Biglaw, Partner Issues, Screw-Ups, Supreme Court

3 Ways Partners Screw Up

Biglaw partners are far from infallible, as former partner Mark Herrmann explains.

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A few months back, I wrote a column called “4 Ways Associates Screw Up.”

On reflection, that seems a little one-sided. I’m back today with three ways partners screw up.

Egad. Have I been writing this column for a long time, or what? I just did a few Google searches to confirm that I haven’t already written on this topic. I think I’m safe. There’s the old “How To Be A Crappy Partner” from 2011. (I appreciate the help you contributed in the 166 comments there. I see what it takes to get my audience riled up.) And then there was “How To Drive Associates Nuts” in 2012. That was some fine advice for partners, if I do say so myself. But, so far as my memory and Google inform me, I haven’t before identified three ways partners screw up. That time has come; it’s your lucky day!

First: Partners don’t prepare in advance to give assignments to junior lawyers.

Partners prepare to do many things. They’ll prepare for weeks before a long jury trial and for days before a key deposition, a beauty contest, or an important appellate argument.

But how much time is a partner likely to spend preparing before asking an associate to do a research project?

A fly on the wall of the partner’s office would see this:

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End of first phone call: “Yes, yes. Of course. If you really think the bill is too high, just pay us what you think our work was worth.”

Hangs up. Curses under breath.

Phone rings: “Hi, honey. A loaf of bread and a half gallon of milk? Of course I can pick it up. Love you.”

Hangs up. Curses.

Mutters to self: “Can’t I get any productive work done today? What the heck am I working on? Oh, yeah — the Brunelleschi case! What was that one about? I suppose I should have some research done.”

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Picks up phone, dials associate, and three minutes later is making largely incomprehensible request for research about some obscure question of Florentine architectural malpractice law.

Because the partner has spent essentially no time thinking about what he truly needed, or about what the associate must know to undertake the research, the partner will completely butcher the giving of the assignment. The partner won’t tell the associate what the litigation is about, will omit key facts from the presentation, and will ultimately solicit research into an area that’s only tangential to the key issue in the case.

What would you expect? If you want to do something right, you must think about what you’re doing. And a partner typically thinks only briefly, if at all, before asking an associate to help with a project. The associate thus has no clue what he’s doing, and the partner will later be outraged at the unhelpful work product that the associate produces. (The partner may well make matters worse by discouraging the associate from asking follow-up questions while working on the project. If you’re going to butcher your initial request for help, you should at least willingly assist the sad sack who’s trying to make sense of your foolish instructions.)

How else do partners screw up?

Second: Partners gratuitously ruin associates’ lives.

I didn’t say that “partners ruin associates’ lives.” Partners do that, of course, but that comes with the territory: If you’ve taken a job at a high-powered firm in a high-powered profession for which you’re being paid high-powered money, your high-powered tasks will frequently ruin your nights and weekends. When a TRO lands on the partner’s desk on December 24 [ho, ho, ho!], then Christmas just got ruined. That’s not really the partner’s fault, and you can’t really blame her for it.

I’m talking about partners “gratuitously” ruining associates’ lives: The client asked for advice on Monday. The partner didn’t ask for help all week, happily tending to other work. On Friday, the partner remembers that she’s dropped the ball and starts furiously dialing for associates. The associate foolish enough to answer the phone learns late on Friday afternoon that he must deliver a research memo bright and early Monday morning.

That’s ruining someone’s life gratuitously, and that’s screwing up.

It’s screwing up in two ways. First, as a matter of principle, ruining other people’s lives unnecessarily is not nice.

But that’s not all. Over time, associates will catch on to the partner, and the partner will pay a price for being a jerk.

I’ve stood in the office of one of my senior partners (at a very large law firm) on a Friday afternoon, watching him dial one associate’s office after another, cursing as no one answered the phone: “Jesus! Doesn’t anyone work around here anymore? I’ve tried to call about a dozen associates, and no one has picked up! It’s only 5:30 on a Friday afternoon; they can’t all have left for the day.”

I’ve also stood in the office of one of my junior colleagues on a Friday afternoon when the phone rang. She looked at the phone: “Ha! That’s Ghiberti calling! At 5:30 on a Friday. There’s no way I’m picking up that phone. Do I look stupid? He’s blown up way too many of my weekends for me to fall for that again. I have plans tomorrow. Let him find somebody else to help.”

That’s the partner’s screw-up.

Finally: Partners forget how little they knew when they first started practicing law.

As a junior associate, you can attend a “litigators’ lunch” when a bunch of litigators are discussing pending issues, and you can come away completely confused. What kind of discovery are they talking about? What caused the waiver? Why would the waiver hurt? How would that possibly be privileged? You hear the words, but you lack the practical experience to understand what they mean.

Fast forward a couple of decades. That junior associate is now a senior partner who has forgotten that he was once young and inexperienced. He thus assigns projects in words that are incomprehensible, and he assumes that junior associates understand concepts they’ve never heard before. The poor associate is thinking: “In law school, we wrote briefs. But this guy is talking about a memorandum of points and authorities. I wonder what the heck that is.” Or: “A motion in limine? Did I ever hear about that in law school?”

Senior lawyers may not quickly realize the difference between someone who’s been practicing for five years (and thus understands the basics and the jargon) and someone who’s been practicing for ten minutes (and thus is at a complete loss). Unless partners bear in mind the difference between those individuals, partners are likely to screw up.

And we wouldn’t want that, would we?

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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