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Law Students and Young Lawyers

Partnership – Not The Holy Grail, Part Five: Why, Oh Why, Do Things Have to Change?

In this Part, I would invite you to live in an imaginary world where you respect and appreciate all of your partners, each of them is a phenomenally talented lawyer, who is also productive, respectful, collaborative, ethical, and has an amazing client base. And they all love you too.

If you are a typical law firm partnership, you will not be content to let things be. No, the firm must grow and increase its profits and the prestige of each of its partners. You need more partners!  And to be fair, you don’t want to lose your bright young associates who are chasing the Holy Grail, and you cannot keep all of them satisfied with non-equity partnership gimmicks indefinitely. So, grow you must.


Deciding who to admit as a new partner to the firm is of the utmost importance, because even a single mistake can be likened to introducing a virus or a cancer into a human body.

And so you would think that law firm partnerships would be extremely careful about who they admit as a new partner. And typically, they are careful about certain criteria such as the capacity of the new partner to generate billable hours and to introduce clients to the firm. When it comes to other criteria which are arguably even more important, such as professional abilities, ethical standards, anger management issues, willingness to mentor and train, misogyny, internal competitiveness, being collaborative, and all those other “soft” skills and attributes, well, exceptions can be made.

For those of you who think I exaggerate, I do not. We have all seen highly profitable partners who are scummy human beings. And yet, law firms tolerate them.

So, not only is it important for lawyers who are contemplating joining a partnership to evaluate the character of the existing partners, they also must understand the decision-making process by which new partners will be admitted, and the pressures that may be brought to bear upon them to go along with partnership admissions with which they may have concern.

During my career, I found myself pressured to agree to admit partners against my best judgment, and in 100% of those cases, I lived to regret it.

At my friend Martin’s firm, a senior partner  launched a campaign in support of his technically excellent, but ethically challenged, associate. Once the associate was in as a partner, they turned on him and he ultimately left the firm and apologized to Martin for having pressured him to admit the associate.

The bottom line is this. A lawyer seeking to join a firm as a partner must not only understand what they are getting into but must develop some comfort level that they understand and can live with the process by which changes are going to be made.

And always remember that getting in is easier than getting out.

A version of this article was originally published by Law360 Canada, part of LexisNexis Canada Inc.

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