Know How Your Team Works
The best trial lawyers not only build their teams with the best people, but people who work well together.
The best trial lawyers not only build their teams with the best people, but build teams that know how to work well together.
Real trial lawyers are lucky enough to work in a profession that demands that we work on a team. I write lucky because it’s simply fun. Working with people you genuinely like and whose company you enjoy is fun. You don’t need to sing kumbaya at the end of the day and do slumber parties after work with your colleagues, but team work is simply very enjoyable.
At our firm, each matter is assigned a team of generally at least two lawyers and at least one analyst. It’s not enough that you simply have a team in place. You also need to make sure the team members know how one another work so that they can win for the clients.
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What does that mean? Perhaps most obviously that means that there must be hierarchy. There is no litigation by committee (or there can be when multiple firms are involved, and our firm now refuses to do work like that because of frustrating and inefficient it can be). Someone must be in charge. Even if they can barely devote time to the case, there must be one lead counsel on the team.
Then responsibilities need to be defined clearly. This can be on a case-by-case basis, or consistent with some firm policy. If the latter, write it down and save that memo or manual entry. If you have to write down the policy, you’ll be more thoughtful about it. Your team must know who does what. We routinely assign one lawyer, generally not a partner, who is the primary staffer on the case. He is responsible for directing client communication, managing the team, serving as primary author on papers, recruiting colleagues as needed, delegating work, and simply acting as THE lawyer on the case.
These are some specific examples, but only examples, and different law offices—with different goals, and different staffers—should do things differently. The point is that acknowledging that we must do our work collaboratively, and that such collaboration is one of the best things about this job, is not enough. You need to decide how the team will work for the team to win.
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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 [email protected].
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