Just about everything that I learned about stupidity in the realm of managing people, I learned from lawyers, much of it from my own mistakes. However, this time I will write about the failures at my friend Martin’s law firm instead.
At Martin’s firm, the Human Resources Manager convinced the Partners that it would be a good idea to initiate a program to recognize long-serving firm members, with the view of spreading the word to all members of the team that the firm valued loyalty.
When I first attended partners meetings, “what are other law firms doing?” was a question that I heard over and over. Whether the topic was a billable hour requirement, parental leave policy, marketing initiative, or just about anything else, the question of what other law firms were doing always seemed to be relevant.
Lawyers (other than litigators, I suppose) don’t like public speaking much more than other people do, and most people rank public speaking as their greatest fear, just before death.
As best as I can tell, there are two potential audiences for lawyers to speak to. The first group is comprised of potential clients. The reason for speaking to them is obvious.
Back in the day, there was a law firm in which the partners were – how do I say it sort of nicely – not ‘culturally aligned.’
Sam was the Managing Partner. He was charming and charismatic, and nice to everybody, at least most of the time. Aligned with him were enough partners to vote with him on everything that mattered, sometimes more out of personal loyalty or ignorance than conviction.
Gordon was the other high billing partner with a huge client base, which qualified him to lead a group of dissidents. He and Sam tended to be competitive about things such as compensation.
Doug was an Associate at my first law firm. Martin was our boss.
Just after lunch on my first Friday at the office, Doug said to me, “Any minute now Martin is going to come into my office with a file that absolutely, positively, has to be completed by Monday morning. He does this every Friday to be certain that I have to work on the weekend. He must tell the clients to hold off on giving us files until Friday morning.”
I like to bake bread. In my opinion, and in the opinion of a family member named Aidan, the crust is the best part of my bread. When he was younger, Aidan would sometimes help himself to both end pieces. I did not like that.
Once, Aidan asked if it was okay for him to take a slice of my freshly baked bread as it was cooling on the counter. I told him to take just one slice. The next thing I knew he had sliced the entire top of the bread off and was happily munching way.
When I confronted him, Aidan was not particularly remorseful. He said, “you said that I could have a slice. You didn’t say anything about how I had to slice it.”
Throughout my years as a partner, managing partner, practice group leader and supervising lawyer, I used to speak to young lawyers who told me what they thought that I wanted to hear. Things like how much they loved their jobs, how supportive the firm was, and how they loved working evenings and weekends. They were quite right. That is exactly what I wanted to hear.
Let me tell you about a lawyer named Josh. Josh was not very good. Everybody said so, especially the partner who was his practice group leader. Eventually the firm redirected Josh’s career path. He moved on and started his own practice. Josh did very well on his own. He developed a great reputation in the profession practicing the same type of law that he was not good enough to practice at his old firm.
It took me eight years after I first realized that my life in law was not working for me until I was fully retired. It went like this:
2012: Best financial year ever. Worked incredibly hard in the last quarter. My hours in November and December were insane. I was so proud of myself. Got a huge slice of the compensation pie.
January 2013: Went to the doctor worried that I was not well enough to go on a trip to Australia for a meeting of our international association. Diagnosed with a thyroid issue. The doctor said it had nothing to do with the stress of my career. I did not believe him.
When asked about my complaints about the legal profession, I am forced to admit that back before I escaped the profession and became happy, I did in fact have some good days. Three of them. (Okay, I am kidding about that last bit. There were more good days than that.)