Big Firm Life and Self-Aggrandizing Lawyers (Patreon)

This post isn't quite appropriate for my business page or my personal Facebook page, both places where -- despite being friends with Eli -- I try to keep the dick-sucking references to a minimum.  Nevertheless, I felt like I had to vent, and I figured I'd share it with our patrons (whom I've come to think of as friends and confidantes).

It starts with the popular law blog portal, Above the Law, which is roughly 4,000 times more popular than anything I do online.  (They get millions of hits every month.)  Lately, I've noticed a growing trend towards self-aggrandizement by the lawyers who post there.

I hit my boiling point today when I read this piece by Mark Herrmann.  Go ahead and check it out (the few hits I send him won't make a difference in his already well-financed lifestyle).  On the surface, it's just your standard douchebaggy "see, by making you do all the hard work, I'm really the one making the sacrifices" puff piece that big law firm partners all tell each other when complimenting each other's managerial styles.

Many of you know that before going out on my own in 2015, I spent the first six years of my career in a big law firm that I've mentioned on the show.  I then transitioned from there to an almost-as-big firm for the next twelve, where I made partner and often supervised younger lawyers.  I did my very best to be a good boss and mentor, but I'm sure I was "that asshole partner" to associates now and then.

Never in a million years would I write the kind of self-serving bullshit Herrmann wrote.

Look:  life in biglaw is hard.  Associates are typically expected to bill 2,000 hours per year at a minimum, and (if you're honest), you bill for something like 80% or fewer of the hours you actually work.  In practical terms, that means that as a young associate you're working 60, 70, 80 hours a week just to keep pace with everyone else.  If you want to earn that sweet bonus, if you want to get on the partnership track, if you just want to avoid the dreaded "not sure if he's fully committed to the firm" comment during your performance reviews, you'd better be prepared to go above and beyond everyone else.

Now, in fairness, biglaw attorneys are insanely well-compensated.  I think I read recently that the average biglaw first-year associate in Washington, DC makes $180,000 per year before bonuses, which is a pretty good living, even in DC.  (You can count on a lock-stop bonus of $10-20,000 per year and those lovely year-end bonuses of $20-50,000 if you bill 2400 hours or more.)  So I guess what I'm saying is that plenty of people work longer hours for less, and biglaw associates don't deserve that much pity.

But we (and here, I'm speaking on behalf of me 15 years ago) deserve better than this Herrmann asshole.

First, let's start off with the money.  If you're a first-year associate billing 2,400 hours per year, you're probably being billed by your firm at $400 per hour.  (That's more than I charge today, by the way!)  Maybe more, but let's stick with the low end.  That means the Firm will earn, potentially,  $960,000 on the back of your labor.  Now, the firm incurs some overhead costs (call it 10%), and some administrative costs (another 5%), plus a small portion of your hours will be written off or uncollectable; let's be charitable and call that another 10% -- although most big firms write off virtually no associate time unless the client complains.

That still leaves biglaw with a cool $720,000 in revenue based off of your 2400 hours, or, you know, more than half a million dollars in profit per associate.  These numbers actually increase as the associate gains experience, because a good fifth-year associate is actually a competent attorney whereas a first-year associate is an overeducated administrative employee who literally doesn't know a goddamn thing about the actual law, so clients mind less paying for their work even though it bills out at $600, $700, or more per hour.

So Mister Biglaw Partner Herrmann, who is so nicely allowing the associate to prepare for a big presentation, knows damn well that the associate is tracking every hour spent on the project (frequently in increments of one-quarter or -- as I bill it -- one-tenth of an hour) and that at the end of the year, the overwhelming majority of the billed value of that time will be distributed back into Herrmann's pockets.

Second, let's talk about those long hour nights.  Herrmann phrases it so nicely -- you, the associate, get to have your name on the presentation and do all the work, while I, the benevolent partner and mentor, will toil away behind the scenes, making sure that you do it right but getting none of the credit. 

I've been fortunate to have a few dedicated mentors in my career, and -- in a few instances -- that story actually unfolds in the way Herrmann tells it.  I remember each and every one of those times.  (That's how rare they are.)

In the vast majority of circumstances, what really happens is this:  at 7 pm (or 9, or 11, or 1 am, depending on how much of an asshole your Hrermann-equivalent is), Herrmann will call you on the phone and ask you to come to his office.  (You always go to his office; unless he's going to shut the door and berate you, Herrmann never comes to yours.)  You go to Herrmann's office, and he asks you to write a memo on the enforceability of the arbitration clause in this particular contract.  You've never seen the contract before and have no idea what case this is for, who the client is, or at what point in the litigation the proceedings are.  "You can have that for me by morning, right?" he asks.  Fortunately, you know Herrmann likes to sleep in to avoid the traffic on the Beltway, so you have until 10 am.  Phew.  15 hours.  (We're assuming the relatively nice Herrmann.)  Let's go!

You then scurry back to your office and sign on to Lexis or Westlaw and start typing shit into the search box.  "+enforceability +arbitration" yields over 10,000 hits.  Dammit.  What state is this in?  You page through the contract and it looks like it was signed in California.  Okay, restricting the search to California narrows it down to 8,734 cases.  Fuck.  What's this contract about?  Distributing bananas in farmers' markets in San Diego?  Okay, umm, let's try "+distribution."  No, that only gets us down to 7,119.  You try "+bananas" just for fun, and that gets you down to just one case... but it turns out that it was over the arbitration of the trademark for "Going Bananas, Inc.!," a comedy club based in Oakland.  Shit.  Time to start over.  Did I mention it's now 9:30, and you haven't eaten anything, but you have drank three Diet Cokes, and you have literally nothing to show for it.  Okay.  Time to grab something to eat.

Now it's 10 pm, and you're... ready to get started?  You've read the contract while scarfing down vending machine dinner, and... oh, fuck.  You forgot to call home.  Okay, quick call to your girlfriend -- who's gone to bed because this happens all the goddamn time, you know -- and a quick apology, and it's back to work.  You started to read the contract over dinner and you see that Herrmann (or someone) has highlighted a provision three pages before the arbitration clause relating to customer satisfaction.  You poke around in the file and find a couple of pieces of correspondence.  Okay, now you actually might know what the case is about.  You think our customer is suing us under this contract because we've been delivering bananas and the customer thinks too many of them have been unsatisfactory.  So what Hermann really wants to know is, "Can we take them to arbitration?"

Herrmann, of course, could have told you this, but (a) he's the "big picture" guy, and what he thinks he wants from you is a discrete legal question, and (b) he's got theater tickets at 7:30 and it's time to GO, man.  So that took you ... fuck, four hours?

Okay, now it's 11 pm.  Armed with the knowledge of what the case is about, you tailor a proper Lexis search, pull up a dozen cases, and read and summarize them.  You're good at this by now -- because it's basically all you've done for the past five years! -- and you crank that out in four hours.  Okay.  3 am.  You're on Diet Coke number 8, and you get up every 15 minutes to do little stretching exercises at your desk to keep  yourself awake.  You now start pounding out the memo outlining the general rule on arbitrability, the factors a court will look for, and the defenses the other side might raise.  It's 7 am.  You do a quick spellcheck on the document and realize you've typed "plaintiff" every place you meant to type "defendant."  You change all the references, catch two or three more typos, and decide that's it.  Your brain is five minutes away from shutdown.  You draft a quick email to Herrmann, tell him it's a rough draft, and hit 'send.'  It's 7:30 am.

When I worked in DC, I lived nearly 40 minutes away in the Maryland suburbs, because even as an overpaid associate I couldn't afford a single-family home in DC proper.  Fortunately, one of the perks of working in a biglaw firm is that they'll reimburse for your cab home if it's after midnight (woohoo!), so you call a cab, meet them in the lobby, and fall asleep on the ride home.  The cabbie wakes you in your driveway, you pay, tip extravagantly, remember to keep the receipt (how many $50 cab rides have you forgotten to submit?  Too many to count), and stumble into bed at 8:30 am.  Your girlfriend has, of course, left for work hours ago.  If you have a two-year-old (as I did), he's been long since shipped off to daycare.

You sleep until 12:15.  Fuck.  You meant to try and be back in the office by noon, but, well, what can you do?  After a quick shower, no shave, you waltz in to the office at 1:30 pm.  No one notices or cares.

You have 18 voice mails.  (Today, I guess, you'd have 18 emails.  Or maybe not; biglaw partners are notoriously technophobic.)  All of them are from Herrmann.  The last six are some variant of "where the fuck are you?  It's after noon!"  You race to Herrmann's office and he looks down his nose at you when you apologize for having stayed up all night.  (Yes, you apologize.  Every. Single. Time.)  Herrmann looks over at the clock as if to say, wordlessly, "..but it's 1:30 in the afternoon.  What have you been doing all day?"

Herrmann tosses a red-lined copy of your memo to you.  When I say "red-lined," I mean he's literally taken a red Sharpie and drawn all over it, not that he's used the MS Word function to compare and contrast or to place electronic notes on the document.  Nope, when Herrmann was a lowly fifth-year associate like you, he got red-lined documents from the senior partner, and by god that's what a good mentor does!  (See?  He's looking out for you!)  He's also very helpfully circled every spelling mistake, subject-verb agreement error, and other typo you've made since, you know, you drafted the thing after being awake for 21 hours.  

Oh, and iturns out that your client isn't the distributor after all, but a third-party beneficiary to the contract who markets the bananas to various indie farmers' markets, and our client wants to resist the arbitration clause.  Oops.  But fortunately, Mr. Herrmann is a good mentor.  "Don't worry, you can fix that tonight, right?"

Sure.  Of course you can.

Third, and finally, let's talk about what actually happens after you pull back-to-back all-nighters and finally get the memo right.  Herrmann thanks you, lifts nine pages from your memo essentially verbatim and drops them into his brief to the Fourth Circuit.  If the case is big enough, you won't be listed at all on the briefs.  Even by the time you're a senior associate or junior partner and you're basically writing the briefs from start to finish, you'll be listed as the second or third name on the line.  Who gets top billing?  Herrmann, of course.

Who argues before the Fourth Circuit?  Not some pissant fifth-year associate, by god; this is a hundred-million-dollar case!  So Herrmann takes the argument; you will literally carry a giant trial bag with 100 cases in it and be expected to hand Herrmann the cases he needs to answer questions during the argument.  (If you're allowed to go at all.)  Who's name appears in the header as representing the intervenor?  Herrmann's.  Who talks to the client?  Herrmann.  And so on.

Don't get me wrong; not every interaction in biglaw goes like this; there are great lawyers in big firms who serve as real mentors.  But anyone who's ever worked in a big firm will tell you that what I've describe happens every goddamn day.  It's part of the job.  And when you start writing a self-congratulatory piece on what a sterling mentor you are for offloading a whole bunch of work on your associate -- work for which you will be compensated, remember -- well, the first thing that came to mind was Winston Wolfe's quote above.