Some Biglaw Seniority Norms Are Pretty Messed Up

Everyone understands that junior attorneys need to work themselves up the corporate ladder, but they still deserve credit for the hard work they do for clients. 

It is pretty well understood that in order to progress within Biglaw, you need to put in your time, and climb the corporate ladder.  Everyone knows that first-year associates will not be arguing important motions or presenting cases in front of juries until they have spent years working on more menial tasks at a firm.  Of course, it makes sense that more experienced attorneys will conduct important tasks that senior attorneys are usually more competent to handle.  However, many Biglaw firms have seniority norms that fail to give junior associates the credit that they oftentimes deserve.

It is usually a huge honor to have one’s name included on legal papers.  It always feels great to sign your name to legal documents, and having your name on papers creates a public record of all of the work you have done.  In addition, judges usually use names on briefs when including the names of counsel in legal opinions, and being included in a decision can increase an attorney’s profile.

However, many Biglaw firms only put the names of most senior lawyers on legal papers.  Oftentimes, these attorneys did very little work in drafting the papers, and they might have only reviewed the documents once (if that) before signing the papers.  As a result, more junior attorneys in Biglaw rarely get public credit for the work they did in drafting legal documents.

I’ll admit it — there are a few good reasons why it makes sense that only the names of senior attorneys usually appear on legal papers.  Many Biglaw firms rely on a small number of rainmakers to generate the majority of their business, and clients want to know that respectable attorneys at the firm are involved with their cases.  There is perhaps no better way of broadcasting to a client that an attorney is involved in a matter than having that lawyer sign papers related to a case, even if a senior lawyer had minimal involvement with drafting the papers.  In addition, there are often many junior associates at a firm in proportion to senior attorneys.  It would be impractical to list all junior attorneys who worked on a brief (although it wouldn’t hurt to name one of two junior associates who contributed the most to a project).  Furthermore, listing a name on legal papers might have ethical implications that firms may wish to avoid.

However, allowing attorneys to put their names on papers can be a huge morale boost, and give associates more buy-in about the work they perform.  In contrast to Biglaw, attorneys at smaller firms are oftentimes free to put their name on papers whenever they wish.  While working my first job after Biglaw, I was excited to begin putting my own name on papers.  This allowed me to use real-life writing samples when applying to different jobs, and prospective employers knew I was closely involved with matters, since my signature was on documents related to those cases.  In addition, showing firms that my name appeared in a number of published opinions helped me increase my profile.  I’m not going to lie, if I thought we’d lose a motion, I’d usually let my boss sign the papers so that I had a nearly undefeated record!  However, putting my name on papers was a huge bonus while working at a smaller firm.

In addition, many Biglaw firms have extremely backwards norms when it comes to internal work product.  As an associate in Biglaw, when writing memos to people at the firm, I was urged to address the memos to attorneys in order to seniority.  Before I knew everyone around the office, I used to actually waste time looking at our firm’s website to figure out which attorneys at our firm were more senior based on their attorney profiles.  This task was extremely complicated, since I was never sure how to rank people, because some attorneys had been at the firm longer than others who had graduated earlier from law school.

We also had to list authorship of internal work product in order of seniority.  However, the fairest method would be to list authorship according to how much work the attorneys contributed to the project.  Indeed, during college, I interned at a leading nonprofit that published its internal work product this way.  As a result, my name appeared first on materials even though I was a lowly intern.  Many scientific papers also list authorship in order of who contributed the most to the paper, among other factors.  However, Biglaw’s addiction to seniority and the pecking order required that the most senior attorneys be listed on materials first, and this could lead to inefficient outcomes.  If the work product was flawed, it could be harder to tell who messed up.  In addition, it is more difficult to discern who knows the most about a matter when authorship is listed in order of seniority.

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All told, there is a hierarchy in each employment environment, and everyone understands that junior attorneys need to work themselves up the corporate ladder.  However, this should not mean that junior associates deserve no credit for the hard work that they do for clients.  In addition, failing to recognize the work of junior attorneys can lead to inefficient outcomes, and firms should give more credit to associates when credit is due.


Jordan Rothman is a partner of The Rothman Law Firm, a full-service New York and New Jersey law firm. He is also the founder of Student Debt Diaries, a website discussing how he paid off his student loans. You can reach Jordan through email at jordan@rothmanlawyer.com.

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