My friend Peter was an accountant. He told me that at his partners meetings there were partners who worked hard to build the firm for the benefit of all. Then there were others who stayed mostly quiet and out of sight, but every so often rose silently and blew a poison dart into the discussion before slinking away. Those outside of the firm would never have guessed at the internal dysfunction.
I am spending this winter on cruise ships, trying to escape the cold, the snow, and everything back home that reminds me of working in a law firm.
With a cruise ship comes shore excursions, and with shore excursions come busses, and with busses come bus drivers and tour guides. With tour guides and bus drivers come tips. For those of you who may not be aware, tour guides and bus drivers share their tips, much like partners in law firms split up the year’s profits. Which brings me to my story.
Getting into a Partnership can be exciting. Staying in one is often more of a mixed bag. But exiting a partnership? Now we have something to talk about!
Some of my best client work involved partnership break-ups. They can become very nasty, very quickly.
Back in the days when everything seemed to be a binary choice, I was a young man who saw many things in black and white.
At the time, I would classify law firms as being one of two types.
We all know people in a wonderful marriage. We also know people in terrible marriages. Sometimes we attribute this to them having been so desperate to have a life partner that they rushed into things without taking the time to really get to know their partner, or even having been negligent or willfully blind to their incompatibility with their partner.
In prior parts of this series, I wrote about the advantages and disadvantages of becoming an equity partner in a law firm. In order to complete the picture, I really should address the fantasy of a non-equity partner (“NEP”) as well.
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.
Becoming a partner in a law firm is easy enough. You pay your money, you take your chances. But what exactly have you bought into?
We all know that what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. Partnership meetings are much the same. Partners can disagree in a meeting but when you leave the meeting room, everyone supports the decision. As far as the associates and staff are concerned, every decision is unanimous. That is the theory. Of course, theory does not always align with reality.
In the real world, people talk. They don’t only talk, but they advocate. They not only advocate, but they criticize. And politic.
In Part One of this series, I said that becoming a partner in a law firm is no longer the goal of every young lawyer. In Part Two, I wrote about the advantages of equity partnership.
Now, let’s talk about the disadvantages of equity partnership.
In Part One, I explained that when I was a young buck, becoming a partner was the ultimate goal of every young lawyer. I suggested that this type of thinking is, for good reason, falling out of favour.
There are both good and bad things about being a partner in a law firm, and today’s young lawyers would be well advised to understand them all before accepting a partnership invitation.