The Summer 2019 ABTL-LA Report newsletter focuses on civility with an articles by Robin Meadow, Justice Currey and Judge Brazile, PJ Edmon and Judge Jessner, Judge Kuhl, Judge Bacigalupo, Magistrate Judge Segal, etc. You get the picture. In short, we all need to read this. (Shout-out to the ABTL Report Editors Robin Meadow (GMSR) and John Querio (H&L) for such an important issue.)Also from today's Wall Street Journal, a couple Letters to the Editor of note:
“The Flip Side of Making Partner” (Exchange, Aug. 10) describes the loss of loyalty, the globalization of many firms and the sales-oriented nature of promotions and pay. What it does not address is what enabled this change to happen. Decades ago, law firms were organized as true partnerships, with the personal assets of partners serving as collateral for the obligations of the firm. If one partner created a big liability, these personal assets were at risk. Partners valued prudence and loyalty in their colleagues.
The creation of a new legal form in the 1970s, the Limited Liability Company (LLC), enabled firms to be owned and run like a partnership, but without risk to the personal assets of the partners. It proved irresistible. Sales became more important than prudence in determining hiring, promotions and pay. As those hired under the new ethos became the majority in the partnership, the old culture vanished. Large-scale law-firm mergers became possible because there was a simple postmerger metric of success: sales. The LLC enabled firms to become global and compete for enticing global business by adding partners from faraway places one didn’t really know well enough to trust with one’s personal assets. Designing systems where there is no personal downside and lots of upside has predictable consequences, many cultural, ones not just restricted to LLCs and law firms.
Lynn Feldman
After making partner in a well-known Washington, D.C., law firm, I received a phone call from a headhunter seeking to recruit me to join another law firm. I responded to the solicitation by saying: “I guess you didn’t know that I am a partner here now and, of course, won’t be leaving.” When he finished laughing, he said he could “dine out” on that answer for months. While I considered a partnership agreement analogous to a marriage contract, the world had moved on, both for law firms and marital relationships. I had wanted to be a lawyer since I was 13 years old, during the height of the civil-rights movement. Law was a profession and I was eager to earn my J.D.
Today, when asked, I discourage young people from going to law school unless they recognize and accept one painful (for me) truth: Law is no longer a profession; it is first and foremost a business.
Lynda Zengerle
Lynn Feldman
After making partner in a well-known Washington, D.C., law firm, I received a phone call from a headhunter seeking to recruit me to join another law firm. I responded to the solicitation by saying: “I guess you didn’t know that I am a partner here now and, of course, won’t be leaving.” When he finished laughing, he said he could “dine out” on that answer for months. While I considered a partnership agreement analogous to a marriage contract, the world had moved on, both for law firms and marital relationships. I had wanted to be a lawyer since I was 13 years old, during the height of the civil-rights movement. Law was a profession and I was eager to earn my J.D.
Today, when asked, I discourage young people from going to law school unless they recognize and accept one painful (for me) truth: Law is no longer a profession; it is first and foremost a business.
Lynda Zengerle
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