I am of the opinion that, generally speaking, lawyers are not particularly good businesspeople. I attribute this to the following:
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Do Lawyers Suck at Business?
Tag: attorneys
One of the most intelligent lawyers who I ever met tells a story about the early days of her marriage as she adapted to the daily routines of domestic life while balancing the pressures of law school. One of the chores which she attended to every week was defrosting her freezer and throwing out the meat that was past its best before date. Yes, from the freezer. Every week. Then, one day, she was chatting with her mother on the phone and lamented the time and money wasted doing this every week. Her mother’s response was one of incredulous laughter. As my friend tells the story, she simply did not know what she did not know.
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Screwing Up
On a clear summer day, my father carefully drove his car out of his narrow one-car driveway past the retaining walls on either side and onto the street. He then turned to the right and parked the car in front of our house. Or so he thought.
After he exited the car, he found out the hard way that rather than put the car in park, he had actually left it in reverse. The car retraced the path from whence it had come until it crashed into the retaining wall on one side of the driveway.
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I Did it My Way
Some lawyers are killing it marketing their practice through social media. Some are not. When it comes to marketing, there are different strokes for different folks. This is important for young lawyers to know, because they sometimes look at what the partners are doing to generate business and cannot see themselves doing those things. They do not understand that there is more than one way to win a client.
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Sue the Bastards
Abraham Lincoln said, “Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can. Point out to them how the nominal winner is often a real loser — in fees, expenses, and waste of time. As a peacemaker the lawyer has a superior opportunity of being a good man. There will still be business enough.”
In the many years since, some lawyers have heeded Lincoln’s sage advice, and many have not.
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Doing Less, Thinking More
My stepson once explained to me that his career goal was to be paid a great deal of money to sit at a big desk in a private office and think about things. I tried to explain to him that on the path to his dream job he would have to pass obstacles such as shoveling the driveway, taking out the garbage or mowing the lawn. We did not understand each other.
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Murray’s Musings About Character
Once upon a time, there was a lawyer whose practice was reliant on one huge client. His junior associate made a mistake on the client’s file. The client demanded that the lawyer fire the associate. The lawyer refused to cast aside a young associate for having made one mistake. The client fired the lawyer. The lawyer lost his practice. The associate lost his job anyway.
Once upon a time, in a common law jurisdiction not that far away, there was a partner in a law firm who did what all good law firm partners do. He billed a lot. He brought in many clients. He trained the junior lawyers. He supervised the clerks. All in all, he was somewhat of a star. I will call him Earl.
Since I retired, I have entertained myself by writing about the legal profession, mentoring a few lawyers, and teaching some classes about business law. None of these are particularly remunerative activities.
Now and then someone suggests to me that I should write a novel, or at least compile my articles into a book. And sell it. And try to make some real money. My standard answer is that it sounds like work, and that I have no interest in working.
It is not that earning a few dollars would not come in useful. I long ago learned from my mother that ‘rich or poor, it is good to have money.’ And I am not rich. But nor am I poor. I think that I can get by without working, and I have every intention of finding out if I am right.
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The End of Days
“Review this agreement and provide me with your comments” is usually the first introduction that young business lawyers are given to the topic of reviewing contracts and the sum total of the training that they receive about how to do it. So off we go and comment on the scourge of typographical errors, the horror of undefined terms, the frightening absence of the word “reasonable,” and of course, unforgivably sloppy cross-references.
Actually, there are a multitude of more important things to think about when you are reviewing contracts. One of them is how long the agreement is going to last, and that actually depends on three things. These are: (i) term; (ii) termination rights; and (iii) renewal rights.