It’s odd:
I started my career — lo, those many years ago — as a law clerk. In 1983-84, in the chambers of The Honorable Dorothy W. Nelson of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, people were people. About a half dozen of us inhabited those chambers — the judge, three clerks, one intern (at a time; there were several across the course of the year), and two secretaries.
And we were all people. When we ran out of sugar for our coffee in the morning, someone ran downstairs to buy more. Sometimes it was the judge (yes, really). Sometimes it was a clerk. Sometimes it was the intern. Sometimes it was a secretary.
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Everyone knew the judge was in charge, of course. (Nobody ever called that place the chambers of Mark Herrmann.) But we were all colleagues, working together to pursue a common goal. No one would have considered trying to pull rank on someone in those chambers.
(I know that all chambers were not created equal, and I assume that others have had clerkship experiences that didn’t resemble mine. But that’s how mine worked. In fact, I recently attended the “35 years on the bench” party that Judge Nelson’s current clerks arranged for her, and it’s pretty clear to me that nothing has changed over the course of the decades.
Well, almost nothing: Who were all those young kids running around, claiming that Judge Nelson was their judge, too?)
Anyway, I then went to work at a small firm in northern California. And at that firm, in the 1980s, people were people. The receptionist’s boyfriend batted cleanup for our pitiful softball team. The secretaries were part of the team. Neil Falconer (a pretty important fellow at Steinhart & Falconer) made a point of chatting with the cleaning woman who arrived every night to straighten out the offices: “Noreen is the only person who’s been employed by this firm longer than I have. She’s dedicated to the firm and her job, and we couldn’t get by without her. And she’s a delight.”
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I naturally spoke to my buddies who worked at big firms, and I eventually worked for one, and I surely roamed the hallways (sometimes for weeks at a time) of many of our Biglaw co-counsel. Those places typically didn’t feel too much like the spots were I had spent my early years. (Frankly, my former Biglaw home may well have been better on this score than many of its peers. I worked in the Midwest, which is often less stodgy than the Northeast.)
As a general principle, however, there’s a chasm at big law firms between partners and associates. And an abyss between associates and staff attorneys. And a gap between staff attorneys and legal assistants. And perhaps even a thin line between legal assistants and secretaries, receptionists, and the many other people who breathe Biglaw air.
If our presidential contenders need advice on building a wall between the United States and Mexico, I suggest they chat with Biglaw partners. Those guys know how to build an Iron Curtain between lawyers and non-lawyers that would put Stalin to shame.
(In my year between college and law school, I worked as a legal assistant at a big accounting firm. The lawyer for whom I worked was an alum of one of the fanciest Wall Street firms. He sat me down on my first day at the office: “At my law firm, the secretaries referred to the lawyers as ‘Mr.’ or Ms.’ [‘Ms.’ was finally becoming an accepted term by then — even at stodgy firms.] ‘How can I help you, Mr. Smith?’ The lawyers naturally called the secretaries by their first names: ‘Jane, could you take that call?’ But you, Mark, are a paraprofessional. I don’t know whether you should call me ‘Mr. Smith’ or ‘John.’ On reflection, I guess you can call me ‘John.’ Yes, that will be acceptable.”
I knew it was gonna be a long year.]
Like I said, big law firms draw a line between lawyers and non-. And people pull rank all the time. (Sometimes that’s explicit; sometimes it’s implicit. But it’s constant.)
Now I’ve meandered away from a law firm and into a corporation. And, once again, people are people.
That doesn’t mean there’s no hierarchy at a corporation. Far from it: Everyone knows who reports to whom and who’s running the joint. And people perform their roles, which is a gentle way of pulling rank.
But, when we think about corporate initiatives — we must give everyone open and honest performance reviews; we must strive to improve all of our colleagues’ job satisfaction — we’re not talking only about the professional staff. We’re trying to improve the job satisfaction of everyone — lawyers, legal assistants, administrative assistants, and everyone else.
People who arrive at in-house jobs from big law firms are occasionally surprised to learn this. I recently heard of a lawyer who went to a corporation (not mine) and was dumbstruck by the new environment: “We should invite the administrative assistants to our meeting about improving job satisfaction? Why?”
Because people are people.
When you move from a corporation to a law firm, you’ll have to train yourself to re-learn that basic truth.
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 [email protected].