Small Law Firms, Solo Practitioners

Can You Build A Cathedral?

Phone calls, emails, meetings -- columnist Keith Lee asks, what is the point of it all?

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There is an old story that tells the tale of three stonemasons. A stranger walks up and asks the stonemasons what they are doing. The first stonemason pauses and says, “I’m making a living.” The second stonemason replies, “I am making the best stone work in the country.” The third stonemason stands up with a distant look in his eyes and says, “I am making a cathedral.”

The first stonemason is a worker bee. He is there to collect a paycheck, nothing more. It is unlikely he will ever find success without someone else’s direction — if he ever finds it at all. A low-level associate. Or doc reviewer. A emp worker. The second stonemason is a craftsman for sure, but lacking in the big picture of what he is doing. An associate. Perhaps a partner someday. The third stonemason is the man who understands the ultimate goal of what their enterprise is all about. He is the senior partner. The one who has clients. One with the will and drive to start his own firm….

It’s easy to get lost in the mundanity of practice. To look at the day-in, day-out grind as simply strapping into the saddle again and again in order to collect a paycheck. Get to work early. Answer emails. Write status report to client. Draft responses to discovery. Return phone calls. Attend meeting. Eat lunch at desk. Shut door, spend five minutes playing Candy Crush so you can maintain some semblance of sanity. Partner knocks on door, has fire, asks you to put it out. Put aside all other work aside (which you will have to catch up on later) and stay at work until 8 p.m. dealing with the partner’s new problem.

Why? What’s it all for? To collect a paycheck? It’s just a job, a well-paying one. You don’t love it, but it pays the bills. Is it for the love of the craft? Diving into legal research, exploring case law, developing strategies and arguments. Spending hours drafting the perfect brief. Is it to make partner? Work hard and long and eventually you’ll be rewarded. Then you can ease up off the gas and maybe enjoy life a bit.

But the goal of a law firm is not to give people a paycheck. It is not to provide the people who work within it interesting problems to solve or work to be done. It is not there to set up structures in which vested workers can benefit off the work done by those below them. All of these are side effects of the one true goal of every successful law firm: to provide excellent work for their clients. To place their client’s needs, worries, and concerns ahead of their own. Making sure that the client is the main event, and changing the way clients think about lawyers.

Only when you make client service the focus of your work, the underlying motivator that fuels your day, will you begin to approach the level of the third stonemason. Only then will you be capable of building a cathedral.

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Keith Lee practices law at Hamer Law Group, LLC in Birmingham, Alabama. He writes about professional development, the law, the universe, and everything at Associate’s Mind. He is also the author of The Marble and The Sculptor: From Law School To Law Practice (affiliate link), published by the ABA. You can reach him at keith.lee@hamerlawgroup.com or on Twitter at @associatesmind.

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