Do You Really Want to be a Partner In THAT Firm?

While climbing the ladder to partnership in your current firm is often the default method of promotion, sometimes an opportunity arises to accept a partnership in a new firm.

And although the temptation is to leap at partnership whenever, and wherever, it’s offered, sometimes that isn’t a wise choice for your long term prosperity.  In fact, more than at any other point in your career, ensuring a strategic, cultural and client alignment is critical as a move at this level can have a great impact on your practice and your clients’ perceptions of you.

But how can you tell, and what questions should you be asking to try and assess whether a firm is the right place to make the significant investment of your time and personal effort?

It’s a complicated process, but here are 5 key areas to spend a bit of time on.

Practice Areas

Finding the right practice mix is an essential component of partnership.

Is the firm a specialist focused only on your area, or are there a mix of different practices? Which is preferable based on your understanding of the industry and your practice?

If there are a mix of different areas, are they areas that are likely to complement and supplement yours, or are you essentially going to be a solitary island in the firm?

Make sure to dig in to every area that the firm practices in. We strongly suggest making some notes about the connections, opportunities (or otherwise) and potential competitions with the existing practice to see if you’ll have sufficient practical connection and support among your partners.

Cohesion and Cooperation

Having a perfect mix of practice areas won’t make a jot of difference to you if the partners are not on the same page when it comes to marketing, cross-selling and cooperation.

In truth, some firms are essentially a collection of independent practices run by “partners” in name only – the primary connection being that they work in the same building.

A true partnership uses the strength of each to build the others. This means that they should be as aligned as possible in terms of vision, direction and cooperation.

That might sound like a bit of a dream and, to some extent, it gets harder to find this kind of cohesion as a firm grows larger. It’s also very hard to pinpoint what you’re looking for because it can take many different forms.

So here’s our suggestion: if your practice is one which benefits greatly from other areas (such as litigation) look for a partnership where you get a sense of overwhelming cooperation and not one of competition. Are the partners more in it for each other or more in it for themselves?  On the other hand, if your practice thrives as a stand-alone you may be better off looking at a law firm which has more of a focus on rewarding star performers.

Depending on the size of the firm, to gauge what sort of firm you are speaking to you will have to speak with more than one partner. Ask for ways in which they currently work together, how they do so, and what you can expect in terms of support.

You might also like to enquire with former partners (if there are any) and find out what their thoughts are.

This is one of those areas where you need to take everything with a grain of salt – often people’s perspectives will be very different because of their different expectations and experiences. And importantly it is horses for courses – what works well for you may not work well for another partner.

Culture

We’ve written about culture before, so won’t go on about it too much here. Suffice it to say that finding a culture that suits your personality (and that of your team, if you’re taking them with you) is a critical piece of the puzzle.

Realistically, you’re only going to get a feeling for the culture of a place by spending time with the people there. This can be a difficult balance because you don’t want to annoy everyone by taking up a lot of time, but make sure you’re keeping an eye out for queues about culture fit during your discussions, interviews and meetings while you’re considering the firm.

It is also important to ensure you have a number of meetings in different settings – formal meetings as well as less formal ones over coffee or lunch/dinner. It will allow guards to come down and for you to get a real sense of the people you are getting into business with.

Stability and Growth

There is a big difference between going to join a firm of 30 years with 20 partners and joining a fairly new boot-strapped start-up.

Neither is necessarily better than the other in terms of opportunity, but how you’re going to feel on a day to day basis will be drastically different.

Stability takes many forms though, not just age and size.  Consider a firm’s recent history in these areas:

• Financial trajectory – are they growing, stable or diminishing in terms of revenue and profit? If there is financial pressure at the moment, is it bearable over the short term, and what are the plans to address it? Have they weathered a few economic cycles or is their success pinned to a continuing financial boom? Are a number of senior partners looking to “cash out” their equity?
• Human resources – is the firm growing, and if so at what rate? Is the growth organic due to increased work, or through acquisitions of teams or opening new offices? What does that growth mean in terms of stress or workload? Has there been a mass exodus recently? If so, why? Beyond just HR, what corporate services support structures are in place to support your practice?
• Practice Areas – related to the above, what are the firm’s plans in terms of its offering – is it full service already, does it have plans to add more in the future, or will it remain a boutique offering?

Depending on what “level” of partnership you’re aiming for, you might not have full transparency on all of these issues, but find out what you can and examine what the data tells you about the firm and its risk profile.

Decision Making

If you’re going to be a partner, then you’re going to be involved in decision making to some extent.

The questions are: what is the extent of your authority, and how are decisions made?

Some larger firms function with an executive team (say, 3-5 partners or senior staff) who make many of the day-to-day decisions. This avoids the need for a full partners’ meeting on every topic but can create tension if there isn’t an alignment of views (thus our comments above).

Other firms have partners meetings on every topic, which can create cumbersome decision making and restrict a firm’s agility.

In a smaller firm, decisions might be less formal and made more on a consensus basis.

In some national or international law firms, decisions are made out of head office. The office you are in may be considered a “satellite office” and therefore hold very little political weight. This is something to consider carefully when considering options in larger firms with national or international footprints.

Beyond the formal structure of decision making lies the reality of it. Is your potential firm basically just run by one powerful individual who nobody is prepared to argue with, or is it a real partnership of decision makers? Does the answer matter to you?

While you might think that, as a potentially junior partner, these aren’t issues you need to concern yourself with we can tell you from experience that frustration with the day-to-day decision making is a huge cause of tension for many senior lawyers.

In Short: Pay Attention to the Things that Matter

The good part is, making a wrong decision won’t likely to be fatal to your career.

However, it can create a lot of stress that might have been avoided if you had been prepared to work through a few more details before leaping in.

The best advice we can give you is this: make sure you know what matters to you going in to partnership, and that you’re satisfied in those areas.

Don’t be afraid to ask questions – after all, this step means you’re going into business with people. If you’re getting brushed off about issues that are important to you now, then imagine how things will go once you’re there.