Biglaw, In-House Counsel, Screw-Ups

4 Ways Associates Screw Up

Former Biglaw partner Mark Herrmann identifies four things that associates should not do.

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Earlier this month, Above the Law took its “Quote of the Day” from a piece called “6 Ways That Associates Can Disappoint.”

Readers swooped through that link like vultures to carrion. But Law360’s paywall kept some of the vultures from the decaying flesh they craved. The vultures complained to David Lat.

Above the Law prides itself on providing decaying flesh to all comers, so Lat asked me to write a column about how associates can fail. On your behalf, I protested: “David, I wrote that very column three years ago — ‘What Drives Partners Nuts.‘ And the second chapter of The Curmudgeon’s Guide To Practicing Law is titled, ‘How To Fail As An Associate.’ How many times must I write this stuff? And how many times will people read it?”

Lat wasn’t convinced. And, hey, I just work here (in a manner of speaking). So here we go again.

The folks in the Law360 article did okay. Their six ways for associates to disappoint were: Don’t (1) be visible enough, (2) take ownership of your work, (3) be thorough, (4) be pleasant, (5) know how to talk on the phone, and (6) sow the seeds of business development.

I’m deeming numbers 1 (visibility) and 6 (developing business) to be duplicative and 5 (talking on the phone) to be penny-ante. And, personally, I don’t much care about number 4 (being nice). Maybe I’m out of the mainstream here, but I’m the person who said: “Attila the Hun? Guy’s got a nasty mean streak, but at least he can do his job. Hire him.” I’ll accept an awful lot of personality quirks in exchange for the chance to work with someone who’s smarter than I am and writes and speaks better than I do.

But that was Law360’s list; naturally, I have my own. What are the real ways that associates screw up? Let me give you a few:

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First, associates blow stuff off.

Asked to do something, they simply don’t. Or they do it late. Or they do it half-assed. Or, asked to revise something, they make the absolute fewest revisions possible, hoping that will be enough to get the partner off their back.

(As one of my exasperated partners at a huge law firm said to me years ago, “It seems like associates just want to have garbage bouncing back and forth endlessly between their desks and mine. Doesn’t anybody understand that I’m not itching to edit more drafts? I want stuff to be final and go out the door. Why don’t associates help me with that?”)

Someone ultimately has to get perfect work out the door. If the associate won’t take responsibility for that, then the partner must.

That truth has implications: Every partner thirsts for associates who act like partners — who take responsibility for completing a job, rather than acting like order-takers who do the least work possible before going home at night. If a partner finds an associate who treats work like it matters, the partner will hold that associate close; that associate makes a difference. If all the rest of the associate gang leaves the firm in a decade (or less), who really cares, anyway?

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Be diligent; be responsible; act like it matters.

How else do associates screw up? Here’s number two: Associates think that drafts are drafts.

Fools!

Look: Partners are selfish; every partner wants to work with the person who makes the partner’s life easy. If you give me final, perfect, polished work as your first draft, then I’ll naturally think that you’re smart and helpful, and I’ll ask you to help with my next project. If you give me a draft that’s really a draft — requiring me to suggest new arguments and delete existing ones, fix typos and grammatical errors, and otherwise waste my evening fixing your mistakes — I’m pretty unlikely to come back to you for help next time around. I’d rather go to the other guy — the one who made my life easy.

That’s not malice; that’s human nature. Partners are busy; they don’t want to waste time fixing your work. So make your work — even your drafts — perfect. (In the words of another one of my former partners: “No one ever failed to make partner at this firm by being too conscientious.”)

Third, associates don’t fret the details.

Asked to look at an issue, associates don’t read all of the cases, so we get blind-sided by a horrifying case that our opponent cites in an opposition brief. Or associates don’t read the whole case, so we cite a snippet from footnote 3 that sounds good, and our opponent notes that the actual holding of the case is that we should lose. Or associates don’t read the whole deposition transcript, or contract, or whatever.

If your firm is functioning correctly, then partners are ferociously busy. They’re running around like lunatics trying to attract new business to the firm, providing strategic advice, and ensuring that everything that goes out the door meets the firm’s standards. Partners really can’t spend time reading the entirety of every case that you’re considering citing in a brief. That’s the associate’s job, and the associate should do it.

So do it.

Finally, associates think that new business drops like manna from heaven.

Protip: It doesn’t.

So do something — anything — today to lay the groundwork for the business that you hope to develop ten years from now. It doesn’t matter too much what you do. When I was an associate, I made a point of publishing one article every year. I kept that up after I entered the partnership. Twenty years later, I’d written 20 articles, and my partners and I were handing those things out at every beauty contest we attended.

The benefits didn’t stop there: People who arrange conferences look for speakers, and they often solicit people who’ve written relevant articles. Every article that you write thus (1) raises your personal profile, (2) shows your expertise, (3) will be used repeatedly in the future for business development purposes, and (4) creates speaking opportunities, which further enhance your reputation.

If you’re unwilling (or unable) to write, then don’t. Do something else to lay the groundwork for developing business. Become active on some bar association committee. Join the board of a non-profit organization. Never dine alone. Whatever.

But don’t go home every night to watch the tube and think that you’ll be a rainmaker when you turn 45. With very rare exceptions, it doesn’t work that way.

(Yeah, yeah: I’m a curmudgeon. But I’m an equal opportunity curmudgeon. I’ve also written about how partners screw up, and how secretaries screw up, and probably about how others screw up, too, though those columns aren’t springing to mind. But Lat hasn’t yet asked me to recycle those puppies; be thankful for small blessings.)

Earlier: 6 Ways That Associates Can Disappoint
What Drives Partners Nuts

Mark Herrmann is the Chief Counsel – Litigation and Global Chief Compliance Officer at Aon, the world’s leading provider of risk management services, insurance and reinsurance brokerage, and human capital and management consulting. He is the author of The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Practicing Law and Inside Straight: Advice About Lawyering, In-House And Out, That Only The Internet Could Provide (affiliate links). You can reach him by email at inhouse@abovethelaw.com.

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