$180K, Raw Intelligence, And Experience

In-house columnist Mark Herrmann comes to the defense of Biglaw paying $180K starting salaries.

dartboard pen inside straight“You’re paying new associates $180K? But I could have a lawyer with 15 years’ experience for the same price!”

So what?

The big firms wouldn’t want your lawyer with 15 years’ experience.

They want someone who’s good. Or who at least has potential.

Experience and raw firepower aren’t the same thing.

With 15 years’ experience, you know how to ask the same old interrogatories, and draft the same old contracts, and provide the same old answers to the same old questions. And that’s valuable — up to a point. That’s what’s required to process all the routine stuff, and there’s plenty of routine stuff going around.

But a few places aren’t looking for people who can handle the routine stuff.

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Routine stuff is “commodity work,” and commodity work pays only commodity prices, and commodity prices don’t pay the freight at a big firm.

Big firms create unique solutions to unique problems, and they require unique lawyers to do that.

I grant you some of this is oversold: Most big firms do more commodity work than they would like to admit. Most big firm lawyers aren’t distinguishable from lawyers who don’t breathe big firm air. In fact, many big firm lawyers are today seeking refuge from the big firm lifestyle and are themselves creating boutiques with big firm quality and less-than-big-firm overhead.

But the difference between “good” and “bad” isn’t just the difference between “new” and “old.” Some people really do have insights, and perspectives, and ways of thinking about things that are just better than the pack. And those are the people that big firms are trying to hire. They wouldn’t want a run-of-the-mill lawyer with 15 years’ experience; experience doesn’t substitute for raw intelligence.

(I hear already, as I type, the guys with 15 years’ experience and little to show for it ranting: “I’m just as good as the smart guys! They just don’t understand! Life’s not fair!” Maybe. Or maybe you just don’t see the difference between what experience teaches and what raw intelligence offers. That’s why you’ll never achieve what you haven’t attained.

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Or maybe life’s just not fair. Heck if I know.)

This is also the tricky part of working in-house. People seem to believe that everything is a matter of training: “If Smith can’t distinguish a good brief from a bad one, just train him. If Jones can’t generate unique ideas that win cases, just show him.”

It doesn’t work that way.

I can teach until I’m blue in the face, and the person who just doesn’t get it is still not going to get it.

I can show the person what a clever idea looks like, and the person will still never have one of his own.

Some people have it, and some people don’t. If you’ve ever worked with someone who has it (not someone who says he has it, but someone who actually does), then you’ve seen the difference. Those people are regularly leading the pack, thinking better thoughts and offering more insights than everyone else in the room.

Those people are rare — but they just may be worth $180K in their first year out of law school. Or worth $180K now because, ten years from now, those people will be exceptional lawyers. Or maybe it’s worth hiring ten people at $180K on the chance that you’ll find one smart person in that collection; that might be a small price to pay.

Experience and raw intelligence are not the same thing.

And it’s entirely proper for the market to distinguish between them.


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.


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