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?”
This Article is about what lawyers need from LegalTech providers. I use Wills and Estates as an example, but the principles apply to many areas of practice.
You can read the article here: https://appara.ai/news-and-insights/where-theres-a-will
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.
I understand that newbies to the legal profession who have student debt and no client base often feel locked into jobs that they hate.
I do not understand mid-level and senior lawyers who are financially stable and have a client base who stay in law firms that make them sick. I should understand them because I was one of them, but that is another story. Do as I say, not what I did.
[Note from Murray: Many of my readers are younger professionals. They may not be crazy about the content of this article. In my defense, I can be a curmudgeon sometimes, but that does not necessarily invalidate my old-fashioned opinions!]
After much thought, I have concluded that young people should be more willing to put up with tyranny. Before the howls to cancel me for this outrageous statement start, let me clarify. I am not talking about physical, sexual, emotional, or even financial abuse. I am talking about that other stuff that we used to call ‘life,’ such as uncomfortable or inconvenient situations.
I did pretty well in law school. I studied all of the time, had no life, and got great marks. By my final year, I may have gotten just a little bit full of myself.
When selecting my courses for my final year of law school, I needed one more credit. So, devoid of any experience in the real world, I somehow decided that any course which was offered outside of the Faculty of Law would be easier than taking another difficult law course.
There were good things about the old days when law was primarily a profession, and lawyers joined law firms with a view to learning, working hard, and becoming partners. One of them was that law firms cared about their associates progressing, developing clients, and becoming self-sufficient.
Sometimes I meet a young lawyer whose career goal is to work in Big Law. That path might not be my first choice, but as long as they know what they are getting into, they should go for it. This article is not about those folks.