Reinventing The Law Business: 3 Essential Virtues For Lawyers

Managing partner Bruce Stachenfeld shares wisdom from business writer Patrick Lencioni.

Bruce Stachenfeld

Bruce Stachenfeld

Patrick Lencioni writes some great books. They are “business books,” so some might say that lawyers should logically have no particular interest in them. But that would be completely wrong. Indeed, the reason I have been successful in somehow starting and running a law firm for close to twenty years is that I regularly draw on insights and ideas from other industries and other thinkers, and Lencioni is someone who continuously delivers good ideas. To cut to the chase – if I had a friend starting a law firm and he asked me to pick a single writer who would be best to read to teach him what he needed to know in starting and running his law firm successfully, I think I would pick Patrick Lencioni.

Okay – so enough buildup.

Lencioni recently wrote a book called The Ideal Team Player: How to Recognize and Cultivate the Three Essential Virtues. In it, he describes the ideal team player that any business would want to build on. The book is a parable and a story – like all of his books – which makes it easy reading; however, in the end he comes up with just three characteristics for the ideal team player, and the more I think on it the more I think he is “dead-on b*lls accurate” (to quote Marissa Tomei in My Cousin Vinny):

  • Humble
  • Hungry
  • Smart

Those are the three characteristics for the ideal teammate/partner in a law firm. To dissect this a bit, Lencioni explains:

  • Humility is the single greatest and most indispensable attribute of being a team player.
  • Hungry people almost never have to be pushed by a manager to work harder because they are self-motivated and diligent.
  • Smart simply refers to a person’s common sense about people.

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And when you think about it, what do you have when someone is missing one of these key ingredients? I will tell you flat out – you have trouble!!!

Consider how much trouble a person who is not humble can cause? He can make everyone around him miserable as he consistently believes he – and only he – is the reason for the team’s success. You don’t need to watch a sports movie to know how much trouble people like this can be.

Someone who is not “hungry” results in the team being uninspired as they realize on some level – overtly or subtly – that they are just carrying this person on their backs. And the more this happens, the more resentful they become.

A person who is not “smart” in human relationships? Even worse! A politician, or inadvertent troublemaker, just pisses everyone off around him and makes everyone resentful. Indeed, sometimes one person who is not smart in human relationships can bring down the whole ecosystem around him.

But if you have these three traits, I think you really do have it all in your teammates.

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After I read the book, I thought about whether I had these traits. I thought about whether my partners, my associates, my administrative personnel have these traits. Happily I am pleased with the results of my thinking (other than wonderment about whether I am humble — I am going to ask my wife about this…).

So I thank Lencioni for writing this super-simple and insightful book and commend it to you. And, ending as I began this article, if you are running a law firm – or working in one – it is a quite valuable exercise to look around at your employees or at your peers or at your bosses (as applicable) and assess whether your teammates have these traits. Perhaps your firm might need a little reinventing if these traits are not present in your team – or – more positively – perhaps you have a great team and now all you need to do is go out and win a few games.


Bruce Stachenfeld is the managing partner of Duval & Stachenfeld LLP, which is an approximately 70-lawyer law firm based in midtown Manhattan. The firm is known as “The Pure Play in Real Estate Law” because all of its practice areas are focused around real estate. With more than 50 full-time real estate lawyers, the firm is one of the largest real estate law practices in New York City. You can contact Bruce by email at thehedgehoglawyer@gmail.com.