Do You Manage Projects, Or Do You Manage People?

There's a difference, as Biglaw partner turned senior in-house lawyer Mark Herrmann explains.

dartboard pen on target inside straightIf you work at a big law firm, you do not manage people.

I’ve written those words before, and folks have spit in my eye:  “All I do is manage people!  I have to make sure the contract lawyers review the documents [or legal assistants prepare for trial; or associates write decent briefs; or junior partners get the bills out on time; or whatever].”

Spit away.  I’m getting out my handkerchief, wiping off my eye, and repeating:  If you work at a big law firm, you do not manage people.

You manage projects, and that’s very, very different.

Look:  As a partner, you ask an associate to help with something.  You see the work product and conclude that the associate has the IQ of a grapefruit.  So you stop using the associate.

At the end of the year, the firm sends around an email saying that you worked with this associate and so must evaluate him.  You obediently write a comment:  “I used the associate for one, fairly important, task.  I won’t use him again.”

Some other clown — the office managing partner, the schlepper-in-chief, someone — then sits down with the associate a few weeks later and delivers the message:  “Although I personally didn’t work with you last year, and I know absolutely nothing about the quality of your work, the reactions of those who worked with you was somewhat mixed.  At least one person seems fairly unimpressed with the quality of your work.”

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That’s a typical law firm’s “associate evaluation” process.

How do you train associates at a typical big firm?

Associate hands you a draft brief.  You either (1) mark it up and hand it back or (2) read the draft, discard it, and write a new one.  Perhaps you tell the associate that the fact that you actually worked from her draft is high praise; perhaps you don’t mention that.  The associate should intuit that it’s her job to compare her version to yours, think about the differences, and learn from having made the comparison.

That’s generally how big firms “train” associates how to write.

What other training do you provide to junior lawyers?  If you’re an unusually helpful partner, you may sit down with the associate before his first appellate argument, pose a few questions to him, see how he answers, and make some suggestions.  But, in my experience, even that would be an unusual amount of training.  More typically, you do no more than get an email from the associate after the argument, in which the associate tells you that he did a great job.

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So, having dried off my cheek, I repeat:  If you work at a large law firm, you do not manage people.

On the other hand, if you work at a corporation, you manage people.  (I guess I should hedge here:  Junior lawyers may not yet manage others.  Some senior jobs truly require only specialized expertise and no management of people.  But most relatively senior in-house lawyers are managing people.)

What’s the difference between managing projects and managing people?

At a corporation, you interview applicants for the position that reports to you, and you have a real say about who gets hired.  (“He appears to have graduated in the top ten percent of his law school class” may not be the entire basis for the hiring decision.)

After that person comes on board, you meet with him (or her) for weekly one-on-one conversations about the person’s job satisfaction, career path, and opportunities you can find to expand the person’s skills (or network, or whatever).

When the time comes for annual reviews, you personally deliver them.  When your direct report is outraged by the one percent raise, you take the grief.  When the person is sure that her performance has been 10 on a scale of 1 to 10, but you’ve rated the person only a 5, you observe the tears.

When the person seeks a promotion and doesn’t get it, you probably deliver the message personally, and you hear the person’s reaction.

If someone’s not performing up to par, you personally tell the person that he’s going on a performance improvement plan; you personally coach the person to try to improve performance; if you fail, then you personally tell the person that — even though it’s a tough job market and he’s got two kids in college — he’s fired.

That’s people management.

It ain’t project management; those are two different things, and they involve very different skills.

I recently had dinner with a friend who’s a partner at one of those joints that provides expert testimony for litigants.  His little firm had recently been acquired by a bigger, more formal one.  My buddy was jarred by the transition from the old style of the place — project management — to the new style — people management:  “These kids [the junior consultants] swing by my office and ask how to succeed at our firm.  Are they kidding?  I tell them, ‘Either bring in business or become indispensable to an existing partner who brings in a ton of business.  Now get out of my office.’  What the heck do these kids want to hear?

“And then we have the HR people; my God!  They’re sending me emails asking me to participate in ‘calibration’ sessions; they want to be sure we’re all rating the junior people on a similar scale for the annual performance reviews.  Are they kidding me?  I have work to do.  I just write back that I’m busy.  And busy again.  And busy again.  And busy every time they ask, until they finally stop pestering me.  Jesus.”

To my eye, that guy would make a very fine partner at a big law firm.

But he wouldn’t function very well as a senior lawyer responsible for managing a team at a corporation.

“People management.”  “Project management.”  Google ’em; they’re not the same.

And, if you’re at a big law firm, you do only the former.


Mark Herrmann is Vice President and Deputy General Counsel – Litigation and Employment 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.