A few years ago, a programmer went viral — in was 2020, so maybe not the best phrasing — after seeing a job listing requiring “4+ years of experience in FastAPI.” Quite the feat, he noted, since he was the guy who invented FastAPI only 1.5 years earlier. The modern law firm partnership track feels a lot like the FastAPI trap. Associates have to prove they will bring a book of business to the firm when they’ve spent years on the bottom of a pyramid scheme with senior partners taking all the credit and nurturing all the relationships. How do you prove your business worth when you’ve never been allowed to build business?
There’s not a single answer for getting over that hump, but Kellogg Hansen partner Alex Parkinson had an additional line item on his resume that some lawyers haven’t considered: he wrote a treatise.
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Specifically, the treatise on Multidistrict Litigation now available from PLI, which he started during his clerkship and then polished in his limited free time as an associate. The project began as a joke, he told me, an effort to one-up a fellow clerk who declared that they planned to read a whole treatise. The obvious next step is to write the treatise yourself. Really raising the bar from “maybe I’ll train for a marathon.”
The result is a comprehensive review of one of the great procedural beasts in federal court. The legal system’s industrial-sized case consolidator makes up more than half the federal docket — or it did before the whole docket became “[Person with well-established constitutional rights] v. Trump” — and this figure keeps increasing as America’s problems grow more intertwined. Talc cancer cases, opioid litigation, NFL concussions… all the stuff you see in headlines without realizing there’s a whole procedural universe making it possible.
The content of the treatise itself is catnip for litigators who like their cases massive, messy, and in need of a federal traffic conductors. “It’s really a testament to what is possible in terms of efficiency and achieving justice in a large number of cases,” Parkinson told me. “It is pretty remarkable, the amount of coordination that occurs to get these matters resolved and to get lawsuits before courts and heard. I think that the federal judiciary is proud of that and should be proud of that.” Later this year, the Federal Rules will add Rule 16.1 to codify the best practices developed by MDL courts.
But beyond a timely guide to an area of law on the rise, the treatise is a powerful marketing weapon disguised as a hobby. It’s a branding tool with some history at Kellogg Hansen. Michael Kellogg and Peter Huber — the firm was once Kellogg, Huber, Hansen, Todd, Evans & Figel, of course — navigated the high-flying Baby Bell years as the acknowledged experts who wrote the book, literally, on federal telecommunications law.
Young associates almost never get to build a “book of business” while they’re staring bleary eyed at document review platforms. But that doesn’t mean they can’t build their business prospects, and chiseling your name on the cover of a leading text is quite the proof of concept. At least if the firm sees value in the practice area. The author of a treatise finds their name bound, indexed, and generating phone calls.
And since the subject matter continues to evolve, Parkinson is already thinking about the future. An update in light of the incoming Rule 16.1 is already planned and he has ideas for future chapters over the coming years. Apparently once you start feeding the treatise beast, it demands regular offerings.
Most lawyers out there won’t bite off a challenge as hefty as a treatise, but those aren’t the only writing opportunities out there. By keeping one eye on the business environment, lawyers can hack the business development timeline. Go give clients a reason to think of you first. If nothing else, it beats training for a marathon.
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.