Why Most Attorneys Never Realize Their Full Potential
Efforts in courage are not enough without purpose and direction.
John F. Kennedy
In reviewing the careers of countless attorneys, I believe I have come to understand what makes the majority of attorneys succeed and the majority of attorneys fail. I reach this conclusion from having examined the careers of hundreds of attorneys at both the partner and associate level. After nearly a decade of meeting enormously successful attorneys, average attorney and below average attorneys, I believe I have the answer.
I remember during my second year of practice as an attorney standing in my office when two fellow attorneys in my law firm walked in. These attorneys were both my same class year and were nice guys. Incredibly, when these two guys walked in my office I had just gotten off the telephone with a legal recruiter who informed me that I had just received an offer from a competing firm where my salary would nearly double. This was before the days of the “salary wars” and major and important firms in the same city often had vastly different salaries. In this case I had received an offer from a firm that was the highest paying firm by far in Los Angeles-this was what now seems like a long time ago.
G-d works in strange ways and in this instance the two guys almost immediately started talking about our current firm and how if the attorneys in our class remained at our firm they would all make partner. Both of these guys then said that their objective was to remain at this law firm and make partner. Out of the 15 people or so who were in my starting class at this law firm, these were the only two who stayed at the Firm and both are partners there to this day. I remember when I found out that each one had made partner thinking to myself “of course they did.” I am also confident that each of these guys will have solid careers at this firm and if I had to bet I would say that each of these guys will remain at this firm throughout their careers.
I believe I am attracted to legal recruiting in large part because I love watching what makes certain people succeed. The people I have worked with I believe benefit enormously from my study of success and failure. The difference that makes some attorneys have profound success in the law and makes other wallow is the difference between being strategic and being tactical with their careers
A. The Tactical Attorney
When I sit in my office and interview attorneys I often feel like I am in an alternate universe. It is common for attorneys to go to top 10 law schools and have a succession of 4-5 jobs with major law firms in less than 7 to 8 years. In each instance where the attorney leaves one firm and goes to another you have to wonder. “Did this person think something was going to be different at the next firm?” You really have to wonder why they are moving around so much.
Consider the attorney who is moving from firm to firm like this. Chances are this attorney sits down at the new firm and does the same (or similar) sorts of work they did at the previous law firm. The attorney will likely have the same sorts of relationships at the second firm with their colleagues that they had at the first firm. The attorney will also likely encounter similar issues with the people giving them work at the previous firm. The attorney will probably also dislike the same things about the fourth firm that they disliked about the third firm.
Even if an attorney is not switching firms, they may constantly be “on the defensive” with their career at their current firm-never feeling they are doing good enough, hoping someone gives them work, hoping someone leaves to make an opportunity for them-and so on.
I have a lot of concern about the way that most companies do business in America today and the way most executives approach their careers. Many companies do things simply for short term gain. Many executives are hoping that their companies will award them stock options so they can “cash out” and retire or do something else. There is a lot of emphasis on short term value and not long term value in the way most people do business. This short term emphasis is very tactical-and this tactical emphasis in a career is insane.
If you find an employer that is fair and reasonable, you could end up being there for 10, 20, 30 or more years. This sort of long term connection between and employer and an employee is meaningful. The employee will typically feel a great deal of security in their position, the employer will be comfortable with the employee at all times, the employee will be around people that understand them and appreciate them for who they are.
Until the mid-1980s in most companies in America (not to mention law firms) most employees remained with a company throughout their career. This was also a time when America was considered very strong in the manufacturing industry on the world stage (much more so than today). With the threat of massive competition coming from Japan in the middle of the 1980s, companies started becoming less loyal to employees and terminating people more readily and employees started leaving more readily as well. A bond between employees and employers was broken in a quick time that had existed for a long, long time. While I am not idealizing this time by no means, for the most part an employee would only be discharged by a larger company for gross, gross incompetence or extreme dishonesty.
When I use the term “tactic” I am referring to any method used to get short-term gain that is immediate. If someone needs money, a tactic would be to rob a bank, for example. If someone does not like how their work is perceived at their employer, a tactic would be to immediately switch jobs in order to feel better. Most attorneys I know of are tactical.
The tactical attorney looks to what result they are getting in the “here and now” for their efforts. For example, if their firm is not paying “quite market” they may investigate other opportunities. If they are not getting the work they want at the moment they may also leave the firm they are at.
Let me tell you a couple of stories about attorneys I know who were quite tactical with their careers.
One brilliant attorney I know of graduated near the top of his class in a top 10 law school. He did some important work outside of a law firm for a few year and then joined a law firm in his third year of practice. When he joined the firm he told them that he did not want to do anything other than intellectual collar litigation. The firm he joined was one of the top firms in the United States. When the attorney joined the firm the firm did not have any intellectual property litigation cases and so they put him on another type of case. He refused the work on the grounds that he was hired to do intellectual property litigation and that was all he intended to do. After four or five attempts to assign this attorney work the firm gave up. Six months later he had not billed any hours and was fired for not billing any work. With this on his record and horrific references from his prior firm, this attorney was never able to get a job with a law firm of more than a few attorneys again.
A couple of years ago I was with a recruiter from our company who met an attorney for a meal. The attorney had recently been placed at a firm and said that he did not like the firm because they had changed the floor he had to park on in the Firm’s building. The attorney was looking for a job.
Most attorneys are tactical and are focused on what they can get in the here and now. This focus is extremely limiting because they do not have a long-term view of where they are going. Looking at the small things in relationship to their employers is something that holds them back tremendously.
Think about the things you may do in your career that are tactical. In my case, I might still be practicing law if I had not been tactical long ago looking at a competing salary as so important, for example, when I knew in my heart that remaining where I was at could have given me a long-term result that was fantastic.
B. The Strategic Attorney
Strategic attorneys typically are the most successful attorneys. When an attorney is strategic they have a well defined and detailed plan to achieve a long-term goal. They use tactics as a means of carrying out their strategy.
Think back above to the two attorneys in my firm who knew they wanted to be partners in the firm they were in way back when. Compensation issues were not really meaningful for them. In addition, I am sure they never were too concerned about parking. These guys simply knew where they were going and knew they were going to get there.
Most people do not have written long-term goals. I highly recommend having long-term goals and, in fact, believe they are the most important thing you can have. If you have not seen the movie or read the book The Secret I highly recommend doing so as both this book and movie go into considerable detail about the power of goal setting. Whether it is Napolean Hill’s classic Think and Grow Rich, a Tony Robbins seminar-most self improvement programs you will encounter will push you aggressively to set goals for yourself and know where you are going. Once you decide where you are going your subconscious and conscious mind will figure out a way to get you there. The decisions you make in response to your goal setting will literally shape your destiny.
1. A strategic attorney knows their result
A strategic attorneys knows where they are going. The strategic attorney’s goal may be to be a partner in their law firm (or another firm). The strategic attorney may be interested in being a famous attorney. The strategic attorney may be interested in being the attorney with the most business of any attorney in their city. The strategic attorney may want to be President of the United States (as Bill Clinton did even when he was in law school). Regardless of the strategic attorney’s goal, he will have a goal. This goal for the attorney is important.
2. The strategic attorney has a purpose for desiring the result
Just wanting something is never enough. You must also have a purpose for wanting what you want. You need to have reasons for doing what you want to do. These reasons are something that will motivate you and give you a purpose for wanting to achieve. You need to ask yourself “why” you want to be something you seeking to be or do whatever you are seeking to do.
Every attorney should commit goals to paper and write them down for 1 year, 3 years, 5 years, 10 years and 20 years. If you do not have long term strategic objectives your career will be like a ship without a rudder.
As I mentioned earlier in this article, my decision to leave the firm I left sounds like it might have been “tactical” but in reality it was not. Long, long ago my grandfather had been friends at the University of Michigan with the founder of the second firm I worked at (the Founder of this firm had once ran for President and my grandfather was proud of having been friends in college with someone who went on to be a presidential candidate). When I was younger I wanted to be an attorney and my grandfather told me “if you want to be an attorney you should go to work for Thomas Dewey’s firm.” I set a goal for myself to work in that firm when I was only 18 years old. My grandfather died a year later. When I was in law school I did not get an on campus interview with the firm. When I began practicing I only applied to one firm because I had set a goal for myself to work there a long time ago. I imagine I made a lot of decisions based on this strategy I had for myself.
Conclusion
The setting of a goal (long-term strategy) is often equivalent to its attainment. But if you do not start somewhere you’ll ultimately be nowhere. The strategic attorney is the most successful sort of attorney. If you are strategic your career and life will change.
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