Here at the Firm Spy we make an effort not to just hijack the content published on other websites, in particular those operating in the same space as us (namely ALB, Lawyers Weekly, and The New Lawyer). However, in the last week we have read two articles published by our good friends at The New Lawyer that we considered so compelling,  so pertinent, that we have decided to republish them here.

Unsurprisingly, both articles are a slap in the face to the modern-day corporate law firm partner.

The first article was written by a former associate to Michael Kirby. Nick James:

The nature of the top tier law firm has fundamentally shifted in the last three decades, writes Nick James, so isn’t it natural that those most adversely affected would begin to cast around for new alternatives?

OBSERVERS of the legal industry have for a while been describing a new set of behaviors and attitudes displayed by emerging lawyers. Generation Y in particular is described as a challenge and sometimes a problem for the existing law firm model.

The new generations, we are told, are less interested in doing the work required to become a partner and are more interested in:

• profit share at an earlier age
• flexibility
• being given greater responsibility and client access
• experiencing an individual connection with their personal values and the subject matter of their work.

While both Gen Y and X are different from the generations before them, it is important to note that many of the ‘changes’ in attitude ascribed to them are in fact natural responses and adjustment to dramatic changes in the large law firm environments they are inheriting.

Today’s mega law firm juggernaut is a relatively recent phenomenon. The very largest law firms in Australia in 1980 had only just exceeded 30 partners. They also operated under a very different set of conditions. In 1979 an article comprehensively surveying the phenomenon of the emergence of the “corporate” law firm in Australia, noted that “one firm has gone so far as to … specify weekly minimum billing targets for its partners and employee solicitors”. The article continued “other law firms have clung longer to a sense of individual autonomy in the partners”.

As law firms have grown since then, in only a few decades, what once was a system of a community of partners bounded by either personal friendship or acquaintance evolved into a highly impersonal/competitive/corporatised and semi-political structure. Its decision making model: Requiring the consensus of a large group of partner-owners who have a window in their career to collect profits before retirement; has (arguably inevitably) driven management decisions which have over time tended to serve the short-term profit interests of the equity partner-owners at the expense of other important interests, including those of the emerging lawyers and even of the firms’ clients.

The fall-out has been a large factor in the crisis in our legal profession of unhappy lawyers (even in partnership ranks) and dissatisfied clients, not to mention a decline in the general level of community respect for the profession. Increasingly higher fees; higher hours worked by lawyers; behavior driven by billing targets; the overheating of the leverage model; the creation of salaried partner/special counsel roles; and the increasing delay of promotion both to and beyond senior associate; are all a result of the intense focus on profits-per-equity-partner as the fundamental goal sitting at the centre of the top tier firm.

Ultimately these sorts of observations don’t mean much in a business sense unless they necessarily lead to two conclusions:

a) Factors inherent in the current large law firm model actually make the model bad at what it must do in the long term in order to remain sustainable and successful; which is to keep its workforce and its clients happy.

And therefore:

b) The current large law firm model is vulnerable to new structures that can do a better job of giving lawyers a better place to work and clients better service and value while being able to accommodate the scale of needs of modern globalised corporations.

The structure which will win in the long term will need more than the simple advantages of incumbency which make the modern top tier law firms appear invincible at this point in time. Any new structure must, to be successful, rebalance the needs of lawyers for conditions which were once an embedded part of their working life as well as provide a dynamic engine capable of driving the growth of the business. How this is to be done is the task for the next generation of lawyers; those who have inherited a large law firm model which they can now plainly see is flawed and requires rethinking. The urgency of this task is heightened as they increasingly realise they themselves are among the primary victims of its basic dynamic and the cost to their lives as well as their professional enjoyment is too great to continue working within the existing model.

It is important to remember, that emerging alternative visions for the future for top tier practice, like the aspirations of the new generation of lawyers, are not a radical departure from the history of the legal profession. It is instead the overheated, current big firm model which is the aberration. It seems arguable that ‘new’ visions for the practice of law in fact represent a continuation of the sorts of things we have always wanted from our workplaces and which are only resurfacing now because they have been left behind for a while too long.

Nick James is the founder and director of the Sydney-based law firm Optim Legal. He is an alumnus of two top tier firms and was an associate to Justice Michael Kirby at the High Court of Australia. Comments can be left online or sent privately to nick@optimlegal.com.au.

The second article was written by Michael Bradley. Bradley, you’ll recall, has previously been the subject of some Firm Spy criticism. Until now, we thought Bradley was some kind of space cadet. We censured him over forcing graduate job applicants to his firm Marque Lawyers (named after a wallet) to write a 500-word application essay featuring the word “jazzy”. We wrote our own application and published it. We also criticized Bradley over the advice he gave to seasonal clerks on how they should comport themselves at their job interview.

We thank Bradley for having the courage to write an article which broadcasts the problems of the modern-day partnership, and necessarily implicates his former firm Gadens where he is an erstwhile managing partner.

Being a partner no longer means having a say in how the business is run, among other things. Michael Bradley asks, what is partnership now, anyway?

“…I looked around at the partners and I thought, ‘I don’t want your life’.” So the senior associate from a very large firm told me in describing his reasons for leaving secure employment and the path to partnership. That’s of course a very personal thing. There are plenty of lawyers who are at least prepared to live that life for the reward of partnership. But what is partnership these days?

It used to mean ownership, a direct financial stake and a say in how the business was run. But in most large firms, the role of the “partner” has had its scope defined progressively more narrowly over the past 30 years to what is now pretty much a single dimension.

The risk/reward proposition in private practice never really stacked up. The available pay per hour worked is, even at the most profitable firms, paltry by comparison with some alternative career paths. The trade-off was the addition of job satisfaction – intellectual, emotional, proprietorial. You could aspire to own a real piece of something special, and enjoy the benefits that went wit h it. These included loads of social status and a soft landing at the back end of your career – a leisurely slide out with a corner office and some board seats, supported by the next generation of partners who were in a carriage further back on the same perpetual train.

It became noticeable by the early 90s that this system had an inbuilt defect, due to the lawyer’s natural imperative to think myopically. The spectacle of ageing partners living off the fat for years after their prime became rapidly annoying and ultimately intolerable for the young Turks. Firms responded by, first, implementing a gracefully staged slide down the equity pole. This quickly escalated into an entrenched “up and out” philosophy throughout the profession which dictates that every partner will progress upwards in power and profitability until they can go no higher; and then they are taken out the back and shot.

It’s a classically human mode of organisation. Human, but not humane. Law firms have accepted that they are not places for the faint hearted, which might be okay if the slices of pie had gotten bigger to compensate for the loss of long term job security. But it hasn’t. Partners still derive all their income during their stay at the firm; they have no access to capital gain and no opportunity to cash out (unless they float the firm). And their incomes, while still high, haven’t climbed in the exponential way that, for example, public company CEOs’ salaries have.

At the same time as finding themselves participating in what is now quite literally a rat race, partners have progressively given up most of their traditional role. Driven by the two complementary theories that “good lawyers make bad managers” and “partners should stick to their knitting”, the era of “professional management” in law firms has arisen and is now firmly in control. Whether or not the guy (yes, it’s a guy) at the top is or isn’t a lawyer, there is a phalanx of COOs, CFOs, HR, BD and KM Directors in complete charge of every aspect of the management and administration of the firm.

The partner’s role is now reduced to this – ensure that (a) you and every member of your team/cell/unit has the requisite number of chargeable hours on their timesheet every day; and (b) the fees under your “control” (however that’s measured) are adequate to justify your continued progression up the greasy pole. How you achieve that is not so centrally controlled, but the consequences of failure certainly are. Pressure? Yeah, just a bit.

It’s efficient, definitely. But for the partner in the trenches, is it what you bargained for? I’d argue that, if you have no real say over hiring, firing, remuneration or progression, and you don’t frequently participate in an open forum with your partners to talk about your business in whatever terms and on whatever agenda you choose, then you are an owner in nothing but name. It shouldn’t be a huge surprise that not everyone wants to be you anymore.

Will we see a day when a group of corporate lawyers/accountants assemble together and simply say to partners “give us a bigger slice of the pie or we’ll leave and your firm will disintegrate”?

Send the Firm Spy your news and views!

A few weeks ago we reported that Marque Lawyers were advertising a position for a seasonal clerkship. The ad was written by Michael Bradley; the former Managing Partner of Gadens who left the firm to go it alone, later starting Marque Lawyers.

Applicants were asked to submit an original piece of writing, no longer than 500 words on the topic “Humanity in the nth degree”.

Ludicrously, the application also provided “ If you include the word “jazzy” in your piece without being too obvious about it, you get bonus points”.

Applications were due yesterday and so as not to prejudice law students clamouring for one of the few clerkships presently on offer, we decided to wait until today to publish the Firm Spy’s application.

HUMANITY IN THE NTH DEGREE

By Firm Spy

Willard Christopher Smith probably never anticipated the fame, wealth and international adoration to which he would later become accustomed, as he sat ‘beat-boxing’ with his mate on a dangerous Philadelphian street corner in the late 1980’s. Much like his rapper buddy, Smith was probably worried about his next meal and concerned about the attention of increasingly curious cops.

But luck is an incredible thing and at some point in 1989, lady luck visited Will Smith on that dangerous street corner. What followed was the kind of ascension to fame and notoriety traditionally reserved for those with a royal birthright.

It all started with Smith’s role as the protagonist of the American cult TV show The Fresh Prince of Bel Air; broadcast on NBC and synducated internationally from 10/10/1990 to 20/05/1996. A total of 148 episodes were produced over six seasons.

who the hell is this guy?

But Will Smith’s success on the Fresh Prince would soon be dwarfed by his international acclaim as a rapper and actor. After leading roles in Bad Boys, I Am Legend, Hancock and many others Newsweek coined Will Smith ‘the most powerful actor on the planet’. Ironically, Smith is reported to be presently filimg The Last Pharaoh; something he may very well be.

It is great that Will Smith is now living large, but what about his poor rapping brother who beatboxed his lungs out on the same Philadelphian street corner all those years ago? What happened to him?

Alas, the ties of ‘brotherhood’ forged in these early, perilous years were not soon forgotten by Smith. This brotherhood, analogous to a modern day law firm partnership, was a very powerful thing. Smith decided to ‘split the profits’ by assisting his friend establish his own famous profile.

He landed his mate Jeffrey a recurring role on the Fresh Prince. Smith then thought ‘why dont we try to build a rapping partnership?’ And so, the iconic rapping partnership DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince was born. The unforgettable single Boom Shake The Room reached number 1 across the world, including here in Australia and together they became rapping royalty.

But while Smith then made a successful foray into acting, what happened to DJ Jazzy Jeff? What happened to this (rapping) partnership?

Well, on the back of the very limited success of Boom Shake The Room, DJ Jazzy Jeff apparently overestimated the strength of his rappng talents and his notoriety. He decided to go it alone. Very soon after making this bold decision to de-equitize and cash-out his partnership share with Smith, DJ Jazzy Jeff descended into obscurity. Jeffrey Townes is virtually unknown today and has none of the wealth of his former partner Will Smith.

The demise of Jazzy Jeff’s career is a fitting account of how humans, when placed in the “nth degree” of fame and fortune, can overestimate their own ability and hoodwink the partners who helped them achieve that fame and fortune in exchange for a life of hardship and obscurity.

Seasonal clerks can learn from this.

Firm Spy.

Send the Firm Spy your news and views!

The following advertisement was recently placed on the UTS Law Students’ Society website:

MARQUE LAWYERS - SEEKING A SUMMER CLERK

Hello second-last-year law student,

Marque Lawyers here.  If you haven’t heard of us, your life probably feels a little empty of meaning but

WANKER

we can fix that. The equation is simple enough.  You want a summer clerkship (partly as a first step in your legal career but mostly for bragging rights on campus) and we want some entertainment over summer.

We only want one summer clerk.  Avoids all that pathetic adolescent angst-driven rivalry between clerks, and we can focus our practical jokes on one target for a couple of months.  And yet we are a proper law firm and the Marque Clerk will be doing proper legal work while recovering from our Christmas party.  The dilemma for us is how to select the Marque Clerk, after all with only one clerk we don’t want a dud.

So, unbound as we here at Marque are by convention and good taste, we have decided to launch a competition and you’re invited to have a go.  It’s quite simple – all you need to do is write something really exceptionally good, submit it then sit back and wait.

The rules:

1. You must submit by email a piece of your own (not your mother’s, and we have software that can tell the difference) original writing on the topic “Humanity in the nth degree”.  Choose a subject like Kyle, Kim Jong Il, Dick Cheney or some other exemplar(s) of human behaviour taken to a logical extreme, and discuss whatever you like about it.

2. You must stop writing at 500 words because that’s when we’ll stop reading.

3. If you include the word “jazzy” in your piece without being too obvious about it, you get bonus points.

4. Send your email to hireme@marquelawyers.com.au by 7 September 2009.

5. We will read all entries unless there are too many in which case we won’t, but that seems unlikely.

6. We will select the 15 or so entries we liked the most, which will probably be because they were entertaining and well written and not because they were accompanied by promises of home-cooked food.

7. We will interview whoever wrote those pieces and, from that group, select our summer clerk.

Easy, really.  Your one chance to use your creative talents to jump the queue of university medallists and score the most coveted legal role in Christendom, at the only law firm in the world brave enough to use the term “Spice Girls” on its website.

Bring it on.

Michael Bradley

Managing Partner

Stay tuned for the Firm Spy’s application for the coveted clerkship position.

Send the Firm Spy your news and views!

Michael Bradley, managing partner of Marque Lawyers, has come a long way in two short years. Back in 2007, Bradley gave some very insightful advice to prospective seasonal clerks:

1) If you have a personality, put it on the [application] page in some way. If you don’t, borrow someone else’s.

2) Buy a very nice suit. Polish your shoes. Learn how to tie a tie properly. Put your skirt on the right way round. Don’t wear your father’s clothes. Stay away from smoky pubs until the interviews are over.

3) Imagine every interviewer in their underwear.

Yesterday, in an article profiling the need for lawyers with a ‘commercial’ focus in the current economic climate,

corporate attire for a bottom-feeder

I’ve always placed a pretty high value on what I would call ‘real world’ experience. One thing I would always like to see in a CV is that someone had an actual job … a job in the real world … I think the more senior you are the more important it gets to have exposure to the business world

Of course, this ‘real world” experience wasn’t an employment requirement as recently as February, when Bradley advertised a position for:

somebody to fill the massive gap at the bottom of our food-chain.

If you’re like us here, you’re probably wondering how ‘massive’ the gap can be at the bottom of the food-chain of a firm boasting a total of 7 partners. Nevertheless, Bradley et al required potential candidates to have a law degree and be:

desperate to take on all manner of tasks delegated to them … [and to recognise that] in this market, any job is a good job.

Nothing about good suits, polished shoes, naked interviewers or ‘real world’ experience here! So what’s an applicant to do with all this conflicting, but incredibly pertinent advice?  We suggest that all applicants wanting a ‘good job’ at Marque Lawyers follow the Firm Spy’s advice:

• borrow someone’s personality;
• borrow your dad’s suit (or mum’s skirt);
• wear no tie;
• wear your Dunlop Volleys;
• chain smoke immediately prior to the interview;
• do not (under any circumstances) imagine the interviewer in their underwear; and
• always remember that, even in this market, you’re entitled to expect that after several long years of university, a job description other than professional food-chain bottom-feeding lay in wait.

On second thought, perhaps don’t.  Send the Firm Spy your news and views!

With our friends at Lawyers Weakly giving some timely advice to aspiring seasonal clerks earlier in the week, we thought it would be a fantastic idea to publish our favorite advice for prospective clerks. Back in 2007, Gadens Managing Partner Michael Bradley had the following advice for aspiring seasonal clerks:

Dear Summer Clerkship-Desiring Desperado,

As you prepare yourself mentally and emotionally for the next few months of horror, in which you will:

* try to make yourself sound interesting, enterprising, broad-minded, life-experienced, mature, clever and

imagine me in my underwear!

just a little bit wacky in your application form;

* agonise over whether to include a photo of yourself looking gorgeous/cute/professional/drunk or just hope that your name sounds good-looking;

* debate with your friends over which firms should be applied to based on the hopelessly inadequate and entirely incorrect gossip you’ve heard about them;

* sit glumly in the front window at home waiting for the post that never comes;

* sit glumly in the common room at law school while people you hate (more than you used to) discuss their interviews in loud voices;

* try to find ways to describe yourself in interviews that will make you stand out more than a teapot and less than an axe-murderer;

* contemplate whether you could pass for an 18 year old once more and go to Schoolies instead of all this crap,

spare a thought for the poor law firms! There are a thousand eager beavers just like you, all dedicated with a single mind to the holy grail of a summer clerkship with, who cares, any firm. And you’re all equally fabulous and we have no idea which one of you will turn out to be an al Qaeda sleeper (actually they make quite good clerks), or who will be the most fun at the Christmas party.

All I can say is I’m glad, again, that I’m not you. Three and a half years of uni and they make you go through this torture to get one of a small number of summer jobs that are considerably less fun than a week in Amsterdam, it’s just not fair. If you miss out, trust me it won’t be your fault. Unless you believe in karma, in which case it is your fault.

So, how to get through this awfulness with your sanity intact? I have three suggestions:

1. Do something to catch the casual job application reader’s attention. If you have a personality, put it on the page in some way. If you don’t, borrow someone else’s.

2. Buy a very nice suit. Polish your shoes. Learn how to tie a tie properly. Put your skirt on the right way round. Don’t wear your father’s clothes. Stay away from smoky pubs until the interviews are over.

3. Imagine every interviewer in their underwear. Try not to laugh out loud when you do.

Clerkship applications will close on 3 August 2007.

Good luck.

Michael Bradley
Managing Partner

We would also like to wish all prospective clerks the very best of luck. Send the Firm Spy your news and views!

Michael Bradley, the shoe-loving head of Marque Lawyers who once allegedly suggested that aspirant seasonal clerks should  imagine him in his underwear, is at it again.  Bradley appears to be seeking a talented young law graduate for Marque Lawyers.  However:

A Marques law clerk hard at work for Joe the IT guy.

candidates must be desperate to take on all … tasks delegated to them by …  Joe the IT guy who comes in when we break a computer.

In an effort to defray potential criticisms from graduates that Marque Lawyers should be offering juniors real legal work rather than delegated shit-kicking, the advertisement states matter-of-factly that:

in this market, any job is a good job.

Do you believe that this is a ‘good job’?

Send us your comments and news!