In-House Counsel

The Road Not Taken: What's In It For Me?

We’re lawyers. We’ve been trained to be rotten to each other. What would happen if we acted civilly?

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Other humans: You can’t live with them and you can’t chop them up and throw them in a food processor without being noticed. That means we have to interact with each other, including at our jobs. If we have to interact, we may as well try to be pleasant or at least civil to each other.

But we’re lawyers. We’ve been trained to be rotten to each other. Law school graded us on a curve and taught us that another person’s success means our failure. For the most part, that philosophy follows us into our careers. In litigation, if you win, I lose. In transactional work, if you get the better deal, I got the lesser deal. To an extent, this binary reality is part of our lives. If we wanted a career where everyone wins, we would have become llama farmers.

The difficulty comes when we don’t realize the playing field has changed. For example, at work we have colleagues and a finite amount of upward mobility. Not everyone can become partner this year. Everyone can’t get promoted just for showing up. If your colleague gets promoted, it probably means you don’t. This can lead to us becoming bitter and rotten colleagues. Instead of seeing ourselves as part of a team, we see ourselves as competitors fighting for a single prize.

Ultimately, if a person is talented and hard-working, she will get noticed; if not by her current employer, then by her next one. Knocking our colleagues down in an attempt to get to the top doesn’t keep them down forever. People get up and keep fighting or move on to other opportunities.

I have had the pleasure of watching many of my friends succeed in their in-house careers. When trying to find referrals to outsource legal work, several have excluded previous places of employment and former colleagues from their search. These people may have lost a battle or been undermined many years ago and the way they were treated then, however long ago, impacts the business and hiring decisions they make today.

Networking is the career-advice flavor of the week. There is a plethora of literature about how to network, how to meet people and showcase your talents (including how to not escape to the bathroom with a pilfered carafe of wine). How about building and improving those relationships with people you already know: your colleagues, both past and present? You don’t have to become soft or turn the other cheek. You don’t have to give up your opportunities for others. But, if you can help a colleague, do so. If a colleague shows a vulnerability, don’t exploit it. Be nice. Be human to each other.

It feels good to win. It feels good to be better than others. It feels good to show someone else isn’t as smart as everyone else thinks she is. But beyond feeling good, what does pushing someone down or stabbing them in the back do for you? It may give you immediate satisfaction, but this short-term high may come at the expense of your future opportunities. Take into account that people move into different industries, political positions, or simply other places of employment, and you can see how foolish it is to fall prey to the immediate gratification of holding another person back or down so you can get ahead.  

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What’s in it for you? It will probably feel like nothing at first, but you won’t lose anything. Eventually, you will develop a reputation for being trustworthy and a strong team member. You may provide support to someone when he needs it. You will be the type of person people want to work with and that will be remembered. That is what’s in it for you. That, and the more durable rewards of a basic sense of decency and humanity.  

Celeste Harrison Forst has practiced in small and mid-sized firms and is now in-house at a large manufacturing and technology company where she receives daily hugs from her colleagues. You can reach Celeste directly at C.harrisonforst@gmail.com.

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