Beyond Biglaw: Top Of Mind

If you want to assess your current standing in the legal profession and job security, ask yourself this one important question.

There are a lot of ways to measure success as an attorney. Many of the ways lawyers measure their own successes are backwards-looking. Whether focusing on past educational accomplishments or big deals or cases they have participated in, lawyers love to focus on what they have done.

There is nothing wrong with that, unless it prevents someone from focusing on what truly is important: the present. And for practicing lawyers, and those who intend to keep on practicing, there is only one question relating to the present that matters: “Who thinks of me as their lawyer?”

The answer to that question, more than anything else, is the best indicator of your true standing in the profession. Unless you are a law clerk, in-house counsel, or a Biglaw firm manager — if that is your current status, then you have earned, at least temporarily, a captive audience. Enjoy it while it lasts, and hopefully you really like your “client,” whether it be your judge, company executives, or distinguished partners counting on you to announce higher draws and distributions for the 72nd straight quarter.

If you act as outside counsel, in any capacity (associate, partner, anything in between), ask yourself that question. Answer it for yourself honestly. If you are a recent graduate, then your former frat buddies who are raising money for their business selling old video game boxes as collectibles do not count. Limit your answers to the people or companies that can afford to pay you. At a rate that exceeds the amount you could charge as an Uber driver.

Be honest with your answers, because this is really the way to measure the health of your career. And just like a sick person doesn’t really care much about those past times when he was healthy, if you are in a position where your current work situation is an unstable one, your cushy gig as junior associate number 37 a few decades ago won’t mean much now. Because the longer your career goes, and the more money you grow accustomed to making, the more important it is to have a growing list of people who think of you as their lawyer. That is your only “true job security,” after all — at least in this profession.

If the only person you know who can afford to pay you a living (or at least better than replacement-level) wage is your current employer, then you better do your best to be top of mind for your firm’s partners with business. Does not matter if you are a junior associate or a service partner. And yes, you may be in competition with your fellow employees for that status. But make no mistake. If you are in that position, you need to be the person who is thought of (preferably first) when work gets assigned. If you are not, and don’t have a plan for reaching that level in your employer’s eyes, then you may as well start looking around. And try harder next time around with your new employer if you manage to find something.

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For those attorneys fortunate enough to have clients of their own, their list may have multiple tiers. Highest value goes to those clients who think of them as their “go-to” lawyer in the practice area that they actually practice in. Next would be those clients who consider them a “go-to” lawyer, and give work to their firm outside of the practice area that they actually practice in. The former tend to be the “stickiest” clients. And are thus the most valuable. The more of those a lawyer has, and the more profitable the work they engage that lawyer to do is, the more job security that lawyer enjoys. It is a pretty simple equation.

But just keeping a list of which clients you are “top of mind” for is just one part of what makes this self-analysis valuable. It is just as important to keep track of changes in the composition of people on your list over time. And trying to understand why those changes, if any, are happening. Is it because your marketing efforts are finally starting to pay off? Or have you slowly been leaking clients of your own because you are too busy servicing other people’s clients? The whole point is to take stock of where you truly are in your career, and that means asking the tough questions about why things are the way they are for you. That is the first step to correcting a rough situation, or maintaining a good one.

Everything I have been written about individual lawyers applies equally to firms and, on a more granular level, practice groups. At our firm, we want our clients to think of us when they have patent-related issues that require attention. We know there is plenty of competition out there, but if we wanted to work in a non-competitive industry, we would have quit practicing long ago. Even Biglaw firms are not immune from studying, and trying to learn from, their existing client mix. And asking whether they are doing enough, in a crowded field of competitors, to remain “top of mind” for their hard-earned clients. Put simply, every firm needs to put itself through this exercise. At least once a year.

Everyone wants security when it comes to their professional lives. When it comes to a competitive service industry like law, there is only one way to guarantee it. So ask yourself: “Who thinks of me as their lawyer?”

Please feel free to send comments or questions to me at gkroub@kskiplaw.com or via Twitter: @gkroub. Any topic suggestions or thoughts are most welcome.

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Gaston Kroub lives in Brooklyn and is a founding partner of Kroub, Silbersher & Kolmykov PLLC, an intellectual property litigation boutique. The firm’s practice focuses on intellectual property litigation and related counseling, with a strong focus on patent matters. You can reach him at gkroub@kskiplaw.com or follow him on Twitter: @gkroub.