Biglaw

Are The Stories About Your Law Firm Worth Telling?

Recent events at Boies Schiller highlight the fragility of firms and the importance of culture.

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Boies Schiller Flexner BSF by David Lat

(photo by David Lat)

International powerhouse Boies Schiller has had a humbling year. The firm had over 350 attorneys at its peak but has seen dozens — including about 60 partners — leave over the past few months. One of those partners, Natasha Harrison, was the heir-apparent to the firm’s leadership. Much of the exodus has been blamed on a series of PR-nightmare representations on the part of founding partner David Boies himself, including his controversial representations of Harvey Weinstein and convicted fraudster Elizabeth Holmes.

But while those business-related problems have been known for many months, Business Insider published a report this week on the alleged extensive damage done to the firm’s internal culture. The allegations primarily relate to Boies Schiller’s second-in-command, Jonathan Schiller, but they point to a wide variety of morale-killing behavior.

The report details Schiller allegedly bullying associates and even other senior partners. Sources report multiple stories of him demeaning others within the firm, including several that drove attorneys to cry publicly. Schiller is also claimed to have embarrassed other partners in front of colleagues and clients, especially in his terse and potentially unprofessional emails.

It’s Not Just Gossip

I can already hear some attorneys writing off this reporting as tawdry gossip being shared by disaffected former employees. To some, the only factors that truly matter in a legal practice are the cases argued, deals done, clients generated, and invoices paid. To these people, a partner sticking their foot in their mouth or hurting a junior associate’s feelings doesn’t really affect a firm’s bottom line and so doesn’t merit the attention being paid.

I’m here to argue that this mindset is not only wrong, it’s actively damaging. We can’t discount conduct that negatively impacts people’s emotions, as opposed to the dollars and cents of the firm.

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A firm’s culture is established by what it does consistently. Every time a senior attorney is permitted to treat a junior attorney unprofessionally without consequences, it reinforces a culture of bullying. Every time decision-makers or those close to them are held to a different standard than others, it reinforces a culture of cliques, politics, and unfairness. The people who work in law firms tend to be smart and observant, and they tend to talk to one another. They hear when people are being treated poorly, and they’re going to figure out quickly whether they can expect to be treated the same way and whether firm management will have their backs if and when that happens.

If the published stories are to be believed, the current exodus from Boies Schiller is proof that culture matters. A firm that holds everyone to a standard of decency and kindness, from senior management on down, can weather the occasional misstep. Even the most kind and patient of us can have an off day where we snip at people. I’m sure we’ve all unintentionally hurt a coworker’s feelings at some point, as well.

Email in particular is a minefield for many, with how difficult it can be to convey tone. What might seem to the sender like a straightforward statement or a lighthearted jest can be received as a devastating critique or cutting insult. In places where we can trust one another to be kind and respectful, it’s easier to have constructive conversations or to grant one another the benefit of the doubt.

In places where team members can’t count on being respected, though, those intended or unintended slights can send people looking for the door.

Cultural Poison

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Reading between the lines of the Boies Schiller departures, some of them were unrelated to the juicy headlines coming out of the firm. Some attorneys openly left for better compensation packages at other jobs. Some were dissatisfied with firm management’s lack of transparency in its process. These are perfectly normal reasons for attrition, ones that even the most functional and culturally healthy firms deal with from time to time. The best of firms still won’t be a good fit for everybody. Some attorneys are more comfortable in firms that operate as open-book democracies, while others prefer to have a benign dictator handle decision-making while they focus on growing their practice. Some attorneys adore eat-what-you-kill objective comp systems, while others prefer softer, fuzzier approaches that better value nonmonetary contributions.

None of those realities matters when your firm is the subject of torrents of negative news stories. Boies Schiller may have reasonable explanations for some of its attrition. But that’s getting drowned out entirely by the mistakes, the unforced errors, and the disregard for a healthy firm culture evident in the stories making headlines. I have no firsthand knowledge about the veracity of any of these allegations. But even if you want to say those stories are overblown or just people being “overly sensitive,” it’s hard to deny that they’ve had a real impact in driving off attorneys who otherwise could have made that firm stronger. These cultural harms can devastate a firm’s bottom line and unnecessarily hurt the lives of those working there.

At its core, a firm is little more than a group of people who have agreed to work side by side. Humans are, and always will be, storytellers. Make sure the stories being told about you and your people are worth telling.

GoodnowJames Goodnow is the CEO and managing partner of NLJ 250 firm Fennemore Craig. At age 36, he became the youngest known chief executive of a large law firm in the U.S. He holds his JD from Harvard Law School and dual business management certificates from MIT. He’s currently attending the Cambridge University Judge Business School (U.K.), where he’s working toward a master’s degree in entrepreneurship. James is the co-author of Motivating Millennials, which hit number one on Amazon in the business management new release category. You can connect with James on Twitter (@JamesGoodnow) or by emailing him at James@JamesGoodnow.com.

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