Don’t Make These Mistakes: The 3 Biggest Impediments To Associate Career Growth
Don't let these hold you back.
Ed. note: This is the latest installment in a series of posts from Lateral Link’s team of expert contributors. Eamon Welch is based in Massachusetts where he oversees attorney placements and client services in the Boston and New York markets. Prior to joining Lateral Link, Eamon practiced law in Goodwin Procter’s Boston office and Greenberg Traurig’s Miami office. Eamon earned his J.D. magna cum laude and Order of the Coif from the University of Miami School of Law, and he also holds an M.A. from Duke University and a B.A. from Trinity College.
The start of the new year is an appropriate time to reflect on your career development. Take stock of what you’ve learned and accomplished over the past 12 months; deliberate about what you would like to achieve over the coming year. Decide what actions you will need to take to get there, and what pitfalls you will need to avoid to do so.
Biglaw associates faced an arduous road to get where they are today. Admission to a top law school, strong grades 1L year, navigating OCI and landing a 2L summer position, a successful 2L summer and receiving a permanent offer from your firm, and the oh-so-delightful bar examination. But the race hasn’t been fully run, and your work is far from done. You can’t sit idly by and blindly hope that the currents of your present situation will propel you to your professional goal. Career development is an ongoing process that you must proactively address every day. However, sometimes the mistakes that you don’t make are the most important factor for your professionally trajectory.
As a Biglaw associate, the three biggest impediments to your career growth are lack of knowledge, complacency, and fear. Avoid these roadblocks, and you are well on your way to maximizing your professional trajectory.
Lack of Knowledge
Lack of knowledge is the first biggest impediment to associate career growth. There’s an old truism that “you don’t know what you don’t know.” Simple enough, right? Well, it’s amazing the number of associates who fail to grasp this concept in an essential area. Don’t be one of them.
Undeniably, it’s important that you master your subject matter and hone your technical skillset. But that’s not enough. It’s critical that you understand the legal talent marketplace in order to position yourself for optimal career growth.
Like the medical residency matching program, the OCI and 2L Summer process is not an infallible process for pairing the right employees with the right employers. Firms and law students do an admirable job endeavoring to identify mutual fit. But the reality is, a couple of Fall weeks and a subsequent Summer is too short a period of time to get it right in every instance, particularly, if we’re talking about a permanent match. Moreover, even if you selected the right firm for your 2L Summer, what might have been the right firm at that stage of your (pre-)career is by no means necessarily still the right firm after practicing for a few years. For maybe 10% of you, yes, circumstances align and you happen upon the firm when you begin practicing that offers the right mix of ingredients for your unique skills, characteristics, and goals so as to warrant spending your entire career there. But for the remaining 90% of you, this just isn’t the case.
Much of the apathy demonstrated by some Biglaw associates toward educating themselves about the legal talent marketplace is likely attributable to the lock-step, market compensation structure for Biglaw Associates. If everyone is getting paid the same in a particular geographic area, cultural differences among firms couldn’t possibly be enough to justify investigating other options, right? But what about cost of living arbitrage? And is it true that everyone is getting paid the same? Take a 4th-Year associate in NYC/Boston/SF/LA who is on the Cravath-scale as an example. The all-in “market” compensation for this associate is $320K. But what if this associate is at a firm where it’s the norm to bill 3,000 hours in a year? Conversely, what if this associate is at a firm where it’s the norm to bill 2,000 hours in a year? At the 3,000-hour firm, the associate earns a billable hourly wage of $107; at the 2,000-hour firm, the associate earns a billable hourly wage of $160 per hour. This delta amounts to $53 per billable hour, a sum greater than many Americans make in total on an hourly basis!
Beyond the relative pay differences, there are actual, material differences in compensation among firms (and also depending on whether you stay put or take advantage of the other possibilities that are out there). Firms have gotten creative in their incentive packages such that a “market” base salary and year-end bonus is not the Biglaw compensation ceiling, but merely the floor. Many top firms are now offering very sizeable signing bonuses to talented associates working in in-demand practice areas. What about above-market bonuses? How about Spring and Summer bonuses? Retention bonuses? Does your firm provide you with paid vacation? What about a technology stipend? When you tally the various bonuses and perks associated with moving to a firm that more aggressively incentivizes top associate talent, you could be talking about a $200-250K difference over just a few year period. That’s a meaningful sum: enough to pay off your student loans, finance a down payment on a residence, or fund your child’s college savings account. How about letting that $250K ride in investments? Over a 30-year period compounding at 7% per annum, that $250K turns into $1.9MM. Enough to retire by many people’s standards – all as a result of making the right lateral move!
And compensation isn’t the only differentiator. Does your firm or practice group have a formal training program, or are you left to your own devices to sink or swim? Is frequent, constructive feedback prioritized at your firm, or are you clueless about your performance until your year-end review? What’s the staffing system like? Do you receive consistent deal/case flow that allows you to progressively enhance your skillset, or are you pigeonholed in limiting roles on sporadic assignments? Are weekends, holidays, and vacations generally respected at your firm, or are they just another workday? Does your firm make it easy to find a mentor and/or sponsor, or do you lack more senior guidance? As you look down the road, how about your brand equity? Is your firm giving you the right platform to market yourself and develop client relationships and originate business? How is the culture at your firm – is it the right environment for you to succeed politically?
As you can tell, even firms adhering to a “market” salary/bonus structure are far from the same, in terms of compensation, hours, growth potential, culture, and quality of life. It’s incumbent upon you to learn what’s out there in the marketplace and familiarize yourself with the distinctions…and determine how your current firm measures up.
Complacency
Somewhat entwined with the first impediment, complacency is the second biggest impediment to associate career growth. Often, complacency is what causes lack of knowledge in the first place. You say to yourself: I’ve survived this long at my present firm with some of my hair still intact, the firm’s literature exalts our unparalleled culture, and my colleagues that I started with haven’t left yet, so this must be as good as it gets in Biglaw, right? Wrong. No matter how content that you think you are with your current situation, it’s imperative that you motivate yourself to learn about the marketplace.
Even associates who do educate themselves about other firms and learn that professional growth opportunities exist for them are still not immune to complacency in some sense. Despite recognizing that firm “x” offers you more compensation, reduced hours, increased partnership prospects, expanded in-house exit options, improved culture, and/or better work/life balance, you still fail to act. Yes, when you bill 10-11 hours per day for a prolonged period of time, things are busy and there’s not much free time. But unless you’re pulling consecutive all-nighters ahead of a major deal closing or trial, you can carve out ten minutes to speak with someone knowledgeable about the marketplace, five minutes to track down your law school transcript, an hour to update your resume, and a few hours to go in for an interview. You simply have to prioritize it and, if you do, you’ll engineer a way to make it happen.
Fear
You’ve learned about growth opportunities and acted upon that knowledge. But you can’t allow the third impediment to career growth to hold you back: fear. Fear can sabotage your professional development, and almost always the basis is unfounded.
Sometimes associates are afraid to pursue growth opportunities because of more general fears. Fear of the unknown, fear of change. Embrace these aspects of your transition and treat it as a positive. You’ve started fresh in law school, at your current firm, and on many other occasions in life. The process is the same. It also furnishes you with the ability to erase weaknesses or shortcomings in your current situation and build your internal profile anew with the benefit of hindsight. Moreover, existing associates are accustomed to new faces joining their practice group periodically, and it’s likely that other associates will be lateraling into your new firm within the same period so there’s a natural support group. Finally, your new firm has expended considerable resources on attracting you there; the firm has a vested interest in ensuring your success upon arrival. The firm will almost certainly employ both formal and informal integration measures to effectuate a smooth transition for you.
Another dimension of fear that can affect associates is fear of how colleagues will react. You’re worried about how partners and other higher-ups at your firm will respond. Will they be disappointed? Angry? You’re worried about how your fellow associates will react. Will they feel rejected? Will they resent you for having to pick up the slack in your absence? First, you have to always remember that law is a business. As anyone who was around in 2009-10 can attest, the moment that you and your practice stop making financial sense on your firm’s balance sheet, there will no longer be a position for you. Partners might lament the fact, but don’t be mistaken, if there’s an economic downturn and you’re no longer profitable, the firm will let you go. Accordingly, you shouldn’t hold yourself to any different standard. If your current firm stops making sense for you financially or otherwise (i.e. there is a growth opportunity available to you), you can’t let considerations about your existing firm prevent you from moving on to a better situation. At the end of the day, if you give notice in a professional manner and transition out of the firm appropriately, no one—partners nor associates—should hold a grudge; if they do, then it’s telling about your current firm and it probably wasn’t the best environment to begin with.
Takeaway
You’ve done the hard work of gaining admission to Biglaw and mastering your craft. In 2019, don’t fall victim to the three biggest impediments to associate career growth. Wall Street bankers have long known that in order to maximize their professional trajectory in the finance landscape, they have to be prepared to switch positions every few years. As of late, Biglaw partners have caught onto this trend as well. As a Biglaw associate, you also have to be opportunistic about driving your career and willing to embrace periodic change; especially, if you’re part of the 90% of Biglaw associates who haven’t begun their careers at the ideal firm for maximizing their career development. For the 10% of you for whom the stars have aligned and you’ve started at your ideal firm – congratulations, and keep doing what you’re doing! But do you know what the biggest impediment of all to associate career growth is? Thinking you are part of that lucky 10% when you’re really a member of the remaining 90%.
If you’re interested in having a conversation with someone who can help you determine whether you’re part of the 90% for whom professional growth opportunities make sense or you’re otherwise interested in exploring the lateral market, reach out to me at ewelch@laterallink.com or on LinkedIn.
Lateral Link is one of the top-rated international legal recruiting firms. With over 14 offices world-wide, Lateral Link specializes in placing attorneys at the most prestigious law firms and companies in the world. Managed by former practicing attorneys from top law schools, Lateral Link has a tradition of hiring lawyers to execute the lateral leaps of practicing attorneys. Click here to find out more about us.
