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.

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”?

WSJ Blog takes on work/life balance; will salary bump stem associate attrition?

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In early December, the Wall Street Journal started a new blog, The Juggle, dedicated to work/life balance issues.  The tag line limits the discussion to “choices and tradeoffs people make as they juggle work and family,” and I’ll be curious to see whether the posts will continue on that line or whether they’ll broaden out to entertain other reasons for a juggling act.

One of the most interesting posts so far is More Money, Fewer Problems.  A first-year associate at a New York firm, who’s also the mother of a 16-month old child, apparently wrote the blog recently to share the effects of the recent bump in her salary to $160K: “That salary bump has significantly affected my thinking as to how long I will really stay at this job. It also, interestingly, for better or worse, made me feel better about getting home late last night. I felt that at least I was getting paid for it. And when I heard the news of the raise, my first thought was, OK — now preschool won’t be such a struggle to pay for.”  At the time of this writing, the post had generated 82 comments, many of which (not too surprisingly) criticize the “greedy associate” mentality.  Put on your seatbelt for this read.

The news about the salary escalation prompted me to wonder about its effect on associate retention.  No question that salary increases are necessary to keep large firms on a level playing field, and no question that associates benefit in some ways from those increases.  (I still remember my delight in making X in June 1999, X+11K in early January 2000, and X+11K+20K in mid-January!)  But I question whether money alone is sufficient to keep associates.

After all, if the pay is competitive among firms, wouldn’t an economically rational lawyer jump from one firm to another to retain the same pay (or to get the bump that often comes with a new position) and to search for a good fit?  (This assumes that the attrition stats, such as NALP’s report that 37% of BigLaw associates leave a firm by the end of the third year in practice, are valid and that the attrition isn’t driven solely by associates seeking more money.)  That leaves the associate in the same economic position (or, depending on perspective, with a new pair of golden handcuffs)  and the firms with significant attrition and the attendant costs.  I’ll be curious to see how this plays out, but I don’t think increasing salaries will promote retention, particularly given the increased expectations that firms will place on associates to fund the pay bump.

On this point, visit the Up to PAR blog for commentary about a recent ABA Journal article that reported “overwhelming” associate feedback that they’d take a pay cut to work fewer hours.  The post, titled Associates v. Partners v. Clients, effectively skewers those who argue that associates who bill fewer hours are less committed than those who work more.  (PAR’s rebuttal: “You have to be extremely committed to the law to try to be a lawyer while also meeting obligations outside the office.”)  Interesting ABA article, and PAR’s examination is even more interesting.

I have to note, though, that I don’t believe any one initiative will promote associate retention.  After all, not all lawyers do want to work fewer hours — and there’s certainly a tension even among those who’d prefer fewer hours when considering how much pay is necessary to maintain the desired standard of living.  So if the solution isn’t money or reduced hours, what is it?  Practicing law is unlikely to be a one-size-fits-all endeavor, and law firms may be hard-pressed to find ways to focus on client service and remain profitable while retaining associate “talent.”  Perhaps the future will allow firms and associates to cut individually-based deals that benefit both sides.  This is a trend that seems to be bubbling up now; if it’s successful, it could change the way firms operate.   More on this another day.

One final thought about The Juggle: I’m surprised that a couple of posts describing the experience of a professional caring for a parent (blog author Sara Schaefer Muñoz’s grandfather) attracted no comments.  I find it hard to believe that blog readers aren’t members of the sandwich generation, and I’m curious that this post, at least, didn’t stir up some reaction.

The Cheat Sheet for women lawyers

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The New York City Bar Women Lawyers Committee has put together a “Cheat Sheet”for women lawyers (or law students) interviewing legal employers or seeking to evaluate a current employer’s commitment to women.

Geared toward gender issues, obviously, the Cheat Sheet is largely applicable for evaluating any diversity issue.  It’s an interesting document, not least because of its comprehensiveness.  The 9-page document includes questions on the “six key indicia of an employer’s commitment to women’s retention and advancement,” including “(a) statistical and background information, (b) partnership and advancement, (c) leadership and accountability, (d) business development and networking, (e) workplace flexibility (including time management and work/life balance), and (f) mentoring,” and also includes recommendations for law firms and law schools.

In addition to the Cheat Sheet, the Committee’s website includes an interesting video documentary entitled Changing Lives: Pioneering New York Women Attorneys and a report on the Best Practices for the Hiring, Training, Retention and Advancement of Women Attorneys.

It’s been about a year now since the New York Times published its article “Why Do So Few Women Reach the Top of Big Law Firms,” citing a NALP study showing that only 17% of big law partners were women in 2005, a small gain from 1995, when 13% of partners were women.  (For a somewhat depressing follow-up, visit this page, which offers subscriber-only links to articles that address mandatory retirement for older lawyers, ask why African-American lawyers are less successful at major firms than their white counterparts, and tout a client-initiated diversity push.  The abstracts give the flavor.)

I appreciate the Cheat Sheet because it provides questions that any lawyers/law student can ask, perhaps at carefully-selected times, or to which they may determine answers through observation.  Although having the questions doesn’t by any means guarantee a smooth path for women or any other group (middle-aged or younger white men included), it does level the playing field by granting some information about the likely expectations and biases of the employer as exhibited through current behavior.  And, really, I’m not sure it’s possible to ask for much more than that under current circumstances.  Perhaps the knowledge gained will assist individuals in creating change in law firm partnership ranks.

Sustainability

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I burn my candle at both ends
It will not last the night.
But ah my foes and oh my friends
It gives a lovely light.
       Edna St. Vincent Millay

What do you think when you read this?  If you’re like many lawyers, you felt a flutter of recognition — perhaps just before you recoiled at the idea that, perhaps, your candle won’t “last the night.”  It’s just the weak who can’t burn and burn and burn, right?

Sustainability isn’t a sexy word, and most of us don’t see it as something to aim for.  After all, we tend to want bigger and better and more, not homeostasis.  What does it mean, though, to have a “sustainable practice”?

According to Merriam-Webster, “to sustain” means (among other things) “to supply with sustenance: nourish” and “to keep up, prolong.”   And sustainable means, of course, “capable of being sustained” or “of or relating to a lifestyle involving the use of sustainable methods.”

How do you nourish your practice?  How does your lifestyle support you in keeping up and prolonging your practice?  Ideas that occur to me (aside from the standard work less and play more, which is easy to say and very difficult to do):

1.  Discover what’s meaningful to you and focus your attention and practice on that.  If it’s client service, you will draw a strength and energy from serving your clients that someone who’s in practice because of the intellectual stimulation won’t experience.  Connecting to what matters to you illuminates your purpose.  Having a purpose nourishes your practice.

2.  Delegate.  If you can identify aspects of practice that you personally don’t have to fulfill, you’ll increase your energy by passing it along to someone who can handle it.  If you find yourself thinking that you’ll spend less time doing it (whatever it is) than teaching someone else to do it, consider whether you’ll save time over the long run if you turn it over, even if it requires an investment of time now.

3.  Connect.  If you enjoy socializing, make sure you have a group of lawyers you join for lunch or drinks or a volleyball game on a regular basis.  You’ll increase social contact, have a group of colleagues to use as sounding boards, build a resource for giving and getting referrals, and more.  You can even do this online, but consider whether you’d get more out of interacting with flesh and blood colleagues.

4.  Notice how your body feels when you have adequate sleep, nutrition, and exercise.  Just notice.  If your noticing convinces you that you feel better and have more energy, consider what to do with that knowledge.

5.  Develop discipline.  You can put a schedule in place that will support you.  Plan time when you put your calls on hold and get concentrated work done.  Set time aside for meeting with your support staff, the lawyers you supervise, and those who supervise you.

6.  Take time for outside interests.  Hike, read, act, whatever… But don’t allow yourself to be one-dimensional.

7.  Do you live on adrenaline and caffeine?  If so, chances are that you’re running from crisis to crisis.  Ask yourself whether there’s a way to limit the crunches to times when there’s really a crisis.  What feels good about putting out fires?  Spending some time resolving this will provide support for making changes that leave you working on a non-emergency basis, which facilitates having more energy.  Adrenaline and caffeine are great, but they’re hardly the key to a sustainable practice or life.

8.  Set aside time to check your progress on these and other habits that support you and your practice.  Because it’s easy to get sucked into a hectic schedule (with your candle burning not only at both ends but in the middle, too), arrange a relationship that will hold you accountable to whatever adjustments you may decide to make.  Consider whether coaching might be the appropriate relationship.

Professional inspiration: The Honorable Elbert P. Tuttle

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The end of the year always strikes me as a good time to reflect on what works well in the law and why we lawyers do what we do.  Today, I’d like to introduce readers to one of my legal heroes, The Hon. Elbert Parr Tuttle.

Judge Tuttle served on the Fifth and Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals from 1954 until his death in 1996.  He’s remembered as a model attorney and judge, one who represented the absolute best in the profession.  Judge Tuttle was tremendously active in civil rights cases, both as a lawyer and a judge and, along with other members of the Fifth Circuit (John Minor Wisdom, John Brown, and Richard Rives) was instrumental in bringing effective desegregation to the South.  (The anecdote at the beginning of this story about Judge Tuttle illustrates not only how he came to play such a role; it also illustrates the power that parental example can have on children, and children then on the world.)  For more on Judge Tuttle’s life and accomplishments, see any of the memorials and articles written about him, and definitely read Jack Bass’s phenomenal book Unlikely Heroes.

Judge Tuttle gave a commencement speech at Emory Law School in the 1950s that defines professionalism.  It has informed my understanding of what it means (and what it should mean) to be an attorney, and I make it a habit to read through Judge Tuttle’s speech several times a year.  The full speech is not available on the Internet, unfortunately.  But here’s an excerpt, provided by the Washington Realty Group:

The professional man is in essence one who provides service. But the service he renders is something more than that of the laborer, even the skilled laborer. It is a service that wells up from the entire complex of his personality. True, some specialized and highly developed techniques may be included, but their mode of expression is given its deepest meaning by the personality of the practitioner. In a very real sense his professional service cannot be separate from his personal being. He has no goods to sell, no land to till. His only asset is himself. It turns out that there is no right price for service, for what is a share of a man worth? If he does not contain the quality of integrity, he is worthless. If he does, he is priceless. The value is either nothing or it is infinite.So do not try to set a price on yourselves. Do not measure out your professional services on an apothecaries’ scale and say, “Only this for so much.” Do not debase yourselves by equating your souls to what they will bring in the market. Do not be a miser, hoarding your talents and abilities and knowledge, either among yourselves or in your dealings with your clients . . .Rather be reckless and spendthrift, pouring out your talent to all to whom it can be of service! Throw it away, waste it, and in the spending it will be increased. Do not keep a watchful eye lest you slip, and give away a little bit of what you might have sold. Do not censor your thoughts to gain a wide audience. Like love, talent is only useful in its expenditure, and it is never exhausted. Certain it is that man must eat; so set what price you must on your service. But never confuse the performance, which is great, with the compensation, be it money, power, or fame, which is trivial.. . . The job is there, you will see it, and your strength is such, as you graduate . . . that you need not consider what the task will cost you. It is not enough that you do your duty. The richness of life lies in the performance which is above and beyond the call of duty. 

Elbert Parr Tuttle, “Heroism in War and Peace”, The Emory University Quarterly. 1957;13:129-30.

 

Fighting BlackBerry addiction

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Last week’s Wall Street Journal featured an article titled, BlackBerry Orphans (subscription required, free preview available).  If it weren’t so serious, it would be funny:

As hand-held email devices proliferate, they are having an unexpected impact on family dynamics: Parents and their children are swapping roles. Like a bunch of teenagers, some parents are routinely lying to their kids, sneaking around the house to covertly check their emails and disobeying house rules established to minimize compulsive typing.

BlackBerries are wonderful gizmos that can make it much easier to balance practice and life.  No need to sit in the office waiting for an email if it can reach you while you’re on personal time.  However, so many BlackBerry users seem to respond to device’s siren song as if nothing could be more important.  One of my clients even confided to me that she would sometimes wake up in the middle of the night and turn on her BlackBerry just to see if any important email had come in since she’d gone to bed.  I confided to my client that I’ve done the same, too.  And then I shared my strategies for making the BlackBerry serve me rather than vice versa.

If you’re having trouble confining your BlackBerry time, try the following tips published by the WSJ Law Blog:

  1. During meals, do not check email.
  2. Do not hide your email habits from family members. If you feel that someone would be upset to see you BlackBerrying, it’s a sign that you probably shouldn’t be.
  3. Commit to stop emailing while driving (even at red lights), walking across the street or doing anything that requires careful attention.
  4. Do not check email for the first hour of the day. In addition to giving you time to leisurely read the newspaper or spend time with your family, the practice will help you shake the tic-like checking ritual.
  5. Endeavor to leave the mobile email device in the car or at home when attending any function taking place at your child’s school, or when picking up your child from school.
  6. Decide on an email-free block of time. Parents should first assess their child’s conversational patterns — some like to talk about their day immediately after school, others just before bedtime. Even if your child doesn’t seem interested in talking, stick to your promise not to email during that time.
  7. Set boundaries at work: Alert your colleagues that your mobile email device will be turned off during the predetermined time slot.
  8. Actually turn off your device and stick it in a drawer during the time you’ve designated as email-free.
  9. If you are in the middle of a work crisis, still try to respect some boundaries. Consider blocking out a few 15-minute periods to check email — and then turn the device off again. Honestly assess whether the situation at work is an actual crisis that can’t be solved without your oversight.
  10. When emailing while socializing or spending time with your family, ask yourself if your priority at that moment is enjoying after-work activities or getting work done. If it is the former, power-down. If it’s the latter, return to the office.
  11. Upon arriving home, practice a ritual that helps you mentally separate the work day from the after-work evening. Light a candle, put on music, pour a cocktail. Don’t check your email during this time.
  12. If mobile email overuse creates tension between you and your significant other, consider creating jointly agreed-upon BlackBerry-free zones. For instance, unless your bedroom doubles as a home office, consider maintaining it as a sanctuary of your personal life.

And if, as one commenter stated, your firm would never permit use of these tips, query whether the firm’s standards and values match your own.

Target fixation

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In World War II, fighter pilots spoke of the danger of target fixation.  During bombing runs, pilots could become so focused on their targets that they’d dive, drop a bomb on the target, and yet remain so intent on hitting the target that they’d fail to pull up in time.  They’d end up hitting their target and killing themselves.  Although they would have achieved their mission, they wouldn’t survive to fly the next one or even to celebrate their accomplishment.

What does this have to do with practice?

Imagine a lawyer — let’s call her Mary — who is so focused on making partner that everything else recedes.  She spends the hours between 7 AM and 7:30 PM in the office on weekdays and at least 6 hours a day there on weekends.  When she isn’t at work, she’s either working at home or thinking about work.  When she meets someone, she immediately thinks about how they might fit into her goal, whether as a potential client, referral source, or otherwise.  Perhaps she’s married, perhaps she has children, and if so, her family is important to her and yet they’re accustomed to her missing dinner or school plays and being busy for “just a few more minutes” when she’s home.  Mary doesn’t go out to lunch unless there’s a reason, and she feels that exercise is just a waste of time that she could use for work or for marketing.  Her office looks like a tornado hit it, but she doesn’t stop to clean up until she starts to lose things on her desk.  She’s generally known as a nice person, but when she gets stressed, she’s liable to snap at her colleagues and the support staff — and she gets stressed rather often.  Vacations are important to her, but all too often she feels that she’s just moved her work from the office to a spot off-site.

And then, Mary makes partner.  Though she may fantasize about cutting back, chances are good that she won’t.  After all, her hard work put her ahead of the pack, and letting up now would knock her off her game.

And then, something happens.  Maybe a parent gets sick, maybe a child, or maybe it’s Mary.  Maybe something goes wrong at the office, or perhaps she just stops one day and thinks wistfully about her life Before, when she used to enjoy talking long walks through the neighborhood at dawn to get her heart pumping.  Perhaps she wonders what happened, when she quit spending time on non-work things.

Mary is a victim of target fixation.

None of us can function well as a single-dimension individual.  We need input on the intellectual level, but we also need to pay attention to our emotions, our body, and our spirit.  Although it’s possible to neglect those domains, their weakness will eventually bleed over and reduce the effectiveness of the intellectual output, simply because there’s nothing to sustain it.  Another word for target fixation is burnout, the moment when we experience having poured an unsustainable amount of energy into one area of life to the detriment of other areas.  It’s crash-and-burn success.

Work/life balance prevents burnout by nourishing all areas of life, though perhaps not in equal proportions.  Some people really love their work and would feel lost if required to cut back (see Stephanie West Allen’s excellent post Hot worms revisited: Extreme lawyers often love their work for an exploration of what work/life balance “really” means and who gets to decide) and others feel pushed to work so much that important areas of their lives are neglected.  Of course, what’s tricky is that the extreme lawyer may feel restless if he “only” works 60 hours in a week, whereas the more traditionally “balanced” lawyer may start to get antsy and worn out if she sees no choice but to work 60 hours.

Bottom line: define your own balance between work and life, or recognize that your work is your life and work/life describes a continuous, integral whole.  Whatever you decide, though, be on the lookout for target fixation — and pull up well before you crash.