Life Lessons from the Business of Law, As Opposed to the Practice of Law

In almost 37 years as a lawyer, I have practiced in firms of varying sizes. I’ve been with a big firm and a mid-size firm (as they would have been defined in the mid to late 80’s); I’ve practiced with a group as small as three lawyers. Less than five years ago, my firm was 18 lawyers and over 50 total employees – multiple offices too. Now, we are at four lawyers in one office. While going from 18 to 4 was difficult – and I am still dealing with the sequelae of that transition – in most regards I am far happier than I was when my firm was listed among the 75 biggest in Virginia.  

When my firm was much larger, I devoted a huge amount of time to the business side of things.  I developed proficiency with Excel. I was excellent at analyzing and projecting revenue and expenses. Despite a lack of formal business training, I got pretty good at being the boss of a business entity of some size. In all fairness, I usually liked doing so, but it made my personal practice of law a lot harder. There is only so much time in a day. It was also more than a little stressful at times. It still can be. Regardless, I learned a lot – and I am still learning.  

I have tried to function according to two guiding principles: one comes from religion and the other from doctors. First, the Golden Rule should apply to all we do. Treat others as you’d want to be treated. Sounds simple, but in the midst of running any business it is anything but simple. Sometimes, the choices can seem downright Hobbesian. Second, the baseline premise of the Hippocratic Oath is that one should first do no harm. In other words, don’t make situations worse than they already are. Again, it’s a simple notion that is anything but simple to execute. 

With the perfect vision of hindsight, here are some lessons – mostly (but not exclusively) drawn from my own mistakes: 

• Be quick to praise. If someone does a good job, remind them. A caveat, however. Don’t praise unless you mean it. People can smell the insincerity of a false compliment a mile away. 
• Be gentle and narrow in criticizing. Address only the specific concern at issue. Try very hard not to say anything that seems like a general criticism of the employee’s overall character. People can and will modify their behavior and/or how they do their job. Changing who you are is another matter.  
• Forgive mistakes, even big ones. We all make them.  
• Never – and I mean never – try to hide a mistake. That is unforgivable in my book. When errors occur, what matters is how to fix and/or mitigate the problem.  
• Never – and, again, I mean never – cast blame when something goes wrong. Almost all negative episodes are multifactorial, as doctors would say. There is usually plenty of blame to be shared. A lawyer publicly blaming a staff member is inexcusable – even if there is some truth in the accusation.  
• When you know you have a problem, do something about it. It’s easy to put aside hard issues, finesse situations. Don’t go there. Bite the bullet sooner rather than later. For example, if you have an impaired lawyer, even one who generates significant business, you have to deal with it, ugly as it is. Not doing so will just magnify the impact of the eventual crash – which will still happen no matter how much you delay the reckoning. 
• Similarly, don’t let your guard down. Always pay attention to the numbers and the money. Be deliberate about knowing what is going on. If you get distracted, problems can get big very quickly. Once, coming off an excellent year, I kicked back a little bit. It was a huge mistake. One of my colleagues just stopped billing. (We did defense work at the time.) It’s not like I totally missed it, but by the time I really got focused we had serious cashflow issues. Fixing the problem was hard and nasty. 
• Never tolerate dishonesty, even little stuff. For a lawyer, there is no such thing as a “minor” false expense report, misuse of a firm credit card or similar episodes. Stealing is stealing. Treat it accordingly. You do yourself no favors by not thinking of it like the crime it is. If a lawyer is dishonest with his or her firm, one has to assume that the lawyer will be dishonest with clients.  
• Be very careful who you hire. The impact of a bad hire, especially a lawyer, can be huge. The old adage of “better right than fast” is so true. If you have reservations about a hire, hold off and think carefully. Dealing with being shorthanded is preferable to a hiring mistake. We once had a lawyer who came to us wanting a job. I had dealt with this lawyer on several matters and had not been impressed. We declined. The lawyer sought employment again about a year later. This time, we had lost a couple of lawyers and I was worried about adequate staffing. Thinking this person would be “good enough” was one of the biggest mistakes I ever made.  
• Along the same lines, if someone really has reservations about hiring someone, pay attention. Years ago, we interviewed a lawyer who I really liked. My law partner did not share my enthusiasm – and I thought he was being unreasonable. He may have been but, in any event, we didn’t make the hire. A month later the lawyer was arrested in a drugs for sex sting operation. My colleague was right, albeit for wrong reasons. 
• Firing employees is hard, but you sometimes have to do it. I have always been slow to fire people, which I suppose is a good thing. However, you can try so hard to be fair to a problematic employee that you end up being unfair to others who are doing their jobs just fine. Ironically, most of the time when we anguished and debated over letting someone go – and worried about how it would be perceived - the reaction from other employees was that we should have done it sooner. 
• On the other hand, when considering whether to fire an employee, remember it’s a two-part equation. One part is whether there are serious issues with the employee’s performance. However, you also have to consider what you will do to replace this employee. Among other things, that means considering whether you are likely to get someone better on the open market. Clearly, there are some folks you just need to get rid of and it’s obvious. More frequently, even the performance issues are not totally clear cut, meaning it is not certain that a replacement is likely to be a real improvement. 
• Lawyers need to be rewarded for good performance – and bear the consequences of poor performance. That seems obvious, but the application gets sticky very quickly. We had a practice area that fell off over time and then sharply, by around 75%. Huge. There were constant “reasons” why cases couldn’t be moved and get paid more quickly. I cajoled constantly and repeatedly offered help and advice, but it was not until the lawyers involved had their base pay reduced and were put on a month-to-month incentive plan that the problem resolved – and it resolved quickly. Of course, I was cast as punitive and heinously unfair, but it actually worked to increase the potential income of the lawyers involved. I should have done it much sooner. 
• If you are wrong, apologize. Of course, one should never offer an apology if you don’t mean it or if it is somehow conditional. 
• Perhaps most important: Try really hard to keep your sense of humor.  

I have reached that stage of life where I feel somewhat free to share my wisdom, such as it is. My hope is that my life experiences, including some rather hard ones, can pay off for others.