The Unwritten Rules for Associates

By Debra Bruce

When I was a young associate in a big law firm, I began to fear that there were unwritten rules to the game that everyone knew except me. Sometimes I wanted to cry out, “What are the rules? Just tell me what they are! I’ll follow them!”

Gradually over the years I began to figure them out, one by one, often as the result of transgressing them. Sometimes I was fortunate enough to learn a rule by merely observing the consequences of a transgression by another associate. On rare occasions a more senior associate, or even a partner, would bless me by privately advising me about one of the rules.

Law firms really do want their associates to succeed, so why do they seem to hide the rules of the game? Here are my guesses at a few possible explanations:

1. By the time you get to high school, it is hard to remember what you didn’t know in first grade. Sometimes something seems so obvious to partners, that it never occurs to them to point it out to the associates.
2. The rule is so patently unfair or illogical (or perhaps illegal) that it is embarrassing to admit it.
3. The rules are not actually the same for everyone, which creates some confusion when they are applied unevenly.

Here are a dozen of the unwritten rules I have observed in some law firms, described in an admittedly jaded way. Please share with me those you’ve observed that I failed to include.

1. Turning down work from a partner will give you a black mark. If the same partner has already filled your plate, remind her of what you already have to do and ask her to prioritize the workload. If a different partner is adding to your pile, you can tell him how delighted to work on the project you will be, and that based on your current commitments, you can get started on it in about three weeks. He’ll probably take the project elsewhere. If you really do want to work on the new project, you can ask to conference in the first partner to discuss schedules and priorities, but there is a risk of igniting a turf war.

2. Learn as quickly as possible who the super stars are (whether partners or senior associates). Try to get work from them, and be sure to do an excellent job. Their opinions of you will carry more weight with the other partners, and they will also have the best projects with the most valuable experience. Even if you don’t get to work with them often, this will give them an opportunity to form their own opinion about you.

3. About the only acceptable reason for not being available when requested is your commitment to other work. If you’ll be unavailable because you’re going to the school play or have front row tickets to the most important professional sports event of the season, just say your plate’s too full or you’re all booked up. Better to be mysterious than to confirm that you have a priority higher than work. Most associates have stories similar to the one told to me by an attorney who received a call from a partner while in the recovery room following surgery.

4. You can fail to make partner by misplacing a comma. When they say “just do good work and you’ll be ok,” they mean just do perfect work. Long gone are the school days where someone feeds you the answers and you just have to remember the correct ones to regurgitate. You are expected to figure most of it out yourself, and you’ll be lucky if you get to watch someone else do it first. B+ is not an acceptable grade, and 97% is not an A.

5. Laughing in the halls can knock you off partnership track. It’s a sign that you are not serious about your work. Someone who will never work with you may witness it, and form a nearly unshakeable opinion about you, which they will then share without remembering its genesis.

6. Don’t believe the partner who tells you “Don’t worry about developing business. Just keep your billable hours up doing quality work.” He probably just wants to get his projects done. Your perceived ability to generate business will be an important factor in the decision about whether to let you into the partnership. The moment you make partner, you will be expected to start generating business to sustain yourself. Your billable hours may drop as partners give work to associates that they used to give to you.

7. While many law firms today have alternative career tracks, in most, the only track that counts is the full out equity partnership track. If you choose an alternate track, be prepared to pay the price of diminished respect and lower quality work assignments that will stunt your professional growth.

8. Each firm has its own cultural definition of how commitment to the firm and its work should be demonstrated. In some firms, lawyers demonstrate their dedication by arriving early, in others by staying late. If your natural rhythm runs against the grain, you may be judged a slacker, regardless of the volume of paper you generate or the hours you bill.

9. Court your administrative assistant as your respected teammate and ally. An admin can protect your back or feed you to the wolves. For example, when I call lawyers in the morning, one admin might say “He hasn’t made it in yet,” while another says, “He must have stepped down the hall.”

10. It’s virtually impossible to make it up the ladder without a mentor of some sort. You need someone to show you the ropes, warn you about the hidden booby traps, funnel the kind of work to you that will make your experience valuable, and go to bat for you during bonus and partnership discussions. Most partners don’t feel much obligation to mentor someone, even if they were formally assigned a protégé. If they do mentor someone, it is most likely to be informal and someone they see as like them—a Mini-Me. You must assertively seek out a mentor if you don’t have one.

11. There is a good chance that you will take home less money as a first year partner than you did as a senior associate, so prepare your finances accordingly. You’ll have to start making payments on your capital account buy-in, and you’ll be responsible for self-employment tax (instead of having your employer pay half of your F.I.C.A.). You’ll also have to make estimated quarterly tax payments on income that you may not actually receive until December.

12. Becoming partner is like graduating from middle school to high school. Just when you think you’ve made it and can stop to breathe, you discover that you’re at the bottom of a whole new totem pole.

If you know any young associates, kindly leave this article on their desks in the dark of night. You won’t have to admit whether you subscribe to the rules. Of course, the foregoing are the opinions and observations of the author (after coaching hundreds of law firm partners), and do not represent the opinions or policies of the State Bar of Texas.

10 Tips for Developing Associates into Rainmakers

By Debra Bruce

Today most law firms, large and small, expect partners to bring in business. In determining whether an associate makes partner, the firm usually considers whether the associate has the capability to bring in business.

Some firms don’t do a very good job of communicating this expectation to their young lawyers, however. In fact, some partners may actively discourage associates from spending time on business development activities, if that takes any time away from doing billable legal work. The firm then unrealistically expects a new partner to support himself with his own business like turning on a water faucet.

While firms that think longer-range may not begrudge the time an associate spends on client development, they don’t all have a policy for reimbursing associates for business development expenses. Young lawyers still trying to pay off student loans are expected to pay for any marketing lunches or other outside activities, bar association and section dues, and community association dues. Asking associates to lay out their cash to benefit the firm they are not yet members of can have a significant tempering effect on their efforts. Finally, some savvy law firms actively support mid-level and senior associate efforts to develop clients by providing time and financial resources, but very few provide real guidance to young lawyers about how to market themselves.

If you want the associates in your firm to one day become contributing rainmakers, here are 10 things you can do to promote and encourage their rainmaking efforts:

1. Take an associate along on lunches and other events for business development purposes, especially if that lawyer does work for that client. Introduce the associate to clients and prospects whenever possible, and allow her to witness your business development style. Debrief with her afterwards to explain why you approached the client or prospect in the way you did.

2. Talk to associates about what your firm expects of them. Share with them your experience in successful business development, including how long you knew or courted your clients before first getting business from them.

3. Encourage associates to get involved in state and local bar association activities, and reimburse local and section dues if they actively participate on committees. Attorneys give referrals to people they recognize. Speaking at bar association events increases credibility and visibility, but those opportunities tend to go to the lawyers who work to support the section.

4. If an associate does the research for a speech you give or an article you publish, share the authorship credit. Invite the associate to attend the speech and publicly acknowledge him.

5. Suggest topics that an associate might write an article about or give a talk on for a community organization. She may not realize that she already has sufficient expertise to be an author or speaker. Provide her name to program chairs and editors as a potential contributor.

6. Encourage associates to maintain contacts with former classmates. Some of them will one day be the CEO, CFO or GC who makes or influences decisions about where to purchase legal services. They will have more trust in lawyers who valued the relationship with them before they gained such power.

7. Invest in business development training for senior associates and newer partners. The old maxim that “you can get business just by doing good work” doesn’t hold true anymore. There is too much competition today. If training costs exceed your firm’s budget, insist that your associates read about client development. One of the best books for lawyers is Rainmaking Made Simple: What Every Professional Must Know by Mark Maraia. I must disclose that I do follow-on coaching for Maraia’s training programs, but my opinion preceded my work with the Maraia organization.

8. Ask your experienced associates to develop a 3-year marketing plan. Help them to see that business development requires sustained effort and delayed gratification, so they should start sooner rather than later.

9. Acknowledge the efforts your associates make, even before they result in new clients. Their business development activities make take years to really pay off, and they’ll need your encouragement to persevere.

10. Track business development hours and provide some sort of associate bonus for successful efforts that bring in work fitting your firm’s guidelines for new clients. People do what gets measured and rewarded.

The health of any law firm depends upon its ability to continually develop new business. The number of lawyers has more than doubled in the last few decades, significantly increasing competition. To keep ahead of the pack, good law firm management dictates grooming associates to become full financial contributors at their earliest opportunity.