In my first four years of practicing law, I learned how to be a lawyer through the “sink or swim” approach. I did this by working 12 hours a day and 6 ½ days a week, without supervision, mentoring or training. I was also worrying 24 days a day, 7 days a week, and waking up screaming at night. I do not recommend this approach to learning the practice of law.
In my first year of practice, a client asked me to advise him concerning his plan to build a sign for his restaurant. The sign was to sit at sidewalk level and would be 6 feet high and 20 feet long with flashing neon lights. It did not take long for me to determine that the sign would contravene the city’s by-laws and to tell him not to do it.
The client was furious with me. He angrily explained to me that it was not my job to give him business advice. In his mind, my role as the lawyer was simply to tell him what the law said and what the penalties were for breaking the law. It was his job to make the determination whether it was a good business decision to break the law.
That was my introduction to business ethics and how the practice of law fits in.
In law firms, partners are represented by two separate yet equally significant groups. The innovative partners who drive the firms forward, and the old guard who advocate for the status quo to protect their incomes. These are their stories.
Lawyers are not generally known for their accounting expertise.
It is not that accounting concepts are too difficult for lawyers to learn. In fact, a lawyer can be a very quick study when working with accounting concepts which are relevant to their files.
The problem arises when it comes to matters which affect their own income. In these cases, lawyers tend to apply their creative talents and their persuasive skills to cloud the issues in their favour.
Warning: The article below contains 30 seconds of material about accounting. Please power through and do not tune out.
There is an old saying that a jury consists of twelve people who are selected to determine who has the better lawyer. Whatever the truth of that saying, there is no doubt that the people who prevail in legal disputes are not necessarily the people who are legally “right”.
How can you possibly explain why a lawyer at a substantial firm took on a file that was outside of his expertise and made a costly mistake, when that very same lawyer had three partners and two law clerks in his department, all of whom would have easily spotted the error if consulted? To make matters worse, had the lawyer involved one of the law clerks on the file to keep costs down, as would normally be done, the clerk would have immediately spotted the error. However, this lawyer chose to do all the work himself at a billing rate higher than the billing rate of the law clerks.
Law firms can be peculiar work environments. To start with, lawyers tend to be quite intelligent and very independent, and often have very well-developed egos. Add to that mixture that lawyers are professionally trained to argue with each other and usually work in a high-stress environment for multiple clients with competing priorities. Finally, keep in mind that law firms typically operate as partnerships, without the more hierarchical and well-established structure of corporations.
Young lawyers often think that there is some magic secret to building a client base, and that marketing is a mysterious and complicated endeavour. I disagree, and I say that as a lawyer who did not really “get” marketing until I had been practicing for quite a long time.
Early in my career, a senior partner in my firm, who I will call Greg, was arguing with the managing partner of the firm because the managing partner wanted Greg to fire one of Greg’s clients.
I once had a law partner named Marvin who taught me what he called the “fish theory” of marketing. According to Marvin, marketing was simply a matter of throwing a fish back to every referral source who threw a fish to you. If you were referred a file from someone, you owed that person a file, and so it went.