What Does It Mean To be a Partner In a Law Firm?
“When a man's partner's killed, he's supposed to do something about it. It doesn't make any difference what you thought of him, he was your partner, and you're supposed to do something about it.
And it happens we're in the detective business. Well, when one of your organization gets killed, it's - it's bad business to let the killer get away with it. Bad all around. Bad for every detective everywhere.”
--Dashiel Hammett, The Maltese Falcon
I have been a partner in three law firms. I spent the first 24+ years of my legal career at Epstein Becker & Green (“EBG”). When I joined the firm, it had something like 35 lawyers. It was a very good place to learn how to be a lawyer in private practice. As a rather new start up, it was entrepreneurial and freewheeling. And it had a great camaraderie. The named partners were each a smashing success worthy of emulation.
I became an EBG partner in my eighth year. What that meant is I borrowed some money and infused a chunk of cash into the partnership pot. I was paid only a little more money leaving me relatively impoverished into my mid-30’s. Indeed, it wasn’t until my late 40’s that I became truly independent. I had always envisioned myself as a free agent, but to get ahead in larger law firms often requires young lawyer to practice being lackeys, attaching themselves to some mentor, with the choice plums going to those who will do the bidding of the few who hold the power. That is the truth about every large business organization. I was sort of an outsider, neither a lackey nor independent for many years. Eventually, I came into my own, developed a base of loyal clients, and got the corner office and the stuff that dreams are made of. But it didn’t happen quickly.
That dream came to an end at a partnership meeting maybe in 2006 or so when to my shock, the EBG Executive Committee presented a new partnership agreement for approval of the partners. There was a small catch for me, the contract had never been presented before for the partnership to even read. I gave my “are we men or mouses speech,” challenging my fellow partners not to vote for an agreement they hadn’t even read. I asked them how they can hold their heads up and represent their clients if they can’t even represent their own interests. The vote was delayed until l after lunch so partners could read the agreement, not a big concession, and I became a troublemaker in the eyes of the firm leadership. The writing was on the wall.
Ultimately, the problem was not just firm governance. The problem was that EBG was an “eat what you kill” law firm, and you were supposed to get compensated based principally on your own “originations”, i.e., book of business, plus to a lesser extent some other factors like billable hours and firm service. I accepted that as a fair and objective criteria and labored dutifully for those 24+ years. By 2007, I had grown my business generation into the top dozen rain makers or so out of a firm grown to almost 400 lawyers, but it wasn’t reflected in my renumeration. My friend and colleague Ken Weckstein astutely observed that that EBG had changed the rules of the game on us – now the firm ate what we killed.
And so with sadness, I left EBG in March of 2008 with most of the rest of the Government Contracts group. We join a law firm called Brown Rudnick, LLP, which I had some familiarity with. My mother’s cousin was a Harvard lawyer who joined a law firm in 1958 in Boston then renamed Brown Rudnick Freed & Gesmer. I met Henry Gesmer as a child and I remember telling him in the early 1980’s when I was in law school that if I couldn’t find a job I would come knocking on his door for employment. Little did I know how true that might be.
Brown Rudnick was a very transparent and prosperous place. It had advantages that EBG didn’t share -- like high realization, high billing rates, and more productive lawyers. It was just a more profitable place – and that made the pie bigger. Unlike EBG, everyone knew what everyone else made. There was a sense there were few secret deals and that you earned what you deserved. The founders like Gesmer were now in the distant past. I don’t think anyone would have thought to put a partnership agreement up for a vote without letting the partners read it well in advance.
I could have stayed at Brown Rudnick until their mandatory retirement policy kicked in and booted me out of the partnership. It was a good place to work. But I hated my commute every day into Washington, DC, and my wife refused to live in the city. And I just thought I wanted to create something that was my own, where I didn’t have to attend staff meetings or training sessions, and where I didn’t need anyone’s permission to blog or express my opinions. I wanted to eat what I killed and not be paid for my labor with as little as 18% of my own revenue like at EBG, or up to 35% revenue like generous terms at Brown Rudnick, but instead get 100%, less my own expenses. And I wanted to fulfill that free agency longing I had from the start. What do you see when you turn off the lights, I can’t tell you but I know its mine.
But I was insecure out the nuts and bolts of the legal business – a partner in a large firm has a lot of staff support. The big law firms have administrative staff, an IT help desk, receptionist, secretarial support, librarian, marketing assistance, billing department, accounts payable department, HR, tax expertise, office planners, buyers, mail room, paralegals, and numerous other supporting players. It frees you up to practice law. It is a curse and a blessing. To escape it, you need to learn new skills to do these support staff jobs or start replicating the system you just left behind.
As Robert Frost said, two roads diverged unto a wood, and I took the one less traveled. The reality is that not many partners voluntarily leave a large law firm sinecure to essentially start their own small practice. It is deemed too risky and too much work. However, my task was made easier by joining up with my former colleague, Howard Wolf-Rodda, who had made the transition earlier to solo private practice. Howard was my safety blanket, since he knew how things worked. He had amazing IT skills and could keep our computer and printer network running. He understood all the software. He had experience with the vendors. He guided me and set up our billing system, arranged our website, installed our phone system, set up the management and billing software, and took care of the QuickBooks account. Without Howard, Abrahams Wolf-Rodda would have never been born. I knew how to practice law, and was a jack of all legal trades, but Howard had already mastered the practical business skills and knowledge necessary for private practice, and he gave me faith that it was all possible.
And so in February 2018 Abrahams Wolf-Rodda, LLC (“AWR”) was born. And it is here where I found the most satisfaction practicing law. You don’t have to be part of a large law firm in the age of AI. I had a friend Brian Bannon who extol the advantage of having your own name on the office door. You can have every tool they have and more. You can ditch the inefficiencies of the large players, and you can be your own man. You don’t have to answer to some firm chairman or functionary in a far off office. You don’t need all the bloat of the big firm. You can have your own website and your own blog. And the conflicts of interest you may encounter are of your own making. You don’t find yourself giving up clients because some other lawyer in the firm is representing someone else. And get this – you can walk to work, strolling every morning about five blocks to my office in “downtown “ Potomac Village, Maryland. What’s not to like?
Howard retired from AWR last Fall. He is busy traveling now and has no apparent regrets. I miss him. He was my last business partner and the one who helped me the most. He was the indispensable key to my own liberation. For that I am always grateful. The processes he put in place carry on even in his absence. And I thus can remain a free agent, practicing law as I first envisioned as a young man, just starting in law school. So we beat on, boats against the currents, borne back ceaseless into the past….