Memories

By Rich Janney

I make a lot of jokes about my time as a litigator and it probably gives the impression that I didn’t like it.  However, I spent seven years litigating for a good reason—I really did enjoy many parts of it and often overlook or fail to communicate some of the many fond memories I have. Whether it is the academic challenge of articulating case law in a persuasive manner, the thrill of winning a motion, or the satisfaction of having out-witted your opponent, there are a lot of aspects of being a lawyer that warrant celebration.  But there are other nuances to the practice that I found very rewarding, too; elements that I think get overlooked.  The following is a list of things I really enjoyed while I was a Chicago litigator:

1.      Judges with mild dementia

2.      Metal detectors at the Daley Center that wouldn’t go off even if I had a leg made out of solid steel

3.      Court calls where the case right in front of mine happens to be one of those mortgage foreclosure deals where the attorney brings eight million files up to the bench and spends the next six hours kicking people out of their houses

4.      Getting to know some really unhealthy people

5.      Putting my keys and cell phone in a dog dish before being allowed to pass through security at the Dirksen Building

6.      Waking up at 3 am with positive thoughts about all the things that could go right with my cases

7.      Martinis

8.      The 85-year-old sheriff’s deputy at the Daley Center who would simultaneously shush the courtroom and put one hand on his pistol, as if he was going to blow your head off if you didn’t shut up (no one called his bluff, though)

9.      The way a wool suit smells after you’ve panic-sweated through the jacket

10.    Putting endless hours into a draft of a brief and then getting it back from the partner covered in a bloodbath of red ink—so pretty!

11.   Technology, which has made it easier to file briefs right up until midnight and thus allowed associates to work right up until midnight, too

12.   Driving to a court call in a collar county and fantasizing about continuing to drive westward, then northward, then escaping to Canada

13.   The slovenly attorney who just can’t seem to get the whole shirt tucked into his pants

14.    Living a balanced, healthy life

15.    Counting the cigarette burns in the carpets in each courtroom in of the Daley Center

16.    Using carbon paper in the 21^st Century

17.    Redweld paper cuts

Those are just a few of my fond memories as a Chicago litigator.  I know, I know.  I probably sound like Garrison Keillor right now, idealizing my past into such a picturesque narrative.  But it’s just how I feel inside, and I had to get my insides out.  Please let me know if you have some fond experiences as an attorney that you would like to share and I’ll read them on the air.

I Will Name Him George

By Rich Janney

The other night I was feeling rather emotional, and I didn’t know why.  So I went home and put on my comfiest sweat pants and snuggled up on the couch with a box of wine.  Me and the box of wine watched The Bachelor and then had a good cry.  Well, at least I did.  I think the box was just leaking.

The next morning I woke up at 2pm and wondered what had made me so weepy.  Then I realized the cause: I had been accidentally taking my grandmother’s hormone replacement pills instead of my regular daily multi vitamin.  Although I was relieved that I’d figured out the mistake, it got me to thinking about other mistakes I had made in my life.

Namely, was it a mistake for me to have picked litigation as my practice area when I graduated from law school?  Maybe.  But more importantly, once I was two years into my career and realized that I hated litigation, could I have done anything about it? Truthfully, I don’t know.  Even with the benefit of hindsight, I am not optimistic that the switch can be made between practice areas once you’re firmly established in a particular group.  I think that is particularly true if the switch is to a totally unrelated area of law, like, for instance, leaving litigation to become a corporate transactional lawyer.

I have known—and continue to know—a lot of litigators who desire to leave their current practice area and explore ‘the other side of the fence’ and find a less stressful practice area, like estate planning or napping law.  I know very few people, however, who have actually made the switch from one side of the fence to the other—into or out of litigation.  Gleaning nuggets from those stories, though, I can still communicate a few common threads that I have observed.

If You Are Going to Attempt to Make the Switch, Do It as Early In Your Career as Possible

In the military, soldiers are trained that if they are ever faced with the prospect of being a prisoner of war, they should attempt an escape as early as possible.  The earlier in the ‘prisoner process’ you are, the more disorganized your opposition is; the less entrenched they are.  Chaos is your friend.  The longer you wait, the more layers of defense will be formed between you and your freedom.

Sad to say, but the prisoner of war analogy holds some merit in the practice of law.  Early in your career, the partners have not ‘gotten used’ to working with you.  They have not come to rely on you or perceived you as a necessary part of their machine.  They have not formed an emotional attachment to you (creepy as that may sound, it’s true).  Once you hear them saying, “I will name him George and I will hug him and pet him and squeeze him,” it’s all over for you.  If they want to hug and squeeze you, then they will form a lot of layers between you and the other practice areas.

All of the people I knew who made the switch did so before they hit their second year of practice.

Don’t Attempt to Make the Switch When Your Practice Group is Really Busy

I know that when you’re super busy, you are most motivated to make your escape, but this is when it would be the most difficult to do so.    This is, as you would imagine, when they need you the most. They will have their defenses on high alert and be ever vigilant to prevent any escapees from leaving the group.  You won’t be (mercifully) shot dead if you try to escape.  Rather, you will be put in solitary confinement.  The Box.

Do Attempt to Make the Switch When Your Target Practice Area is Really Busy

Makes sense.  When the group is really busy, they might just welcome some stranger who wandered into their camp at night.  Again, chaos is your friend in this situation.  Before you know it, you’re pulling the oars right alongside the rest of the team and sooner or later they just might come to think of you as one of their own. If you try to break in when everyone is slow, not only will the partners probably shoo you out, but the associates who are starved for hours will probably try to put a fork in your eye.

Now, all this presumes that you are at a big firm where there are multiple practice areas and a certain volume of work.  This was the situation with both of the people I know who switched, anyway.  It gets even more difficult at a small firm because it is literally harder to get away from a group.  They might be just down the hall or, god forbid, right next door.  It becomes exponentially harder (in my estimation) to make the switch between firms.  This probably requires a good contact at your target firm who is willing to take you on board as a newbie.  If you have such a contact then you don’t need to read this article.  Go make that call right now.

I certainly don’t want to ever offer discouraging words, but I do want to shed some light on the harsh realities of the market.  Truthfully, I hope that I am wrong about this and there are a lot of exceptions to this rule.  In fact, if you have such a story I would love to hear from you.

If I don’t hear from you, I will probably go home and curl up with a box of wine.  I have already named him “George.”

Lateral Partner Glop

By Rich Janney

Lawyers are very good at dealing with slimy gray glop.

I should probably clarify.

What I mean, what I meant to say, is that attorneys, metaphorically speaking, are good at dealing with vague, amorphous situations—slimy gray glop.  That’s kind of what they get paid to do.  Attorneys are given a vague set of facts, try to plug those facts into a set of ambiguous laws, devote a vast amount of time and resources to the problem, and distill this gray glop down into clear answers for their clients.  These clear answers can be in the form of a persuasive brief for the court, a memo clarifying the regulatory requirements on a particular deal, or explaining a way to die without having to give all your money to the IRS.  What have you.  You turn slimy glop into a delicious candy bar (or something like that—you can choose your own metaphor, but I have chosen a candy bar as mine).

But as you know, this is not an easy process.  Your clients bring you barrels and barrels of this slimy oozy glop (if you’re lucky) because, well, they can’t make any sense out of it. Can you help?  Of course you can.  You are smart and resourceful.  You are experienced.  After you get over a wave of cold sweats, a nauseous stomach, and the feeling that this is an insurmountable problem with which you have very little time to solve it, you get to work.  You roll the barrels of glop into the staging area of your firm, hit the big red button on the wall, and back up.  The claxon sounds, the red light flashes, and hordes of legal oompa loompas are released from their cages and start ripping the lids off these barrels like chimpanzees high on PCP.  Per your directives—which you are giving from atop a chair with a megaphone—the oompa loompas scoop the glop out into buckets which are then passed, hand over hand, down a line and fed into a machine that runs continuously for days, sometimes weeks, sometimes months, until finally you and your team have distilled the glop into something understandable and useful—a metaphorical box of Willie Wonka Candy Bars which you send back to your client (with an invoice).  The next day it starts all over again (if you’re lucky) when your very pleased client sends you even more barrels to process.

Point being that you, as an attorney, are a master of the barrel of slimy gray slop.

And yet, paradoxically, attorneys are almost paralyzed by fear of the slimy gray glop when it comes to managing their own careers.  You don’t like ambiguity here, in the career department.  But gray glop seeps in eventually. You have spent your career working diligently on problems for an ever growing roster of clients.  One day you realize that you have actually built up a rather impressive book of business.  However, over time you have come to realize that his book of business, these clients, might be better served at another firm.  You may need to find a firm whose rates have not ballooned sky high, or a firm that has the geographic reach to help serve your national or international clients, or a firm that has a deeper bench in the relevant practice areas sought by your clients.  But how do you actually MOVE your clients from one firm to another? 

Here’s where the gray glop comes into play because it’s a process riddled with ambiguities.  Are those people you do work for truly YOUR clients?  I mean, do they consider YOU their attorney?  Would they MOVE their business to ANOTHER FIRM solely because you moved to that firm?  HOW MUCH money would that business be worth, if it actually did move with you?  Why do I keep writing in ALL CAPS?  And since, due to your fiduciary obligations to your partners, you are not allowed to ask these questions point blank to your clients, it makes it very difficult to make any tangible claims about what you could bring to a new firm.  How can you solidify all this mess so that you can have intelligent discussions with your potential future partners?

Kinda makes you want to just forget about the whole thing, doesn’t it?

But you can’t forget about it.  This is your career, your future.  You may be at a firm where every step of building up this book of business has been a blood thirsty Machiavellian snake pit with a competitive atmosphere so toxic that your clients are suffering as a result.  You may be at a firm that has built up an infrastructure that you don’t need (like an office on Pitcairn Island) which is causing your rates to skyrocket.  Maybe your clients need an office on Pitcairn Island, but your current firm doesn’t have one.  Whatever the reason, you gotta go somewhere else.  For you.  For the clients.  For the oompa loompas.

So let us help you make sense of this glop. 

What you need to put together is a business plan, a strategic plan.  A what?  What does he mean, “A business plan?”  What do you mean, “What does he mean?”  I mean you need to draft a document that tells people what you do, who you do it for, how much it is worth, why you think clients would follow you to a new firm, and how you plan to continue to develop new business wherever you end up.  This plan is the mechanism that will help you and your target firms clarify all this nasty gray glop to make the process as clear and tangible as possible.  This, your business plan, is your oompa loompa-candy-bar-making machine.  In it, you need to articulate what kind of platform you’ll need to continue to do work for you clients.  You’ll need to state what kind of billing rate you need to retain these clients (knowing that this might price you out of some places).  You’ll need to spell out for the reader who your contacts are and how you think you could get them to give you business.  It’ll probably end up being about 3-5 pages.  Maybe more.  Maybe less.

Sounds easy, right?  It is and it isn’t.  In theory it’s easy, but once you actually sit down to try and write this thing, you may think that it would be preferable to lick the public toilets at Union Station.  But trust me; this will be easier than licking a toilet.  Follow me.

First, Tell Them Who You Are

Seriously.  Tell them a little about yourself.  I mean, what’s your expertise?  How long have you been doing it?  What’s your professional background?  You can even title this section, “Professional Background” if you like.  Here you can also list your representative matters to give them a flavor of the depth of your experience.

Second, Tell Them Who Your Clients Are, How They Became Your Clients, And How Long You’ve Been Doing Work For Them

Sounds simple enough, and it is.  Not only can you spell out who the clients are, but you can and should use this section to explain the relationships you have at each client.  “Skip Buffpanel was a partner of mine before he went in-house to become the General Counsel at Mordecai’s House of Peanuts.  When the company made the decision to initiate an IPO (Initial Peanut Offering), Skip requested that I lead the legal team during the process.”  Or, highlight your marketing successes that led to a new client.  Stuff like that.

Next, Tell Them How Much You Have Collected Annually From Your Clients

They love this part.

Then, Tell Them Why You Need To Find A New Firm

This is, as you would expect, a very important component of your business plan.  This is where you let them know that your billing rate has increased too much.  This is where you tell them that you have a client that needs a legal expertise that your firm just doesn’t have.  This is where you tell them that your client needs a firm with an office on Pitcairn Island (if it needs one)(I finally Googled Pitcairn Island—it’s in the South Pacific and apparently its bees produce very good honey).  These details will be crucial for your target firms to decide at the outset if it makes any sense for you to have a conversation with them. 

Now Tell Them Why You Think Your Clients Will Come With You

This is really tough.  Because of your fiduciary duties to your current partners, you cannot just tell your clients that you are thinking of leaving and then ask if they would come with you to a new firm.  Of course, if they bring it up first then you’re golden.  If that were to happen, then you can say that “Skip Buffpanel told me that, although he is very pleased with the legal work I provide, his CEO has indicated that $1500/hr is too much to pay in legal fees and the company will be forced to find new representation if a better rate cannot be established.  Mr. Buffpanel encouraged me to find a firm with better rates so that he can continue to work with me.”  But if you are not lucky enough to have that clear commitment, you can still articulate why you think they would come.  “I have been given very strong indications that The International Glitter Mitten Company is not pleased with the firm they use for their real estate deals.  At the last client meeting, the CEO, Ellen Boozelpumper, said that she would very much like it if I were at a firm with a strong real estate presence since she is already very happy with the corporate work I provide for her company.”

Tell Them How You Plan to Market Clients In The Future

I find that this section is almost the hardest.  Partly because I think it feels so intuitively weird to some people.  It’s weird because you really have to spell out who you know, how you know them, and how you would be able to get work from them.  I guess it’s weird because it forces you to de-mystify yourself.  You may have to explain that you are the nephew of a prominent hedge fund owner and you see Uncle Bugnuts every year at the family re-u.  At past reunions, he has said he is paying “close attention to my legal career” and that he “is thinking about giving me some fund formation work.”

And, beyond explaining why you think Uncle Bugnuts will give you work, you need to also explain how you intend to market yourself, how you’ll network, and then articulate some concrete marketing steps you plan to take in the next 6 to 12 months.  Tell them events you plan to attend, contacts you will try to make, and meetings you will try to achieve.

Finally, Tell Them How Much All This Is Worth

Let’s face it; this is the thing that will get the most attention.  You now have to articulate how much revenue your various clients will generate, if they come with you.  It’s fairly easy to estimate how much your existing clients will be worth in the future since you can cite to a history of collections.  It’s trickier to do so with a client or piece of work that isn’t yet yours.  But you still must break down the hours and rates to come up with estimates for the new work.  If I had one piece of advice on this subject, it is to be conservative with this number.  I know you’ll get far more meetings if you say you have a million in business, but if you fall short of the mark in your first year of work, things aren’t going to be so great.  Now, I’m all for optimism and “if-you-build-it-they-will-come” mentality, just not here.  Don’t aim low, by any means, but don’t get crazy either.

Hopefully, this will help shed some light on how to make sense of this amorphous chapter in your career.  Nothing is ever easy, but the business plan will at least help you solidify some of the concepts and ideas that might be swimming around in your head. And that is pretty much all I have to say about the gray glop of moving your business from one firm to another.  Therefore, I’m going to go draw an oompa loompa for the top of the article now.  Unless I decide it’s too hard to draw, in which case I am going to draw a barrel of gray glop.  At this point you know more than I do which way I decided.