My friends Jim and Sheila love dogs. They used to share their residence with a rescue dog named Henry. Dragons live forever, but not so little dogs. So when Henry got sick and his demise was imminent, Jim built a coffin for Henry so that it would be ready when needed to carry Henry to his final resting place in the woods.
While Jim was building his coffin, Henry would see him working on it. After it was finished, Henry could see the coffin, just sitting there and waiting for him.
Many years ago, I knew a young couple who were very much in love. The young lady loved the idea of pleasing her parents and impressing her friends by marrying a good-looking boy with a promising career. The young man was in love with the idea of having a pretty girl on his arm who would respect and adore him. They were both in love with the idea of moving on to the stage of life that today’s young people call “adulting.”
A holocaust survivor who I know once asked me, “who says you are supposed to be happy?”
Paul is a junior lawyer. His supervising lawyer expects every document that Paul creates to be perfect. In order to ensure that this standard is met, all of Paul’s draft documents, no matter how routine, are reviewed and often revised. Paul resents the extra time that is required to achieve that standard, especially since he is working many, many hours.
I have been on many cruise ships. On every single one there was a daily meeting listed in the schedule of events for the Friends of Bill W. and Doctor Bob. After my first 10 or 12 cruises, I remarked to someone that these fellows must cruise a lot, because they have been on every cruise that I have taken. After laughing hysterically, my acquaintance informed me that Bill W. and Doctor Bob were the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous, that they were no longer alive, and therefore most likely not on the ship, and that the listed event was a 12-step meeting for Alcoholics.
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.