In an earlier article in our series, Murray Gottheil quoted these words from Leo Tolstoy: “all happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
The sad truth is that there is unhappiness in all families, and many families do not like to share their secrets. Working with these families on business succession requires professionals to be trusted, and, as Arthur Ashe said, “Trust has to be earned, and should come only after the passage of time.”
One upon a time, I had a client named Jack, whose mother had granted him a Power of Attorney (“POA”). Some years later, Mom’s capacity became questionable. Jack’s sister, Jill, wanted to have Mom create a new POA in her favour that would terminate Jack’s POA. The future of a family business hung in the balance. Someone was likely to come tumbling down the hill. The dispute made quite a few family members unhappy, and quite a few lawyers a lot of money.
“A dysfunctional family is any family with more than one person in it.” ~ Mary Karr
Sometimes when I consider what tremendous consequences come from little things, I am tempted to think there are no little things.
~ Bruce Barton
I used to ask my litigation partners how it felt to issue a Statement of Claim and ruin someone’s day. Mainly I wanted to annoy them, but I also thought that it was a useful reminder that the things that we do as lawyers can have serious consequences for other people.
There was once a mid-sized law firm that wanted to develop a specialty in a niche area of litigation.
At the bottom level of that specialty, there were general commercial litigation lawyers who wrongly thought that they knew enough to be competent. One step above, there were lawyers with a decent reputation who gave good, creative, advice and achieved decent results most of the time. And then there were the Tier One superstars. Big reputations, high billings, and in demand for the most difficult assignments.
“So, tell me what you want, what you really, really want “
~ Spice Girls
Have you thought about what type of people law firms really, really, want to hire? I mean, after you drill down past the marketing and human resources departments, and contemplate the type of things that even the Partners are afraid to admit behind closed doors.
I got into a bit of a dust-up with a lawyer on LinkedIn the other day. She wrote something that I did not agree with, which was clothed in reverence for human rights, so I countered with my usual intelligent and incisive commentary, informed by my long history in the legal profession.
Those of you who read my stuff know that I am not the world’s biggest fan of law firms who address mental health issues by offering pizza and yoga classes, while refusing to acknowledge that the principal cause of their people’s suffering is overwork.
So, this employment lawyer leaves her firm and sues, as she has the right to do. She makes scandalous allegations (including racial discrimination and harassment) against her former employer, as she has the right to do. Then she and her lawyer go to the media, and a story is published in the Law Times featuring pictures of the lawyer and her counsel. The lawyer then posts a copy of the article on social media, with a link to the Statement of Claim. She apparently decided that it would be good strategy and worth the risk of legal consequences.
There’s no such thing as a free lunch.”
~ Milton Friedman
I have a theory about lawyers who do not have much of their own client base, and that is that they would be better lawyers if they did have a client base. I say this despite having run across quite a few lawyers who were dripping with clients but sorely lacking in legal skills, and others who had great legal skills but few of their own clients.
I base my theory on the hypothesis that communication and the ability to persuade are important legal skills. If lawyers cannot communicate in a manner to develop client loyalty and persuade people to give them business, surely, they must be missing some skills that, if developed, would make them better at what they did.