Small Law Firms, Solo Practitioners

5 Ways To Piss Off A SmallLaw Lawyer

Building and maintaining a practice can be a hard endeavor, and when respect is lacking, sometimes folks like myself will get upset.

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Gary J. Ross

Gary J. Ross

I’m not often pissed off. In fact, I rarely even use the word “piss.” A lot of my anger was burned off in my 20s, so here in my 40s, it takes a lot to get me upset, which helps at work. (Advice to the wannabe negotiators out there: learn how not to lose your cool, but also learn how to act like you’ve lost it.) Once I found out life is better if you go through it joyously — and I don’t know how some folks make it through a day — I no longer got ticked off about small things, like when the shopping cart has a bad wheel or somebody says something on Facebook that doesn’t align perfectly with my narrow world view.

But we all have our limits. There’s only so much a person can take, even a person who from all outward appearances has it good. (Who’s got it better than us? Nobody!)

Here are five ways you can test the limits of a SmallLaw lawyer:

  1. You expect me to bow to Biglaw. “[Biglaw firm] drafted these documents, so you shouldn’t have any comments.” The clear implication being “who on earth are you to say there are any shortcomings with these documents, which were labored over by a bunch of second- and third-years and glanced at by a partner? Who are you??” I had a set of documents — that I had never seen before — dropped on me the other night and this is what they told me when they said I had to sign off on them by the next morning. Like I’m a rubber stamp. This pissed me off so much I wrote a listicle and led with this item. Never tell a SmallLaw attorney he or she should defer to anyone in Biglaw. Many of us came from Biglaw and rightly believe we’re far better attorneys now.
  2. You attach conditions to paying for work I’ve already completed. Usually by promising future work. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard, “You cut me a [price] break on this, I’ll reward you with future work.” How about we forget about the birds in the bush and concentrate on the bird in hand? Just pay me what you owe me, and we’ll worry about future work in the future. After all, what are the odds you’re going to ask me for a break on the future work? 1 to 3? 1 to 4? I don’t normally gamble, but those odds are pretty good. Some clients try to carry out a Ponzi scheme, by asking you to do future work in order to get paid for past work.
  3. You e-introduce me to vendors. We moved recently, and one of my “friends” saw fit to send an email introduction to me and a moving consultant. Not just an email to me, saying, “Hey Gary, I know this moving consultant guy. Here is his info.” Instead, it was, “Gary, meet Matt. Matt, meet Gary. Gary is moving his office, and Matt has a moving consulting service, so I thought I would put the two of you in touch.” I’m sure Matt is okay with that, but how I am supposed to respond?? While I’ll admit I’m mildly curious as to what a “moving consultant” does — maybe Matt comes in, looks around, says, “yeah, all this needs to be moved,” and then hands me an invoice — the last thing I need is for anyone to introduce me to yet another vendor under the guise of “networking.”
  4. You don’t respect my time. In SmallLaw, we have a lot of plates in the air, and it’s hard to find the time to spin them all. Something like excessive calling will suck up a lot of time, since mentally it’s hard to go right back to the place you were before the call.  Some amount of calling to shoot the breeze is perfectly fine; after all, many of us work either by ourselves, or just with a small number of others.  It breaks up the day a bit to chitchat. But persistent calling about matters either already settled or that I don’t have the ability to affect is just a nuisance.  Maybe you just like the sound of my voice?
  5. You don’t randomly PayPal me large sums of money. There’s nothing stopping you. My PayPal account is my email address. A few dollars before the holiday would be great.

It really just boils down to respect. For the most part, everyone in SmallLaw is friendly and helpful. But building and maintaining a practice can be a hard endeavor, and when respect is lacking, sometimes folks like myself will get upset. I can’t say any dire consequence will come if you manage to piss off me or another SmallLaw attorney, except I’ll note that many people responsible for building their own client base are relentless networkers. The more people you have at your disposal — who will answer your calls and emails, make introductions, and offer advice when needed — the easier things will be. So you probably want to avoid pissing us off if you can.

P.S. Happy Birthday to fellow ATL columnist Matt Kaiser.

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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 securities matters for startups, large and small businesses, private equity funds, and investors in each, and also has a number of non-profit clients. You can reach Gary by email at Gary.Ross@JacksonRossLaw.com.

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