Description

I'm gonna talk today about law firm politics that really is one of the more important topics because it's something that if you don't understand kind of these rules. And then, so this is what I'm gonna talk about today, are facts, but also rules. You can often get into quite a bit of trouble and It in trouble.

But a lot of people leave law firms because they make mistakes with these rules. And I was for some reason even before doing this webinar this morning, I was thinking about just some candidates of mine that have had problems with these rules and and teach you a lot about it.

And this, by the way this topic is the inability of people to understand these rules, but also to follow them. That ends up getting a lot of people in trouble, and it holds a lot of careers back. And people that become successful inside of law firms often are very good at these rules.

So I think that this is a pretty important topic. And one of the other things I think is quite interesting is and I keep hearing the statistic, but there's a study that was done I believe it was at, Stanford, and it was basically saying that 15% of your success comes from your [00:01:00] technical ability, but 85% comes from things like this, which is politics and your ability with other people.

I think that the more you learn about the stuff, the better off you'll be. So today I will talk about this and then after, I'll take a short break and then we'll come back and do questions whether it's about this or really any other questions you have about your career, like to cover.

In terms of law firm politics, I think for a lot of people, especially if you don't come from a family that, or professionals, and it's one of the more confusing things that you people face when they're practicing law and when I wrote this based an article, originally, I was thinking about a partner that I knew, and he was a very successful partner in a major law firm and this was 10 years ago, making almost 5 million a year.

And he retired because he just didn't like the politics. And what he said is not only is it stressful dealing with attorneys outside the firm, but even his own partners were out to get him. He said he constantly felt like he was under threat and other people were trying to undermine him in the eyes of his colleagues, clients, and others.

And he didn't like it.[00:02:00] So he retired very early but also very stressed out and still stressed. About a lot of the things that happened and and how he felt and. I think a lot of his success came from an ability to understand the rules related to the stuff, but also his stress.

His success came from ability to understand the rules I'm gonna cover today, but a lot of his stress came from an inability to to, to control a lot of the stress around him and the politics. And this politics by the way, applies whether or not you're a partner, associate, or a summer associate.

And and what I'm gonna talk about today, I think are the rules that the most successful, the ones that'll make you the most successful practicing law. And and these political mistakes are just hugely important. People leave law firms because they make political mistakes. People quick to practice of law entirely because they make these mistakes.

They making the mistakes and not following the rules we wanna talk about can undermine your confidence. They can get you fired, driven out laid off and all sorts of issues that can affect you. So one of the first issues that I would say, one of the [00:03:00] more important rules is to just avoid losers and people with issues in the firm.

And and every firm, pretty much in the degree of it is different than, some more than others, But there's going to be firms that have issues and there'll be people that Don't like their work. They may not like the management of the firm. They may not like they may create trouble.

They may already be in trouble. They may have people, a lot of people that dislike them. And, all law firms have these people. It's nothing that all groups of people have these people. So it's nothing not an indictment of a law firm. But all major law firms in each office have people that have problems with drugs which are sex or people that are harassing others.

Whatever the kind of harassment is people that are pat the hours, people that lie, people cheat, people that do poor work. People constantly looking for another job and are unhappy people that are in trouble with the law and all sorts of things. And and these people are in most firms and the problems with them can rub off on you.

It's very easy to spot these people. For the most part. You [00:04:00] can spot them very quickly. They will let you know who they are. The second you meet them, they will start saying negative things. I interviewed someone yesterday, it was interesting, and within a few minutes he said That he quit his last firm because his boss was an FN bitch or something.

I shouldn't even swear. But but he just went on and on about that. And then he talked about other problems and and so I realized very quickly this person was a bad apple. And certainly all you need to do, people like that is agree with them, and then they will immediately be your friend.

And they will say they will like you to also have their negative issue opinions and want you to share their, your negative opinions with them. And if the more of that you do the more they'll be your friend. And and the more they'll make you feel accepted. And that's not good. So these people are gonna influence how you feel about your firm.

They're gonna influence your thoughts and actions, and they're gonna influence the way that you see the world. And I wanna talk about this real briefly because your outlook towards the world really is dependent on the outlook of the people that you're around. People go to good schools, people try to get [00:05:00] into important social groups and things based on the fact that the people that they're associating with typically will have a certain type of outlook in the world.

And that outlook will influence how they become successful. So if you're associated with people that have a negative outlook of the world and are. Enthusiastic about where they're working or the firm or anything of that sort of thing. And that's going to influence you. All law firms, all businesses are constantly churning through people and they're pushing people out that don't support the business.

It, it happens all the time. Sometimes when the economy's very good those people may be allowed to stick around because the firm needs work done, but they will, There's always a rere a process where these types of people are being pushed out and and and so you really wanna stay away from them and they will rub off on you.

And and usually people that are very negative, sometimes people are just negative negative, negative. But usually people that are negative because their performance isn't good. They're [00:06:00] not getting advanced, they're not giving the work, they're being criticized, they're not they're having problems.

And instead of fixing those problems they, and realizing that those issues are with them, what they will do most of the time is they will a lot of the time is they will turn it around and find fault with the people. Have criticized them, or the organization that harbors those people and not improve.

And you don't wanna be any part of that. You can take a look at any firm out there and find negatives. You can, any place you work, you can see negatives, You can find all sorts of negative things, or you can find positive things. And the really the key thing that separates and this is not me playing psychologists it's a, but it's a pretty basic fact.

The key thing that separates very healthy psychological people from negative psychological people are healthy psychological people will always try to find the best in every situation. What can I learn from the situation? What's positive about the situation? And that influences how they feel.

And people that are negative psychologically will do the opposite. And [00:07:00] that negative thinking by the way will carry off into everything that you do. It'll carry off into your relationship. Or the positive thinking, it'll carry off into how you get along with your spouse or your significant other.

It'll affect everything and and it can harm you if you pick up on it. You do not want to pick up negative views in a negative way of seeing your job and your firm. It's just, you're welcome to do that, but you're much better off seeing the positives and and that's just going to make you feel better about what you're doing.

Think about how how you feel when you're inspired someplace and how you feel when it's the opposite. You're better off making yourself inspired. And if you wanna, if you want to hang out and spend your time with people with very negative views, it's going to hurt you.

Now, you may be in an organization where everyone's negative, in which case I would recommend you might wanna leave. But but for the most part you, you do wanna spend time with positive, hardworking people, associate with people that think highly of the firm that like their jobs that are getting ahead.

And understand that, that way of thinking anding. And if you don't then [00:08:00] then that's going to probably hurt you. You need to really protect your mind and your outlook at all costs and not allow yourself to be influenced by negativity. Because negativity is what draws people down.

It's what makes them not like their jobs, not like their lives, all sorts of things. And it's just not. In your best interest to really participate in this and and because it's going to hurt you. By the way there's hundreds of thousands of people all over the country that are very successful and happy and large law firms and small law firms, they love their jobs.

They grow there. They look forward to it every day. They find all sorts of reasons to like it. Their clients like them. They are inspired by the work. And most of the people that got to be that way had mentors and other people that showed them how to think about things in a positive way and stayed away from negative things.

It's better to be around people that are thinking positively about your job and to to have good friends and good people that are, and that are supporting [00:09:00] a positive way of thinking than it is to be negative about things. So not, I don't know how many other ways to say this. I've said it and, but my, my point is that that you have to protect your mind.

You have to find people that think positively and are going places. And if you don. Then it's going to hurt you. I hadn't experienced, It was interesting. I, This is just a quick aside, but and I was thinking about this right now, but I think I, this is probably a good thing to talk about.

When I was in college, there were two there were several and I went to a school that didn't really have fraternities, but there were a couple fraternities and one of 'em was a fraternity that had a lot of kind of smart kids in it. They were nerdy, but they were, enthusiastic.

And the other was a fraternity that I joined, which was really a lot of bad kids that were, drinking and all sorts of things. And but a lot. And, using drugs and just not really going anywhere. And something interesting happened. I and both fraternities wanted me to join them, but and I really even wouldn't call them fraternities, but I guess I will.

But and I joined the one with the bad kids in it. And the funny thing is out of those kids, a [00:10:00] lot of them just have had done well, but most, a lot of them haven't. And had a lot of problems. And the people at the other one were the kids were all enthusiastic and so forth, were have done very well.

A lot of 'em have one of them was a, one of the. Top two or three people, Goldman Sachs, and just, it's a, I think a lot of these groups that people join and when you're around people where they think highly of what they're doing and they're enthusiastic, I just think it makes a big difference.

And and I think it goes for social groups. So I ask, also think it goes for the firm as well. And I think that you are around people that think negatively, it's going to rub off on you, and you're only going to go down that path of negativity. You're not going to go someplace positive. So another thing I would really recommend is avoid working with toxic partners, senior associates, and others who are likely to say bad things about you.

So just as there are associates and some associates and partners that are toxic and have attitude problems so are there toxic partners? There are partners that in every firm and that will [00:11:00] say negative things about pretty much anybody that works with 'em. They'll have all sorts of criticisms.

They will think that the work's never enough. They will talk negatively about you. You just don't a lot of times they're they're too busy or think are too important to give you instructions. The sessions will be cryptic and they'll come back your work. They'll they have bad reputations.

They they may have personality issues. They, and they're just people. You're better off avoiding. When I was practicing, there was one for my joined. There was this woman that. And that every time someone would work with her they would quit the firm and then they would go off and do things like, become waitresses, which is, which, is fine.

There's nothing wrong with that as a job, when you're, top graduate of Columbia Law School and taking that as your next job, it's a little unusual. And and, but people were just going off the rails after working with this person, and I worked with her and it was it was, I could see why she's just incredibly hostile very negative didn't understand things and then would it was just very strange.

And there are people you're better off avoiding. And and if you deal with those people, it's going to be it's [00:12:00] not going to be positive for you. It may just change how you feel about things or they may just be very negative about you, so you wanna avoid those people. There's a rule s it says that one third of the people you meet will like you.

One third will not like you and one third won't care. And and if you don't like someone you probably, if you see somebody and you just instinctively don't like them for whatever reason you should probably avoid working for them because they're gonna pick up at you don't like them.

And if people don't. Like you and you pick up on it. You can pick up on it just through daze. You can pick up on it through all sorts of ways. And and if they pick up on it then you should probably avoid them. And if someone doesn't like you you may also wanna avoid them. They'll find reasons not to like you.

You could often tell people that don't like you just because they sometimes will just make negative remarks to you when you don't even know them for whatever reason or who knows? But you just wanna avoid people that don't like you and you wanna avoid people that you like. And there's just people that are likely to say bad things about you no matter what you do.

Some people are angry. Some people are just very difficult to work with. Some people have communication issues. [00:13:00] Some people are having their own problems meaning they're being criticized by other people, and so they want to take it out on somebody you just don't know. But there are people that are likely to be unhappy with anyone they work with, and that's not a good thing.

And there's people like that at every firm. And and there's people that you're told to avoid working with. There's people. That that, will often I mean there are, in some firms, there are partners that they specifically go out and hire people laterally to work with them. But the expectation that person will quit within a year or two or be just demoralized and leave the practice of law.

There, there are partners like that. So those are the kind of people even when you're interviewing laterally and just say, Who will I be working with? What happened to the last person and so forth. And you just need to be very careful and and just avoid people that are toxic. And it's not that there's anything wrong with these toxic partners.

It is just that they're just not they may not respect you. They may not they may have other issues and and you, they're just not the right people to, for you to avoid. And and sometimes you can get [00:14:00] along with them. Sometimes you may click with them and they may be just absolutely perfect and they'll be your biggest supporter, but but you just need to be very careful.

And the same thing with senior associates. There's also senior associates that. And be very toxic. You just need to be careful. And and just careful about anybody that you may have said anything negative about any, anybody that is having problems in the firm that you may know about or heard about those people are also people do avoid as well.

So that's enough. You should understand this lesson and there's not really that much to it, but you do need to. If you come across people that are very toxic or that you think are dangerous and and there's a universal consensus that they are unless you feel some sort of connection to them and think that things will work out, you should be very careful.

And then one of this is and these are some more positive rules. I like this one. But you should definitely try to work with partners with large books of business. And then one's also that like you and every law firm, there's partners with large books of business. Those partners are the ones that can help you [00:15:00] if you go to work for a partner with a large book of business on your first day of work and that you could have your whole career.

Spent working for them and then servicing their clients when they retire. And most of the time it's partners with large book of business that, but large books of business that have the power to make you partner, have the power to help you get business and can teach you a lot. Now, every law firm has service partners.

There's certainly nothing wrong with being a service partner, but a lot of time the service partner is a good person for you to learn from. But they don't necessarily have the skill to advance you or the the pole to advance you. And and and lot in your, it's much easier to make partner in law firms if you are attached to a partner with a large book of business.

And and then partners also can work for other partners with large books of business and literally spend their whole career doing that. It's just one thing to understand that to get ahead you're often better off not thinking about always the work or the quality of work the person's asking you to do, but the the partner that has the most power in business and and senior associates are good [00:16:00] people to work with.

So our service partners, there's nothing wrong with that. It's also a very good way to get experience and make mistakes because they will probably have a lot more patience with you than someone with lot of business and then work with 'em later. But getting close to the right people can really help you quite a bit.

They can often and if they like you and other people know that they like you you're also much more likely to get good performance reviews because people wanna make those people happy so they can get more work. And there's just a whole bunch of things so that can help you and and partners with large books of business.

Often people are often taken around and gone go to new firms and are supported by all partners with large books of business throughout their career. These partners are really good people to work with. And and and and most cases if you are able to make partner in a major law firm it's because somebody or a group of very powerful partners with a lot of business got behind the person that did it.

And and this is pretty much how most service partners become partners and state partner is by the alignments they have with attorneys like that. Another thing that's very important and and [00:17:00] unfortunately I think that lawyers aren't this, that good at this because it's such a an adversarial profession, but.

The best thing you can possibly do is be liked by people and and liked by everyone. So the more people that like you the better off you are. And this means things like smile. This means complimenting people. In an honest way. It means just being liked and thinking about how how to get along with people and and really making that a priority.

If you think about your life and this is not anything to get too philosophical about, but most people everyone remembers people getting mad at them. Everyone remembers being criticized. Everyone remembers people that called them out and were negative. Remembers these sorts of things.

And no one likes being criticized. No one likes being called out on mistakes. No one likes it. And then you don't like the person that does it. And you, everyone remembers when people have exploded at them. And so people are going through life and really wanna be liked and when the stuff happens, they don't like it.

[00:18:00] So you have to remember that one of the most important things just in terms of getting along with others is you have to be really likable and you have to really wanna do it. And and I'm not saying it's easy, especially when you're in such a adversarial profession, but it's what it is.

And and I just, I was remembering I recently received a letter from someone from my law school and noticed that one of the partner at, one of the, I dunno, top five managed partner in one of the top five largest law firms probably in the world is his huge roster appliance.

And this is someone I went to law school and with, and I just remember that this guy was always smiling, always saying hello going out of his way to be as nice as possible to people and extremely nice laughing at everyone's jokes. And really doing his best to brighten up the world around him.

And and I don't remember this guy being a particularly good student, but I do remember. How likable and genuinely nice he was. And and now he's one of the most successful attorneys out there. And I'm sure it's because of that [00:19:00] personality and then just being likable and I'm sure he probably even advance.

And a lot of it had to do with that. Think about the people that you like and how they act and how they smile and how they're very positive and just a real presence and how you're always excited to see them. And tho these are the kind of people that do well and people wanna be around people like that.

So the clients and and and so this happiness and so forth is infectious. It's very important. And and it can go a long way in your career. There's most people avoid, people that are angry. Create problems are negative. They don't like it. And and you wanna be seen as positive and nice and likable and enthusiastic and upbeat.

And and if people think about this way of you they'll give you better reviews. They'll want you around, you'll make them feel good about themselves. And and they'll warn you of problems. And and and if it's just, it's, they'll overlook your mistakes. They they'll want you around.

And and honestly, like some of the most unsuccessful attorneys that I know that have had the most problems in their career are [00:20:00] often just very cynical and negative. And they've always been like that. And the people that have been on the best and the happiest are often very happy and enthusiastic, and they find opportunity and they see positive things and negative things, and they make the best of the situations that they're in.

And the more you go into these Dynamics of what's negative the better off you'll be. I, consulted for lots of law firms and and there's always, in every law firm, there's always this culture of negativity Oh, this is bad. And it could be, the law firm could be over a hundred years old, and there's always people within the firm predicting it's demise and all this stuff that's negative and thinking negatively.

And then those people go out and they start interviewing and saying, I don't know if I can stick around any longer, and all this kind of stuff. And this is continually happening in every law firm. And then there's people always that are positive. And and the negative people always leave and they take their negativity with them someplace else.

It's not good for firms. One of the things that was very funny, and I was just thinking about this recently is when I got started in my career there was a a [00:21:00] recruiter that I knew in Los Angeles, it had been very successful moving all these partners and groups of people around.

And he had this list of all these, all these partner placements and so forth that he'd made o over the years. And and, but at that point, he'd been doing it for a long time. And and but the funny thing was, is I looked at the list recently. And he'd been moving all these people in back and forth from all these firms.

And the funny thing was, this is interesting, is most of the firms there were very few firms on his list that were even still in business that what were not even a shell of them was around anymore. And so a lot of times the people that are these partners that are moving and just all these kind of people that are moving are just people that are unhappy and then they take their unhappiness to another firm.

And then if you get a group of them together, the firm's trying to grow laterals. The firm often doesn't stay around. It's just something to think about that when people are leaving they're often taking their own happiness and going elsewhere and gathering a bunch of people like that is not always the smartest thing a firm can do.

And [00:22:00] then if you like people like you and they're enthusiastic, then you're also gonna get future referrals. And people are gonna think positive with you in the future. And they're gonna have work that they'll wanna refer to you. They'll enjoy being around you. They'll enjoy the things you say.

And so it's very important to, to just be as likable as possible. And the other thing that's very interesting is if you are more likable, if you. If you like people, then they're gonna like you back. So you need to be, So that's one of the keys is to, if you wanna be likable, then you need to like other people, if you want to get business, then you need to help other people and make yourself preferable.

If you wanna get more work, you need to, everything comes indirectly, but you need to do good work with what you have and do really good work, and you'll get more work. So everything is an indirect result a lot of times that you're gonna get. But it can make all this stuff just makes a huge difference in how successfully be.

So I just really recommend just think about what can you do to be likable. There's a, it's funny that and I've told [00:23:00] this story before, but Warren Buffet on his desk used to keep I guess he, for $5 and he taken a Dale Carnegie course, and Dale Carnegie is a human relations course. I took it a long time ago, and I, but essentially, That course tells you to remember everyone's name.

It tells you to to be positive, to not talk negatively about others, to not talk negatively to things like that. And so he always kept it on his desk and says the best investment he ever made his whole career would, would've been whole completely different had he not taken this course. And he just thinks it was a great, he thought it was a great course.

So the point is that this human relations is really one of your most important aspects of being successful. So the more you can do this and the more you understand it, the better off you'll be. So the other thing is never complain about anything unless absolutely necessary. Certain people in law firms are always complaining about everything.

And and I've always had this in our company too, there's always people that will complain and they'll come in and they'll have some sort of complain about something. And when they, when this happens [00:24:00] typically the first time I'm like, Okay that's fair. But then the second time it happens, I'm like, I know this person is going to leave.

is just is so grave some problems because there are certain people that will complain wherever they go. And and that's just how it is. And law firms and all organizations do their best to have fewer complainers and more people that are positive. And I had a funny experience.

I was I was going out, I went out to dinner. I was with a recruiter and a candidate that she had placed. And and the attorney was looking for a job and he was, the reason he was looking for a job was because the firm had moved every attorney's parking spot to a different location and the building, I think it was in the building, and they moved it across the street or something.

And he was very upset about it. And it was a, the whole dinner was just dedicated to this complaint. The attorneys complain they find fault to get upset about things. And and if you constant complain and you don't like anything, if you don't like your parking spot, if you don't like your benefit or whatever then people aren't gonna like it if they feel like you're gonna complain or see the [00:25:00] negative.

And some people, no matter what you say to them or no matter what happens, will be negative about things. And and again, there's nothing wrong with complain. And I'm not saying that you should never complain or have. Or take negative treatment. But it, I the best thing you can do often is let others complain.

And and if you develop this mentality, you're always going to be seeing the negative in a situation and not the positive. And that's not helpful. Think about your relationships, think about people that you've associated with and think about to, to things at some point. Turn where everything was negative instead of positive.

And and if that happens with anything it's not gonna work. There's all sorts of things you can complain about. You can always complain about your secretary. You complain about your benefits, your pay whatever your office size, your other attorneys anything. Phone system, your IT staff and more.

And and the, if you complain negatively, people don't like that. It makes people feel badly. People don't wanna feel badly about where they work. They don't wanna feel badly about they don't wanna have to [00:26:00] worry about you and your complaints. They just, it's just gonna give you negative attention and it's going to make you a, an emotional drain as opposed to sometimes someone who's positive.

And and it is just not good. Usually the people that complain the most are the ones that say they don't complain. These are just some little things and and I would really recommend, and this is just my personal advice, is that. That there's always going to be things that you can complain about.

You can always see the negative in any situation that you're in, but you're often much better off seeing the positive. And then instead of complaining, challenge your work and or challenge your energy into things that are going to to make you help you do a better job with whatever you're doing.

And people are gonna respect you more when they see you and you're not complaining about things and people will like you more. They'll they'll want you to, they'll wanna associate with you more. They wanna avoid you. And and you'll be recognized as someone who doesn't join and complain and respected for.

That this is just, what I'd recommend is putting your head down, working and [00:27:00] really allow other people to worry about this. And and then it's really going to help you look much better in the eyes of others. And obviously there's nothing wrong with having complaints about things, but or thinking things could be better.

But honestly, the, the statement I made earlier is that the whole. The emotionally healthy person is the person that's seen the best in things and not the negative. And so if you become someone who's gonna see the negative all it's going to do is gonna drive work away from you.

It's gonna drive people away from you. It's going to cast you as a someone that doesn't support the firm or is negative and unhappy and people are going to avoid you. They're not gonna wanna have you associate with clients if you're always talking about negative things. It's just, there's nothing, it doesn't serve you.

So my advice is just to avoid it. The other one is talking ly about others in the firm. This is obviously every human organization, regardless of whether it is whether it's a small farming town or it's a, huge city. There's everybody talks about everybody all day.

And and you can certainly talk about people [00:28:00] negatively all day. There's gonna be bad secretaries wherever you work. There's gonna be in the mail room, there's gonna be other attorneys that have issues. But you shouldn't really be concerned about this. And and there's always all sorts of things to complain about.

And I was thinking, this is funny. When I was practicing, there was a a very a very powerful litigation partner. He. Generate that. He had some of the most important clients probably you can imagine. And and he was very good at his job. And he was also very good at research.

He was an incredible researcher. And but he couldn't write. I didn't understand it. He would write sentences and you forget to put words in. He would forget to, it just didn't make sense. And so his, and then his writing would never really make the point that he wanted to make, but it would allude it was just weird.

And and he would have he would write something and then other associate associates that were very good, that were hired to work with him would review his writing and and then it would turn into something that was credible based on the framework that he set up. But but at the same time, he was very sensitive about his poor writing abilities.

[00:29:00] And if someone talked about it then that then he wouldn't like it. He got very mad about it. And one time there was an associate that had worked with him for a few years, exclusively a very smart associate. And and and then he joked with a secretary about the partner secretary about his writing ability, got back to the partner, and then the partner just stopped giving the associate work and made sure that other people in the firm also didn't give him work.

And and it, he literally didn't have any work for over a year and almost had a nervous breakdown. And so the point here is just the if some people are overly sensitive they want they, if someone says something negative about them, they their ego's, very offended and they get very upset about it.

And and it just creates problems. If you talk negatively about your peers and think it, it's back to them. They're gonna do everything they can to undermine you, make you look bad, or will just stop talking. . That's something I'm sure that's happened to a lot of people. If you if you make people feel badly about themselves then oftentimes they'll just cut you off or they'll want to come back and get you and and you just have to be very careful if you [00:30:00] if you can't be trusted with information, you won't learn information.

If you are seen as tolo, people will be on guard with you, and they won't, you won't trust you. And and there are people who like talking negatively about others and gossiping and and you're welcome to do that. But if you do that those same people are gonna know that when they, you're not around when they're not around, you're probably talking negatively about them too.

So it's just, it doesn't help you. And and secretaries, when they hear you gossiping about a, someone that they may have worked for, they will tell them they will. It's just it's just not good. Or if you gossip about a secretary they'll will talk ne they may they may get back at you.

So you just have to be careful and and and and, you just, anything you do if you are talking ly about others, they will use that to get back and get back at people. And and I've had people that have helped me and and. Because of a good relationship and because of talking positively about about them.

And this is just a quick story. When I was when I was working, I had a very good relationship with one of my secretaries. And and one time I, we missed a [00:31:00] filing because the messenger went to a federal court, state board. And it was just a complete mess. My secretary the, it was a very important filing, so there was a couple partners that thought they were gonna lose their jobs over it cuz they were working for another partner.

And and my secretary managed to go back into the core and get everything backdated even when, not on a date and with a guy even though she didn't want to. And and and saved a couple people's jobs. And and certainly had I not had a very positive relationship with my secretary and none of this would've happened.

And and a lot of people that I know didn't. And being well liked are extremely important. Being well liked is extremely important. And not talking negatively about others. Very important. And it's just something to really stay on top of. The next thing is to work hard, make senior working hard.

There are people that have the reputation for working hard and doing lots of hours. There are others that don't very few people. I mean that it does happen, but very few people are ever asked to lead firms. If they are working long hours and doing really good work attorneys often do lose their job for not working enough hours.

And really in [00:32:00] order to get ahead you need to have the reputation for working hard and billing lots of hours. It's just how it is. Law firms are businesses. They make money. Everybody understands. I think that works and law firms that they make money when people are billion, lots of hours.

And the people that bill the most hours are the considered the biggest distributors. Your ability to burn bill lots of hours is really just as important many times as the quality of your work. And and I think one of the reasons is because the assumption is made that if you are billing lots of hours that your work's probably good and you're probably gonna repeat work.

So that's why the hours are the most important thing there. And and if you don't build lots of hours, I think everyone knows you'll be in trouble. So to build as many hours as you can as important. And and for the most part, if you're billing lots of hours most people will leave you alone.

And and and can really create issues. And I had an experience not too long ago. I was working with an attorney and I learned and it was actually, this was a few years ago, so I can talk about it now, but it was really surprising me. He was looking for a position, was getting lots of [00:33:00] interviews and but he told he got an offer from a major New York law firm not in la not in New York, but and told them that he needed to take his wife to the doctor two days a week and wanted to know if the firm was open to him doing this.

And the firm was open to it. But he was still nervous about accepting the offer. And and I, he was a patent litigator of a degree in electrical engineering. And and according to his resume before he started working in a law firm, he'd been an engineer with a big company in Silicon Valley and gone to law school while working as an engineer and told me the company paid for his degree.

But he just, there was something a little off with him and I shared you some due diligence. After a short period of time, I discovered that he was still employed full time as an engineer, while also working as an attorney law firm. So he was doing two jobs at the same time. And and he was even reachable two days a week in the office of the company when he was supposedly taking his wife to the doctor.

And he was able to pull this off and had been in his current firm for five years turned in time sheets and I don't know if they were accurate, which is crazy. [00:34:00] Anyways he was able to work two jobs at the same time and collect obviously a double salary.

So when I found out was going on I stopped working with him and he subsequently lost his job and and and had to suit himself up with only his current job. Just, the important thing is that people need to understand when they give you work that you'll work as hard as you can.

It's most important thing in the world. And and partners want to feel like you are excited about the work you're getting. So you want to come across as excited, not unexcited and and think about who you would want to give work to. So if you give work to someone and the person doesn't seem like they're excited to do it, then you probably don't want to give them work.

If you give work to someone and they seem like they are. But you wanna give them work so that, that's how it works. And and lawyers by the way too, also like to see you in the office a lot. So even though a lot of people work at home if you are in the office, That's good, especially if partners and so forth that you're working with are in the office that makes them feel like they can stop by and discuss things with you that you're supporting them.

And and I do think it's [00:35:00] important and and it's also important for getting work. It's important for former relationships. There's just a lot of reasons. And a lot of people actually quit jobs after Covid when they were told they had to be in the office certain length of time. And but being in the office is really pretty important.

And and I think being seen in the office FaceTime is much as, I hate to say it is important to a lot of people and it shows commitment. And and it's just a it's important. So you do wanna see, be seen as working hard if they're, if your firm is on Slack or other things, or responding to emails quickly.

I've had issues where people are working for me, and they're supposedly in the office, and then you can't reach them for, or not even in the office, but working at home and then you can't reach them for half the day or for several hours or even the whole day. And and that's not good.

When you see that a couple times obviously you don't necessarily want to have that person working for you anymore. And it can create problems. The other thing is you wanna have a reputation for taking your work seriously. What that means is you want people to care about it.

And and caring means that [00:36:00] when you have a matter you push a little bit harder than just doing the rote thing. Oh, this is what the law is. You actually look at things very closely and and you don't act like anything's dumb and necessary. You act like everything's very important and think about how you would feel you would wanna give work to people that believed that the work was important and and thought it was important.

And and just, one of the most successful attorneys that I know of had the reputation for telling potential clients if you gimme work, if you gimme this case, I'll eat, sleep, and breathe it. And he meant it, meaning he wanted the work. He wanted, if you wanna give him work, He will take it so seriously, it's all he'll think about.

And it was actually true. And he built a huge law firm doing that. So every matter you work on is you need, people need to think that it's extremely important to you because it's extremely important to someone. So a lot of attorneys, there's this kind of mentality, it's always been there, by the way forever.

But that you know that you're very smart or you're, that you're smarter than the work you're getting. And you'll do this, but it's dumb and [00:37:00] stuff. And but if clients think that when you get to work, you're gonna be very excited about it, then they're gonna give you more work. The most successful attorneys I know when they get in an assignment or just jumping up and down, they're very excited about it.

And whether it's from a client or how, however they get it, they act excited. They they they and if they think you care a lot about it, then they're gonna give you more work as well. That's how you would be too. If somebody if you had to get, say a car painted and you went to someone and they were just Yeah, we can paint it if you want.

It's okay. And they, there weren't that, and they didn't give you a lot of insight into how they were gonna do it, or they just weren't that excited about it. You might let them paint it, but if you went someplace else and they had all these Brochures and books about painting and all these same things that they'd done.

They were very proud of the, these other cars and pictures and they talked a lot about it and told you how they would avoid problems. You would probably hire that person to paint your car instead of the person that wasn't enthusiastic. And that's how partners are when they assign work. That's how clients are when they give work to do, but they want people that are gonna care about it.

And you need to be seen as someone that cares and takes it seriously [00:38:00] and and really wants to do it. And and if you're not, then you're not really going anywhere. And you want to people that take things seriously. One of the things that is very interesting too, that I've noticed is when I talk to attorneys that have a lot of business, when I talk to mortgage people, brokers that have a lot of business, when I talk to anyone, a doctor that has a lot of clients, like a lot of times what they do, it's very interesting, is they will.

And I had this experience once with a very young mortgage broker. I think I was buying some office space or something a long time ago. And and I went to him and and when I called him on the phone to talk about, he said tell me about what you're buying. And he was like, Yeah, and what does it do that?

And he asked all these questions for 20 minutes. And he was ac asking these questions, not because they were really relevant, was because he was trying to act like he cared a lot about whatever it was I was buying, cuz I cared about it too. And that was his way of bonding with me, which was very interesting.

And then I used him, and then I used him again. And and he became extremely successful. I think he became the [00:39:00] head of lending or something at US Bank. Just from the time. And I, and a lot of it was because he took things seriously. So when people think you care it means a huge difference.

If clients think you care and you're asking a lot of questions, and the best doctors do that, the best. The best lawyers do that. They ask a lot about your issues. They ask a lot of questions and they act interested. And that makes the, whoever's getting the work feel really, or giving them the work feel really good.

And then this is another big one but it's about understanding how to create work. And creating work means that every attorney, by the way, this is one of the most important skills, is creating work. You should constantly, if a client comes to you with a legal matter, you should be able to continually come up with things for them to do.

Forever. I know this is a funny thing to say, but you should say maybe your corporate books, maybe you need to have some of your contracts looked at by our employment department. Maybe you should have your filings up to date. Maybe you should work in your trademarks. Maybe. This is how the best attorneys think.

They're always thinking of additional assignments and additional work [00:40:00] to do. And so finding work is very important. You should, if you're doing work for another attorney, you should say maybe this client should do this and this. And so always coming up with extra work and things is the nature of the legal business.

There's nothing unethical about it. If the work's providing value you have to continually come up with work. And so not doing only what you're told. Isn't good enough. Like the attorneys want to have reasons that you need to come up with extra work. This is just how it works. There's always people in every law firm that can figure out how to do things quickly without a lot of research, without a lot of work, and they will take a lot of pride in this.

Sometimes if you're given a legal research issue, they'll just go find a statute and the statute's very clear. And instead of writing a memo and looking through the case law, say, This is where the statute says a perfect situation, there's nothing else to do. And this is not always what the law firm wants.

And a lot of times they actually want a lot of work done on things or extra work and and extra work. I'm not saying this in a in a way that is telling you to over bill, but they, you, if [00:41:00] you do one thing, maybe there's something else that can be done to protect the FLA or to, I don't know.

But you need to be able to create work. You need to come up with extra work that could be generated from the clients because that can help save the client money by avoiding problems in the future. It can can enrich the, can enrich the firm and by giving them more hours.

And so this is just how it works. A few years ago I was working with a. Attorney that was literally like one of the top, I dunno, five students or something that from a top five law school. Just very good performance. And and he might have been the first, his law school didn't rank people, but his grades were just off, off the charts.

And and so he was working for a major law firm in New York, I think in their Chicago office or something. And and a junior partner brought in a big client and gave the young attorney assignment. And he quickly realized something about the answer didn't require this really in depth survey of some, branch of the law.

And and so he he told, he quickly went to the assignment attorney and told the partner that he could put an end to this whole thing. And the [00:42:00] lawsuit that was going on with some very quick research and and the junior partner was very upset because the junior partner had just brought in those client.

It was a new client and it was looking like it was gonna be a big costly lawsuit. And it was important for the attorney standing in the firm. And this partner certainly didn't want So in telling them they could build a new client, millions of dollars in a legal case the junior partner didn't want that because the solution of the problem's very simple and and he got the part, the associate got fired.

It's really not a nice thing to say. But the law firm Felt that he wasn't playing the game. I don't know. And he was very devastated. And he ended up leaving the practice of wall altogether. So the idea is even if he came up with a solution to everything that, and I'm not saying that this is anything, I'm not saying it's, this is ethical.

He he should have, you, you have to understand dynamic here that people want work to keep con continuing and and so you, you have to find work to be done. And firms go out of business when too many litigation cases settle. At one time, there was a very old Los firm, [00:43:00] San Francisco firm, Ella Irman, that had three class actions or something sell at one time, and then it just ran outta work.

And because, so people are always finding work to do. It's what keeps the firm busy. And law firms all need to find work to be done and and create, attorneys and find and create work. And when I see create work, it's, have you considered this? Have you considered this?

Maybe we should consider this. And and if you have that ability, you can give the client the choice. It's not to say that you have to be unethical, but you have to be, You have to understand how to create work and creating work is what makes law firms profitable. So it's also what keeps you busy and keeps you billing hours.

This is another one just about commitment. There's a lot of articles I've written about commitment, but if you're fully committed and that that's a very important thing. If you're not seen as committed people will avoid giving you work. So people that aren't committed holds a lot of people back.

It holds relationships back. It holds it holds all sorts of things back. So it's interesting. I was reading [00:44:00] this study it was nothing to do with family law, but they were saying something like some huge number. It was like 98% or some, something along those lines of marriages that start with a prenuptial contract end.

And and then whereas I don't know, 50 or 60% of the ones that don't have them succeed. And so if you think about those numbers if someone's going into an agreement or a marriage or whatever with one of these contracts then maybe there's a lack of commitment and doubt on, on both sides or one side, I dunno.

But and so that's the point that this commitment if you have commitment to something, You're going to do much better than if you're not committed. If you go into a law firm and you think, I'll do this for a few years and see what happens then you're not committed. Think about the people that you deal with.

Think about the businesses you deal with. The businesses are likely committed. The people that you wanna associate with or are, you want people committed. And most people lose that commitment. And and people that leave the law firms are [00:45:00] committed. They you may get tired. You may be under, feel like you're undermined.

Who knows? You may get frustrated. You may think something else looks better and and believe it looks better. And if you do that, you'll lose your commitment. And a lot of people in large law firms will tell everyone around them that they want to go in house. They'll do something different with their careers.

And and if you look like someone who wants to do something else you're just not gonna be receiving the best assignments. You're not gonna get the most hours or have the most opportunities. You just need to be seen as committed and and you need to look like this is where you want to be.

If you start expressing doubts and saying, I'll see what happens then then you won't be committed. I was talking to someone not too long ago and they were talking about it was just weird. It was someone that had gotten married a couple years previously, and I was at the wedding and they said something, quote, I'm in this relationship for now.

And I was like, What the heck? And why would someone be talking like that? And and then sure enough the relationship fell apart within a year. Commitment's very important. You have to you have to know you [00:46:00] have to look like you're committed. The law firm wants to believe you're committed.

The client wants you to look like you're committed. And and think about what you would want. Would you wanna have a doctor operating on you that wasn't committed to their, to what they're doing? Would you wanna have, who would you wanna choose for for something that was important to you?

Just think about this. Commitment. Commitment is extremely important, by the way people can pick up on it. When you're committed you're improving. When you're committed you're looking for ways to get better. When you're improving. You're when you're committed, you're not going anywhere.

And people could trust you and people can give you more work. There's so many reasons to be committed. They're important. The next one is line. So many people get in trouble for a line. I was once working with an attorney that was fired for a ridiculous reason. He was asked when he came into work one day, and he was a very senior attorney that was right about to make partner if he'd sent a letter to the client.

He said that he had, but he hadn't sent a letter, he'd forgotten to do it. He immediately wrote the letter and post it and sent it. The firm found out he hadn't sent it when he said he sent it. But going into his, going into his word processing program, and and, realized when he had sent it and the firm fired him immediately, [00:47:00] just incredibly just fired him.

So you a almost impossible time finding new position he blackball by his law firm all because of a simple lie that to me seemed pretty harmless. But the problem was, is that law firm, I believed he couldn't be trusted, and people just didn't wanna do work with him anymore after that.

The other one is mistakes. People make mistakes all the time. There's in a law firm you, you probably make some sort of mistake on an on, on a, maybe on a daily basis. You forget to do something, You forget you typos, you don't, who knows? There's tons of mistakes and they're just part of a learning process.

And and everyone has made mistakes and a lot of people make a lot of mistakes. And and so the biggest thing about mistakes is just admit the mistake and just try not to make the same mistake twice. So attorneys certainly wanna look infallible in the eyes of clients, but but at the same time you don't need to you, you don't need to lie about making mistakes now.

You don't want to come out. And talk about mistakes all the time, but you, and you certainly wanna learn from your mistakes, but people make mistakes. And [00:48:00] this are just another one firm sponsored social events. If it seems like a, an important event to the firm, or regardless you should go to all the social events of the firm.

People will look for you. They will appreciate you trying to contribute and being there and trying to bond with people. This is another thing that shows commitment. If you're not coming there, people will think that you may be not interested in staying the firm in the long run, or you may not have the confidence to socialize and that other things take precedents.

So it's always a good idea to go to these things. Whether it's a holiday party or anything you, you really wanna do your best to be there. Partners, of course are, it's important for them to be there. And associates important as well because you can inform relationships and meet people in a more informal setting.

And then they get a sense of how you are socially as opposed to just professionally. And they can see a human side of you to some extent as well social events. And and it can be a nice thing. So it's really something that you should do. And to the extent. That they occur in your firm.

And really going to all of them because that to, cause if you don't go you may see, be seen as [00:49:00] someone that isn't that interested business generated functions are another one. That's the kind of the same thing. But if you're invited to go on them or you have the opportunity, that's an opportunity to to learn how that stuff's done.

I've seen people fired for not doing well in those meaning they that they're the, they undermine people at them and so forth. You have to be pretty careful. But those are they want you, if you have the opportunity to go to them you should. And it's just a good opportunity to watch and and could be, actually fun to some extent if.

Watch how they can be done or what can be done differently. And then this is just another thing, but you never want to criticize the management of the firm. Even if you have valid criticism, you just, you really, to the extent you can get, not get involved in that, the better. If you if you put yourself on the side of someone that's against management you, half the time you're gonna lose.

And it can be not a good thing. I never forgot this, and I've told this story several times, but I was in a meeting once where there was an associate that was leading the pro bono committee. And you started [00:50:00] talking about in front of all the, this is actually under the summer associate.

He started talking about where the firm was the lowest in the city for pro bono out hours need to improve and the firm management wasn't making a priority. And and there were a few members of the management committee and bunch of associates there and summer associates and and the senior associate seemed very concerned about this.

And and I just, at the time I was surprised, but I realized it was probably not a good thing for him to have done and in front of all these people. And and then the rest of the summer, cause it's at the beginning of the summer, I just noticed that. People were being very rude and the partners were being very rude to this guy.

And and and almost attacking the public and stuff and criticizing every, all the work that he was done. I just noticed it a few times, but but I realized I felt that this was something that was probably related to that. And and over the next few weeks I noticed that this guy started looking dis hell and upset and so forth.

So I've just seen a lot of stuff like this. I've seen lots of attorneys publicly criticize their firms and their management senior [00:51:00] attorneys and lose their job. I saw another firm was funny. It was a big firm and they someone had written something negative on a I dunno, like a news gossip site for attorneys.

And they'd written something in the comments and and the firm very negative about their existing firm, the firm. Actually had screen recording software on this person's computer, or I don't know if they did it on other ones, and they found it and they fired them. So it's just, you need to be very careful and and, just saying negative things about partners and and so forth.

And and this is one thing my dad used to say to me, and someone said it to him that was his boss at one point said if you think it, you'll show it. Meaning, if you think something negative about someone then you'll show it. So just not talking negatively about people is probably your best bet you really wanna avoid it.

And then same thing with speaking negatively about your peers. If you do that, it's likely to get back to them. And they will also realize they can't trust you. They will there, there's just no reason to do it. And you just never wanna really criticize or complaint. But if you say negative things about people they're likely [00:52:00] to try to get back at you.

So why would you want to create enemies? The people that you're working with will potentially be giving you work in the future. They you want to be supported. It's just not worth it. And and a lot of people do this. They think it's okay to do all these criticisms, but it's just, there's no, it doesn't benefit you just taking the side and criticizing people.

There's no. It does, There's no benefit to you now if somebody's not. Even, if even one of the things that's very interesting that I've seen is some of the most successful people, like you could be making the worst errors around them imaginable, but they won't criticize it. They'll realize that you'll pick up on it, and then it's better for them not to make to, for them, not to be the person that's making you the enemy than than to say anything about it was funny.

But, personal life in the office is also a huge mistake. The people do not want to know. The more they know about your personal life frankly, the more it's going to hurt you. You just don't wanna give people that opportunity. There are certain people that believe that you should never they just have all sorts [00:53:00] of beliefs.

They may believe that drinking alcohol is a sin. They may believe that everyone that that is unmarried is doing something wrong. Who knows? But you just, you don't wanna you don't wanna give people that opportunity to think negatively about you and your personal life can do it.

I, earlier in my career, I was working with a woman that had Basically lost her job because and far was outta work because she shared some details with a personal life. And and with a partner and that wasn't that important. This is just meeting some guy and hooking up with him all weekend.

But the partner didn't like that and and stopped giving her to work and didn't treat her well after that. And unfortunately, there was no one else in this person could get work for him in her practice area, in the firm. You, the partners will, you don't know, you just need to keep your personal life outta the office.

People get fired for all sorts of things. They they could get in a fight with their spouse. They could who knows? And just none of it belongs in the office. And dating colleagues is probably usually a very bad [00:54:00] idea. And because it creates tension, especially when the relationship doesn't work.

It's just You have to be very careful about keeping your personal life out of the office and because these sorts of things can impact your ability to manage others, they can impact people's opinions of you. One of the ways to think about it is and it's not it's really not that important, but but there's and it depends a lot of cases on the firm, but you don't wanna give people reasons to say negative things about your, to think negatively about you for the most part.

If you involve your personal life in the office, then it can create problems. I saw a partner not too long ago that lost his job with a major firm because it became out publicly that he'd had a relationship with an attorney in his firm that wasn't a partner. And and it was a consensual relationship, but he was a person superior.

And because of that it came to light two years after it was over. And and the firm ended up paying a huge settlement. And this person was never able to find another job. It's just cuz the personal [00:55:00] life getting involved in the office. And so there's nothing wrong with you being human, but you want to be known for your work and professionalism and not the drama in your personal life.

I saw one time in a firm I was not working at the time, but there was an associate. I don't know, was meeting women online or something and then paying them to, I dunno, but it's and he got caught in some kind of policing and the same thing happened to him. Like he was just ex off in the legal profession.

And I don't know how that happened. I think it would happen because he I don't know how they found out he told someone, asked someone in the firm to represent him privately, I dunno. But and this is the other one, just understanding that everything you do on the phone and the and office computers and your email and so forth is likely monitored.

And and and you should be very careful about that. And I've seen people be fired for posting negative comments on online. I told you about that earlier. I I've seen people in being caught cause of screen reporting stuff by one time I was moving a group of partners from firm in Connecticut to another firm.

And and and day before they were all gonna get notice and [00:56:00] leave. The firm came in and. Basically stopped them from leaving by making counter office and stuff. And and they found out because they were running recording stuff on their screen. And and again, I'm not saying law firms all do this.

Probably a lot of, most of them probably don't. But you just have to assume that anything that you do on your computer and your phone can be monitored. I've it's it's just how it works. So you have to be very careful about that. And firms do this to protect themselves.

A lot of firms, for example, work with companies that may be getting ready to merge about public, and they have to protect themselves and make sure that information doesn't get out. And then the other one, this is just, I covered this one earlier, but try to work with people likely to give you good reviews.

I talked about a lot of this a little bit earlier, but avoiding people that are have a reputation of hurting people. You want to try to be around people who have rotation for. Hurt helping people and and do that. And then this is another one term, but terms not taking on more work than you can handle.

Many times you may be extremely busy and and so busy that it's actually impossible for you to do anything else effectively. The problem is if you [00:57:00] there's a lot of pressure to take on work and to do as much as you can because you wanna be light and thought of as in a positive way.

But if you can't do a good job and you don't have the time to do something and you know you're not gonna do a good job and make sloppy mistakes and you won't get enough sleep, or whatever the issue is, then it's, you're often better off turning it down. And people will give you negative vibes about this, and they do their best to guilt you.

But it's better to to, to really to, to protect yourself than and you, and make sure you have time to recharge and and sometimes turning down work is your only option. And and you need to balance. Your sanity with all of this. And and again, if you're already billing more than enough hours in your firm and someone asks you to do something, you can't handle it.

You, you should really do your best to tell them, because the problem is when you take more work than you can handle, if you don't do a good job on whatever the assignment is, then that'll come back to high. And no one's gonna care that you said I had more work than I could handle. Making sure that you keep that under control is [00:58:00] important.

And the other thing is handholding during assignments. Partners hate it when people ask for direction all the time and don't understand stuff. If you are constantly asking for feedback and annoying people, that's not good. People just like you are getting a zone where they're thinking about something and if you walk in and ask them a dumb question or you meet with them and ask 'em some dumb questions and you're not gonna like that.

So you should really try to make sure you understand the assignment right when you get it so you can give the best work possible back. And it's always important to understand what is needed. People may often be impatient. When they're giving you assignments. But but it's really in your best interest to make sure you're gonna do things correctly and with as little follow up as possible that from higher ups.

Now that one of the other things that I would say that's very smart is to always make friends with more senior associates, seem to be very nice to them if you're an associate, because they can often be very helpful to you in explaining what somebody's looking for and they actually like telling, helping you with this stuff.

And and then you won't have to go [00:59:00] to the partner of the ma side work and so forth. The other thing is just keeping your appearance up. I don't like talking about this because I don't wanna, it's just not a nice thing to talk about. But just making sure you look like a good work product.

I was talking to someone yesterday, I was interviewing someone that had been a. I think a professor at UCLA and then in the law school and USC and some other things. And and then he had a a t-shirt on when I was interviewing him and just, his hair was all messy and and it just, it didn't go over well.

I was like this, and he guys did some other things too. He talked negatively and I was like, This person is not probably going to be a good person to have. And he wanted to talk to candidates that were coming in or, but I was like, this person's probably not gonna be a good person to have working with our attorney candidates.

So people are defined a lot of times by that. And there's nothing wrong with being dumpy and, whatever. It's not criticizing that, but your people to the extent you keep up your parents it is very helpful. And and the only reason I talk about this is because this is something that was told to me when I was also young.

I remember when I [01:00:00] was a summer associate in the law firm maybe it was an associate there, the highest paid attorney in the firm told a group of attorneys that when he walked in he deal like the most competent, most put together, highest performing person in the room. And because the clients were paying all this money for him and they were acting they were.

He was paid to basically to look like he was the most important, whatever. But the point is that I think that the more you keep your experience up your appearance in terms of just being vibrant and healthy, the better off you're going to be.

And this is something that most, the, a lot of the most successful attorneys do. And it's something that I would keep in mind. You're a product, so you're selling your product. And again the, there's nothing wrong with being frumpy and so forth. But I've just, I had issues with this all throughout my career with people that were unplaceable.

I had another one guy this, and I hate to keep bringing these kind of things up, but I had one guy that had this very long hair, went down, passe, the buttocks, and and certainly hadn't been like that when he [01:01:00] started at his firm. And he just grew it out and no one would hire him. It was just the strangest thing.

It just, it was it was sad. He was a very talent, he was first in this class from a pretty good law school, like a top 25 law school and had gotten a job in a really good firm. And then so the point is that you just have to be careful about these sorts of things and people take it seriously.

And then it's understand if you work in a branch office, there's. A lot of politics in many of these offices and and and it can be very difficult if you're in a branch office, some places to make partner. It can, you can and just understand if you work in a branch office you really need to many times form a good relationships with partners in the main office because they can help the partners in the main office can help you.

And that, that's very important. And just making sure that you're visible if you want get ahead in a branch office is really very important. So you wanna be visible to the partners in the main office. And it's, this is, I don't, this probably shouldn't be on the rules, but it's it is a very important component [01:02:00] to, to try to form relationships.

And then this is the other one, just in terms of the quality of the work. A lot of times people will turn in work that is that's just a draft and it hasn't been thought through. And you should just basically have a rule, even though you're excited to show whatever you come up with to people, you should just basically have a rule that you won't turn things in until it's been proved and you've looked over it and you're satisfied that it's okay.

This is just the way the best attorneys operate. If you turn in work that has typos and needs to be corrected later people will assume that you didn't think through the legal conclusions and the other things that are in there and you're better off. And, unless you're asked to turn it in right that second, you're better off giving yourself enough time to do it.

A lot of attorneys will. You may spend four or five hours on an assignment, like writing down whatever you're gonna write down, and then, 10 to 15 proofing it. That's literally or double checking and making sure everything is up to, and because if you do work that has issue errors, [01:03:00] that's just gonna give you a bad reputation.

It's not something even if you put draft on it draft should mean it could go out the door, but maybe thinking about it some more will make it better. If you turn in work like that it is pretty alarming. If it doesn't, if it has errors, and I've worked with law firms before that it represented me and things, and then they turn things in and it's just so messed up.

I'm like, What the hell is going on? Because they're they're turning things into paragraphs, that properly format and stuff. And that typically means if you're doing that then then then people don't think it's gonna create, it's just gonna create a lot of problems with you.

And that the whole way of thinking about this is that the way the outside world and clients think about typos and things is if you are making typos and errors on your work. Then it's disrespectful for one, but it can be taken that way. But also the conclusion is probably that you haven't thought through the conclusions that you're making.

And this is how judges and courts look at things. It's how people look at contracts is if you're not doing the best work you can, then that's not good. And then this is [01:04:00] the final one, just always being available. You have to pretty much always be available when you're working for other when you're working in a law firm you have to you law firms or are being in a law firm or being an attorney, very much like being a doctor.

So clients have emergencies all the time. And the doctors need to be available and attorneys really should be available all the time as well. I've seen people, again, I talked about a little bit earlier. I've seen people in lose jobs and by being not being available.

For when someone calls or not return calls right away and even on the weekends. Regardless of how you feel about that, and I know a lot of people who don't like hearing that that's really something that's important. So those are the rules. I apologize this took so long to get through them.

But I'll take a quick break right now and then we will then I'll come back and take questions. I'll take questions either about this presentation or pretty much any questions you have about your career back just a minute.

Q&A

All right. Okay, so these are good questions. These are fun questions. Gimme a second here. Guess the first one [01:05:00] is, what do you do when office politics are already stressing you out? So I think one of the things is really, it is just not to participate. So I think if you're getting involved in the office politics, it can many the best way you can get involved or the way you can deal with it, is just not to participate.

So if you participate in it, it will create problems. So I tell this story a lot and I'll just continue telling it because I think it's very interesting. When I first started in recruiting I hired one recruiter that had been at her. Last job for 15 or 16 years. And I hired another recruiter that had been at her last job for maybe six or eight years or something like that.

The one that was there for 15 years stayed at our company for 17 years. Then one was, that had been at her last job for eight, stayed at like 10 or 11 years. So what does that mean? So it means that during that time, by the way countless people came into our firm that had all these problems and things and politics they got involved in and took [01:06:00] sides in and left and were angry and but these people managed to stay and not be affected by all the politics that did happen.

So I think the point is how did they stay and how did the other people not get involved? And the idea is you just, you, not only do you not participate, but you see the positives in people. In everyone and in every situation. And that's pretty much it. You just, you wanna do whatever you can to see the positives in everyone, in every situation and not get sucked in because if you get sucked into negativity, you're going to see nothing but negativity.

And so why would you is that view of the world help you or not? The, pretty much every organization is going to have office politics. It doesn't really matter where it is. It doesn't matter what the firm minister's going to be, some sort of politics. And the more you participate in it the more it's going to it's going to hurt you.

And and so I don't really, you certainly can participate in it and maybe you're very political and good at these games, but the idea of [01:07:00] politics, by the way, is in every election there's usually two sides. One side wins, the other side loses, and the one that loses it just has to pack their bags and do noon, whatever.

If you wanna be part of the politics, you may be on the winning side some of the time and on the next time. No. So you just have to be I would recommend just not participating in it and to the extent you do it's not going to be a good thing. So yes. Can this next question is it possible that office politics can create burnout and lead a work performance?

And yes, so of course it can. It course, it can burn you out. If you're trying to work on someone's legal problem and all you're thinking about is politics of course it's going to, Why would you put your attention? Why would you put your attention on something that doesn't advance your client's interest or help you?

Office politics is never going to help you. It's never going to help you. And it's always going to be there. What? It doesn't help you. There's just nothing beneficial about it. Now especially if you're like an associate or something. It's just, it's not going to help you.

The only thing that's gonna help you really [01:08:00] is not being involved. And there's always going to be ways to to think negatively about something. There's always going to be drama. And you just need to back off and not participate in it. Unless you have some innate skill that's going to benefit.

Partners with huge books of business and people that are doing things, Aren aren't involved in any of this. They're too busy they're too busy doing well, and So should you be, you should just do your job. And that's something that that most people, a lot of people have said to me. I was talking to someone in our company not too long ago that had been there for, couple decades and they said, I just like to do my job.

And so that's what a lot of people like is they just wanna do their job. Other people wanna get involved in politics and you just can't. I don't I don't really understand why you would want to because it's once you take sides in something you're casting yourself on that side and and that side's not always going to win.

It's just, it's not, it doesn't benefit you to get involved. Okay. How will I prepare for a law firm? Politics? I'm starting a new job in a new firm. There's no way to prepare. [01:09:00] So that's the thing, is that the idea of the the office politics is you don't wanna participate.

 And if you get involved in this stuff, the only thing politics will do for you is make you not like people, not like your job.

Demotivate you, cast you on the side of an issue,

which is going to automatically put you at odds with people on the other side

and give you something to worry about other than your job. So I just don't get it. What is the point? I I don't get it. So I just don't think this is really anything you wanna get involved in. Now, politics it's just not, in my opinion, a positive use of your time.

It may be something that you're interested in doing, but but it's just, it's not, it's for the most part you're paid to be an attorney. You're paid to do work and the politics is just not going help you. See here. How do you avoid toxic people at work without offending?[01:10:00]

I see. So the best way, So this is a good question. So the, you said there's toxic people at work, so gimme one second. So toxic people without offending them. Okay so to avoid toxic people you just you try just to avoid getting assigned work from you.

You don't, you try to not spend time, getting close to, you don't walk up to them and try to meet them and so forth. You if you do work for them, if you are asked to do work for them,

Realize you might be better off avoiding it

if you can.

And then, and just some other things would be, be very clear about what the assignments are or about what you're being asked to do,

to put things in writing, write down what you were asked to do. If you're writing a memo about something, you would say This, you asked me for this and this and this is my conclusions. And then make sure you do very exceptional work for them.

Very good work. And then try to avoid [01:11:00] doing assignments in the future. Avoid more than one type of assignment.

So I had an instance interesting happen. I remember when I was a first year associate in a firm is the there was a guy that was considered a toxic partner and associate, another first year associate was given some assignment from the guy. And and then did it. And then but while he was working with him realized he was very toxic.

He just went he basically said, I'm not gonna do any more work for him. And he took the smart guys, Stanford. And and I think people are expect, were expected that because of what happened. So he, and then that toxic partner ended up actually going to prison for something later, not while he was in the.

So sometimes if you really feel like you can't work with someone just saying, I don't think it's a good, then if you are doing good work for other people, sometimes just avoiding those people is a really smart thing. Okay. How can you tell which part? So this next question is let's see.

How can you tell which partners have large books of [01:12:00] business and who is a service partners? Gimme one second. Most of the time people know a service partner is basically a partner that doesn't have business, and then a partner with a large book of business is a partner that has their own business.

So every law firm has partners that are service partners and the service partners one that pretty much just does the work for partners with business. And then a partner with business is one that is, that has other people working for them. So most of the time in a law firm, you will be working for a lot of times a service partner that's working for a partner.

If it's a large law firm partners are either service partners or partners with business. And typically there's two types of partners. There's. Income partners, which are typically partners without business. And then there's shareholders, which are partners that are part of the, one of the owners of the firm and get a distribution of the profits.

Service partners get just an income and and then partners with business also get percentage of the firm's profits. And then they usually, they have a business throws off and they get paid based on the amount of business that they have as well. The only way [01:13:00] to tell that is in most firms, everyone knows who those people are.

So if you ask, how can you tell you typically everyone in inside the firm will know and it's nothing related to worry too much about, I would think. Something you can figure out. Okay. What do you do when let's see this next question.

These are great questions by the way. Thank you. Wanna ask? So let's see. What do you do when one of your superiors does not like you, regardless of your work ethic? And try your best to work hard. Yeah. So again, so there's the law of third. So one third of the people you meet will not like you. Not like you.

No matter what, it's just how it is. One third will like. Like you and then one third, and this is, this, these averages don't have to be third will not care. So if sometimes you just won't see eye to eye with people so you won't see eye to eye with people and they just instinctively won't like you, you may remind them of someone that they knew in the past.

They may remind them of a parent they don't like. Who knows? But there's nothing you can do about that. Sometimes you can over, you can convince those people to like you by being affable and doing [01:14:00] good work and and looking out for them and being their friends and helping them.

But other times you can't. So if a superior doesn't like you then you're pretty much you shouldn't care. One third of the people aren't gonna like you anyway. You should just avoid them and realize that you know that you're gonna go through life with a lot of people not liking you.

And this is very hard for a lot of people to realize. But it's just how it is. And and there's all sorts of Reasons that you may care. Sometimes people are like what's called codependent. They need other people's affirm. But the point is that you just shouldn't care. So I, it's a very hard thing to say, but you shouldn't care.

Now, one of the funny things that's funny is sometimes you may be in a firm where the personalities are such that the majority of people don't like you, or the majority of people do like you. And because firms will attract different types of personality types and and and that's just how it is.

And you're often better at and you may go and do a firm where everyone that you meet you feel very uncomfortable with. I know of certain law firms where I'm very uncomfortable with the majority of people there. It's just the firm's [01:15:00] personality is just too fricking whacked out for me.

I don't it and I know ones where I like everyone there. So it just depends on the firm that you're in. And and so it can depend on that. Now, if you're in a firm where you feel like you don't like the people, you're probably in a firm with a culture that doesn't match what you want. And and that's fine.

You just don't worry about it. Okay. Let's see here. What about politics? Okay, for folks considering talking legal, recruiting career, more about your company. Yeah, so legal recruiting is certainly a profession. That you can go into. There's I would say the careers outside of the law, there's a lot of people are involved in but this is a, we're a legal, more of a legal placement company.

But you can work in you can actually work in law firms in hr, like as a recruiting coordinator or in hiring. And there's all sorts of jobs doing that, which are actually very good jobs. Legal recruiting is is is a very data intensive business now, I think is more about how to match people and how to understand the cultures of firms and [01:16:00] things.

And and honestly, I keep learning more and more about it every day. It's a very interesting career. But there's a lot of information on BCG where you can read about what we do and there's also Yeah. And if, some things will just appeal to people and not others. So for some people working inside of a law firm as a recruiting person would appeal.

Sometimes people want to like the idea of what we do which is it's how to fit people into firms based on lots of different characteristics. And then and then there, there's and recruiting is one type of profession, but there's lots of things related to recruiting.

You can work inside of companies as a recruiter. You can you can work in a recruiting companies, a recruiter. And and but the, I would say this particular profession is interesting. What I see when I first started in this profession we were like the first company to start putting things online.

There was literally no nothing. When I started hardly at all that had recruiting from websites with articles and different resources. They're just, it [01:17:00] didn't exist. And and so we were the first in that. And and then now the whole thing is changing again where it's more about the quality of Data that you're using and how the data points matter.

It's just very interesting how things are changing. So there's a lot of different professions. This is one of them in understanding people. There's career counselors, there's, which are people that talk to people about their careers. There's there you can write books about this stuff.

There's a lot of stuff if this is the kind of thing you're interested in. A lot of people I've known attorneys do things go into become therapists. They become they help people. There's just so many different jobs. And the only thing that I would say, About when you're trying to think about a career outside of a law firm is what's very interesting about people choosing jobs and careers is there are some jobs that when you think about them or you hear about them, they will just automatically appeal to you.

I for example, would not want to be a rapper, but certain people that type of, they're just something [01:18:00] running through their blood that makes that a reality. I was years ago, I remember meeting with someone that sat down and gave me like a three hour presentation about how she wanted to develop a winery.

And she had this whole model made and everything, and I was like, Why is someone, and when I was talking to someone in the real estate invans so yeah, certain people are just genetically wired to to, to think about development or to think about different things. And so you have to decide what are you genetically wired for?

What is it that that makes you most interested? So if this kind of stuff appeals to you, then you may be interested in what I'm, what we do. But but you should also think about what appeals to you and and different people appeal to other things. I was working with this guy that had graduated from It doesn't matter where he graduated from, but it was a, one of the, it was like a Stanford type school law school, like a really good law school.

It wasn't Stanford, but it was of that caliber. And he was a partner in a law firm and and went and decided to he, and he was a former, I [01:19:00] think he was a former professional football player and was asked to be the assistant coach for a major college football team for one year because they needed a coach or something.

And he left his partnership to go do that. And then after a year tried to come back and they were like, No. And, but think about that. So someone is practicing law and suddenly decides that it was more interesting to them to coach a college football. Then they're being a partner in a law firm, and that's where their passion was.

So you need to follow whatever your passion is. And that person knew that was their passion because they played football and all this stuff, but you have to follow whatever passion you have. So that's when you hear about different types of jobs when you get involved in things like what makes you happy, because you should spend most of your time doing the types of things that make you happy.

And maybe practicing law isn't what makes you happy. Then the thing I would say about politics and just related to that is one of the things about politics inside of law firms and legal organizations is that's something that makes a lot of people [01:20:00] very unhappy. And it's not necessarily the work of the law firm that makes someone unhappy or doing the work.

It's the politics that go along with it. So that's the reason that I say why participate? Unless you feel like you can participate in the right way and get strength out of, But why would you participate in something that doesn't necessarily isn't going to help you or is gonna make you unhappy?

Now, it may make you happy to be part of that drama, but ultimately I don't know. So you should be careful. Okay. Let's see. Okay. Okay. I think that's about all the questions. There were a couple other questions about office politics how to is it important in a law firm?

And and ultimately I would say no. So I think you need to you, you just don't, I think that the people that tend to do the best of the people that tried to not get involved in this stuff and they put their heads down and kinda leave it at that. So I hope these rules and things that I talked about today were helpful.

I certainly appreciated everyone being on this webinar. And look forward to [01:21:00] talking to everyone next week. Thanks.