To Be A Lawyer Is To Be A Manager (Though Hire A Manager When The Time Is Right)

We need to be thoughtful about always becoming better lawyers -- which means being thoughtful about becoming good managers, according to columnist John Balestriere.

We need to be thoughtful about always becoming better lawyers, which means being thoughtful about becoming good managers. And if you work in any law office that gets big enough, hire a professional manager.

All lawyers take (some might say are forced to take) continuing legal education (CLE) classes. And we will take them forever, or at least until we take down our shingle. The genuinely good motivation behind this relatively new practice (widespread CLE has been around for only a few decades in the United States) is the wisdom that the practice of our profession changes constantly – that’s one of the fun things about being a lawyer – and we need CLE to keep up. At our firm we see this all the time: just last week we obtained a great result for a client in a very thoughtful decision that could influence in Connecticut something as fundamental as the understanding of res judicata and collateral estoppel. I respectfully seriously doubt that CLE as implemented now is the best way to keep up (and I even teach these things, albeit under the direction of people who know what they are doing). But the point is well taken: the law constantly changes; we didn’t learn enough in law school (more on that in a future article); and we need to keep developing ourselves.

But almost all lawyers will need to be managers. We wholly ignore our development here. If you are a solo trusts and estates lawyer or criminal defense attorney, perhaps you do not need to be a manager of people like most practicing lawyers. But, obviously, you still have a practice to manage. It is popular to say how bad we are at management. Such criticism, I suppose, acknowledges that we need to worry about management. But I next to never hear attorneys discuss the importance of good management as essential to good legal practice.

It is essential. Indeed, developing your management skills over time is fundamental to your development as a lawyer. It hardly means that as a first-year associate you need to have an MBA (not like I’m saying an MBA actually teaches you how to manage). But if you are to develop as a lawyer over the half century or more that you may be a practicing attorney, you will need to manage: you will have people you supervise (I once saw David Boies say that all business litigation is a team sport); you will have matters to organize; you will almost always have a complicated professional calendar to keep; and you very likely will manage client funds, invoices, payments to vendors, settlement money, and the like.

Unfortunately, I see few resources in the legal field specifically to assist lawyers in developing their management skills (though, hopefully, this column and that of Bruce Stachenfeld will help). There are management bibles out there worth considering, like anything by Jim Collins. And Jay Foonberg wrote what many consider the bible of starting a law firm (I respectfully think it’s a bit dated, but I certainly bought it when I started my practice, and it’s unquestionably good food for thought). I am not able to help much in terms of suggestions on resources. But I do implore you to keep in mind that if you are to develop as a great lawyer you need to develop as a great manager. It’s part of being a great lawyer.

And if you are in the position of actually running a law firm, an office in a government agency, a practice group, any group of lawyers, do all you can to hire an actual manager. For one thing, it simply takes a ton of time to manage a bunch of people doing complicated work where technology and finances come into the work every day. If a lawyer is spending her time on all that goes into management once a firm or law office gets bigger, that lawyer is not serving clients. This is true regardless of whether you are in a private or public law office. I spent my early years as a prosecutor in two offices and saw extremely bright, hardworking lawyers handling all kinds of management tasks that I now realize could have been handled by a non-lawyer, so that those lawyers (who do still need to perform some management oversight and tasks, albeit far fewer) could spend more of their time on being lawyers and investigators and teachers.

And those we hire might be better at us at management, at least certain aspects of it. We could take a lesson from our medical colleagues, where hiring those with training specific to management in the medical profession is the norm. I was a straight-up solo once – me and a desk and a Palm Treo – and had to do everything, including setting up email, putting the chairs together in my office, taking out the shredded paper and all that. There’s about 20 of us at our growing firm now, and not only would I have no hope of devoting adequate time to doing a good job at management, I do not have the skills in hugely important management areas such as accounting and IT that our chief of staff does.

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Management is part of the practice of law. Rather than complain about that, good lawyers embrace it. But then good lawyers exhibit what should be a hallmark of our profession – good judgment – and when the time is right, delegate many management tasks to trained, devoted management professionals.


John Balestriere is an entrepreneurial trial lawyer who founded his firm after working as a prosecutor and litigator at a small firm. He is a partner at trial and investigations law firm Balestriere Fariello in New York, where he and his colleagues represent domestic and international clients in litigation, arbitration, appeals, and investigations. You can reach him by email at john.g.balestriere@balestrierefariello.com.

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