Lawyers don’t like to be honest about not making money. (Unless you’re Jordan Rushie.)
I went out on my own in March of 1998. I did no advertising. The first month, I made three times what I was making monthly at the small firm I worked at for nine months. I was well on my way.
April was about the same, and so was May.
This was awesome. No looking back. Who said starting your own firm would be hard?
Then came June.
Nothing. No new cases, no money. The phone didn’t ring.
It was over. Three good months, and now I was done. I, of course, freaked out.
A few days into July the phone rang, and I was back. Whew. So I had one slow month. Now it would all be fine.
While self-anointed law futurists are competing for who can give the best advice on having a practice-from-laptop-sans-office and remain as small as possible (because happiness practicing law is being alone all day in front of a screen), some lawyers are still considering adding a lawyer as an associate, partner, or of counsel.
The question is, how?
Hiring a lawyer can be expensive, and there’s not always an extra chair next to you at Starbucks, so you’ll probably have to put them somewhere with a wall and a desk. Bottom line is that even when you get too busy to handle everything yourself, the cost/benefit analysis of adding another lawyer can be scary. You’re not just talking salary – but also benefits. And what about if that lawyer brings in business, how should they be compensated?
There’s no one way to do this, so here’s some considerations for those that are contemplating adding on…
When you went to law school or started thinking about starting your own practice, did you have dreams of waking up in the morning, walking down the hall to another room in your house and sitting down to do legal work? Did you hope to bounce ideas off of the dog, or plan strategy watching Matlock re-runs at 2 p.m.?
I’m sorry, I just don’t get this “Do I need an office?” back and forth, in which my “future of law” friends are quick to say “You don’t need an office.”
No, you don’t need an office. They’re right. You also don’t need to wear clothes that make you look respectable. You don’t even have to have any idea what you’re doing. You can work from your computer in your dining room, in shorts, and find answers (some which are correct) to questions like “how to draft a will,” on the internet. Some client, somewhere, will hire you. Maybe a few.
As you build your practice, you can do everything small, cheap, and sloppy. Forget about being downtown or by the courthouse. Forget about having to dress like you want to be hired for important legal work. Forget about building anything of significance. Just stay home and be happy that you’re saving money every month on an office. Way to go. Hopefully you won’t take advice from business owners who know building a business takes investment….
And so last week I wrote about mentors, questioning whether today’s young lawyers considered them crucial to professional and personal development. I questioned whether the high calling of being a lawyer has today been reduced solely to a desire for cash, and as such, nothing more than the hope to be “first” on Google and have a “game changing” web presence.
Which brings me to what you can call “Part II” of last week’s mentoring post, and an example of a lawyer to emulate.
There are certain lawyers that bring to mind a one- or two-word description. David Boies — Bush / Gore, Morris Dees — Civil Rights, Clarence Darrow — Criminal Defense, and when I hear “First Amendment,” I think Marc Randazza.
When I hear “first page of Google,” I can’t name one lawyer, and if I can, it’s not a lawyer that matters, except maybe to a bunch of lawyers looking to be the next internet sensation. Being an internet sensation as a lawyer is no different than having been a yellow pages sensation in the previous generation. Ever seen an obituary of a lawyer that said: “She was respected for her two-page, multicolored ads that were placed ahead of all other lawyers in the yellow pages”?
Marc Randazza isn’t an internet sensation. He’s only got about 275 followers on Twitter (and is therefore clearly on his way out of the profession if you ask any social media expert), but Marc Randazza matters.
Would you like to matter in this profession? Will you ever do anything important — anything that causes others to think of you as “that” lawyer for “that” type of case or issue? Or are you just hoping to win that stupid lawsuit against your law school for forcing you to go there because they promised you a job? Or maybe you’ve just bought in to the lie that to survive as a lawyer, you must vomit all over the internet with whatever your marketer tells you is the latest trick to game Google?
And before the commentariat’s collective head explodes, yes, Marc Randazza is my lawyer. I’m in the group currently being sued by Joseph Rakofsky….
Over the past few weeks, the ugly truth about the generational gap between those who claim the moniker of “Gen Y lawyer” and, well, everyone else, has been raging through the blogosphere. While younger generations have always looked at their elders as “stupid,” and not worthy of listening to, it has never been as much a part of the legal profession as it is now. The Gen Y cheerleading squad of lawyers and their marketers believe there actually is a “revolution” in the legal profession and that if those who have come before don’t get with it and move their practices to the iPad, they (we) will go the way of the dinosaur.
They also think their elders want them to fail, are scared of them stealing clients, and only offer criticism for these reasons. I hate to break it to you kids, but I want you to succeed, and my clients aren’t hiring you. They’re not hiring your website or your Facebook Fan Page. Really, they’re not…
Ah, nothing brings around the lawyers of today like the talk of money. One of the most popular Google searches by law students and lawyers is “how to make money as a lawyer.” I rarely see searches for “how to cross examine the expert witness,” or “building a reputation, one case at a time.”
It’s all about the cash.
So here it is, here’s your red meat:
Charging “what everyone else charges” is for losers.
Good clients know you get what you pay for. Cheap, annoying, time-sucking, Bar-complaint-filing clients try to own someone for nothing. If you want the same clients everyone else has, charge the same legal fees. You can be Wal-Mart, or you can be Saks. More people shop at Wal-Mart, but people looking for quality shop at Saks, and they know the difference. They go in, they see something they want, and pay for it (without a payment plan). (And don’t tell me “credit cards are payment plans.” The seller gets the full amount, the buyer makes payments to the bank.) Saks doesn’t have “low prices,” and customers aren’t going there for low prices. They’re looking for quality. Price is secondary….
This week’s column was initially going to be about setting fees, but then two lawyers pissed me off so I’m now writing about why technology sucks and needs to be controlled like a screaming 2-year-old on an airplane.
I took Friday off to chaperone a field trip with one of my kids to the Everglades. I promise if I ever get a Pinterest account I’ll post all the pictures of the alligators. On Thursday, I did everything but wear a shirt that said, “I WILL NOT BE IN THE OFFICE OR AVAILABLE FRIDAY.” I also emailed some annoying people that haven’t been out of their office, ever.
That day, one lawyer I emailed responded something to the effect of, “I know you’re going to be out tomorrow but,” and then asked me to do some work on our matter. The other lawyer called Friday morning, was told I was out and said, “Can you have him call me to discuss a case even though he’s out?”
Yeah, we all have smart phones, we’re all getting email in real time, and regardless of what we’re doing, the other side can’t comprehend that we are either really not available, or just don’t want to be available. Maybe we’re looking at alligators with our kids while our phone is back on the bus.
Being out of the office (and for those that don’t have an office, “being out of the office” is a concept, not a physical geographical location issue) is something lawyers need to do to avoid hating the practice of law, but it is becoming more and more looked down upon….
Although lawyers make up 43 percent of Congress, and 60 percent of the U.S. Senate, according to Governing magazine, “[s]ince 1976, the number of lawyers in legislatures has declined by nearly a quarter, from more than 22 percent of all lawmakers to less than 17 percent.”
There, of course, is a natural path from lawyer to legislator. But the low pay, travel, time commitment, and mud slinging that we see on TV and the internet turn many lawyers away from public service.
The current political landscape also causes lawyers to be uninterested in participating in politics at any level, whether it means lobbying, running campaigns, fundraising, or attending political functions.
In preparation for this article, I did a Google search for “lawyers getting involved in community.” The first result was some article about pro bono. Let’s be honest: in 2012, why would a lawyer trying to build a practice spend time doing free legal work for the needy instead of trying to figure out whether Pinterest can be monetized to bring in clients?
Being a lawyer who is involved in the community, I used to be frequently asked, “Hey, I want to get involved in the community, can you tell me how?” I don’t get asked that much anymore. “Community” is considered “the Twitter community,” or “the blawgosphere.” While the tech hacks haven’t yet declared community involvement “dead,” the fact that the result of becoming involved in the community is often organically-developed, real relationships with other like-minded people that may lead to business, is unattractive to those that have bought in to the notion that a collection of followers and friends online is a quicker path to lots of phone calls.
So if there are any lawyers left out there that are still contemplating community involvement, I offer the following….
“Fewer clients.” This is the ideal that began the story of the transformation of Jerry Maguire.
Haven’t seen the movie? Watch it. Absorb it. It’s a great premise by which to build your practice.
Now that January is over, an invaluable piece of paper walked in to my office. In prior years, I attempted to mentally keep track of who called me and who hired me, but I wound up forgetting a lot of the details. This year I’ve made some changes. On a monthly basis, I’m reviewing prospective clients who called, as well as who referred them, who took their calls, their case types, and whether I was retained.
The percentage of calls-to-retained used to be “most.” Most potential clients that came to my office retained me. I made it easy. I’d bring them in, spend some free time, smile a lot, negotiate the fee, and get the case.
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Ed. note: The Asia Chronicles column is authored by Kinney Recruiting. Kinney has made more placements of U.S. associates, counsels and partners in Asia than any other recruiting firm in each of the past six years. You can reach them by email: asia@kinneyrecruiting.com.
Deal flow has clearly picked recently up for most US associates, counsels and partners in Hong Kong/China and Singapore. We are on the phone with a lot of these folks on a daily basis, many of whom we have known for years. Further, the head of our Asia team, Evan Jowers, and Kinney’s founder and president, Robert Kinney, frequently meet in person with leading US partners in Asia to assess their needs and keep on top of the inside scoop at as many firms as possible. The need for legal recruiting help in Asia from experienced recruiters appears to be live and well. In March, Evan and Robert were in Beijing at such meetings, in April, Evan was in Hong Kong, and for half of June Evan will be in Shanghai and Hong Kong. Thus its pretty easy for us to tell when there has been an across-the-market pick up in capital markets and corporate work.
On an average day in Asia when Evan and Robert visit firms, they typically have 5 to 9 meetings a day, mostly with US partners in the market. The reason they have these meetings is not simply because Kinney makes a lot of US attorney placements in Asia and that a particular firm may have openings; instead these are just visits with friends. After years of working together as business partners, the folks at Kinney are actually these peoples’ friends. The firms Kinney work closely with in Asia (which is just about every law firm – call us if you want to know the one firm in the world we will never place anyone with again, ever, and why) look forward to the visits, or at least act like they do. After seven years in the market, many of the client partners are former associate candidates. Also, these US partners see Kinney as a very good source of market information as well, because they know how deep their contacts are in the market and how frequently they are speaking to counterparts at peer firms.
In a land that is right here and in a time that is right now, a technology has arisen so powerful that it can replace basic human document review. Is it time to bow down before our new robot overlords?
First, here’s a little story about me: my life in the legal world began as a paralegal. My first case was a GIANT patent infringement case that was already six years old and had involved as many as five companies, multiple US courts, the ITC and an international standards committee. I knew nothing about any of this.
On my first day, my supervisor (a paralegal with at least eight other cases driving her crazy) sat me down in front of a Concordance database with a 100,000+ patents and patent file histories. “Code these,” she said. I learned that “coding”, for the purposes of this exercise, meant manually typing the inventor’s name, the title of the patent, the assignee, the file date, and other objective data for each document. I worked on that project – and only that project – for at least the first six months of my job. After a week or so, time began to blur.
What I know, in retrospect and with absolutely certainty, is that as time began to blur, so did my judgment. So did my attention to detail. If you could tell me that I did not make at least one mistake a day – one inconsistent spelling, one reversed day and month, one incorrectly spaced title – I frankly would need to see your evidence. I would not believe it. The human mind is trainable but it is not a machine.
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Lawyers don’t like to be honest about not making money. (Unless you’re Jordan Rushie.)
