Out here in the country where I now live, it is a good thing if your septic tank is located on a lower elevation than your house. If it is not, you need something called a macerator to grind up the poop so that it can be pumped up to your septic tank, because as we all know, shit rolls downhill.
To put this in the context of a law firm, one might note that the most senior partners are usually on the highest floor of the office building.
Closely related to this concept is the idea that delegation only goes one way, and that is down. I remember the feeling of astonishment that I experienced the first time that an Associate tried to delegate something to me. I had to explain to the soon-to-be-prior employee that it does not work that way in a law firm.
My now wife, and then Associate, likes to tell the story of working until midnight on the day prior to giving birth to complete all her files except for one, and then having left that file to me to finish up. She found it still waiting for her on her return six months later. In my defense, I was down one Associate and quite busy, not to mention that shit does not roll uphill unless you have a macerator and a pump, and she had neither.
Since then, I have learned a thing or two about human resource management. It turns out that things do go better when people work as a team, and pitch in to help each other. In fact, if you have a good team at a law firm, Associates only try to “delegate up” when they are feeling desperate and ill-equipped to handle the work that has rolled down the hill to them, and Partners then willingly step in to help.
In those rare law firms or departments that have a positive culture, Associates feel free to delegate up when they can see the end of their rope coming closer and about to slip through their fingers. And in those same almost mythical firms, Partners recognize that if the shit is rolling, it is their fault. They have understaffed, taken on too much work, delegated poorly, or failed to properly mentor or train.
In those firms or departments that do not have a positive work culture, many Associates who are overwhelmed burn out, break down, or just keep on unhappily keeping on. They ponder whether they would be better off moving to another firm, or going in-house, or to the government. I speak to some of these people from time to time. They are, for the most part, hard-working people who feel like they have been pumped through the macerator and into the tank, when really, they are just in the wrong firm or department. They doubt themselves and wonder whether they have what it takes to succeed in private practice. They do, actually, just not in the poop palace where they are working.