Every week it’s something different. A common refrain among us SmallLaw folks is ”I can’t believe how much I didn’t learn in Biglaw.” But it’s not that Biglaw doesn’t teach attorneys anything. It’s that there’s a lot of legal situations that simply don’t lend themselves to being handled in Biglaw. I would even go so far as to say most legal situations aren’t right for Biglaw. The Biglaw system can’t really handle discrete, one-off matters, and a lot of times, those are the most interesting jobs you get. A complicated matter that requires just a few hours of partner-level research may be too complicated for associates but too small for the average Biglaw partner.
One of my colleagues coined the phrase “the weekly LLM,” which is perfect. A lot of these weekly LLMs take you into areas of the law you never imagined. And in SmallLaw, not only do you have to find the answer, you have to find the answer. There’s no one to pass it off to, and the client will often be stuck until you come back with an answer. And since you’re the one looking it up, you’re going to remember the answer and how you got there to a much greater degree than if you were simply reviewing someone else’s work, which is what generally happens in Biglaw.
And it’s funny how things turn out. You do one little thing for someone that’s outside of your comfort zone, then soon after someone else comes along with a similar situation, and you say, well, I’m no expert, but I’ve done it before — and recently — and I’m not in Biglaw anymore, so my fees are reasonable. So you do it again, and then next thing you know, people are referring clients to you, and calling you an expert! In this thing you just started doing a few months ago.
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Case in point: Last year someone asked me to draft a privacy policy for their website. I’m a corporate transactional guy — or at least I was until I entered SmallLaw — so I had never drafted anything of the sort. To this day, I don’t even know what area of law privacy policies and terms of use fall under. Fortunately the client gave me plenty of time, and eventually I was able to craft something together that passed muster. And afterwards, if anyone asked me if I could draft a privacy policy, I could point them to my client’s website. A little over a year later, privacy policies and terms of use are a significant part of my startup practice.
Now when something outside of my comfort zone hits the inbox, I think, hmmm, I’m looking forward to finding out the answer to that! Often I’m as interested as client. (This week’s LLM was in zoning law, with a specialty in display advertisements.)
Every now and then, I’ll have a potential client call me and they’ll be adamant about having a lawyer who has handled their exact issue, and of course it’ll be something really obscure. I’ll tell them about my experience in the field and how I would approach the research, but sometimes the person still insists on getting this imaginary attorney who has handled their one-in-a-million situation before. Once the person called me back and hired me, and I asked if that meant she had been unsuccessful in her perfect lawyer search. She sighed and said forlornly, “Well. [pregnant pause] You were the best I could do.” (Sounded just like the women I’ve dated.)
One of my buddies from college is an eye surgeon. One night a few years back we were in a sports bar watching a football game and a guy at the next table struck up a conversation. He said he admired veterinarians, since they have to handle everything from a rooster losing its beak to a cat with a tail injury to a horse with shin splints, and then everything in between. Whereas my friend just has to worry about eyeballs. And just human eyeballs at that! (For some reason my friend didn’t care for that observation.) When I was in Biglaw, I was the eye surgeon. Now, I’m the veterinarian.
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Gary J. Ross opened his own practice, Jackson Ross PLLC, in 2013 after several years in Biglaw and the federal government. Gary handles corporate and compliance matters for investment funds, small businesses, and non-profits, occasionally dabbling in litigation. You can reach Gary by email at [email protected].