Last night I worked on a trademark file. It was a disaster. The application had been filed incorrectly and the Trademarks Office had cited a long list of issues and demanded a response 9 years ago. It seems that for some reason no one had looked at the file for quite some time. I needed to figure out if the application was even still alive. It was beyond stressful.
Herb Cohen, the author of ‘You can Negotiate Anything’ and once labelled ‘the world’s best negotiator’ tells a story about negotiating the purchase of his own house. Apparently, his family was so intent on acquiring this particular home that he feared being divorced and having his children never speak to him again if the deal did not close. As Herb told the story, since walking away from the deal was not an option, he was unable to negotiate even a nickel off the purchase price.
Early in my career, I represented a franchisor of retail bakeries. As is commonly done, my client leased premises from commercial landlords and subleased them to its franchisees.
Since my client was not particularly good at what they did, they frequently made mistakes. On one occasion they missed the deadline to give notice to renew a lease.
At one stage of my career I did a great deal of work for a franchisor of bakeries. If the truth be known, my client was not exceptionally good at the franchisee selection process. The franchisee qualification process consisted of providing evidence of a bank account and a heartbeat.
Once upon a time, one of my litigation partners had a field day suing a very senior partner of a reputable law firm in the Toronto area. I will call that defendant “Max.”
The crux of the matter was that our client, who I will call Sue (appropriately, because that is what she ended up doing to Max) was involved in the sale of some shares of a corporation to the other shareholder. When Sue did not get paid, she came to see if we could do anything about it. When my partner asked Sue whether she was represented by counsel in the sale transaction, she identified Max as being her lawyer.
I once had a partner who was a “heads down, get your work done” type of guy. Knew his law. Billed like a fiend. Not much of a people person. Let’s call him Ken.
Many of you will be familiar with the old saying (sometimes attributed to John Adams and other times to Winston Churchill) to the effect that “if you are not a socialist at age 20, you have no heart, but if you are still a socialist at age 30, you have no brain.”
Back when I was practicing law, I used to say that my greatest skill was doing lunch. I did an awful lot of lunch with some pretty good business development results. I have previously written about how I used my lunch meetings to develop personal relationships. You can read about that here: Eating Your Way to A Great Client Base
During my lunch meetings with potential clients, I often used the power of doubt to sell my legal services.
I have decided not to pick on Big Law today for a change. Let’s talk about smaller firms with entrepreneurial founders instead.
Sometimes lawyers call me and tell me about how they feel about their law firms. They don’t call me if they are happy. They call me when they want out. Out of the firm, out of their practice area, out of private practice, out of the practice of law altogether. Out of something.
I have heard a good number of tales of woe. One interesting theme is around the flaws of law firm founders. Serious flaws. The type of flaws that drive good people to head for the exits. I have termed this Founder Deficiency Syndrome. It sort of has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?
There was once a law firm which had a particular department which experienced some turn-over in its associates. Lots of turn-over, actually.
The department in question was headed by a lawyer with a ‘strong personality.’ I am not qualified to give a psychological diagnosis of this lawyer, but if I were, I would probably say that this person was a narcissist. If I was being nice.