I’ve been thinking a lot about transitions. Not just about the one in Washington, D.C., but other kinds of transitions: retirements, career moves (up, down, and out), and deaths. One local legal newspaper, the Los Angeles Daily Journal, has published display ads about partners retiring from their firms and the firms bestowing best wishes upon them. Those display ads are a new phenomenon. I don’t recall seeing them before, but I don’t think prior generations of lawyers were in such numbers as the boomers. What prompted this reflection about transitions was the transfer of knowledge that we need to do now.
Austin Kleon’s book, Show Your Work: 10 Ways To Share Your Creativity and Get Discovered (affiliate link) speaks about transitions in its own way. I know we are hard-wired left-brained thinkers, but some of his thoughts apply to lawyer transitions.
1. “Teach what you know.” “Share your trade secrets.” I know, anathema, especially to lawyers, but Kleon’s point is to share your knowledge. As we dinosaur lawyers move off center stage, we need to do exactly that. Share the knowledge we’ve gained (both good and bad) through our careers and pass it on.
have always been amazed at how reluctant many people (and not just lawyers) are to share what they know. They say (whoever “they” are) that “knowledge is power” and so, many people, especially in leadership positions, hesitate to share that power by refusing to share that knowledge. Don’t get me started on lawyers who leave, under whatever circumstances, without any memos to files. What now, the successor lawyer asks? Good question. Your answer?
Not sharing knowledge sandbags those who come after you, who will represent clients you’ve left behind. The client then thinks that you are the only one who can ever do the work and who laments your departure. Unfavorable comparisons abound. Talk about tying the next lawyer’s hands; talk about making the next lawyer look ignorant, stupid or (fill in the blank.) It’s not just the legal knowledge, but also the client knowledge that needs to be shared.
If you’ve handed off the work to a younger lawyer, then shame on you if you haven’t prepared that lawyer thoroughly for what’s to come. There’s no statute of limitations for bad behavior, for holding the work so close to your chest that it will take dynamite to pry loose that knowledge. Memo to everyone: we are all replaceable.
Another point: teaching is reciprocal. Just as we teach younger lawyers, they teach us. They have different points of view based on different experiences, and their approaches, while maybe not ours, may be more appropriate, fresher, or provide a wholly different take on the matter at hand. We dinosaurs can be very set in our ways (duh) and so, if we look at sharing our knowledge, teaching the younger lawyers what we know, they may well find very different ways to use that same information to service clients. We need to remember that just as we are dinosaur lawyers, many of our clients are of the same generation and same thought processes. They too are moving off center stage.
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2. “Don’t become human spam.” What does Kleon mean? It’s straightforward: shut up and listen. Stop talking. Anyone can become human spam when “… the world becomes all about them and their work. They can’t find the time to be interested in anything other than themselves.” Sound familiar? How hard it is to take a few billable minutes and ask how your associates, partners, staff are doing? Showing interest in them as people and not just as machines to churn out the work can make all the difference in working relationships both present and future. Show, don’t tell.
3. “Do good work.” If you don’t share your knowledge completely, then how can the next lawyer do good work if the knowledge is incomplete? How can a lawyer take advantage of opportunities if she doesn’t know they exist because no one has told her? A Catch-22? (Joseph Heller’s book Catch-22 is a must read and applies in many practice situations, especially when trying to reconcile layers of differing procedural rules.)
Younger lawyers often need thoughtful guidance. Ever heard of the game “Red Light, Green Light?” Dinosaurs will. Sometimes younger lawyers don’t stop when they hear “red light,” especially when considering whether to represent a potential client; dinosaur lawyers not only hear “red light,” but recall when they made the same unwise choice. Sharing those experiences is invaluable to help younger lawyers avoid those mistakes and others.
4. “Read obituaries.” Really? Yes, Kleon calls them “near death experiences for cowards.” But they’re not about death, they’re about life and how people lived those lives.
I recently read an obituary in one of our local legal newspapers about Barry David Kohn, who was a sole practitioner for many years before he became a court commissioner in Los Angeles, first in the Municipal Court and then in the Superior Court when the courts unified almost twenty years ago. I clerked for Barry while I was in law school, and I couldn’t have had a better experience. He was the classic teacher; he taught me how to research, write motions, and supervised my discovery work as a certified law clerk while still in law school. While we lost touch over the years, I will always remember how much he was willing to teach me and how much I learned from him. He was so generous and kind with his time, his experience and his knowledge. I will never forget him.
What we dinosaur lawyers must do is to pay it forward, to share our knowledge, to show the next generation how to do good work. That was Barry’s legacy to me and that’s my job and yours. The better we do it, the better prepared the next lawyers will be for a seamless transition. It’s in their best interest, as well as our own, that they succeed.
Jill Switzer is closing in on 40 (not a typo) years as a active member of the State Bar of California. Yes, folks, California, that state west of the Sierra Nevada, which everyone likes to diss. She’s had a diverse legal career, including stints as a deputy district attorney, a solo practice, and several senior in-house gigs. She now mediates full-time, which gives her the opportunity to see old lawyers, young lawyers, and those in-between interact — it’s not always pretty. You can reach her by email at [email protected].