by masque du pantsu » Sun May 06, 2018 3:46 pm
I generally agree with the above and of course there are differences between firms practices. But, i can add a few nuances from my experience in a transactional practice in NYC biglaw.
First, doing good work and working hard are baseline but alone they are not sufficient. You also need to have a good reputation, project confidence, and be a person that partners and clients like and trust. For these, there is a strong element of luck (more on that below).
At some point around fourth or fifth year, partners will start signaling to you that htey think you have the potential to be partner if you stick with it and play your cards right. Just before i left, I had hit the point where this started happening in my annual reviews, at departmental happy hours, and in private conversations. And for example, on the work part, I was working enough to bill between 2800 and 3300 every year i was there (which i am not proud of; it sucked and it mostly happened because i didn't know how to protect myself, always wanted to please people and never figured out how to say "no"). This wasn't the minimum you needed to be working but it's at least one data point.
But i said before there is a strong element of luck. On the more obvious side, it helps to be in a booming practice area, and it depends in any event on how many people are in line ahead of you. I was in a practice area that made at least one partner from the NY office every year, and my rank and the ranks above me were thinning VERY rapidly due to departures, and even then, i would still have been facing a good five to seven years of everything continuing to go well, continuing to work hard, and even starting to work even harder.
A couple of less-obvious things that depend on luck: First, doing good work. It's not enough to do good work, people have to KNOW that you do good work, i.e. you have a good reputation. People say this means you can make no mistakes, which is not true, obviously you can make mistakes. But you can't make the wrong mistake in front of hte wrong person or your reputation can be torpedoed. Everyone is going to make mistakes. You need to be lucky enough to not have the wrong mistakes happen in front of the wrong people.
Second, mentors. You need to work with people who not only can advise you but also give you opportunities to stretch yourself. Some people will say "hey i think you can handle this even though you've never done it, you go lead this negotiation and i'll only jump in if you need me", etc., whereas others will micromanage the shit out of you because they can't let go. You can learn a lot from both people, but you need to be able to connect with the right people at some point and convince them to trust you with important things so that you can stretch and grow and build a reputation as someone who can do the second-order tasks that you need to do well to be successful as a senior associate and partner. If you can do that early, you're far better off. You need to have ability obviously, but it's also luck whether you even get the chance.
Third, clients. If you do most of your work for a couple of clients and they stop doing deals, obviously that's not great.
On the book of business point, at least in my practice area, nobody who made partner ever had a book of business. Even junior partners who were first minted didn't really have a book of business; they had started participating in pitch meetings as mid-level to senior associates and continued to do so as junior partners but nobody harbored any illusions that it was them that had landed the relationship rather than the senior partner who was mentoring them. Rather, you were made partner based on the firm's view of your POTENTIAL to build a book, but junior partners often still acted like senior associates until they started learning how to disengage, leave the legal work to the associates and start focusing on partner things. You basically needed to have a "potential" book of business, i.e. the partners had to perceive that clients trusted and respected you and that they could see (i) handing off their own clients to you AND (ii) you having hte potential to start bringing in your own.
I used to absolutely sneer at 0Ls, law students or junior associates who said they hoped to become a partner, and it wasn't because it's a hard path. Rather, it's because until you start living the life, you really have no idea whether it's even something you should want. None of hte partners i worked for lived easy lives. When they made partner, they usually worked MORE, they're lives were more difficult than they were the year before. Nothing changed. It wasn't some light at teh end of a long tunnel where you had "made it" and could relax; in order to be happy doing it you either needed to live and breathe M&A or you needed to accept being deeply, deeply dissatisfied with your life. Like a law student says "I think i can make partner", my (internal) reaction was "you fucking fool," not because it's hard but really because of how much ignorance of reality the attitude shows. If you live and breathe it, great. Most of hte partners i worked for loved their job, and it showed. But there's no way to tell whether you'll be that person until you start doing it.
I generally agree with the above and of course there are differences between firms practices. But, i can add a few nuances from my experience in a transactional practice in NYC biglaw.
First, doing good work and working hard are baseline but alone they are not sufficient. You also need to have a good reputation, project confidence, and be a person that partners and clients like and trust. For these, there is a strong element of luck (more on that below).
At some point around fourth or fifth year, partners will start signaling to you that htey think you have the potential to be partner if you stick with it and play your cards right. Just before i left, I had hit the point where this started happening in my annual reviews, at departmental happy hours, and in private conversations. And for example, on the work part, I was working enough to bill between 2800 and 3300 every year i was there (which i am not proud of; it sucked and it mostly happened because i didn't know how to protect myself, always wanted to please people and never figured out how to say "no"). This wasn't the minimum you needed to be working but it's at least one data point.
But i said before there is a strong element of luck. On the more obvious side, it helps to be in a booming practice area, and it depends in any event on how many people are in line ahead of you. I was in a practice area that made at least one partner from the NY office every year, and my rank and the ranks above me were thinning VERY rapidly due to departures, and even then, i would still have been facing a good five to seven years of everything continuing to go well, continuing to work hard, and even starting to work even harder.
A couple of less-obvious things that depend on luck: First, doing good work. It's not enough to do good work, people have to KNOW that you do good work, i.e. you have a good reputation. People say this means you can make no mistakes, which is not true, obviously you can make mistakes. But you can't make the wrong mistake in front of hte wrong person or your reputation can be torpedoed. Everyone is going to make mistakes. You need to be lucky enough to not have the wrong mistakes happen in front of the wrong people.
Second, mentors. You need to work with people who not only can advise you but also give you opportunities to stretch yourself. Some people will say "hey i think you can handle this even though you've never done it, you go lead this negotiation and i'll only jump in if you need me", etc., whereas others will micromanage the shit out of you because they can't let go. You can learn a lot from both people, but you need to be able to connect with the right people at some point and convince them to trust you with important things so that you can stretch and grow and build a reputation as someone who can do the second-order tasks that you need to do well to be successful as a senior associate and partner. If you can do that early, you're far better off. You need to have ability obviously, but it's also luck whether you even get the chance.
Third, clients. If you do most of your work for a couple of clients and they stop doing deals, obviously that's not great.
On the book of business point, at least in my practice area, nobody who made partner ever had a book of business. Even junior partners who were first minted didn't really have a book of business; they had started participating in pitch meetings as mid-level to senior associates and continued to do so as junior partners but nobody harbored any illusions that it was them that had landed the relationship rather than the senior partner who was mentoring them. Rather, you were made partner based on the firm's view of your POTENTIAL to build a book, but junior partners often still acted like senior associates until they started learning how to disengage, leave the legal work to the associates and start focusing on partner things. You basically needed to have a "potential" book of business, i.e. the partners had to perceive that clients trusted and respected you and that they could see (i) handing off their own clients to you AND (ii) you having hte potential to start bringing in your own.
I used to absolutely sneer at 0Ls, law students or junior associates who said they hoped to become a partner, and it wasn't because it's a hard path. Rather, it's because until you start living the life, you really have no idea whether it's even something you should want. None of hte partners i worked for lived easy lives. When they made partner, they usually worked MORE, they're lives were more difficult than they were the year before. Nothing changed. It wasn't some light at teh end of a long tunnel where you had "made it" and could relax; in order to be happy doing it you either needed to live and breathe M&A or you needed to accept being deeply, deeply dissatisfied with your life. Like a law student says "I think i can make partner", my (internal) reaction was "you fucking fool," not because it's hard but really because of how much ignorance of reality the attitude shows. If you live and breathe it, great. Most of hte partners i worked for loved their job, and it showed. But there's no way to tell whether you'll be that person until you start doing it.