are out of balance.  I believe that’s where the depression comes from.

It’s another lens on the same issue.  Whether the pressure leads to shortcuts that become unethical behavior, as Schiltz argues, or whether it leads to unimaginably long hours that leave no time for family or fun or relaxation, measuring one’s worth by someone else’s ruler always leads to depression, rage, grief.  But those emotions need not be impotent.  Change is possible.

So what’s the answer?  Know your values.  Know why you became a lawyer.  (If it’s because you were a college senior and had to do something and knew you wouldn’t make a good doctor, figure out whether law is really where you belong.)  Evaluate your current practice situation and figure out whether you can adapt to it, or have it adapt to you, in a way that will allow you to live in congruity with your values and your vision.  Trite though it may sound, you have the power to set the measuring stick for your own success: never give that away.  These steps will keep a lawyer in harmony with her values and that will, in turn, prevent her from sliding into the trap of unethical behavior that Schiltz describes.