An Insider's Guide to Law Firm Land: Tales on How to Become a Happy and Successful Lawyer

By Scott Watkins

An Insider's Guide to Law Firm Land: Tales on How to Become a Happy and Successful Lawyer is an engaging, personal mentorship book detailing

how lawyers can achieve a happy and successful career in private practice law firms.

This honest, captivating series of true tales offers a wealth of advice no one gave you in law schoo

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hunter Marcus Consulting, LLC
• Release date: Mar 14, 2022
• ISBN: 9798985803822

Scott Watkins

Scott Watkins is a Shareholder at one of the largest law firms in the world. He received a BS in Electrical Engineering from Columbia University in 1989 and a JD from George Washington University in 1992. Focusing on emerging technologies, his career spans billion-dollar disputes over telephone infrastructure and fighter jet engines to social impact projects in alternative energy and law enforcement support. Scott's personal interest in mindfulness and self-growth led him to appreciate that while success alone can create an OK life, success balanced with happiness can create an exceptional life. A natural storyteller, Scott is passionate about sharing his personal stories to help lawyers enjoy a happy and successful career in law firms.

Book preview

    P A R T   I    

Pathways

One day Alice came to a fork in the road

and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree.

Which road do I take? she asked.

Where do you want to go? was his response.

I don’t know, Alice answered.

Then, said the cat, it doesn’t matter.

—Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

1

PRIVATE PRACTICE

IS A JOURNEY

It still seems like only yesterday that I graduated from law school. Bright-eyed and optimistic, like most young lawyers, I thought I knew it all. Can you blame me or any young lawyer for feeling that way? Starting salaries out of law school can be ten times higher than the national poverty level. Law firms charge hundreds of dollars per hour for their services—which makes young lawyers think they, as individuals, are worth hundreds of dollars an hour! It’s like an actor who hits it big and starts to believe their own press. I certainly believed it. I was looking forward to how I was destined to be a star in my profession.

It turns out, I had no idea what I had signed up for. So began my journey through a landscape at times so surreal that I call it Law Firm Land.

WHY WAS I SO COMPLETELY UNPREPARED?

Law schools may do a great job of teaching people to be lawyers, but they don’t focus on preparing them for the business of practicing law—referred to in the industry as private practice.

What’s the difference?

Being a lawyer is the art of applying legal skills in researching, investigating, drafting, negotiating, strategizing, advising, and arguing in an overall effort to achieve the best available result for whomever you represent. Every lawyer job, be it private practice, in-house counsel, the government, or the military, will draw on those skills.

Private practice is unique, as each of its lawyers is a commodity whose time is sold by the firm to the clients. Success in private practice requires mastering a different skill set—one that includes maximizing the value of that commodity, while also bringing in clients, and possibly taking on the responsibilities of Partner to run and expand the business.

Ultimately, the private-practice skill set is far more critical to long-term career success than the lawyer skill set. Why? Because in private practice, being a productive or great lawyer is a valuable asset early on, but later, that value diminishes in favor of private-practice skills that make firms bigger and more profitable. Attorneys who master these private-practice skills can rake in a small fortune.

On the flip side—and this is a painful truth—private-practice attorneys who fail to develop these private-practice skills will be out of a job by their fortieth birthday.

So, it’s vital to master the machinations of private practice. Yet law schools don’t teach these skills, and law-school graduates entering private practice have no idea what they just walked into. I know—I was once one of them. The few who happen to take the correct path can have it all as wealthy, powerful, and successful lawyers, and potentially make Partner. Those who take a wrong turn one too many times will be shown the exit.

It is usually after someone takes a wrong turn that I hear the knock on my door with a polite, Do you have a few minutes? More times than I can count in my three-decade career in private practice, a junior lawyer has sought my advice for navigating through unexpected troubles. I have been glad to give guidance, as I always considered it an honor when young lawyers viewed me as authentic, knowledgeable, and available enough to seek my counsel in the first place. They came to me with problems and uncertainties, and I gave them straight answers wrapped in a story or two.

I have been able to give guidance on how to navigate private practice because I have an uncommon diversity of experiences that few lawyers possess. Most lawyers don’t switch firms often. They tend to spend their career within the same type and size of firms (specialized boutique versus general practice, small versus big), and either make Partner quickly or don’t make it at all.

I differ from my colleagues because my career has taken me all over the place. I spent thirteen years in the Counsel ranks before advancing late in my career to Partner. I have held the positions of Law Clerk, Summer Associate, Associate, Special Counsel, Of Counsel, Partner, and Shareholder. Half my career was spent in small and midsize boutique firms, and the other half with two large general-practice firms on the American Lawyer magazine’s top 100 list (AM Law 100). I am currently a Shareholder at one of the largest law firms in the world.

The dynamics of every situation are unique, but, overall, the difficulties for any private-practice lawyer follow predictable patterns. It might be that you work twelve hours a day and still can’t meet your minimum requirements. Perhaps you’re generating the best work product you can, and yet your supervisor is never happy—maybe even screaming in your face over it. Sometimes you’re doing well, and the firm yanks all of your work away. The firm tells you you’re on a partnership track, but you never seem to make it. You have no idea how to bring in clients. The list goes on and on. No one who encounters such challenges is alone in their experience. I have the stories to prove it.

A caution about guidance by stories is to acknowledge we often learn not by success but by failure, tragedy, and hardship, and so my stories here often slant negative or critical as situations went wrong rather than right. So, when you read the stories that follow, you may think a lawyer’s journey is to accompany Dante through the nine circles of Hell. Certainly, there may be instances of that, but the profession is not one of fire and brimstone. I spent many years in supportive working environments in well-run organizations, in the company of good people working on challenging and rewarding matters. I also spent many years when the exact opposite was true. In both cases, there were good days and bad days. This book provides you the opportunity to put your finger on the scale to have more good days—and possibly even great days.

The approach is to recognize that a career in private practice is a journey. You can find much joy and reward if you happen to travel the path successfully. It’s also filled with obstacles that can make the journey unpleasant or derail you completely. I prefer the former, and I am here to help guide you past these obstacles to maximize your potential for a happy and successful career.

My stories are the basis of the advice I have given over and over to the dozens of young lawyers who have knocked on my door. It is the same advice that I would give my sons if either decided to become a lawyer. I would not let them go to law school unless they first read this book cover to cover.

I’ll show you pathways to reach Partner—and whether it’s actually a place you want to go. There are pathways for going elsewhere if that is what you desire. Law firms want what they want, but it’s your choice as to what you want to give. Ultimately, my goal is to help you stay in private practice for as long as you like, to exit smoothly if you want something else, and to avoid being pushed out at a time not of your choosing.

I could provide the core guidance for your journey in a few sentences, right here and right now. I don’t. Why? You wouldn’t believe me. As an attorney, I recognize that, before anyone accepts what I have to say, I must first make my case. The stories to follow in these pages are that case.

Like all stories, there are characters I encountered, whom I identify by whimsical names to protect privacy and maintain levity, but who may believe they see themselves in context and may not agree with or appreciate my characterizations. Everyone is the hero of their own story, and they may recall events different from the way I do. I can only say I call things as I saw them and do so in support of the lawyers of the future, without interest in debates with lawyers of the past.

So, take a seat, sit back, and relax. For I have some stories to tell.

• • •

2

THE JOURNEY BEGINS

Every journey starts somewhere. For a legal career in private practice, it’s your first job out of law school as an Associate.

Seeking a job out of law school is an early rite of passage. On-campus interviews, firm interviews, submitting resumes, being clever with options. Some interviews that went well and you thought you had in the bag. The ones that went sideways. Find your best option, take the offer. If you don’t get one, get creative, find the job. Start your legal career. I did it, along with 500 of my classmates and tens of thousands of other graduating law students, who all began the journey with their first job.

In this entire process, no one thinks about how or why this process exists. Why are law firms recruiting young talent in the first place? What are the needs of law firms? How do you—or any candidate—meet those needs? Stated more simply, Why do you have a job?

As fate would have it, I was given the answer before I knew the question existed.

It was a late summer day when I showed up at my firm for Day One of work as a lawyer. It was an unmitigated disaster.

The firm was a small, boutique intellectual-property practice in the suburbs of New York City. It was not my first choice, or even my fifteenth choice. With an engineering degree, a fairly high class ranking from an Ivy League undergraduate school, and solid grades in my top-twenty-five law school, I had higher aspirations for Big Law with the fancy offices, big salaries, and prestige.

Unfortunately, it was after the tail end of a recession, and several Big Law firm closures had the market flooded with applicants; first-year attorney jobs were not easy to come by. Many of my classmates graduated without any offers at all. Rumors were abundant of law-school graduates who, years after law school, were still without legal jobs.

For both my summers and post-law-school employment, this firm was the only meaningful offer I received. I won’t go as far as to say I was happy with what I had. I can say I knew I was fortunate to have it.

So, back to the unmitigated disaster.

I appeared at the firm in my new Men’s Wearhouse off-the-rack suit (a comical concept nowadays, when many Partners show up in ill-fitting jeans). Step one, I went looking for my first project and found The Boss (the sole Partner of the firm) chatting with the Head of Litigation (a non-partner Counsel).

The Head of Litigation was a wonderful man, whom I had supported over the previous two summers. The two of us had planned how we would be working together when I started full-time. After exchanges of welcomes and morning pleasantries, I asked the Head of Litigation what he wanted me to start work on. Before he could answer, The Boss said, You will be working with me.

I was in shock. I had joined the firm to work with the Head of Litigation, not The Boss. The Boss was a near-senior citizen who had turned to law late in life. I knew the firm’s other senior lawyers did not think highly of him, and I had found him extraordinarily difficult to work with. I did not want to be near him, and I did not want to practice his particular area of law.

The Head of Litigation—equally shocked—turned to The Boss to discuss it. The Boss turned to him and simply said, Come with me. The two walked into The Boss’s office, leaving me standing in the hallway. A few moments later, you could hear the arguing down the hallway.

I stood there for what seemed to be hours, although, later, the receptionist said it was about twenty minutes. Then the arguing suddenly went silent. The Head of Litigation emerged from The Boss’s office, walked up to me, and said I would be working with The Boss. I thanked him for trying and went to The Boss’s office for my first assignment.

With my first assignment in hand, I returned to my office, tossed my suit jacket on the guest chair, and slumped in my desk chair. The Boss wanted everyone wearing their suit jacket, and he would be grumpy if he saw my exposed shirt. Call it my first official act of defiance by symbolically presenting The Boss with the middle finger.

It was my first day—my first god-damned day—and I had sparked a fight, was put on work I had no interest in, and was working with someone whom I neither trusted nor respected.

Worse, I realized, with a sense of dread, that this was it. My entire life up until this point—every academic and professional engagement—came with a built-in end date. Didn’t like a teacher or summer job? The reset button could always be hit with the start of the next academic calendar. But not anymore. This was real life now. There was no automatic end. The work would last until my career took me to another job. Given how hard it was to find even this job, that meant this was going to be it for a long time.

Quite upset, I called my older brother. He had been working for many years as a public-relations executive in the sports industry. From the dinner table and other overheard conversations, I knew of his office torture-chamber stories. He would know what to do.

My brother listened and, on that Day One of my career, explained to me how the working world works.

My brother told me to realize that I had a job because The Boss had more work to do than he could handle. The Boss needed to delegate work to someone who would do it for him, in the way The Boss wanted it done, and without any headaches. The firm had hired me to provide this service. It was my job to do the work the way the firm wanted it done. Or the firm would find someone else who would.

Do the work the way the firm wanted it done, or the firm would find someone else who would.

We live in a world where an increasing portion of the population sees it as all about me. I had been making it all about me. What work I wanted to pursue. What work I didn’t want. Who I wanted to work with. Who I didn’t want to work with. My brother’s message was Get your head out of your ass and recognize that, in the working world, you make it all about The Boss. In the simplest terms, Make The Boss Happy.

It can be jarring to be confronted with the reality it’s actually all about your boss, or as we explore later, it’s really all about your client. The sooner you orient your thoughts toward that, the faster you will start to move on the path. Add enough speed, and, in time, you could be the boss, and then it really can be all about you.

• • •

3

THE DESTINATION

Just as every journey starts somewhere, there is a planned destination. In private practice, the planned destination is to make Partner. Partners are the owners of the firm; they make lots of money and have big offices, interesting work, and (the perception of) job security. It is the great aspiration of law students and young Associates alike. I know of no statistics on it, yet from personal experience, the overwhelming number of law students who enter private practice do so with the ambition to make Partner. For many, making Partner is an obsession, a consideration always active in some compartment of the mind that views every act and decision through a lens of whether it will support or damage their promotion-to-Partner prospects.

Staggeringly, most law students