Bob is a great associate. He has a terrific work ethic. He really knows his stuff. Clients like to see him on the team. But he is not going to make partner. We have known it for a couple of years now. He is great doing the work, but he struggles when it comes to finding new clients or getting existing clients to send us work that was not already coming our way.
Two years have passed and we haven’t told Bob that his career with us has stalled.
Why do we find it so difficult to be honest with people we work closely with and care about? Partners rarely seek to deliberately mislead their associates about their prospects. The contrary is the case. Partners care a great deal about colleagues they have worked alongside, often for years. It is these shared experiences that are in the forefront of their mind as the topic of Bob’s future comes up, usually during the promotion round.
(Bad) reasons not to have that difficult conversation
There are lots of bad reasons not have that difficult conversation:
• “Bob plays a key role in a number of client relationships.”
He probably does, but clients understand that not everyone can make partner and that from time to time people they are used to dealing with will leave. They will be disappointed, but their disappointment is tempered when the new team member turns out to be something of a star.
• “Bob may not have everything we expect from a partner, but you know, it will be OK to promote him.”
This argument can often carry the day if Bob is the latest in a line of Bobs that have found their way into the partnership. Some will just about wash their face as a partner, others will be in that group that consistently disappoints. They never really stop being the associate.
“Saying what needs to be said and offering a positive way forward is the best outcome”
• “I know Bob is not really partner material – how about we make him a legal director/of counsel/senior associate?”
The of counsel role is important and valuable, and making it available to all who come up short in the race to partnership devalues it. It also crowds the firm with lawyers who are technically able but increasingly expensive and needy for work. And it makes it hard to find the work and money to invest in new talent.
• “This is all rather difficult – let’s see how Bob gets on this year.”
I think we know how this year is going to work out, pretty much the same as the past couple of years. All we have done is kick the can well and truly down the road.
(Good) reasons to have that difficult conversation
It does not need to be like this.
It starts with clarity around what is expected of a partner at your firm. Do your associates understand what it means to make partner? Do they have an awareness of where their career is heading and where they sit in their peer group?
This awareness is shaped by regular feedback and an appraisal system that is a lot more than “that thing that HR makes us do every six months”.
With clear expectations and objectives it is much easier for all associates to benchmark themselves. It gives confidence to those who are on track to partnership, those who are targeting an of counsel role and, importantly, those who recognise partnership may be out of reach.
It may still end in a difficult conversation, but one where what needs to be said is said in a clear and unambiguous way. When the conversation ends Bob will know where he stands. Too many of these conversations end with Bob thinking “maybe next year”. Slumping shoulders, eye contact avoided and equivocal language mean the messenger has mangled the message and set him or herself up for a repeat performance in 12 months’ time.
Saying what needs to be said and offering a positive way forward is the best outcome. The best firms will have prepared for this moment and, once the anger and disappointment have passed, will begin a constructive conversation about the future. It may be a conversation about a secondment to work with a client, advice on which firms might be right for Bob and where partnership may be a prospect. It may be a switch to the of counsel career path. There will be no pressure to act quickly because the firm, and probably Bob too, knew this conversation would come around. There may be up to 18 months to work out and execute the next move. And when he moves it is positioned as a positive decision on Bob’s part.
Understanding the importance of the promotion decision to the firm, and not just the candidate and their sponsors, is often overlooked. This is where the leadership plays a crucial role in ensuring the firm follows its own rules. The more you bend these the more you undermine the firm’s philosophy around what it means to be a partner.
Andrew Wansell is chief operating officer of Boodle Hatfield
Isn’t a more sophisticated analysis required, i.e. one that focuses on quality control rather than just sales ability? Indeed, isn’t the premise of your approach that we only really want to promote salesmen/those with good contacts to our partnership rather than proper lawyers? There’s no point making fantastic brushes if no-one wants to buy them. Equally, there’s no point being a brush salesman if you don’t have any brushes to sell. The problem in recent years is that we haven’t begun to create a structure whereby people have different career paths depending upon whether they are technically gifted or gifted in other areas. In fact, the lie is still propagated when trainees start out, I suspect, that it’s all about being a good lawyer; everything else will inevitably follow. No it won’t. And the sooner we adapt a Victorian-style business structure to the needs of a twenty-first business, the better.
I agree that the partnership conversation is often ducked or badly handled. However it never ceases to amaze me how often Firm A makes up its mind up that an Associate is not making the grade, only for the Associate to leave and make partner at Firm B and then flourish. Like so much in life, I have concluded that ‘success’ (however defined) can be quite random.
As an associate, aspiring to partnership, I was offered an Of Counsel role at a US firm and separately, partnership at a UK firm. I took the latter. The US firm were disappointed but said that now I had the title of partner at a good UK firm they too would consider me as a partner. Other than the title, nothing else had changed. Bonkers.
“clients understand that not everyone can make partner and that from time to time people they are used to dealing with will leave”
Well, they might—sometimes. But my experience client-side is that a key lawyer, whether partner or not, leaving a firm can lead to a relationship disintegrating and ultimately panel places being lost. It seems remarkably arrogant to assume that clients care about the partner they are working with but not the person/people who are probably doing most of the work and by extension client interaction.
If we take an analogy, sports merchandise is based upon the team’s success and the individual players.
The current partnership mentality is the equivalent of having a team full of players who are there just to sell shirts rather than to win games. We know how that recruitment strategy worked out for the England rugby team.
How about this.. urge lawyers to be the best possible technical lawyers and train them along the way to be better at promotion, with marketing teams who take the load off rather than just shuffle papers and then say it is the fee earners’ faults when marketing activity doesnt work.
Take a chance on Bob and get on with it.
Yes, poor Bob. He’s a nice bloke and deserves a break.
There is a lot of truth in this:
“Equally, there’s no point being a brush salesman if you don’t have any brushes to sell.”
The firm I am just leaving values partners who are effectively just salesmen, and have nothing to back this up in terms of legal ability / general intelligence. They treat the actual fee earners as monkeys and don’t differentiate between skilled solicitors with excellent client relationships and barely average solicitors, all of who they view as easily replaceable. Amusingly that isn’t the case now the economy has improved so much and the demand for good solicitors has improved massively.
I’m joining a firm where from the outside, and the brief glimpse I have had of the inside, this appears to be completely different. Fingers crossed! They have already been fairly clear on what will be required to make partner, and what opportunities there will be in the coming years.
A number of commentators have made the assumption that only a”brush salesman” can become a partner. There are many outstanding lawyers who are also tremendous at building client relationships. I would point to Juan Picon at DLA Piper, and David Taylor, former head of Real Estate at BLP, as good examples of this. Being a great lawyer and being great at building relationships are not mutually exclusive.
The reality is that there will always be more excellent lawyers, than there are partnership opportunities. My concern is that firms are not being honest with their associates about their prospects of for partnership. And they are not being transparent about what it means to be a partner at their firm. Not all firms are looking for the same things in a partner.
I was delighted to see one commentator is joining a firm where what is expected from partners is understood, and the opportunity has been clearly explained. It sounds like the kind of firm that others should be aspiring to be.
There is an awful lot of dead wood in the partnership at most firms (even after a more aggressive, credit crunch inspired, cull). Particularly at the top, where once partners are in their final years they are marketing based on a fast fading reputation from when they were at their peak (perhaps 40-45).
Also, many partners jealously protect their own position and do not allow promising associates the freedom to truly build their own relationships. This can reduce the options a little to (i) recruiting the technically able internal candidate who seems to have a good relationship with clients but doesn’t seem to own those relationships and (ii) recruiting the lateral from outside who as they are already a partner can point to their own relationships (but then more often than not, fails to bring them across).
The article assumes that the partnership process is essentially meritocratic. It’s often politically driven – partner A want his assistant made up because partner B had hers made up last year. If Bob hasn’t been adopted by a partner then he’s never going to throw six to start.
It’s sometimes driven by which assistant shouts the loudest and longest….and there are some good shouters out there. Bob is likely to be quiet in my experience.
I’ve also seen good assistants have their path blocked because they work for a partner who has no intention of sharing to any extent his book of work, so they can’t ever demonstrate a viable practice of their own, whereas other less able assistants progress because some partners are bit more mature about that process.
I’m 13 years PQE and still an associate, although I started at a small firm, went solo for a few years, and only have 3 years big law firm experience. It always amazes me who makes partner. It’s all people with contacts, but no great social skills or personable personalities.
I don’t want to be defined by my billings; I don’t want to manage others, I don’t want to have to do BD / Sales = I will never be a partner. This is not a new thing this has been the position since the dawn of legal practice. Why are people still surprised that being a good technician is not enough?
Partnership is not a promotion step like assistant to associate; it is a move into business ownership and profit share: you share your business and your profits with someone who can demonstrably add to both.
Bob is clearly a very good lawyer – he would not have been employed for so long if that were not true. He is not going to be a partner because he does not wish to do those things that partners have to to to gain and sustain their status.
Re Mark Husband 11:25 am
I agree with a lot what you say but the reality, as mentioned above, is that there is a lot of dead wood at partnership level, hiding underperformance behind low hours targets.
Those low hours targets are there to allow time for management/BD. What I don’t see happening is partners bringing sufficient work in to justify those allowances. perhaps if they did, their teams would grow enough to need for more partners.
If there is lots of work most partners/firms will string Bob along for years with false promises and assurances (including several years as of counsel “as a gateway”, they tell him) because he knows the clients and work and so keeping him makes the partners’ lives easier. As soon as there is a slight dip he gets the chop together with more lies (“the business case fell just short in this market”). The only associates who are managed out are those who can’t do the work or are no good with clients.
Tom Jarndyce | 11-Dec-2015 10:14 am
Tom
Had you spent more on quality rather than concerning yourself with quantity your heirs would have been saved years of miserable litigation in the Chancery Courts.
For under-performing partners the “wind has been blowing from the East” for many years – they are likened to Mr Skimpole, de-equitised then seen off the premises by Inspector Bucket.
What I think firms more often than not get wrong in these sorts of scenarios is that they blindly follow PQE as a metric for “who is up this year”, and put merit to one side. I think firms need to recognise that some candidates will be ready sooner than others, but also that some candidates may justifiably require longer to make their case. I don’t think “up or out” at 9 or 10 PQE as a rigid model makes much sense. Some will be ready at 8 PQE and others at 12 PQE.
How do people know whether it is partners getting in the work or the power of the firm’s brand? It makes much more logical sense for a firm as a whole to be the rainmaker rather than individuals who can up and leave, with their relationships going with them.
The Kirkland & Ellis model is the most ridiculous of all – promoted to partner at 5/6 years PQE, in the same way that at other firms associates are promoted to senior associates. You are then given a few years to prove yourself, but still – to the outside world, you are a ‘Kirkland & Ellis’ partner, and are more likely to get a partnership role elsewhere as compared to a perhaps better, more suited senior associate (who doesn’t have the ‘partner’ title to boost creds).
Anonymous | 14-Dec-2015 8:45 am AND Anonymous | 14-Dec-2015 9:08 am
Firms really do not blindly follow PQE – they have (mostly) implemented a modified associate lockstep which takes account of various practice development steps. The reality is that work of any type has a finite degree of complexity – only so many partners are required in any firm who can attend to the most complex work because there is a finite amount of it. Equally firms can only sustain so many partners whose predominant role is CRM / BD rather than billing.
An associate “stalls” when their higher degree of expertise is underutilised, they are not engaged in work generation and the work which is available to them can be done by a less senior and less expensive team member. This is not an issue of blame for the individual or firm – just a commercial reality. The much maligned “Counsel” or “Legal Director” positions work extremely well for firms and individuals in this position.
Firms do try desperately hard to institutionalise client work but law is a people business; over time a relationship of trust develops with a client that simply matters more to the client than their relationship with the firm. Also some partners really are very good indeed at attracting work which would not, but for their presence, have come to the firm. While these points are true you are, with respect, somewhat missing the point that there is still a limit on the maximum number of people required to do the work that comes in the door.
As I have mentioned above; advancement in to partnership is not an axiomatic step in all careers; firms do depend on a degree of attrition and, in consequence, the threshold for entry into the partnership of any firm is very high indeed.
You say “firms do not blindly follow PQE” and yet in my experience nearly all candidates for partnership in top firms have between 8 – 10 years PQE. I’m not for one second suggesting that one merely needs to serve time to be a candidate, far from it, but I do think the whole concept of there being a “window” needs to be re-visited. I don’t know many who make partner at top firms at 7 PQE or earlier, and similarly I know few who have passed 12 PQE and subsequently been made up.
The modified associate lock step isn’t really about partnership. Crudely put it’s a way of paying higher billing associates more money than lower billing associates, and to compensate those whose 20s have been ruined. It does sound nice and progressive though, particularly when HR stress the point that it’s not about billable hours, but quality of work and achieving milestones.
Quite a few comments above about how partners in law firms are “worth it”. A handful probably are. Most, on the other hand, are mediocre and their roles could easily have been filled by people who are passed over for whatever reason. Some are downright awful. This is hardly surprising; it reflects human society in general, not to mention the composition of associates themselves. The point really is whether we should reform the whole edifice so that we bring the profession into the 21st century and make it more efficient and fair. I don’t want to sound like Susskind but he has a point when he bangs on about how the profession really does need proper specialisations within each discipline generating their own career paths. For example, what about a front-line knowhow person (i.e someone with real technical ability who gets involved in transactions), a project manager, a salesman, someone who is fantastic at drafting, etc, etc. I know that type of micromanagement will make some people cringe. On the other hand, having seen over the last 20 years or so the same, never-ending pattern of poor over-worked associates doing everything within silly timeframes and longing to escape a profession which quickly becomes hateful to them, I really do think we should start thinking about proper change. Before the machines come along, that is, and force change upon us (another Susskind theme!).
Within a cube draw a ziggurat (or, less accurately, a pyramid, if you prefer) On the vertical lines of the cube draw an increasing PQE scale. Everyone outside the ziggurat but within the cube has gone.
This is the shape of the machine – raging against the machine does not change its shape. Adjusting measures, metrics and terminology does not change the fact that the machine has to be that shape. The departed have to depart to preserve the shape – ultimately how they came to leave is immaterial.
To paraphrase Churchill; this is the worst form of law firm structure, except for all the others.
A number of people have raged against the inequity of the prevalent law firm structure. A structure which, as Mark demonstrates, is Darwinian. The number of partner positions is significantly less than the number of potential partners. There will inevitably have to be a selection. How that happens is a measure of a firm.
What is is interesting are the comments which suggest that somehow “over-worked associates . . . urging to escape”, “whose 20’s have been ruined” have been coerced and miss-sold a career in law. Is this really the case, or have they taken the kings shilling knowing that life will be very hard, but that they will enjoy, at least for a time, financial rewards and an escalator to greater rewards, that few other careers offer them? I tip my hat to those who recognise that law is not for them and step away knowing that life will be financially less comfortable. I worry for those who stay doing a very hard job they clearly do not enjoy.
Mark Husband – the Kirkland & Ellis junior partner model is entirely based on PQE as a metric. Then what happens is the underperforming junior partners float into the job market when it becomes clear they will not progress further at Kirkland & Ellis. All well and good, you may see, but unfortunately they are then competing against top senior associates from other firms for partnership/GC roles, and because they have the ‘partner’ label they will be perceived (wrongly) as better than the top senior associate who didn’t make it (or want to make it) at, say, a magic or silver circle firm.
Anonymous | 15-Dec-2015 1:05 pm
One swallow does not a summer make: K & E may have their own approach to internal advancement but this has no effect on the lateral market.
I know of no firm that faced with a lateral does not ask itself “are they good enough to be a partner here?”. This is an objective test measured against the firm’s own metrics for partnership, the existence of “clear water” between this putative junior lateral and their own senior associates / counsel etc.
The badge is not as transferable as you seem to think; firms are cautious and critical of laterals and terribly good at weeding out people who are unlikely to contribute at the right level, as are headhunters!
A useful exercise is to take the required lateral level of business that a firm insists upon for a partner and multiply that number out over the actual partner headcount at the firm concerned then look at the total revenue of the firm. You will always find that the lateral threshold is higher than the actual RPP.
We know that this topic generates a lot of concern and confusion – for the last several weeks and over Christmas we are running a survey to provide a platform for lawyers to define their preferred working structure. Please take part here: https://lnkd.in/eWtW_dW or here https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/PKHCZS3
There really is a discussion to be had about how these things shoudl work and you voice and opinion really will matter.
How many times do firm hire someone from another firm on the basis their employment / recognition / training by that other firm is a badge of quality. More than you’d hope / think. Law firm interviewing / lateral hiring / auditing of lateral performance as against promises & expectation is absent in most organisations – an admission that ‘we got it wrong’ only appears once said lateral has moved on again…and then it was their fault not ours.
We’ve heard about Bob. What about Eric, who’s a senior equity partner: rainmaker, great at pitches, client lunches, chewing the fat over the state of the property/M&A/FMCG market (hey, he can read the trade press. What a star). If we relied on Eric the firm would never actually make money and might well get sued for negligence. And there are a lot of Erics. This is the partnership model which is unsustainable, and under the single or limited shareholder model being rolled out in the volume sector, Bob, who can actually “do the legal bit” is actually a lot more valuable in the longer term(though he may have to reconcile himself to earning less in the longer term).
Eric has been “bossing the EQT” since well before the days of LLPs and in addition to mild cirrhosis he carries a capital account equivalent to the GDP of a small island nation – no one remembers where this came from but it is welded into the accounts. He is either going nowhere near a “single or limited shareholder model” or, on conversion to such a model will be a vanishing dot the moment his warranties are satisfied and earn out period concluded.
Meanwhile Bob finds that clients value his legal skills; that they are in fact loyal to him and to a certain extent dependent on his knowledge of their sector, systems and personnel. There is no Eric in the “single or limited shareholder model” holding the clients to the firm and so Bob simultaneously discovers that he has a book of business and realises that he can never have ownership of the firm he is in. Rapidly the value he found in the “single or limited shareholder model” evaporates and he trades in his book of business for an equity position in a conventional LLP.
Plus ca change plus c’est la meme chose.
So, based on all these comments, I think we can say Bob is partnership material, he just needs to catch the right break….as so many partners did before him.
I find the biggest difficulty here the term “partnership material”. We can debate at length about what a good partner looks like and who is most valuable to the firm, but I suspect the answer is horses for courses. Sometimes people get to the top based on merit and sometimes people get to the top because the right people like them (or because they have the right type of genitals, but that is a different debate). However, the notion of someone being “partnership material” seems to suggest that there is some sort of magical quality that you either have or do not have and ignores the fact that people are capable of a great deal of personal and professional development. Perhaps instead of writing someone off as not being “partnership material”, firms could do with investing in their employees, giving them some opportunities and seeing what they are actually capable of.
Bob would not make it at the firm I am at. But we would have a proper discussion on what he needs to do to make the grade, if he was willing to go for it, or stay where he is (as a trusted and good lawyer) or perhaps look at opportunities with clients who would value such a person and whose career structure works to Bob’s advantage as Mr Wansell elegantly states in his article. The ostrich strategy usually ends up with your bottom being bitten.
Law firms, like other businesses, need various tasks doing if they are to get along. The need a sales force to get in work, people to do the work, and people to manage it all. The exact job that Partners do depends on their particular skills, but will normally be a mix of all 3 of these, in different proportions. They are all important, and the firm as a whole needs a mix of all of them. If Bob can’t show his firm that he is going to fill the space that they have for him, possibly because of inter-personal rivalries, then if he wants to progress he’d be happier leaving. So he needs to have the conversation as the article says. And a point will come when his career has stalled for too long to move to greener pastures, so he needs it sooner rather than later.