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.
I am, of course. But I don’t have to make sure that everyone else knows it. Whenever I forget this simple truth, the client ends up paying for it somehow.
I have observed over the years that it is an interesting aspect of human nature (or at least the nature of lawyers) that people tend to value most what they themselves do well.
Law firms being partnerships, someone must decide how to split the pie at the end of the year, and except in some small firms, the pie is rarely split evenly. The task of deciding how large a slice of the profits should be given to each partner in medium and large firms usually falls to the compensation committee. One might think that the compensation committee would consist of human resources professionals with specialized knowledge in evaluating job performance, and perhaps that is the case in some firms, but in many firms the primary qualification for membership on the compensation committee is a large client base and big billings.