How to Make the Right Partnership Decision: Achieving Clarity in Business Ventures

SUMMARY

In this article, we explore "the partnership dilemma" and how it can lead to a moment of clarity. This situation occurs when someone is considering becoming a partner in a law firm and is caught between wanting to take the next step professionally and the risks involved with such a move. There is the potential for great reward in the form of money, prestige, and a partnership title, but there is also the concern of the potential for personal and professional failure if the firm doesn't do well or if the partnership efforts, in general, don't pay off.


The first step in determining whether becoming a partner is a good fit is to figure out your goals and objectives in becoming a partner. It's important to be honest with yourself about why you want to become a partner: is it purely for the money, or are you looking to grow professionally and learn? Secondly, it's important to evaluate the firm you are considering joining: what type of work will you be doing, how much autonomy will you have over your work, and what are the firm's financials and current structure like? This will give you an idea of the risks associated with a partnership and whether it may be a good fit for you.

Once you have evaluated both yourself and the firm, you can make an informed decision about whether becoming a partner is the right move for you. From here, you will need to understand the implications of the partnership agreement and really evaluate whether the terms are fair and in line with your goals.

In conclusion, the decision to become a partner should not be taken lightly and requires careful consideration of both yourself and the firm. Taking the time to thoroughly evaluate all aspects of a potential partnership can lead to a moment of clarity that can make or break your professional career. Becoming a partner in a law firm requires a great deal of risk, but can also yield great rewards if done properly. Understanding the partnership dilemma, evaluating yourself and the firm, and understanding the implications of the partnership agreement are all key steps in making an informed decision about whether or not to become a partner.
 

QUESTIONS ANSWERED IN THIS ARTICLE

 

The Partnership Dilemma

One of the most difficult decisions a lawyer can make is whether to pursue a partnership at a law firm. On one hand, becoming a partner offers financial rewards and prestige; on the other, the cost of becoming a partner can be incredibly high. It is often a difficult and taxing process, and the outcome is rarely a certainty.
 

The Benefits of Partnership

For a lawyer considering a partnership, there are several advantages to doing so. Firstly, becoming a partner can bring a great deal of financial stability. Partners often have access to more lucrative clients, the ability to earn more money, and an increased level of job security. As a partner, the lawyer is in a more powerful position and has more influence in the firm than a non-partner.
 

The Challenges of Becoming a Partner

However, becoming a law partner also carries significant risks. The process of becoming a partner is often long, arduous, and expensive. Lawyers must prove their worth, staying late nights and taking on additional tasks to demonstrate their commitment. Additionally, the advancement process tends to be competitive and can often lead to interpersonal conflict.
 

The Costs of Partnership

The actual cost of becoming a partner can be staggering. A lawyer may need to pay a large sum of money to join the partnership. Moreover, depending on the size of the firm, this sum may need to be paid up front. If a lawyer is already working at the firm, then there is often an expectation that the lawyer will stay for a certain period of time after joining the partnership. This can take away the freedom that the lawyer had in the past, and may cause significant financial stress.
 

The Moment of Clarity

Considering the stakes involved in becoming a partner, it is essential that lawyers make an informed and confident decision. Weighing the benefits, risks, and costs of the decision is essential, in order to determine whether the partnership offer is truly desirable. Taking the time to reflect on the advantages and disadvantages can lead to a greater appreciation of the decision, and ultimately a much clearer outcome.

The Partnership Dilemma and the Moment of Clarity We see it all the time: A graduate of Yale or Stanford Law or wherever joins a highly regarded international law firm in New York City or Los Angeles. The lures are spectacular: Name brand clients known worldwide; Powerful senior partners, a few of which may even be media figures; back-up support staff to dream for -proofreaders, legal assistants, schedulers; plus fellow lawyers equally brilliant and success-driven. For all-work-and-no-play achievers, such an achievement is like landing in Heaven. All that hard work has paid off.
 

The panic, if it can be called that, sets in quickly.
You may not recognize the panic, or it may rest just beneath the surface of your conscious life. This panic is centered on the uncertainty of a young lawyer's life. The firm's standards may at times seem impossibly high. A typo on a document might send a pantheon of powerful partners into a fury. The hours can be long. A client might want something overnight. There are partners with no private life, spending all their working hours at the firm. There appear to be no benchmarks other than hours billed -and the more hours the better. Stories circulate, such as: At X Firm, one senior associate billed 3,100 hours his eighth year and another billed 2,950, the associate with the most billed hours making partner and the other lawyer forced to leave the firm. Such a story may be merely apocryphal but serves to highlight the overriding importance of billable hours. In this type of environment, a lawyer cannot help but ask him- or herself the following questions:

1. Am I cutting it? And just what is required to 'cut it.?' Am I up to this and can I keep it up for 30 years?
2. Do some partners prefer working with certain associates? If so, what are these associates doing that I'm not?
3. Which types of practice and which partners seem to hold the most power?
4. Which partner might become my mentor? Will any partner ever take on this role with me? How do I get the process rolling?
5. Which associates seem to be making the most headway?
6. And if certain associates do seem to be making more headway, why is this happening? What are they doing that I'm not doing? Or, what am I doing wrong?
7. How can I stand out from the other associates without causing some sort of backlash from them?
8. Finally, how long will it take me to make partner? What are my chances? Who is likely to be my primary competition?

Metaphorically Moving From Hell to Heaven
Being an associate in a large firm can be pleasant when a collegial atmosphere exists nurtured by partners, associates, support staff and clients. If an attorney lands in a practice area which he or she finds intellectually stimulating, so much the better. But even if the work situation is optimal, there remains doubt lying just below the surface, an angst that concerns the unknown future and the attorney's position in it. To be an associate is, in a sense, to always remain in a form to indenture to the firm's partners. This may well be tolerable through the first, say, four years, when the attorney is establishing work habits and developing skills to last a life time. But such indentured status begins to grow somewhat stale as the typical associate begins to run a docket of cases with minimal partner supervision. Attorneys typically report what can only be described as a moment of 'clarity' somewhere between the end of their third and beginning of their sixth years.

The Moment of Clarity
The attorney has begun to realize that the senior partners he or she works with every day are not gods, and that most of the work is routine and does not require a brilliant, break-through intellectual analysis. In short, the romance is gone. What is left is a future stretching into decades filled with 'more of the same.' The attorney realizes that he or she is just as competent as everyone else but has flaws. Perhaps these flaws have to do with social-interaction skills. Perhaps there is a lack of connection with certain partners that may prove to be harmful. Perhaps the attorney finds it impossible to bring in new business. Perhaps there is a relationship with another associate that causes daily, gnawing resentment. What the Moment of Clarity amounts to is a combination of summing up one's experience in the firm and a simultaneous dropping away of the veils of expectation, idealization, hope and promise. One's life and one's position in the firm is seen simply and starkly for what it is.

The Search for Legal Nirvana
What rests behind this Moment of Clarity is the contrast between what one's life has become and what an individual seeks, which is complete control over one's life. Such freedom, if there is indeed such a state, is instinctively sought, and this complete freedom is envisioned by most associates as earning a partnership in a big firm. Getting a partnership offer is the problem. There are no rules to follow, no G.P.A. to be achieved, not LSAT to pass. Instead, political skills, sheer determination and billable hours come into play. It may seem unfair that having run the gauntlet of high school grades, SAT, college grades, LSAT, law school G.P.A., law review, federal clerkship, and acceptance by a name-brand firm, the battle begins with new rules not cast in stone. These rules, as undefined as they are, seem to call upon one's ability to form bonds and deflect criticism. They seem to involve outworking everyone else. They seem to involve who can parlay enough family and other contacts into billable clients. And what does any of this have to do with being a good lawyer?!!

The problem with the associate's search for ways to make partner is that just running up the most billable hours is not enough. On the other hand, bringing in several million dollars of business and being able to keep at least nominal control of it would certainly guarantee a partnership -or, as a Plan B, the ability to move elsewhere with clients in tow. If one can achieve this, the associate's personality conflicts inside the firm, if any, become less important.

But What If A Lawyer Doesn't Want To Be A Rainmaker?
What then? Can one still make partner without bringing in clients? Yes. There are other ways. One can become an unrivaled expert in some narrow but revenue-producing corner of the law. Clients with specific types of problems will be drawn to the firm because it has a reputation for solving them. The associate with expertise in this field will get the bulk of this new work or have an important say in how this work is conducted. One can bill more hours than his or her competition (other associates in the same class). One can get visibility outside the firm by serving on commissions and boards. One can marry the managing partner's daughter or son. One can watch as other associates jump ship and hope that he or she will be the last one standing at the end of eight or so years.

Conclusion
Okay, so you've got big-time angst. You don't know what to do. Here's a solution. Let the situation play out. The worst that can happen is that you must leave big-firm life and try for happiness at a medium-sized firm. You might not make partner or find happiness there either, but you are more likely to keep your job and develop a life outside the firm. In such a scenario, the trajectory of your life is dictated for you by outside forces. Not a pleasant thought. On the other hand, everyone's life is dictated by outside forces, even those who stayed behind at your prior firm and made partner. For instance, they will die at a moment not likely to be of their own choosing. In the meanwhile there will be deaths in the family, divorces, possible disappointments with children and other unpleasantness. The key is to be content with a combination of what you have achieved and what is forced upon you. Partnerships are not at the center of such considerations. You only think they are if you allow the culture of the law firm to dominate your thinking. It is in the Moment of Clarity that you can gain a new perspective. Happiness won't likely be the result, but a sense of calm and acceptance will make the rest of your life that much better.