Small Law Firms, Solo Practitioners

All Lawyers Are Not Created Equal

Your reputation is your personal responsibility, no one else's. Guard it zealously.

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Keith Lee

Keith Lee

Last week, I wrote about how being a lawyer is a sales job. The gist of the post is that networking and relationships are the foundation for success for many lawyers, especially those in small firms.

Here’s the funny thing about clients — they’re often strangers. Lawyers in small firms often do not have a ready stable of institutional, corporate clients that they can rely on for regular, reoccurring work. Instead, they must constantly be on the hunt for new clients and work. It’s how they keep their doors open.

If you’re not comfortable with taking the time to meet new people and becoming adept at small talk, then your ability to develop client relationships will never amount to much.

It’s all about “who you know.” Do you know the right people? Do you take the time to build relationships? Are you an active member in your local bar association?

Bar associations are essentially a lawyer’s professional community. And as I have noted before, if you invest in your community, your community will invest in you. By joining a local bar association and dedicating real time and effort to it, you can begin to develop the relationships you need in order to thrive as a small-firm practitioner.

But another consideration are the relationships you don’t want. Not all lawyers are created equal. It very quickly gets around a tight-knit Bar about lawyers you want to avoid. Lawyers who are assholes. Lawyers who are unethical or rude. This is often a tough thing for new lawyers to get a read on.

If a brand new lawyer is lucky enough to be gainfully employed in a law firm, they’re likely on their knees, thanking the heavens that they’ll be able to make a small dent in their student loan debt while keeping a roof over their head. Beggars can’t be choosers.

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Yet what happens in these situations is that a new lawyer will get stuck with a law firm or lawyer that has a bad reputation. But because they’re a new lawyer, and don’t know any better, they take the job and run with it. Which ends up with new associates going to message boards (or emailing me) with complaints like:

I’ve been at a small firm for a year, right out of law school. Since then, I’ve been working 10-hour days, every day, including most weekends. My boss is a jerk, barely reviews my work product, and is quick to blame everyone else in the office for failures and or mistakes, most of which are frankly due to the fact that he’s never around or available. I’ve gotten to know some lawyers in town and I’ve learned that my boss has a reputation for grinding through new associates. They almost all inevitably leave the firm. I’ve also heard some questionable things (ethically) about how he practices. Should I stay at the firm (I’ve only been here a year)? Or should I look for something else?

Employed is (usually) better than not employed. And even in a bad situation, you can still learn something. But at a certain point, you’re being taken advantage of and developing a negative reputation by association. You’re falling victim to a negative halo effect.

You need to take care of yourself and make sure your reputation is not tarnished. While gainful employment is preferred, you don’t want to be known as someone who is taken advantage of or seen as complicit in questionable ethical activities. Like Warren Buffett said, “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.”

Your reputation is your personal responsibility, no one else’s. Guard it zealously.

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Keith Lee practices law at Hamer Law Group, LLC in Birmingham, Alabama. He writes about professional development, the law, the universe, and everything at Associate’s Mind. He is also the author of The Marble and The Sculptor: From Law School To Law Practice (affiliate link), published by the ABA. You can reach him at keith.lee@hamerlawgroup.com or on Twitter at @associatesmind.

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