Incentives of pay, partnership, and purpose.

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The Wall Street Journal Law Blog ran a nice post yesterday on the projections of BigLaw managing partners for 2007.  The post summarizes and discusses data from the Citigroup Private Bank’s forthcoming “Managing Partner Confidence Index,” supported by slides from the underlying study.

Not too surprisingly, most managing partners expect both revenues and expenses to increase.  44% of managing partners expect more than a 3% increase in billables, 82% expect some increase, and 73% expect the increase to be one of the primary drivers of revenue.  70% of MPs expect more than a 5% increase in expenses, and 91% expect lawyer salary and benefits to be the primary contributors to that increase.

Firms continue to hire associates (anecdotally, 93% of firms are planning for an increase), though they’re planning for rather small increases in the number of equity partnerships:  36% are expecting less than a 3% increase, 26% anticipate no change, and only 30% expect more than a 3% increase.  8% actually expect to reduce the number of equity partners.  (I’d love to see parallel data over the last 2-3 years on this.)

Dan DiPietro, who led the team conducting the study, comments that associates’ billables, though increasing, remain below the 1998-2000 levels, and that firms are hiring to make up for the shortfall in hours.  The WSJ Law Blog asks whether associates would prefer to see higher billable requirements (but better chances at making partner) or more associates (and less chance of making partner).  The comments seem to favor more hiring (or perhaps more accurately, a lighter workload for current associates) quite strongly, in large part because the likelihood of making partner is perceived to be low and the rewards are judged to be dubious.  No surprises there either, though the responses hardly qualify as scientifically accurate.

It also seems to me that the competition for partnership is just another step on the ladder for many high-performing lawyers rather than something that they pursue from a true desire to reach that goal, and that competitiveness for the sake of winning (whether the prize is truly desirable or not)  falls apart quickly when it faces a genuine challenge.  In other words, a person may compete through high school to get to a good college; compete through college because that’s the key to a good career; compete through law school either intentionally or because it was the least unappealing path (by family prescription, dislike of the sciences, or passivity); compete into a plum law firm job; compete to rise through the associate ranks… But find at some point that the cost of competing exceeds the value of the reward.  And that’s burnout.

So, perhaps the question should be, what reward will keep associates at firms, will keep them working hard, and will retain its luster long enough to maximize the return for all interested parties?  It isn’t money, and I’d suggest it isn’t partnership potential.  Instead, I think it’s rewarding work that’s intellectually engaging and meaningful, performed in a collegial setting and supported by good training.  It’s having a purpose and working in service to that purpose.  The purpose will vary from individual to individual: money, partnership, prestige, “saving the world,” representing certain points of view, and so on.  The challenge for firms, I believe, is finding a reasonable business opportunity that permits individuals to effect their individual purposes in a way that advances the corporate good and serves clients well.

Interesting new resources for women who are lawyers

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One of my mother’s friends, Margie Pitts Hames, argued in the Supreme Court in 1971, in Doe v. Bolton, the companion case to Roe v. Wade.  She told me that when she went to the clerk’s office before arguing, she was told to put on her hat — because court reporters at that time were required to wear hats in court, and no one expected a woman to be anything other than a court reporter.   Dorothy Toth Beasley argued  for the other side,  later became Judge Beasley of the Georgia Court of Appeals, and literally left her mark on the court by having “and women” chiseled into the court’s credo “Upon the integrity, wisdom and independence of the judiciary depend the sacred rights of free men” in 1992.

Fortunately, we’ve come a long way since then.  And yet….

It’s pretty common to see news items about women leaving the legal profession and the small percentage of women who make partner in large law firms.  A story I read recently in the Washington Post highlighted a website that includes forums on which female (and other groups) law students are sexually objectified and even threatened with physical violence.  I’ve posted about the challenges facing female litigators and about a woman who’s suing her firm for sex discrimination because (among other allegations) she claims she was told she was spending too much time at the office and too little with her family.

Although I seek to serve both men and women who practice law, it does seem to me that women at times face unique challenges that seem to persist for reasons both known and unknown.

I recently ran across Ms. JD, “an online community that provides a forum for dialogue and networking among women lawyers and aspiring lawyers.”  Ms. JD was created by a group of female law students from Boalt Hall (UC Berkeley), Cornell, Georgetown, Harvard, NYU, Stanford, UCLA, UT Austin, the University of Chicago, the University of Michigan, the University of Virginia, and Yale who are “concerned by the rates at which women opt out of the legal profession, the lack of representation of women in the highest courts and echelons of the legal community, and the role of gender in the progression of many women’s legal careers.”

Ms. JD will launch at a national conference co-hosted by Yale Law Women at Yale Law Schoolon March 31, 2007.  The goals of the conference are “(1) to foster professionally transformative alliances through new communications technologies, and (2) to share tools and strategies to enhance the experiences of women in law.”  I can’t attend the conference, but I would love to know what happens there.  I invite anyone who attends to contact me (see last paragraph of this post) with a report and comments that I will share here with or without attribution, as you prefer.

 

(A personal aside to the story about Margie Hames: I wish I could link to an online resource about Mrs. Hames.  She was a remarkable woman: smart, fierce, kind, funny, reverent, irreverent, and opinionated.  She died in 1993 at a much-too-young 60.  However, because everything of substance that I’ve found about her on the web takes either a pro- or anti-abortion stance, I’m not linking.  If you’re curious, Google.  But, please, don’t believe everything you read.)

Don’t count the billable hour out just yet.

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Many lawyers and commentators like to criticize the billable hour as the source of all legal woes — or at least work/life balance challenges.  There’s a certain appeal to the argument since, after all, the idea behind the billable hour is that experienced attorneys know more and are more skilled and therefore can accomplish more for a client in a shorter time; nevertheless, though efficiency may increase, the workload never decreases because the overworked attorney “must” bill 2000+++ hours whether his fee is $185 or $585 per hour.

But Patrick Lamb, author of In Search of Perfect Client Service, has decreed that reports of the demise of the billable hour are greatly exaggerated.  This follows a previous announcement of the death, based on comments made at the law Firm Leaders Conference in San Francisco.

Lamb and other bloggers (including Chris McKinney, Ed Poll, and Bob Sutton, among many others) have made numerous posts on why the billable hour may have outlived its usefulness.

And for the billable hour… Well… Any publicity is good publicity, at least for now.

Success tips for lawyers (and some poetry, too)

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Today I ran across a Law Practice Today article titled How to Be More User-Friendly, by Wendy L. Werner.  The article lists reminders of what lawyers need to do, be, or think about “to not just be tolerated by the rest of the world, but to flourish.”  Here’s the list, and I strongly encourage you to read the full article for amplification.  Though I’m not crazy about the tone of the article (which comes across to me almost as a primer on “how lawyers can learn to masquerade as humans”), the advice is well-taken.

*  Talk less, listen more.
*  Sharing information with those around you is not a bad thing.
*  Know what your colleagues are working on.
*  Being rigorous doesn’t mean being a jerk.
*  Risk is sometimes necessary to find new opportunities.
*  If you only spend time with lawyers, you won’t know how to talk to juries or clients.
*  Lawyers are frequently smart people — but lots of other people are smart too.
*  Diversity is a fact of life.  If you want a successful and smart organization, hire and promote a diverse work force.
*  Seek opportunities for feedback.
*  No matter what your level in the organization, find a mentor, coach or advisor.
*  Having fun at work isn’t a crime.
*  At the end of your life you probably won’t say — “I wish I had spent more time at the office.”

 

 

Email “addiction” experiment

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I tried something new and different this week.

I left my Blackberry at my desk when I closed up shop for the day.

Now, granted, I work from home, so it isn’t such a big issue for me to go back to my desk, check email there, etc.  And I can hear my office phone ring from almost every part of the house, so it isn’t as if I was truly disconnected from my office ommunications.  Still, I didn’t check email while sitting with my family after dinner, I didn’t do “one last check” of email before I turning off the lights and going to sleep… And I didn’t do my first email check of the day until after I’d had breakfast, showered, and landed at my desk, whereas I usually check it as soon as I wake up.

I ran this experiment mostly as an integrity issue.  I’d urged a client not to keep her Blackberry on her bedside table overnight, and then it hit me — that’s what I do, too.  Running through the excuses (no, really, I do use it as my alarm clock) didn’t make me feel any better, so I decided to take my own advice.

What did I learn?

The sky didn’t fall in.  Not a single client fired me for failure to respond to an email within minutes.  (The corollary, of course, is that no client was in the midst of an urgent situation that would have prevented even this experiment.)  My down time was my own.  I wasn’t distracted, and I didn’t ask anyone to wait while I looked to see whether the latest incoming email needed my attention more immediately than my family did.  I was more present for conversation, and I didn’t even consider whether I should check email when I woke up briefly during the night.  (Not that I’d ever do that, of course.  Often.)  I was fully engaged in my personal life, and I returned to my work life with greater gusto in the morning.

I noticed that I felt no angst at all about allowing calls to roll to voicemail, but missing emails did give me great pause.  I’ve posted before on the distinction between “urgent” and “important” and I’ve realized that email registers as urgent for me, even though I know that at least 95% of it is not important.  How about you?

Imagine the irony when I ran across an article discussing email “addiction.”  I put addiction in quotes because, for me, in this situation, that’s slang.  Nevertheless, it was a nice experiment, I liked the results, and I think I’ll continue it in some form, though my email-accessible hours may be a bit more extended than they were during the last week.

Engagement: Another name for work/life balance?

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Regular readers of this blog know that I’m a proponent of finding work/life balance AND a proponent of excellent client service.  Though others may disagree, I think the two can and must co-exist, and frankly I question whether a lawyer can deliver top-notch legal services without some form of balance — recognizing that “balance” means radically different things to different people.

But “work/life balance” tends to take a beating at times.  Some attorneys and some commentators think that work/life balance is a PC phrase for lazy lawyers.  And I’ve been recently mulling over another way of expressing WLB ideas such as having a life outside practice, creating time and habits that support both practice and personal life, and using energy boosts from recreation to buoy the focus and output required by practice.

Peter Vajda recently commented on “engagement,” which he went on to describe as “the experience of an employee who is fully involved in, and enthusiastic about, his or her work. Folks who are ‘engaged’ proactively care about the future of their organization and are most often willing to invest, over and above, to ensure their organization’s success.”  Well said, Peter.

That thought dovetails with a book I finished reading over the weekend called The Power of Full Engagement.  I’ve recommended the book before based on a preliminary skim, but now that I’ve read it all the way through, it’s going on my “highly recommended resource” list for clients.  Its premise is that most of us move through our careers as if we’re marathon runners, working from stress to stress with little or no time for recovery — and that doesn’t turn out so well.  Instead, the authors recommend periods of strategic disengagement from work to facilitate regeneration, and that disengagement from work is generally engagement in some personal pursuit, whether that’s family time or an artistic hobby.  In other words, it’s what I’d call work/life balance in motion, the attribute of being a person who is a lawyer rather than a lawyer who also does XYZ on the side.

So, perhaps we should be talking about how lawyers can become more fully engaged in their practices and lives? Readers, I’m curious: does the concept of “full engagement” resonate with you more than the idea of “work/life balance”?

For new(ish) associates: Speak up!

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Dan Hull, of What About Clients? blog fame, posted a key question that associates (really, all lawyers) must be able to answer at a moment’s notice: What are you thinking?  As Dan put it, “If a neuron fires in a brilliant young lawyer’s head, and no one hears it go off, did it even happen?”  Dan writes to encourage more senior lawyers to ask junior associates what they’re thinking and to teach those lawyers to volunteer their thoughts, and I couldn’t agree more.

But new(ish) lawyers are often uncomfortable volunteering their ideas, feeling that because they’re new and have a lot to learn about practice, it’s better (as Abraham Lincoln advised) to “remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.”  This fallacious belief is what Mark Herrmann, author of The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Practicing Law, refers to as the “potted plant” mistake.  That “wisdom” backfires in the law firm setting, though.  A new lawyer must add value immediately, and sharing questions or insights is the quickest way to do that.  (It goes without saying that these insights must be well-considered, right?)

What I like about Dan’s advice is that the simple question, “What are you thinking?” creates an atmosphere of collegial inquiry.  It not only allows more senior lawyers to get an insight into a newer lawyer’s thinking process, whether to reap the benefit of brilliance or to dispel a mistaken assumption before it causes harm, but also it open the opportunity for the newer lawyer to learn how the more senior attorneys are analyzing the issue at hand, sifting the important from the irrelevant, and cooking up an approach most likely to meet the client’s goals.

So, new(ish) lawyers, volunteer your thoughts, and ask what others working on your cases are thinking.  (Don’t forget to ask paralegals and secretaries, too.  You might be surprised at the insight that these people can have, and it’s a painless way to remind yourself that non-attorney legal professionals can make a variety of valuable contributions if provided the opportunity.)

Another take on associate retention rates

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Most of the news about associate retention is cast in negatives — quoting, for example, that 60-62% of entry-level associates will have left their firms by the end of their fourth year in practice.  What if changing jobs more frequently is simply a fact of modern life? Or the result of dual career couples, the consequence of frequent moves from one city to another, or an indication of refusal to settle for a career or lifestyle?

Although the thoughts don’t transfer entirely to law, Penelope Trunk, the Brazen Careerist, has an interesting post today titled  Make Life More Stable With Frequent Job Changes.  The thrust of the post is that most new employees today will change jobs every two years (that’s what I find difficult to apply to a legal practice), will start adult life by moving back into their parents’ homes, and “will say that money is not their number one concern in evaluating a job.”   Trunk argues that the old paths to stability no longer work and that job-hopping is the new way to be stable, which she defines as “knowing you have a life where you can do what you love, during your whole life, not just at the end.”

Trunk identifies 5 ways to use frequent job changes to build stability.  Whether you change jobs once or repeatedly, most of these are excellent suggestions:

1.  Build up a strong skill set quickly.

2.  Get good at making transitions.

3. Make the most of the in-between-jobs time.

4.  Get out of paying your dues.  (If you find a way to do this in law, forget practice and write up your methodology instead.  If it really works, you’ll be a prize-winning author.  I’ll remain skeptical.)

5.  Keep your finances in order.

Watch for upcoming posts that will wrestle with the question of whether it’s possible to find career stability — meaning, satisfaction, rewards in whatever metric(s) apply to you — without changing jobs so frequently.  Perhaps it will surprise no one that I think the answer is unreservedly, yes!

Taking a short break

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I suppose the flu is going around everywhere now — part of the last gasp of winter.  And, I’ve got it, and it’s hideous.

I’m going to get some rest and get well.  I’ll be back by Monday.

Until then, here’s a quote for your reflection:

“As a leader, you have to not only do the right thing, but be perceived to be doing the right thing. A consequence of seeking a leadership position is being put under intense public scrutiny, being held to high standards, and enhancing a reputation that is constantly under threat.”

— Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and Andrew Ward
Firing Back

Escape the trap

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Most of the lawyers I talk with enjoy practicing law, at least to some degree.  They may not love it, but there’s some part of practice that works for them, whether it’s the intellectual challenge, the stand-up work that can harness the acting bug, or even the money.  I don’t think I’ve ever met a lawyer who thinks her practice is just perfect, with no need for growth or adjustment, but the majority of lawyers aren’t desperately searching for a way out of the profession.

I find that one trait is almost universal among those who are unhappy in practice, though: a sense of being trapped, with no alternatives, no escape, just a decades-long future in the same miserable position.

The source of the misery varies, of course.  Sometimes it’s working too many hours, with the accompanying pain of a distant or angry spouse/family, no time to develop a relationship, or feelings of burnout from trying to please clients, employers/partners, family, friends, etc., but lacking time to enjoy personal pursuits.  Sometimes it’s feeling trapped in a job that doesn’t fit, because of the practice type, clients, colleagues, the way the firm (or company) operates, or because the money is an insufficient reward for the effort required and there’s no passion to balance it.  And sometimes, it’s the result of years of academic competition without any particular direction, yielding a terrific but unwanted legal career.

Lawyers talk about golden handcuffs, and especially in view of law school debt, that’s a real phenomenon.  However, I stand for the believe that no one is ever truly trapped.  There’s always an option, usually a variety of them, though it may take the help of someone else to see what those options are.

Sometimes the choices only require an adjustment.  For instance, burnout can often be countered with rigorous energy management.  (If that intrigues you, read The Power of Full Engagementby Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz.)  Sometimes, the choices are much more difficult — a new job or practice, perhaps with a pay cut.  And sometimes, the path is undefined and the first steps of moving into it are exhilarating and also terrifying.

So, for anyone who’s wondering: the trap, though it looks real, is an illusion.  In Einstein’s words: “The significant problems we face can not be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them,” and One cannot alter a condition with the same mind set that created it in the first place.