Private Law May Be A Business, But Lawyers Are Not Simply Businesspeople

Lawyers have obligations businesspeople don't -- and we cannot forget that, according to columnist John Balestriere.

Lawyers have obligations businesspeople don’t. We cannot forget that.

While having coffee with a client recently, she complained about the rapaciousness of venture capitalists that she had encountered over the years. As she saw it, they came to businesspeople like her with promises of helping entrepreneurs build their dreams, while the public got better products, and everyone was better off financially. But, she recounted, on one occasion, when it came closer to certain VCs investing in her company (something that didn’t happen), the VCs sought more and more conditions in the deal that were unpalatable to my client. These eleventh-hour additions all accrued solely to the VCs’ financial position—my client, her partners, the quality of their product, and their customers all be damned.

I think she’s right about VCs or investors in general. But that’s their job. They are there to make money. Without expressing an opinion on the impact such a way of making a living has on one’s soul, we cannot really criticize investors, finance professionals, or even businesspeople in general for having a primary focus on their work of increasing profits.

Private lawyers like those at our firm must acknowledge that they are businesspeople, too. Indeed, a focus of my biweekly column on Building and Managing a Law Firm is that we do need to keep in mind that we’re running businesses. Law firm managers have responsibilities that businesspeople have that have nothing specifically to do with serving clients and doing justice. This absolutely includes the obligation to manage finances well. Without enough money coming in, staff cannot get paid, Westlaw subscriptions get canceled, and there’s no toner in the printer.

But while being mindful of this reality—perhaps never once considered in the halls of law schools in New Haven or Cambridge or Morningside Heights—we also do need to keep something else, at least as important, in mind. We are not just businesspeople. We are lawyers. We are part of a profession that has a special obligation to our clients, to the courts, and to justice. Businesspeople do not have that obligation. We do.

I can see the eyes roll on some and, fine, all are entitled to their view. Certainly, if a lawyer does not consider herself to have higher obligations, she will not conduct herself pursuant to such obligations. Many of us, perhaps most of us, I think, work and live mindful of such obligations. Some would criticize my perspective as naive (to whatever extent a former organized crime prosecutor trial lawyer from Brooklyn who was a Yankee fan as child during those terrible 1980s can be naive). The fact nonetheless remains that since ancient times those schooled in and practicing the law were supposed to be special and different. And that means we must be special and different businesspeople.

Litigators who are mindful of our special obligations can easily point to a situation where our lawyer responsibilities trump our businessperson responsibilities to generate cases and always be selling. As litigators our first response to a potential client who comes to us and either wants to sue or has been sued in a civil action should be to figure out if we can resolve the dispute for the client quickly. Given the way most of us are paid, a quick resolution often is not in our financial interest. Too bad. We have a client to serve—a fast resolution is exactly the best resolution in many, many cases. We have courts to serve—too few litigants get the time they need from already overburdened courts (especially the state court), so we do not need to add cases which do not belong there. We have an obligation to justice—justice delayed really is justice denied, and virtually any litigant will complain, fairly or not, about how long even the fastest federal court action or arbitration matter takes to be resolved.

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I think we need to look at this the right way. We have an opportunity, very quickly, to do justice and serve clients when they come to us at the beginning of a dispute. We absolutely deserve to be well paid for the value we obtain for them when we help them resolve such dispute quickly. But if we can serve them well, we are satisfying our own professional calling. And—simply being blunt—most of those that have problems now that require a lawyer will have problems later that require a lawyer. Serve the client well and he very well may be back when you cannot resolve the dispute quickly.

Law firm managers must be smart businesspeople. But we always need to keep in mind that we are more than that. We’re lawyers, too, and need to act like lawyers every day.


John Balestriere is an entrepreneurial trial lawyer who founded his firm after working as a prosecutor and litigator at a small firm. He is a partner at trial and investigations law firm Balestriere Fariello in New York, where he and his colleagues represent domestic and international clients in litigation, arbitration, appeals, and investigations. You can reach him by email at john.g.balestriere@balestrierefariello.com.

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