Some fossils still standing might recall a practice belonging to a long-gone era, a tradition that seems absurd in retrospect, but I swear once existed. It was called a “six-year partner track.” In those simpler, gentler times of yore (at least if you were white and male, someone’s nephew, attended the right boarding school and hadn’t been convicted of a felony) you could reasonably rely on making partner at your firm by the end of your sixth year. There is strong evidence in the historic record of that actually occurring as recently as the late 20th century.
Of course, that distant epoch lives only in sepia-tinted Daguerreotypes stored in great-grandmum’s attic nowadays. But I’m guessing a handful of you graybeards out there harbor memories of the seven-year partner track? Am I right! (You naughty old goats, what are you still doing here? Retire, already!)
This is where I’ll cue that song from Cats…
Memory, all alone in the moonlight.
I can dream of the old days, life was beautiful then.
I remember, the time I knew what happiness was.
Let the memory live again
Let’s have a show of hands! Who remembers the eight-year partner track? I see a few timid takers Sing along with me, you antiques!
Those were the days, my friend
We thought they’d never end
We’d sing and dance forever and a day
We’d live the life we choose
We’d fight and never lose
For we were young and sure to have our way
La la la la la la
La la la la la la
So how about the nine-year partner track? Anyone? Don’t be shy.
Okay – this is fun. Who remembers the ten-year partner track? Yes! Whoo-hoo! There you are – I saw you. Now take your walkers and your wrinkles and waddle off to bed, gramps!
Eleven-year partner track? Twelve? I see a bunch of hands going up! Thirteen? Fourteen? Fifteen? That’s more like it! Lots of hands going up now. You get the idea.
Not now, but soon.
Of course, when you really get down to it – who cares about making partner? I mean, what does partner mean anymore anyway?
If you want to make partner, you can join that firm where everyone makes it in their sixth year! (You know the one.) That’s trendy now – very Law 2.0, very “industry disruptor.” There are firms where everyone is partner. One of my clients fought hard to get elevated at her firm, burning bridges in the process with some partners in other regional offices…only to return from vacation and discover they’d taken their revenge by making every other lawyer in the office partner, too!
“I’m pretty sure my secretary is a partner,” she offered by way of witty commentary, “since she’s been there six months. And it was thoughtful of them to elevate the bike messengers.”
It might be argued that making everyone partner hardly burnishes the title. As many junior partners have discovered, it was getting pretty tarnished already. It’s not like you actually get any equity in the firm or share in the profits or anything really partner-like along those lines. For that good stuff, you have to run the further gauntlet of the eight- (or ten-, or twelve-) year equity partner track…which begins when you “make partner.”
At this point, most of my clients don’t even bother aspiring to the title “partner.” They’d settle for “of counsel” or “senior counsel” or just “too old to be called associate,” which, let’s face it, sounds better than “fifteenth year associate.” If nothing else, not being called associate helps with the job hunt – headhunters love it, a feather in your cap!
It’s worth reminding yourself at this juncture that you didn’t go to law school, didn’t enter into the, ahem, legal profession, for anything as superficial as money anyway, did you? You did it for love, just like the rest of us. Out of dedication. Because you adored debate team in high school and wanted to advocate for what’s right and show the world what you’re made of.
So isn’t it enough to be recognized, appreciated, validated by the folks you work for, with a kind word, a bit of praise? Huh? Of course.
And it would make sense that law firms ought to love praising attorneys. After all, flattery costs nothing. Given that circumstance, you might be wondering why they so rarely do it, and the answer is simple: They only have to bother for the really good lawyers whom they’re not planning to fire, and those lawyers (like all the others) are so eager to please and starved for a kind word that there isn’t much to do – smile in their direction, they’ll eat out of your hand.
Lawyers are pleasers. Lawyers love to please. If you nod at one politely, he’ll light up like a bulb and for a moment, it’ll feel (to him) like maybe Mom really was proud, and he really is worth something.
An annual, or semi-annual review might seem like the perfect place to offer some lawyer a drop of praise. In reality, law firm praise seldom arrives during reviews, because reviews themselves seldom arrive. Reviews leave a pesky paper trail that can gum up the works if the firm decides to fire you, so it’s best to skip them, at least until they give you that really bad one before they let you go.
Heck, let’s not dwell on unpleasant realities. Back to praise. Gosh, doesn’t it feel good when that rainmaker partner returns from a couple weeks at his condo in Maui, slaps you on the back and says “great job on that case!” Even if he gets your name wrong…it’s something. You won the pie-eating contest. Whoo-hoo! More pie!!
A bit later, you might feel like a much-appreciated but poorly-remunerated maid in Sao Paulo serving a household of billionaires…
Oh, Consuela – you’re just like part of the family! What would we do without you? Now, run off and scrub the toilets and please stay in your room under the stairs in the basement so we don’t have to see you wandering around while we’re trying to relax poolside with cocktails.
But why not live for the good times?
Speaking of poor Consuela, this seems a prudent point at which to remind you why it is that Lucy always pulls away the football just when Charlie Brown is getting all excited about finally kicking it in a big, beautiful arc into the air.
She does it because it amuses her. Lucy (like a law firm) is a rational economic player. That means she only cares about herself.
I always find it refreshing when a genuine bigshot rainmaker managing partner sits down in my office and states it flat-out: “C’mon, there’s no economic justification to making anyone partner at this point. We just lateral in folks with business, and pay for it if we see a synergy.”
There you have it: The awful truth. The “partnership track” isn’t about “elevating” anyone nowadays – it’s about “law firm M&A.”
One of my clients worked at a regional firm, and was doing well – he’s a terrific lawyer. I asked about partner prospects, and he answered with delightful frankness:
“Oh, that? At my firm they require a $2 million book. If you attain that, you’re equity partner. You won’t really earn any more than an associate at that level, but you get the title. And once you build up a book worth $3 million or $5 million or whatever, you take home real money.”
I was stunned. “So that’s it. You get a $2 million book of business, and you’re equity?”
“Yep.”
That was it. Duh.
It makes sense. If you want that football to still be there when you’re ready to kick it, it helps to own that football. And to be paying the salary of the person holding it. That takes money.
I worked with one lawyer who built a $2 million book of business (a couple old college friends were in-house and helped her out), then wound up making equity partner at her firm. Over the years, her book grew to a steady $2.5 million or so. Then it suddenly dropped almost in half when one of her big clients tried working with someone else.
Guess what happened? Her firm “de-equitized” her. That happens.
It gets weirder. That same big client came back the following year, and her book went back to about where it was before -somewhere around $2.25 million. That’s when her firm, having just “de-equitized” her a year before, called her into someone’s office to say they wanted to “re-equitize” her. Yeah, that also happens.
In the end, she thought it over, then asked the firm’s managing partner what the difference was, given her $2 million to $2.5 million annual book of business, whether she was equity or non-equity.
The managing partner mulled it over, then looked her in the eye and said, “Well, you’d have to pay in some money of your own, but as equity partner, you might make more money if you have a good year.”
And if she declined, and stayed non-equity partner?
“Well… in a bad year, you’ll come out slightly ahead, and in a good year maybe slightly behind.”
Essentially, it made no difference. She earned the same amount in revenue for the firm pretty much every year, and whether they called her “equity” or “non-equity” they wound up paying her about the same amount every year, too. And if she stopped and thought about it, that made sense, because if they paid her any less, she’d leave to another firm, and if they paid her any more…well, that wasn’t going to happen.
So that was it. There was no magic. It boiled down to money.
Making partner, as in being a partner, isn’t paradise, because it also boils down to money. It’s more like still being a senior associate or of counsel, except now the firm expects you to “bring in business.”
Let me further emphasize that “bringing in business” isn’t easy – or easily avoided. If you think you’ll make partner andsimply continue on as before, think again. Now that you’ve got “partner” after your name, your fee is higher than ever, so billables can be harder to justify. And even if you are busy handling other people’s work, that doesn’t let you off the hook. You’re still required to devote every spare minute to “bringing in business of your own.”
Let’s talk about what that means. You are expected to hit the pavement and somehow drum up smart, sophisticated and (to pay your fees) very wealthy bystanders to hand you tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to do their legal work. And it’s not like you’re the only one out there fishing for dollars, either. Every other partner from every other firm in town, and maybe the country (and maybe even your own firm, too) is competing with you to knock on those same doors and sweet-talk those same potential clients, trying to “drum up business” of their own.
It can begin to feel like you’re set up to fail, especially since the senior equity partners haranguing you to bring in business make all their money from a handful of zillion-dollar corporations that have always used your firm – that’s their “book of business” and it’s not like they “brought it in” either. They inherited it (although, if you were to go anywhere near thoseclients, you’d better believe the punishment is a slow, agonizing death.)
For many junior, “non-equity” partners, “bringing in business” boils down to being asked to do the impossible – a shorthand description for living with constant, nagging anxiety. I’ve worked with plenty of junior, non-equity partners who were immensely relieved to toss in the towel and give up, take a job in-house and get their lives back.
The fact that law firms are about money helps explains why so many partners out there aren’t especially talented lawyers. Typically, those guys bring in business through “connections” or because they’re “people persons.” Some of them earn a fortune, which might not seem fair to you, but it is how things work. These “rainmakers” do stuff like take clients to basketball games and hit up wealthy relatives for business and pretend to just happen to be zipping through Baltimore on business so they can take someone important out for dinner and fill her with drinks and make her feel like she’s the most interesting person they’ve ever met.
Law firms need business to make money. And they need folks with contacts and “people skills” to bring in that business.
And then there are sometimes when…well, I have no idea why law firms make some people partner. Let’s face it, no one does. Maybe they just remind someone in power of himself (typically white, male and privileged.) Or maybe the firm’s partners really are ageist or sexist or whatever-ist, or maybe there’s some unethical hanky-panky going on behind the scenes or maybe the firm needs to create the appearance of diversity. I don’t know. Sometimes every lawyer in the firm isscratching his head (or rolling her eyes) at the choices that get made behind closed doors. Maybe that’s why those choices get made behind closed doors.
The system’s not pretty. But that’s how it works. Those equity partners aren’t Olympian gods, and no, they don’t get to rule on your worth as a lawyer, let alone a human being. They often get things wrong, and fail to spot or appreciate talent.
Whatever plays out between you and them, you don’t have to apologize for who you are (the authentic, best you, whom you choose to be) and you never have to ask anyone’s permission to be creative. That right comes with being unique and being you.
It’s your life, and sure, it’s nice to receive feedback now and then. So, yeah, there’s a suggestion box, and you’ll take a look at those little slips of paper. But you’re also the final arbiter of your own path through your life on this Earth.
Back to Lucy, and Charlie Brown, and that football.
Let’s be honest: We all know Lucy is awful. She always lies, and will always pull the damn football away. That’s because Lucy is Lucy – that’s what she does. And sure, it’s okay to hate her for it, but not terribly productive.
A more useful way to frame the situation is “Stop being an idiot, Charlie Brown, and falling for Lucy’s schtick because you expect her to stop being Lucy.”
Law firms are like Lucy. Whatever else they might be, they’re predictable.
It might make sense to stay at your firm, pocket the salary, and give up believing they’re going to cough up a promotion or a raise. If they do, great, a nice surprise, but law firms don’t just reward people because they like them – or because they promised they would.
It might make more sense to leave your firm for someplace else, or quit law and open a cupcake bakery. It’s your life. You can stay at that place and use it for the time being, for your own purposes…or not. The choice is yours.
Because as surely as Lucy will always pull away that football, a law firm will always pay its attorneys precisely as little as they can get away with to keep you working as hard as they need you to. That’s called a market economy.
You, Charlie Brown, are a player in that market economy, and you make the calls for the business entity known as you. You don’t need to stick around hoping Lucy won’t pull the football away this time and you’ll get that raise or promotion.
You also don’t need to get all excited if they tell you that you did a good job. It’s nice, but non-essential information. You know you did a good job.
What you need is the freedom to make up your own mind, realistically, and plan your future. And that you already have.
You can hold your own damn football. It’s called a drop kick and it’s pretty fun too.
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This piece is part of a series of columns presented by The People’s Therapist in cooperation with AboveTheLaw.com. My thanks to ATL for their help with the creation of this series.
Please check out The People’s Therapist’s legendary best-seller about the sad state of the legal profession: Way Worse Than Being a Dentist: The Lawyer’s Quest for Meaning
And now there’s a new Sequel: Still Way Worse Than Being a Dentist: (The Sequel)
My first book is an unusual (and useful) introduction to the concepts underlying psychotherapy:Life is a Brief Opportunity for Joy
I’ve also written a comic novel about a psychotherapist who falls in love with a blue alien from outer space. I guarantee pure reading pleasure: Bad Therapist: A Romance
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