You don’t get to insult my intelligence and depend on it at the same time.
~ Rachel Wasserman
Imagine that you could bake up a bunch of perfect gingerbread cookies in the shape of a lawyer wearing a suit and holding a briefcase, and then say a few magic words and breathe life into them. They would then jump off of the cookie sheet and immediately start billing hours. I bet that there is at least one law firm Managing Partner who has fantasized about how great it would be if all of their Associates just fit the cookie-cutter mould that the firm wants, did what they were told, did not try to disrupt the system, and never complained.
In the words of Eliza Dolittle, wouldn’t it be loverly?
And wouldn’t it be even loverlier if our cookie-dough Associates knew not to be smarter than the Partners, and if they were, to keep it a very big, sweet, secret? (Especially if the Associates are not straight, white men?)
A speaker on franchising once described the perfect franchisee as being “smart, but not too smart.” Smart enough to follow the franchise system; not so smart that they thought that they could improve on it. That may make sense when you are granting a franchise to run a cookie bakery, but does it make sense when you are managing a law firm? Don’t we want our lawyers to be intelligent and capable of critical analysis? Don’t we want them to use their brains to find out-of-the-box solutions and creative strategies?
Or do we only want the partners to do that, and would we prefer if the Associates simply did as they are told? Or should they do it for clients, but keep their mouths shut about how firm policies and procedures can be improved?
We all know that one of the key legal differences between an employee and an independent contractor is that an independent contractor is told what has to be done, but an employee is told how, when, and where to do it. While law firm Associates are employees, surely, they are employees in training to become Partners. It should be obvious that you cannot flip a switch and turn an employee who simply follows orders into an entrepreneur worthy of partnership. You have to model the skills that you want and give them the opportunity to practice them. So, maybe it is a bad thing to tell Associates how, when, and where to do their work, at least after they have been at it long enough to know what they are doing. And maybe we should encourage them to come forward with ideas about how to improve the firm, or at least their practice area.
I invite partners at law firms to ponder why it is frequently their most capable lawyers who jump ship after a few years, while the technicians tend to hang around longer. Is it possible that the explanation is that they are treating them like they are stupid at the same time that they are paying them to be smart, and charging clients for their services at a rate that suggests that they are brilliant?
This article was inspired by Rachel Wasserman of Wasserman Business Law, who can be reached here: https://wassermanlaw.ca/
This article was originally published by Law360 Canada, part of LexisNexis Canada Inc.