Andrew McDermott

Attorneys are burned out. 

It’s a case of diminishing returns – attorneys are working harder each year while achieving less. If you’re part of BigLaw, you’ll work a minimum of 80 hours per week. If you’re a solo attorney who’s looking to grow, you’ll experience a similar workload but may only average 1,200 billable hours annually. 

Is burnout inevitable?

The legal profession is characterized by intense, high-stress work

Even worse, there’s an inherent amount of conflict in the profession. 

It’s everywhere. 

• Conflict inside the firm due to competition and infighting
• Conflict with clients who disagree with you on key points
• Conflict with third parties to defend your client’s interests

It’s no wonder then that the World Health Organization classifies burnout as a disease. Attorneys are working harder but losing the majority of that time to nonbillable work. They’re hammered by falling realization rates, discouraged by insufficient origination credit and struggling with compassion fatigue. 

Many are struggling to cope. 

They’re fighting valiantly against the problems they experience on a day to day basis, but they’re finding it harder and harder to perform at work. They ask themselves the question… 

Why am I working so hard? 

They judge themselves unfairly as being lazy, not having what it takes. As if they’re failures who haven’t been able to produce results. Their days are dominated by busywork.

No wonder so many attorneys hate their jobs.

Increasing productivity requires preparation

It’s completely doable. 

If you’d like to achieve a 2x increase in productivity, you’ll need to do some upfront preparation first. This is a massive post, one you’ll want to refer to often. Take notes, test things out for yourself. 

First things first. 

You’ll need to record your day. Here’s an example shared on Q&A site Quora, by an unhappy and anonymous attorney. 

Scan through it. 

You’ll need a broad understanding of all of this when it’s time to create your own productivity framework. 

********

I’m a mid-level or perhaps senior associate at a large law firm. Let me describe the two types of days that I routinely experience and then mention why I actually think I’m unhappy – as opposed to what you might think if you simply read TNR or ATL.

Busy Day:

7:00 am: Wake up, check Blackberry. See that 30 emails directed to me / my team on projects have come in since I put it down at 2:00 am. Response to 10 of the 30, get four junior associates in motion on tasks for the day. Try to go to gym, but realize I can’t make it because, while I was writing those 10 emails, I’ve had clients send me meeting planners for 8:30 am and 10:00 am calls. (For the initiated, clients rarely ask if I can make a call; sometimes I’m told to get on the line in five or ten minutes, sometimes I get random meeting planners. If matters conflict, somebody screams uncle, but it usually isn’t me.)

7:30 am: Hop on the train (subway). Read more emails while on the train and respond to another 4 or 5 so that responses will launch as soon as I come up from underground.

8:15 am: Arrive at the office. Start printing documents for 8:30 am call b/c secretaries won’t arrive for another hour.

8:30 am: Call gets moved to 9:00. Thank god I don’t expect it to last more than an hour, or I’d already have a conflict. Use extra time to look over documents I expect I’ll be discussing on 9:00 call. (But still no clue of its content because I tried emailing the client, but the client did not respond.)

9:00 am: Jump on call. Fortunately, it’s on what I expected. Client wants to do another call with the other side at 10:00 am because he is heading to the beach with his kids at noon. I inform client I have another call at 10:00 and client asks me to push that call for him. I try to dodge by proposing 10:30 and promising to keep the other call to 30 minutes. All the while, 40 new emails come in while I am on the call. I get two more junior associates moving on projects, IM with another three and request additional experienced staffing for one project.

10:00 am: Get on second call. Again have no idea what it will be about, but assume I can handle it because it is with an unsophisticated corporate client that we love because it lets us ring the meter. Junior comes to my office to listen to call. In-house lawyer bloviates about irrelevant points for 30 minutes and I field another 20 emails while on call and mark a document at my desk, occasionally paying attention to the call. The junior is in my office, but I never look at her because I’m just trying to get done what I need to get done to not fall further behind.

10:30 am: I recap call with junior associate (largely because I missed key points while marking the document that is at my desk, and need her to tell me what happened). I then get on the 10:30 am call with the 9:00 am client and try to pay attention because the client is a business-side managing director. I check the news, anyway, however, in part because I know that nothing I do on the call will in any way impact my pay or my chance of promotion, so I don’t really pay much attention.

11:00 am: Call ends. I follow-up with benefits and IP on some points raised on the 10:30 am call. They’re not expecting my queries, but they can’t do anything. I CC the client and the relevant partners so that the client knows I’m following up on his points and so that the benefits and IP associates have to meet my stated timeline or look bad. (Chances are, they won’t respond anyway. We won’t fire them for it, and we won’t pay them any more if they do.)

11:30 am: Take a few minutes to skim the news; get coffee. Return to desk and begin marking documents drafted by juniors for one of my deals. Attempt to mark them without interruption, but answer the phone every 10 or 15 minutes and lose train of thought.

1:15 pm: One of my callers asked me if I’ve seen emails that just came in, and if I’ve reviewed the documents attached — 250 pages, came in five minutes ago. I tell the client that, no, I have not yet reviewed the documents, but I will as soon as I can and generally try to determine whether the matter is urgent. When I realize that his deadline for this afternoon is false (like most deadlines), I find a way to push the work back. (I have more work on my plate than I could complete if I stayed in the office 24×7 for two or three weeks, so it’s always a matter of fighting whatever fire is burning strongest; never a matter of real project management.)

2:00 pm: Begin catching up on emails; see that I missed two calls while reviewing documents and hope clients/partners are not mad at me for missing them. Call juniors to determine what I missed.

2:30 pm: Urgent email from client. Don’t believe that matter is urgent b/c every matter from this client is said to be urgent, but call client to check.

2:45 pm: Matter not urgent, so grab lunch in the cafe. Eat lunch at desk while responding to emails.

3:00 pm: Things are quiet, so catch up on document that has sat on my desk for more than a week. The official deadline was last Friday, but we all know that deadline was false and I probably blow through 50+% of my deadlines.

3:30 pm: The fire drills begin. Client says it wants to sign a set of documents today, none of which we’ve seen. I call two juniors to get them to review parts and to get tax review. I skim as fast as I can, isolating key points.

4:00 pm: Three clients have already sent me voicemails on other projects, and I have two more meeting planners, both for calls at 4:30 pm. I ignore all to close out document I’m reading for the 3:30 pm client.

4:30 pm: I jump on one of the calls and find out this client also wants documents signed tonight. I IM some juniors and wonder how I can possibly get this done.

5:00 pm: Partner drives by and drops a 200-page markup on my desk. He spends 30 minutes in my office trying to discuss it despite my telling him that other matters are in process and need to be closed out.

5:30 pm: I’ve been hit with two more clients who want to sign documents today. I now have five projects that are trying to get done by today. I push things forward to the extent I can, do the least possible amount of work I am OK with on each project and push things out. I am on and off calls with each client for next three hours while turning the documents.

8:30 pm: I’m now waiting for comments on three of the five matters. The other two have died: false alarms. I catch up on emails.

9:00 pm: Things get hot again and it’s just like at 5:30 pm, except that now it’s harder to reach the clients but the deals still need to get done. This continues until 10:30 pm.

10:30 pm: Order dinner on seamless, catch up on emails not related to hot projects.

11:00 pm: Documents begin to come back and junior associate dumps work on me from outside of my practice group. I try to tell him to shove it, but I can’t because he has CC’d a powerful partner. I ignore the deals that I’m trying to close and deal with the junior associate’s query.

11:15 pm: Return to hot deals. Continue going back and forth (I’m still receiving 50-100 emails an hour on these projects) for next 2 hours.

1:15 am: One deal done, the others can’t be finished because one side’s clients went home and all outstanding points are “business points” (i.e., they matter, so we can’t touch them because we are just lawyers). Turn back to other work that builds during the day. Because most of my juniors are gone, do whatever needs to be done that hasn’t yet been done.

2:00 am: Get markups from Asian office. Powerful partner CC’d, so turn documents myself, which include such wonderful 2:00 am tasks as adding brackets to the trailers on signature pages. Finish in about 90 minutes, and call a car.

3:45 am: Get in car, knowing that everything that I did not close last night will be open by 9:00 am the next morning, likely with clients hounding me to get in touch with the other side, update all dates and numbers, etc., from approx. 7:00 am onwards.

*********

Not-Busy Day

7:00 am: Wake up, check Blackberry and see 20 emails. None need to be handled by me, so I ignore them.

7:15 am: I go to the gym and aim to get into the office at 9:30 am.

9:30 am: I skim the news and ignore projects that have sat on my desk for weeks. I turn to them at 10:00 am and work on them until 1:00 pm.

1:00 pm: I get lunch and say hi to my secretary. I eat lunch at my desk so that I can continue to plow through the backlog from busier days.

4:00 pm: I get coffee b/c I am bored with the work and want to talk to somebody. I bring coffee back to my desk, anyway, and continue to read and mark more documents.

8:30 pm: I finish reading what I think ought to be read today (It’s really my call; every deadline I have at this point is obviously false and I cannot possibly clear my plate.), and call it a day by having document services scan my markups.

8:45 pm: I take the train home, a little happier because I talked to the folks in document services, at the coffee shop and the cashier in the cafeteria. Otherwise, I just spent the last 11.25 hours alone in my office, proofreading and marking documents without any human interaction.

*********

How many people would like to work through either of these two types of days?

When you add partners who scream at you (and do indeed throw objects when angry), associates who routinely backstab each other, fixed salaries and bonuses so that there is no link between pay and performance, or pay and value add, and partnership odds of roughly 1 in 25 to 1 in 50 – as well as sometimes weeks on end in which you do not leave the office before midnight – there are just a lot of things not to like about the practice of law.

This is horrible. 

It’s easy to understand why this attorney is so unhappy. This attorney is in a bizarre form of solitary confinement (11.25 hours alone). Their day is filled with assorted power moves, a consistent deluge of work from above and below as partners and associates drop work her and soul-crushing isolation.

This is unhealthy. 

There’s very little human interaction — no hobbies or downtime to speak of. No time for family, relationships or even a full night’s rest. 

It’s unsustainable. 

Why you should copy this unhappy attorney’s example

No, I’m not recommending that you copy their professional lifestyle. 

Just the journaling. 

You’ll want to document your day from beginning to end for 30 days. This isn’t about right or wrong. It’s not about whether your current schedule or level of productivity is effective or not. Just get your current performance down. 

No judgment. 

No beating yourself up over any failures, no blaming others for a lack of progress. Just creating a factual account that outlines your productivity and the way you spend your time each day. 

What happens afterward? 

You’ll want to take note of the following details in your day.  

1. When you start work
2. What you work on and when
3. Who you speak to throughout the day
4. Which clients reach out to you the most 
5. What these clients want or choose to discuss with you
6. Which matters, activities or events produce the majority of your billings?
7. The matters, activities or events take up most of your time
8. Who adds to your workload?
9. What is added to your workload? 
10. How you’re tracking or documenting your time (and whether it’s accurate)

Why go to the trouble of documenting and analyzing your day? You can’t fix a problem if you don’t know it exists. You need a clear idea of the details you’re facing.  

You need reporting. 

If you’re relying on a legal practice management tool, you should already have reporting options in place. You just have to record your time.  If you don’t have a practice management solution in place you can use charting tools like amcharts to visuals your time spend. 

If you’re like many other attorneys, these charts may confirm what you already know. 

You work too hard. 

Fear kills attorney productivity, increases busywork

What are attorneys afraid of? Let’s take a look at a few of these fears so I can demonstrate what I mean. 

1. If you work hard, you’ll make partner. This isn’t true in a large number of cases. Some firms create partners-in-name-only (Pinos). Others dangle the carrot in front of associates until they give up, move on or finally succeed. 
2. If you make a mistake, we’ll fire you, or you’ll ruin your career. A single mistake involving the wrong client or partner can be enough to disqualify an attorney from future employment. 
3. If you want to keep your job, you’ll outwork work your peers. This is an implicit expectation that’s typically hinted at with passive-aggressive comments and used to keep associates pushing hard to meet increasingly difficult demands. 
4. If you don’t do a good job, you won’t get more work. The implication here is that you’ll be weeded out if firm decision-makers decide that you’re incapable of producing the quality or quantity of results they’re looking for. 
5. If we overwhelm you with work, it means we like you. It’s an invitation for attorneys to run on the hamster well of partner approval, constantly striving for positive feedback in the hopes of one day making partner. 
6. If you’ve made a mistake, hard work will fix it. Push yourself even harder. Produce more billables to compensate for your mistake. Work hard enough and we’ll let you know when you’re back in our good graces.  
7. Your peers are working harder than you. Code for “if you consistently outpace your peers, there’s a good chance you’ll be able to cultivate enough social capital to keep your job during the next round of layoffs.” 
8. If you want to pay off your student loans, a career in law is the only way you’ll be able to do it. This isn’t the only way for students to pay off their student loans, but it is the most obvious and viable solution. According to Nerd Wallet, the average law school student graduates with $145,550 student loan debt, including undergraduate loans.
9. Associates are expendable and replaceable. Research shows there’s a surplus of attorneys who are looking for work. That’s good news for firms and bad news for associates. 
10. Partners are expendable and replaceable. The implicit expectation here is rainmaking. Partners are expected to bring in a significant amount of new business to the firm. For many firms, this is the only way to ensure true security. 
11. You can’t attract clients without us. The idea behind this fear is the fact that you’re trading on your firm’s good name to attract and retain new clients. This may or may not be true.
12. You need us; you can’t make it on your own. This is an irrational fear that’s used to retain associates and partners, especially if the firm in question is prestigious or authoritative. 
13. If you leave the firm, you’ll lose everything. The frightening part about this is the fact that it’s true to a certain extent. There’s a surplus of hungry attorneys who are out of work. That number is always rising. If you leave on less than ideal terms, there’s a chance you may hurt your career prospects, especially if your firm  
14. If you leave your firm, your standard of living will decrease. It’s true only if you’re unable to find another position that enables you to maintain your standard of living. If you’re an average attorney that’s a very real possibility. 

Taken to an extreme, these are dangerous. 

Is there anything wrong with a firm promising partner or using it as a tool to motivate associates? Not at all. It is a problem if firms are using these items to sow fear, uncertainty and doubt in their team. 

Why is this a problem? 

Moral and ethical issues aside, what’s the issue here? Many of the above issues have a degree of truth to them. If you’re terrible at your job, yes, it’s a great idea to fix the problem before giving you more client work. Many professionals don’t see the problem. 

It’s toil vs. productivity. 

Many people believe toil and productivity are the same. In reality, they’re opposites. Let’s break it down a bit. 

• Toil refers to tedious, exhausting and repetitive busywork that’s relentless or never-ending. It’s fruitless, low-value work that erodes morale in your firm. Repetitious tasks – document reviews, proofreading, copying performed indefinitely – these are the necessary but despair-inducing parts of practicing law. Unhealthy toil produces stress, burnout and fear. 
• Productivity: Work that moves the needle, takes you closer to your goals, or helps you build a solid reputation in your firm or industry. It’s work (big or small) that produces the kind of results you’re looking for in your career. Its meaningful work you know will showcase your considerable talents. It’s a morale booster for firms. 

Give toil a purpose, create a compelling why, and it morphs into productivity. Remove meaning or purpose from a productivity task; take away the why and it becomes toil. It’s all about the why behind your work. 

Get the why right and productivity skyrockets. Create meaning and you’ll find you’re able to dramatically increase your salary, create the promotion you want, or become your firm’s next all-star.

With the right why your…

• Conventional results create trust. Conventional results = doing your job exceptionally well. Being a great attorney, going above and beyond for clients and your team. Exceptional day-to-day performance increases. If you’re a real estate attorney, your documents and agreements are above reproach; your work is pristine, you’re fast, efficient, helpful, productive, etc.
• Transformative results create career opportunities. These are extras, the above and beyond results that make things better for your firm, the industry or clients as a whole. It can be as simple as sharing knowledge via a speech, interview or article or as comprehensive as personally taking on a client. It’s your big break, the chance to handle a major action on behalf of your firm or take the lead on a major client’s matter. 

Here’s why these results matter. Conventional results are boring and often insignificant. They’re little things that show partners how you’ll perform with big things. Transformative results are outlandish, terrifying and intense – if they go wrong, they can be career, firm or relationship enders. 

Here’s the thing about these. 

The partners in your firm? They want both conventional and transformative results. But they’re not interested in transformative change until they trust you to achieve the conventional. Transformative results are often risky; the trust you’ve accumulated acts as a buffer, giving them what they need to take a chance on you.

Think back to the items in our list above. 

Can you see the problem with these items? These whys create toil. They don’t create productivity. The people in these firms will only work as hard as they need to, to prevent these disasters from coming true. 

They coast after that. 

Performance drops once that fear is gone. How can associates and support teams in these firms continue to grow? How can their firms grow? Their why doesn’t motivate them to improve, it restricts movement due to a fear of loss! 

How to 2x your productivity in half the time

This sounds pretty unbelievable, doesn’t it? You’re overwhelmed with work as it is. How are you supposed to be able to accomplish more in half the time? 

Focus on principles first. 

With the right principles, you’ll be able to achieve massive gains in productivity, gain more free time and achieve work/life balance, something others believe to be impossible. 

Step #1: Plan for Parkinson’s Law

Parkinson’s law is the adage that “work expands to fill the time available for its completion.” Why would this be a problem for attorneys? 

Your peers are going to sabotage your progress. 

As you make significant strides with the productivity framework below, you’ll come across saboteurs. Other associates, partners, support teams – they’ll see that you have more free time. If you don’t have a plan for your free time it will be taken from you. 

They’ll fill your time with extra work. 

As your productivity increases, you’ll need to have a plan for the additional time you receive. That time needs to be guarded jealously. You can fill that time with more billable work, business development work, free time, anything you choose But it needs to be done on your terms. 

Step #2: Develop a F!@k off fund 

You need leverage to be able to say No with power. 

Paulette Perhach wrote the Story of a F!@k Off Fund. She showed how people accept horrible behavior from their co-workers and bosses, simply because they need their job.

“A few weeks later, your boss calls a one-on-one in his office, walks up behind you, and stands too close. His breath fogs your neck. His hand crawls up your new dress. You squirm away. He says, “Sorry, I thought…”

You know what to do. You’re just shocked to find you’re not doing it. You are not telling him to f!@k off. You are not storming out. All you’re doing is math. You have $159 in the bank and your car payment and your maxed out credit cards and you’ll die before you ask your dad for a loan again and it all equals one thought: I need this job.”

It doesn’t have to be a situation that’s as flagrant as this. It could be as simple as: 

• Junior associates CC’ing partners when they drop extra work in your lap to corner you
• Partners demanding that you fast track a particular matter or project over other priority items
• Partners attempting to poach clients from you
• Being asked or expected to “ring the meter” or provide clients with subpar work
• Resisting attempts to steal your origination credit
• Being forced to work with toxic or chronically abusive clients (who make the firm a lot of money) 

This doesn’t have to be monetary. 

There are hundreds of little headaches like these, many of them occurring daily. The circumstances are different, but the pattern is the same. Something goes wrong. You see it but decide to keep your mouth shut. 

You want to keep your job.

The point here is the fact that you’re able to say No to flagrant lapses in judgment. You’ll need leverage to do that. Here are some ways you can create leverage (and the ability to say No). 

1. You don’t need a paycheck due to (savings, investments, trust fund, etc.)
2. You’re a brilliant attorney with deep expertise in a profitable practice group
3. You have connections (or the ability to create connections) that are beneficial to your firm
4. Your breadth of knowledge is massive. You’re the maven everyone goes to for answers
5. You’re a unicorn (e.g., workhorse rainmaker who happens to be connected to powerful influencers)
6. You’re an exceptional rainmaker who’s consistently able to generate business on demand
7. You have a unique ability that enables you to do what other attorneys can’t or won’t do

Your F!@k off Fund boils down to having something your firm wants or needs but can’t get on their own. Don’t have the leverage you need? Take an additional 30 min. to two hrs per week to identify strategies you can use to create leverage.

Step #3: Learn how to say No

Partners don’t want to hear the word No. 

But you need to use it often. How do you say no without saying no? Here’s how Adam Grant, Wharton professor and author of Give and Take, does it:

• The deferral. I’m completely swamped right now. Would you follow up with me later, say 3 PM?
• The delay. The deadline for [client project] is today. If I take on one of these new matters we’ll miss this deadline. Would you check with [partner] to see if he’s okay with me taking this on?
• The introduction. I’m completely in the dark about [practice area]. Mitchell is our resident expert, would it be alright for me to follow his lead on this?
• The bridge. Catherine and Reginald are actually already working on [client matter]. Would you like me to reach out to them?
• The relational account. If I take on [matter], I’ll be letting [partner] down. He was counting on me finish this by 4:30 PM today. I’m happy to help if he’s okay with putting his project on the back burner. 

See the difference? 

Every demand has a consequence, something that’s easy for management to forget. But that’s exactly how it works in the real world. If you want X done, I won’t be able to finish Y, and so on. Do it this way and you teach co-workers that every decision comes with a cost.

Step #4: Create a list of barriers and disruptors

At this point, you should have a substantial amount of data outlining the various aspects of your productivity. You’ll want to make a list of the problems impacting your productivity and your solution to deal with each of these problems. 

Do this for each of the barriers you’ve identified in your 30-day assessment. 

Create solutions for each one. 

Step #5: Choose your time categories

Choose the time categories you’d like to devote your time to. You may not be able to pick and choose the tasks you prefer. I get it. It still important that you choose the tasks you’re going to focus your attention on.

You’ll see why in a moment.

There are several categories attorneys are expected to manage. Here’s a shortlist. 

• Working on client matters
• Business development
• Review management
• Client intake and follow up
• Client service and support
• Administrative tasks 
• Scheduling meetings and appointments
• Automating tasks and deadlines
• Automated time tracking for billing and invoicing
• Bookkeeping
• Automated document assembly
• Employee management
• HR support and career development 

There’s a good chance you have more to do, but we’ll begin with this shortlist for now. Which of these is most preferable? That all depends on whether you’re a grinder, minder, binder finder. Attorneys generally fall into one of these four roles. 

1. Finders are rainmakers. They bring new clients, business and revenue to a firm. Good finders are exceptionally rare, which makes them incredibly valuable to a firm. When times are good, finders often make more. When times are bad, finders often make dramatically less money than their peers.
2. Binders are connectors. These attorneys are sophisticated networkers, able to connect with, build and maintain deep relationships with important and powerful people. They receive and provide others with important introductions.
3. Minders are managers or bureaucrats. Often times they’re on executive committees or they’re the managing partner responsible for administrative tasks. They manage attorneys, paralegals and support teams. In short, they run law firms. They’re efficient, precise and capable of managing a firm.
4. Grinders are the workhorses of their firms. The majority of attorneys are hired to do one thing. Work on the matters given to them. These attorneys are expected to (a.) do as much (billable) work as possible (b.) produce high-quality work as quickly as possible. Grinders aren’t hired to be mentors, rainmakers or managers. They’re workhorses, nothing more, nothing less.

You’ll want to sort your roles and responsibilities by category. Start with the role you’re assigned at your firm. Most attorneys are hired to be grinders. 

Here’s the problem.

Many attorneys are expected to fill multiple roles. Grinders are expected to become rainmakers and binders are expected to maintain connections while grinding away at the office. 

That’s okay.

Choose your primary, secondary, tertiary and quaternary roles. Your attention will be focused on your primary roles. If you’re expected to fill multiple roles, you’re going to…

Step #6: Slash and burn all other roles and responsibilities

Am I suggesting that you shirk your responsibilities?

Not at all.

Instead, I’m recommending that you outsource, delegate, automate or hire additional help to handle the other roles on an as-needed basis. If your soul law firm that’s short on funds here are three ways you can attract the help and support you need.

1. Barter: Trade legal services in exchange for marketing and business development help
2. Spend: Pay for the help and support you need from capable service providers
3. Buy: Software tools that will enable you to automate and delegate the important parts of practice management

What does this look like?

If you’re a solo grinder, you can:

• Hire the top 3 percent of freelance marketing talent to set up business development funnels. You can also use these freelancers to run low-cost ad campaigns for your firm. 
• Hire a virtual assistant to manage key components of your personal and professional life. 
• Purchase practice management and online review software to automate key portions of your business

If you’re a finder and a small firm owner you can:

• Hire the top 3 percent of freelance marketing, finance, and project management talent to improve business development and operations efficiency. 
• Use freelance attorney services like montage legal group, Hire an Esquire or Flex Legal Network to find competent freelance attorneys who are willing to work at a reduced rate.
• Focus your attention on rainmaking and growing your firm while relying on third-party help to handle client matters in a specific practice area.

See what I mean?

Get someone else to handle all of the work you can’t (or don’t want to) handle yourself. Here are some ultimate guides you can use to outsource, automate, delegate or hire additional help. 

• The ultimate guide to automation for lawyers
• The ultimate guide to using virtual assistants at your law firm
• How to avoid feeling like you’re only productive on nights and weekends
• The overworked attorney’s guide to legal practice management automation

See what I mean?

Focus your attention on your primary role or responsibility. Find ways to outsource, automate, delegate or hire additional help for everything else. It’s an easy way to save a significant amount of time, energy and effort. It’s a way to establish work/life balance, protecting personal, familial and professional relationships.

Sure, this can boost productivity. A 2x increase though? 

That sounds impossible.

It certainly sounds impossible but the data shows it’s really quite achievable. Research shows attorneys lose 6 hours per day, every day, to nonbillable work. Attorneys are struggling to produce 2.9 hours of billable work each day.

It’s an uphill battle.

The strategies and tactics I’ve shared means individual attorneys and law firms can generate the revenue they need with 50 percent less effort. This isn’t really about adding anything new; it’s about eliminating the barriers that are already hurting your firm’s ability to perform.

That’s it.

Eliminate these barriers for everyone in your firm and productivity skyrockets.

A 2x productivity boost is possible with the right framework

Attorneys are burned out. 

They’re struggling with a case of diminishing returns. Attorneys are working harder each year while receiving less. The legal profession is characterized by incredibly demanding, high-stress work. No wonder they’re finding it harder and harder to perform at work.

Why are they working so hard?

As we’ve seen, you can boost your productivity to unprecedented levels with the right framework and a bit of strategy. A 2x boost in productivity requires some upfront preparation but it’s all fairly simple. 

You can do this.

With the right approach and clear boundaries, you’ll find there’s no limit to your productivity gains.

Why do attorneys work so hard? 

Are they pursuing a higher purpose or some lofty goal? Some are, but they’re in the minority. Are they simply more driven or ambitious than the rest of the world? Maybe, but these attorneys are the exception, not the rule. 

What is it then? 

Why are attorneys willing to work 50 – 100 hours per week? Are these attorneys more productive than the rest of their peers? 

The dark side of productivity: attorneys who work too hard

In my previous post, I shared research from Stanford University. Professor John Pencavel found productivity per hour declines sharply when a person works more than 50 hours per week. 

It’s a case of diminishing returns. 

Those who work 70+ hours per week get the same amount done as those who work 50 hours per week. It’s a sharp decline in productivity attorneys continue to push themselves to do more. A few of these attorneys work themselves to death. 

Why do they do it? 

The answer to this question is a controversial one that’s bound to provoke a strong reaction. 

The cause? Fear. 

Skeptical? Let’s take a look at a few of the causes so I can demonstrate what I mean. 

1. If you work hard, you’ll make partner.
2. If you make a mistake, we’ll fire you, or you’ll ruin your career. 
3. If you want to keep your job, you’ll outwork work your peers. 
4. If you don’t do a good job, you won’t get more work. 
5. If we overwhelm you with work, it means we like you. 
6. If you’ve made a mistake, hard work will fix it. 
7. Your peers are working harder than you. 
8. If you want to pay off your student loans, a career in law is the only way you’ll be able to do it. 
9. Associates are expendable and replaceable.
10. Partners are expendable and replaceable.
11. You can’t attract clients without us. 
12. You need us; you can’t make it on your own.
13. If you leave the firm, you’ll lose everything. 
14. If you leave your firm, your standard of living will decrease.  

Taken to an extreme, these are dangerous. 

Is there anything wrong with a firm promising partner or using it as a tool to motivate associates? Not at all. It is a problem if firms are using these items to sow fear, uncertainty and doubt in their team. 

Why is this a problem? 

Moral and ethical issues aside, what’s the issue here? Many of the above issues have a degree of truth to them. If you’re terrible at your job, yes, it’s a great idea to fix the problem before giving you more client work. Many professionals don’t see the problem. 

It’s toil vs. productivity. 

Many people believe toil and productivity are the same. In reality, they’re polar opposites. Let’s break it down a bit. 

• Toil: Tedious, exhausting and repetitive work that’s relentless or never-ending. It’s fruitless, low-value work that erodes morale in your firm. Repetitious tasks – document reviews, proofreading, copying performed indefinitely – these are the necessary but despair-inducing parts of practicing law. Unhealthy toil produces stress, burnout and fear. 
• Productivity: Work that moves the needle, takes you closer to your goals, or helps you build a solid reputation in your firm or industry. It’s work (big or small) that produces the kind of results you’re looking for in your career. Its meaningful work you know will showcase your considerable talents. It’s a morale booster for firms. 

Give toil a purpose, create a compelling why, and it morphs into productivity. Remove meaning or purpose from a productivity task; take away the why and it becomes toil. It’s all about the why behind your work. 

Get the why right and productivity skyrockets. Create meaning and you’ll find you’re able to dramatically increase your salary, create the promotion you want, or become your firm’s next all-star.

With the right why your…

• Conventional results create trust. Conventional results = doing your job exceptionally well. Being a great attorney, going above and beyond for clients and your team. Exceptional day-to-day performance increases. If you’re a real estate attorney, your documents and agreements are above reproach; your work is pristine, you’re fast, efficient, helpful, productive, etc.
• Transformative results create career opportunities. These are extras, the above and beyond results that make things better for your firm, the industry or clients as a whole. It can be as simple as sharing knowledge via a speech, interview or article or as comprehensive as personally taking on a client. It’s your big break, the chance to handle a major action on behalf of your firm or take the lead on a major client’s matter. 

Here’s why these results matter. Conventional results are boring and often insignificant. They’re little things that show partners how you’ll perform with big things. Transformative results are outlandish, terrifying and intense – if they go wrong, they can be career, firm or relationship enders. 

Here’s the thing about these. 

The partners in your firm? They want both conventional and transformative results. But they’re not interested in transformative change until they trust you to achieve the conventional. Transformative results are often risky; the trust you’ve accumulated acts as a buffer, giving them what they need to take a chance on you.

Think back to the items in our list above. 

Can you see the problem with these items? These whys create toil. They don’t create productivity. The people in these firms will only work as hard as they need to, to prevent these disasters from coming true. 

They coast after that. 

Performance drops once that fear is gone. How can associates and support teams in these firms continue to grow? How can their firms grow? Their why doesn’t motivate them to improve, it restricts movement due to a fear of loss! 

This is the dark side of productivity. 

The list I’ve shared above, it motivates attorneys to work very, very hard. It’s effective, but only in the short term. At some point, the problems in our list will be resolved or employees will simply stop caring. It’s an individual event for each employee, but the effect these decreases have on morale keeps productivity lower than it should be. 

This is why most attorneys work as hard as they do. 

Fear of loss. 

In my next post, I’ll share practical strategies and tactics your firm can use to 2x, 4x and even 10x productivity with billables while decreasing the amount of time spent on non-billables. 

Attorneys are treated unfairly. 

They’re not equal. They should be, and many of us would like to believe that attorney compensation is both equitable and just. But is this really the case? Are attorneys treated equally by their firms? 

The answer is No. 

Here’s a controversial and initially unpopular approach to compensation. 

Attorneys should be treated unequally. 

The equitable case for treating attorneys unequally 

This sounds horrible. 

Decent human beings don’t suggest or recommend this sort of thing. They look for ways to level the playing field. This isn’t actually what most people want though. If we’re completely honest, the unspoken mantra many have in the industry is the opposite. 

I want you to do good, just not better than me. 

This is the problem. 

This perception is a driver behind the consistent troubles legal professionals face in the industry. It’s the dynamic that turns fairness on its head. Wait a minute, I just said attorneys should be treated unequally, didn’t I?

Inequality isn’t the same as unfairness. 

What does this mean specifically? It means that high performing firms provide the polar opposite of “conventional” firms. What specifically do these high performing firms provide? 

Equality of opportunity. 

An article in the Wall Street Journal shares a true to life example from that demonstrates the importance of equality of opportunity. 

Four hundred of Kirkland & Ellis LLP’s top lawyers gathered in May at an oceanfront resort in Southern California to toast another banner year.

Kirkland was the highest-grossing law firm in the world for the second year running, earning $3.76 billion in revenue. When a slide flashed on the screen, showing the value of the firm’s shares, the partners in the room quickly did the math. They would be taking home $1.75 million to $15 million.

Not invited were another 560 partners, who were back at the firm’s 15 offices around the world, working. Though outwardly carrying the same title as those lounging poolside in California, they hold no equity in the firm and generally can expect to make $800,000 at most. While a comfortable living, the salary and its implied second-class status is not the reward many expected after striving to join the venerated partnership.

This is life at the modern law firm, where not all partners are created equal, and data and money rule.

This example presents a bit of a paradox. In the past, becoming partner meant joining an exclusive group. 

Being named a partner once meant joining a band of lawyers who jointly tended to longtime clients and took home comfortable, and roughly equal, paychecks. Job security was virtually guaranteed and partners rarely jumped ship.

That model, and the culture that grew up around it, is all but dead. Law firms are now often partnerships in name only.

See the problem? 

Under the previous model, partners received the same comforts and amenities, long term clients, a stable book of business and equal paychecks. Never mind the fact that these partners may vary wildly in ability, drive, focus and performance. If one partner does the work of 10 of his peers, he still receives the same as everyone else. 

It’s an equitable but unfair arrangement. 

How have law firms responded? They’ve swung hard in the opposite direction rewarding a specific and exclusive group of partners. These partners receive the lion’s share of rewards. 

Both options are harmful. 

Here’s why. 

See what I mean? 

There are problems with both of these compensation models. Both of these compensation models are inherently unfair. These models rob attorneys of their agency and autonomy. 

• Equitable compensation models dangle the offer of partner in front of ambitious attorneys. They tend to focus their attention on equality of outcome – all attorneys are treated the same if or when they make partner. It’s a powerful motivator and it’s largely effective. However this model has been largely abandoned due to competitor reliance on inequitable compensation models. This model forces equality of outcome on partners capping growth in the name of fairness. 
• Inequitable compensation models, the kind we have today, are a bit more insidious. Equity partners dangle partner in front of attorneys, only now it may take a decade (or longer) to reach that goal. Once attorneys reach that goal many find they are partners in name only. Their salary, opportunity and growth prospects are capped, but they’re told otherwise. This model removes equality of opportunity.   

What’s the solution then? 

You modify your compensation model so it produces equality of opportunity. You provide the employees in your firm with the objective evidence they need to believe they have opportunities with your firm. 

Equality of opportunity: The foundation of compensation

Compensation in law firms is based on two factors. 

1. New client business brought to the firm
2. Hours billed to clients

This isn’t just my opinion; it’s based on research and survey data from legal pundits like Jordan Furlong. 

The majority of those surveyed agreed with the sentiments above. Why then are compensation models so difficult to administer, manage and maintain? 

In a word, tradition. 

With traditional models, the profit for client particulars is divvied up three ways. Origination credit for the person who brought the client to the firm. Credit for introducing the matter to your firm and, finally, credit for those doing the work. 

This environment produces hoarding, infighting and competition. 

All of which is completely unnecessary. According to Law.com research, when clients were served by three practice groups, revenues were 5.7 times higher than those served by one. Clients who were served by five practice groups generated fees that were 17.6 times higher than those served by one.

It gets worse. 

• Competition makes client longevity impossible. While 75 percent of clients working with a single partner would consider switching firms if that partner left, 90 percent served by two partners would stay with their firm if one left.
• Rainmakers focus their attention on selling rather than serving. This creates a significant amount of strife as clients are sold on the firm, then abandoned or neglected by lead attorneys shortly after.
• Financial gain is prioritized over personal or professional health. Attorneys are struggling with increasing rates of depression, burnout, substance abuse and more.
• Associates are overworked; Partners are crushed by more work. Partners are expected to bring in a significant amount of business. They’re also expected to bill a tremendous amount of hours. Partners face a dilemma. Do they assign billable work to associates or keep for themselves? Wasn’t making partner all about doing less billable work?

In the face of these problems, firms are still refusing to cooperate. 

Why? 

If timekeepers bend over backward and work together, they don’t see another dime — traditional compensation models pit partners and associates against each other. Teams are told to work together, but in reality, they end up competing with each other. The firm environment becomes cutthroat; overtime employees become disengaged mercenaries who are interested in sabotaging their peers to get ahead. 

This is incredibly harmful to firms. 

Why your compensation model matters 

Traditional compensation models create disengaged employees. According to Gallup and Steve Rasmussen, former CEO of Nationwide, your employees fall into one of two camps, patriots or mercenaries. Not because they want to be but because they have to be. 

Here’s how Rasmussen describes it. 

“Patriots totally identify with their company, and mercenaries are more likely to focus on personal outcomes.” 

Remember the inequitable model I mentioned above? That’s the prevalent model today.   

Patriot employees are engaged. They have ownership, they believe in their firm and their firm believes in them. Instead of looking out for themselves, they’re focused on looking out for their firm. 

Why would they do that? 

Because they trust their firm to look out for them, their interests, their families, etc., on the other hand, mercenaries are focused on themselves. They’re job hoppers and social climbers. They’re focused on getting as much value as they can for themselves. 

They’re typically disengaged. 

If the interests of the firm happen to align with their own interests, they’ll do what’s best for the firm. But they’re not really focused on putting their firm ahead of themselves. 

They’re the opposite of patriots. 

Research from Gallup shows employee engagement in the US is at 34 percent, the highest it’s ever been. This data is promising, isn’t it? Yet it’s hiding an unpleasant dark side. 

Sixty-six percent of employees are disengaged 

Of that number, 13 percent are actively disengaged, meaning they’re working to sabotage their company and undermine progress made by their co-workers. 

See for yourself. 

Employee disengagement (or neutrality) is a signal that something is wrong. There are lots of causes for employee disengagement. HR startup, Soapboxhq lists ten causes: 

1. Poor management
2. Lack of career growth
3. Poor communication
4. Pay
5. Lack of recognition
6. Lack of leadership
7. Lack of training
8. Excessive workload
9. Lack of tools and resources
10. Lack of collaboration

The majority of the items in this list can be boiled down to one thing, can you guess what it is? 

That’s right, the absence of equality of opportunity.

Items two, four, five, six, seven, nine and ten all find their roots in this problem. Fix the underlying problem and you can change your firm’s compensation model for the better – retaining talent and profits in the process. 

How to win buy-in from your associates

In my [previous post], I mentioned that the hidden problem behind compensation boils down to identity. Your firm’s identity is built and defined by three areas – culture, personality and values. I’m going to touch on these three areas again, so we’re clear on the details. 

1. Optimizing your firm’s Culture

Robert E. Quinn and Kim S. Cameron at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor discovered there are four types of organizational cultures.

1. Adhocracy cultures are temporary and driven by change. They’re often characterized as “tents rather than palaces.” These firms reconfigure themselves rapidly in the face of change. They’re adaptable, flexible, and creative in the face of uncertainty, ambiguity, and disruption.
2. Clan cultures are family-like. There’s a focus or special emphasis placed on mentoring, nurturing and investing in the growth of those in the clan. It’s all about doing and accomplishing together. Prioritizing employee development is crucial, viewing clients as joint partners essential — an emphasis on engagement, commitment and loyalty non-negotiable.
3. Hierarchy cultures follow a set structure. These firms are focused on perfection, efficiency, stability and doing things the right way. They focus on clear lines of decision-making authority, standardized rules and procedures, control and accountability mechanisms. These are seen as the keys to success.
4. Market cultures are often utilitarian and primarily focused on results. The internal environment in market cultures is competitive, achievement-focused, and driven by outcomes and prestige. “In the words of General Patton, market organizations “are not interested in holding on to [their] positions. Let the [enemy] do that. [They] are advancing all the time, defeating the opposition, marching constantly toward the goal.”

These cultures each have strengths and weaknesses. 

These strengths are unbelievable. 

On the other hand, these weaknesses are unbelievably destructive. They create major problems in law firms, especially when it comes to compensation. 

Why though? 

Because of the next component. 

2. Individual and firm Personality 

Like people, your employees have a mix of the big five personality traits. These traits existed at the individual and firm-level. These traits are: 

• Openness: Individuals and firms high in this trait have a higher degree of intelligence and intellectual curiosity. These individuals and firms value knowledge, experience and data more than others. Firms with a large number of people who are high in Openness may prefer any of the four cultures, provided that they meet their goals or objectives. 
• Extraversion: These individuals and firms are skilled connectors. They’re able to build relationships inside and outside their industry. They’re the life of the party. Influential partners can connect with influencers, leaders and essentials who can provide these firms with a significant amount of leverage. Firms with a large number of people who are high in extraversion may prefer clan, market or adhocracy cultures. 
• Agreeableness: These individuals and firms are socially minded. There’s an emphasis on taking care of their own (employees/clients). They’re cooperative, easy to work with, polite and compassionate. Firms with a large number of people who are high in agreeableness may prefer clan cultures. 
• Conscientiousness: These individuals and firms have a high degree of amount of self-discipline. They’re reliable, trustworthy, organized and efficient. These individuals and firms thrive with proper planning. Firms with a large number of people who are high in conscientiousness may prefer hierarchy cultures. 

See why this is a compensation problem? 

No? 

The employees in your firm may not match the culture of your firm. This mismatch creates major problems if the culture and compensation model you’ve selected doesn’t fit with the employees in your firm. 

Michael Anderson, author of Partner Compensation, the vast majority of compensation models fall into seven basic categories.

1. Equal partnership
2. Lockstep
3. Modified Hale and Dorr
4. Simple Unit
5. 50/50 Subjective-Objective
6. Team Building
7. Eat What You Kill

Here’s a detailed guide that breaks down each of these compensation models. It’s a companion piece that’s designed to work with this article.  

Here’s the crucial component. 

These compensation models are dependent on your firm’s culture and the collective personality of your team and firm.

What does that mean? 

It means, for example, that an “Eat what you kill” model, that’s focused on a timekeeper’s individual effort, will create major problems in a clan culture.

Here’s where it gets worse. 

Partners who are at a sufficient level in the firm may refuse to work with the culture or personality of the firm. This means a partner in a clan culture may decide to behave like a mercenary, every partner for him or herself. 

3. Aligning firm and individual Values. 

When I use the word values, I’m referring to the implicit and explicit values of your firm:

• Thoughts: “The partners in this firm don’t care about any of us. Why should I work harder?”
• Beliefs: “Partners/managers are obsessed with filling their own pockets.”
• Morals: “These people are crooks. I need to get out of here as soon as I can.”
• Ethics: “They lie to their clients; I don’t feel bad about lying to them. They deserve it.”

Most law firms treat this discussion as emotional claptrap. Nonsense that doesn’t really have an impact on your firm’s performance. When you read employee reviews like this, does that sentiment ring true? 

Is it really nonsense? 

Obviously not. But of all the details we’ve discussed so far, your firm’s values have the greatest impact on any change or transition in your firm.

Why?

Think about it.

1. It’s the hardest to uncover. If it’s bad, your employees will never tell you the truth. 
2. You can’t get buy-in without it. 
3. You can’t fix it without help from everyone. But one person is all it takes to destroy the values in your firm. 

If you want buy-in from your employees, you’ll need your values to be in line with your words. This means you have integrity; practically speaking, this is when your thoughts, beliefs, words and actions all align.   

What does that do? 

It creates psychological safety. Psychological safety tells your employees it’s okay, it’s safe to take risks; you can tell the truth, even if it hurts. It’s something all high performing teams need, which the employees in each of these reviews do not have. 

If it’s not safe, they won’t be honest. 

Why does that matter to your law firm? Patrick Lencioni, legendary management consultant explains: 

If your employees don’t weigh-in, they’re never, ever going to buy-in. You’ll simply manufacture disengaged employees, saboteurs that work behind the scenes to undermine you whenever they can. 

That’s exactly what the employees at the beginning of this article did. 

Sabotage their employer. 

You get employees to buy into your compensation model by first eliminating the five dysfunctions of a team. 

This gives your associates the safety they need to tell you what they really think. Like Lencioni says, this doesn’t mean that they have to agree with your final decision, or that there needs to be consensus. They also don’t need to be happy with your final decision. 

It just means you’ve given them a chance to speak their minds.  This is how you get associates to buy-in, but it’s the one thing most firms with controlling leaders won’t do. 

What if you’ve done this already? 

This means you’re ready to focus your attention on the next step, the one most firms focus on first (when it should be last). 

Choosing the compensation model that’s right for you

Here’s the payoff. 

In order for your compensation model to be effective, it has to work with your firm identity rather than against it. Joel Rose, legal management consultant, suggests making some basic decisions regarding financial distributions. 

1. Determine who (individual, committee or governing body) will decide how income and profit should be distributed? 
2. Outline whether financial distributions will be based on percentages, units, participation or a combination plan (more on this in my next post)?
3. Will financial distributions be prospective (planned at the start of the year) or retrospective (based on year-end performance/results?). 
4. Will disbursements be based on funds left over after overhead is paid, or after a predetermined owner or partner draw? 
5. Will your firm have non-capital/equity partners who only receive their salary + bonus? Or will you distribute a specific percentage among each of your partners and shareholders? 
6. Will hourly rates be established or reaffirmed periodically for each timekeeper or employee? This would be helpful so partner billings would be consistent from the client’s perspective.   
7. Which functions will partners serve (e.g., finder, minder, binder or grinder)? How will each role be compensated? 

Here’s where this gets difficult. 

Your answers to these seven questions should align with your firm’s culture, personality and values. This is how you determine the right compensation model for your firm. If your answers don’t align, it’s probably not a fit for your firm. 

This will take time. 

But it’s well worth it. Fixing these issues ahead of time eliminates team dysfunctions and disengagement problems, enabling you to attract and retain top tier talent. Once you’ve identified the compensation model that’s best for your firm, you have one more to-do. 

It’s a never-ending task. 

You create equality of opportunity in your firm. 

How exactly do you go about doing that? Equality of opportunity means different things to different people. That’s true. This means you do all of it. You consistently work to create opportunities for employees in your firm. 

Here are a few ideas you can use to create equality of opportunity in your firm. 

• Create objective promotion standards employees must meet to receive incentives and rewards.
• Create a specific promotion track that’s tied to an individual employee’s strengths and weaknesses.
• Create a general promotion track that conveys an “up or out philosophy.“
• Build or purchase training materials to increase performance, skill, experience or competence in your firm.
• Create an origination plan that amplifies benefits to recipients and the firm.
• Improve work/life balance for employees in your firm.
• Create a variety of firms to handle nonstandard practice areas and markets – B2B, B2C, fringe practice areas, low cost/high return practice areas, etc. Create a firm with its own brand, firm identity, partners and compensation structure. It can be virtual or traditional, small or large.  
• Create an intrapreneurship program for attorneys who are looking to leave the firm (e.g., fund their startup firm in exchange for equity, access, opportunity, connections – something of value). Give attorneys with an entrepreneurial mindset control of the firms you create.
• Provide attorneys with the flexibility they need to cross-train on several different roles in the firm (e.g., finder, minder, binder, grinder).
• Create bonus pools on a predetermined duration (monthly) in exchange for meeting specific goals (i.e., each associate will receive a $10,000 bonus if entire practice area hits X billable hours this week). Rotate offers and incentives to keep motivation high.
• Create new compensation models where associates can earn fees that are similar to partners, provided that they can produce similar results (i.e., rainmaking, building connections, etc.). This track could be offered without a partner or of counsel designation. Just a high value associate with valuable talents. 
• Create leadership, mentorship or scholarly designations for employees who are skilled minders or binders. 
• Create evangelist programs for gifted rainmakers (finders) who can aggressively recruit clients in an official capacity. Various evangelist roles could include service evangelists, brand evangelist or chief evangelist.

These are just a few ideas to get you started. 

These ideas may work well. They may not work for you at all. They may perform better than you expected. That really isn’t the point here. Choosing the right compensation model depends on deeper factors. The details most firms ignore. 

They’re not sexy or buzzworthy. 

But they are crucial to your firm’s survival. In my previous post, former employees posted negative reviews about their law firms, remember them? 

“Unequivocally the worst place I have ever worked.”

“Took a pay cut to help out the company when it was in financial straits, also took on more responsibilities, but when the finances improved I wasn’t offered my old salary back. Also the work was extremely stressful.”

“The real problem starts at the top. The name partners are a bunch of idiots obsessed with filling their own pockets at everyone else’s expense.“

This is the unspoken perception many employees have about their employers, even if they don’t deserve it. 

Equality of opportunity can’t guarantee outcomes 

That’s up to your employees. 

As we’ve seen from Price’s Law, Value creation isn’t symmetrical. If you have 100 attorneys in your firm, 10 of them will produce 50 percent of the value, results or outcomes.

It’s inevitable, it’s unequal and it’s unfair. 

But it’s also something your employees can control. Provide employees with the equality of opportunity they need and they decide how far they’ll go with it. They decide whether they’ll produce the kind of value that makes their career.

Give them opportunity and outcomes depend on them entirely. 

This is why attorneys should be treated unequally. Treating people the same isn’t equal treatment if the people aren’t the same. It sounds an obvious truth, yet it’s consistently ignored. Give your attorneys all the opportunity they can handle. 

Treat them fairly but unequally. 

Create a compensation model that serves your team and you’ll find your team automatically serves your firm. 

Your employees are all mercenaries. 

According to Gallup and Steve Rasmussen, former CEO of Nationwide, your employees fall into one of two camps, patriots or mercenaries. Not because they want to be but because they have to be. 

It’s a for or against problem. 

This problem makes it difficult to solve a more urgent problem law firms are struggling with today.  Their compensation model. 

The hidden problem behind compensation models

As Rasmussen saw it, employees were comprised of these two groups. 

“Patriots totally identify with their company, and mercenaries are more likely to focus on personal outcomes.” 

Patriot employees are engaged. They have ownership, they believe in their firm and their firm believes in them. Instead of looking out for themselves, they’re focused on looking out for their firm. 

Why would they do that? 

Because they trust their firm to look out for them, their interests, their families, etc., on the other hand, mercenaries are focused on themselves. They’re job hoppers and social climbers. They’re focused on getting as much value as they can for themselves. 

They’re typically disengaged. 

If the interests of the firm happen to align with their own interests, they’ll do what’s best for the firm. But they’re not really focused on putting their firm ahead of themselves. 

They’re the opposite of patriots. 

Research from Gallup shows employee engagement in the US is at 34 percent, the highest it’s ever been. This data is promising, isn’t it? Yet it’s hiding an unpleasant dark side. 

Sixty-six percent of employees are disengaged 

Of that number, 13 percent are actively disengaged, meaning they’re working to sabotage their company and undermine progress made by their co-workers. 

Why engagement is a compensation problem

Firm leaders are seen as mercenaries. 

This doesn’t mean they are in reality, but for many employees, perception is reality. Here’s why firm leadership is viewed this way. If anything changes, if associates bend over backward to increase their billable time do they see the rewards? 

Maybe, it all depends on the firm. 

For most firms, the answer is No. If timekeepers bend over backward, they don’t see another dime — traditional compensation models pit partners and associates against each other. Teams are told to work together, but they actually end up competing with each other. 

Collaboration, teamwork, those aren’t the things that increase revenue or make firms successful. 

Actually, it is. 

When firms compete, it’s incredibly harmful. 

According to Law.com research, when clients were served by three practice groups, revenues were 5.7 times higher than those served by one. Clients who were served by five practice groups generated fees that were 17.6 times higher than those served by one.

Firms aren’t cooperating though. 

Why? 

I’ve shared the answer before. The hidden problem behind compensation boils down to your law firm’s identity. That identity is built and defined by three areas – culture, personality and values. Today we’re going to look at two. 

1. Culture
2. Personality

1. Culture

Robert E. Quinn and Kim S. Cameron at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor discovered there are four types of organizational cultures.

1. Adhocracy cultures are temporary and driven by change. They’re often characterized as “tents rather than palaces.” These firms reconfigure themselves rapidly in the face of change. They’re adaptable, flexible and creative in the face of uncertainty, ambiguity and disruption.
2. Clan cultures are family-like. There’s a focus or special emphasis placed on mentoring, nurturing and investing in the growth of those in the clan. It’s all about doing and accomplishing together. Prioritizing employee development is crucial, viewing clients as joint partners essential — an emphasis on engagement, commitment and loyalty non-negotiable.
3. Hierarchy cultures follow a set structure. These firms are focused on perfection, efficiency, stability and doing things the right way. Clear lines of decision-making authority, standardized rules and procedures, control and accountability mechanisms. These are seen as the keys to success.
4. Market cultures are often utilitarian and primarily focused on results. The internal environment in market cultures is competitive, achievement-focused, and driven by outcomes and prestige. “In the words of General Patton, market organizations “are not interested in holding on to [their] positions. Let the [enemy] do that. [They] are advancing all the time, defeating the opposition, marching constantly toward the goal.”

These cultures each have strengths and weaknesses. 

These strengths are unbelievable. 

On the other hand, these weaknesses are unbelievably destructive. They create major problems in law firms, especially when it comes to compensation. 

Why though? 

Because of the next component. 

2. Personality

Like people, your employees have a mix of the big five personality traits. These traits existed at the individual and firm-level. These traits are: 

• Openness: Individuals and firms high in this trait have a higher degree of intelligence and intellectual curiosity. These individuals and firms value knowledge, experience and data more than others. Firms with a large number of people who are high in Openness may prefer any of the four cultures, provided that they meet their goals or objectives. 
• Extraversion: These individuals and firms are skilled connectors. They’re able to build relationships inside and outside their industry. They’re the life of the party. Influential partners can connect with influencers, leaders and essentials who can provide these firms with a significant amount of leverage. Firms with a large number of people who are high in extraversion may prefer clan, market or adhocracy cultures. 
• Agreeableness: These individuals and firms are socially minded. There’s an emphasis on taking care of their own (employees/clients). They’re cooperative, easy to work with, polite and compassionate. Firms with a large number of people who are high in agreeableness may prefer clan cultures. 
• Conscientiousness: These individuals and firms have a high degree of amount of self-discipline. They’re reliable, trustworthy, organized and efficient. These individuals and firms thrive with proper planning. Firms with a large number of people who are high in conscientiousness may prefer hierarchy cultures. 

See why this is a compensation problem? 

No? 

The employees in your firm may not match the culture of your firm. This mismatch creates major problems if the culture and compensation model you’ve selected doesn’t fit with the employees in your firm. 

Michael Anderson, author of Partner Compensation, the vast majority of compensation models fall into seven basic categories.

1. Equal partnership
2. Lockstep
3. Modified Hale and Dorr
4. Simple Unit
5. 50/50 Subjective-Objective
6. Team Building
7. Eat What You Kill

To be successful, these compensation models (as well as it’s variations) are dependent on both your firm’s culture and the collective personality of your team and firm.

What does that mean?

It means that an “Eat what you kill” model, that’s focused on a timekeeper’s individual effort, will create major problems in a clan culture.

Here’s where it gets worse.

Partners who are at a sufficient level in the firm may refuse to work with the culture or personality of the firm. This means a partner in a clan culture may decide to behave like a mercenary, every partner for him or herself. 

The hidden problem with compensation models is people

Your employees fall into one of two camps, patriots or mercenaries. Not because they want to be but because they have to be. Your firm’s culture, personality and values determine whether your firm is filled with patriots or mercenaries. 

As I said, it’s a for or against problem. 

In my next posts, we’ll unpack the problem further and provide solutions you can use. 

Hate tracking time? 

It’s completely understandable. Attorneys have much better things to do with their time, like defending and protecting their clients. Here’s the problem. 

Tracking time is a necessary evil. 

It’s how attorneys, law firms and support teams get paid. The surprising part about all of this, if you hate time tracking, your managing partner may hate time tracking even more than you do. 

Law firms with poor time tracking habits bleed money

This sounds like an inflammatory thing to say. Is it true though? Here’s how Benjamin Lieber, Managing Partner at the Potomac Law Firm, described accepting attorney timesheets.

 “Lawyers would send me their time every month by email and would come in all different formats and all different conventions and levels of granularity. And even the units would vary somewhat. Some would use a tenth of an hour or some would use quarter hours, some would use a third of an hour, it was a mess…”  

Next, he explains what he did with the data, once he received it. 

“I would take all that, put it into spreadsheets and then put it into invoices. That worked okay for the first 10 or 12 clients…” 

The amount of busywork Lieber had to deal with was excruciating; it was an absolute nightmare. All of this, just to get invoices to clients on time.  

Looking at Lieber’s feedback, we know: 

1. His attorneys sent their time entries in at the end of the month
2. All of his attorneys were reconstructing their time entries
3. These attorneys used a variety of unhelpful formats and billing conventions
4. Lieber had to sort through these headaches at the end of each month
5. This kind of billing at up a significant amount of his attorney’s billable time, as well as his

No wonder attorneys hate timekeeping! Lieber’s situation is a recurring problem across the industry. Here’s where this gets worse. 

Poor time tracking habits decrease revenue

The longer timekeepers take to complete their timesheets, the more billable leakage their firm experiences.

Ann Guinn, on her ABA blog, compiled the research. 

• You lose 10 percent of your revenue (billable time) if you record time entries the day of, once a day.
• You lose 25 percent if you wait 24 hours to record your time.
• You lose 50 to 70 percent if you wait just one week.

The attorneys in our particular case study were waiting till the end of the month! If we’re projecting this out, this means firms could be losing 200 to 280 percent of the revenue they should have. Revenue that’s rightfully theirs simply because they didn’t track their time properly. 

Does the data back this up? 

Absolutely. 

Research from Adam Smith, Esq., shows billable leakage is a serious concern for firms that are reliant on reconstructive billing. According to Adam Smith Esq., timekeepers using reconstructive billing (at the end of the month) are failing to report all of their billable time. 

This leakage ranges from $20,000 to $40,000 per timekeeper, per year.

That’s unfortunate, but it’s certainly not enough to fix it. 

It gets worse. 

This survey also found attorneys spend an average of 3.1 hours filling out timesheets each month. The survey used an average rate of $438 per hour which means firms lose an additional $16,294 per person, per year. So a firm with 100 attorneys loses an additional $1,629,400 per year. 

The loss for our 100 person firm is now $3,629,400 to $5,629,400 per year. 

The bad news? 

This estimate is actually quite conservative. In a previous post, I showed how law firms lose an estimated $86,294 to $106,294 per person, per year. This figure doesn’t even include the financial fallout from leakage/overbilling.

What happens if we plug in the numbers for our 100 person law firm? 

The losses climb.

The financial loss balloons to $8,629,400 – $10,692,400 per year. 

How to boost law firm revenues by 70% or more

Work to eliminate the causes that produce these financial headaches. This solution is simple on its own, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy to accomplish. 

There’s a catch. 

Your partners. An Altman Weil survey found law firm partners were the number one impediment to change in the vast majority of law firms. 

“In 69 percent of firms, partners’ resistance to change is an embedded drag on progress, and recent economic successes may obscure any clouds on the horizon – at least for the short-sighted.”

Law firm leadership is most likely unwilling to change. If you’d like their cooperation, there needs to be a sufficient amount of pain involved. 

• 69 percent of law firm partners resisted most change efforts (up from 44 percent in 2015)
• 66 percent of law firms experienced insufficient economic pain to motivate change
• 60 percent of partners were unaware of what they might do differently 

You’re going to need to win buy-in from the partners, stakeholders, and decision-makers in your firm before you attempt to make sweeping changes. How do you go about doing that? Patrick Lencioni, legendary business management consultant explains. 

The long and short of it? 

You have to mine for conflict. That’s right, you’ve got to flush out the disagreements, objections, concerns, risks, thoughts and feelings from key stakeholders in your firm. Notice what he says here. Achieving buy-in: 

• Doesn’t mean there’s consensus or agreement
• Does not mean everyone in the firm is happy with the decisions made or the outcome(s) presented
• Fosters disagreements and heated discussions, the very things needed to earn buy-in 

Earn buy-in, and your firm will work to eliminate these causes. Ignore buy-in, and they may fight you or sabotage your efforts. Okay, imagine that you’ve done it. You’ve earned the required buy-in at your firm. What’s the next step you should take?

Fix the causes. 

Here are some time tracking issues that decrease law firm revenue and the fixes you can use to eliminate the problem. 

Revenue leak #1: Time tracking via spreadsheets

We discussed this above and in a previous post. Time tracking via spreadsheets is a problem for a variety of reasons. 

Spreadsheets introduce a significant amount of unnecessary non-billable time into an attorney’s workday. It’s unpleasant so most attorneys avoid filling out their timesheets for as long as they can. As a result, the accuracy of their time entries decreases day by day. 

Then there’s formatting. 

Remember how I mentioned attorneys spend an average of 3.1 hours filling out timesheets each month? In reality, that number is much higher. Here’s a common example that demonstrates my point about spreadsheets. 

• Your firm has multiple clients 
• Each client has their own spreadsheet
• Each associate in your firm has their own copy of the time tracking spreadsheet 

Here’s where the problems begin. 

Don’t worry, the problems will jump out at you as soon as we begin asking questions. 

1. Which timekeeper (e.g., associate, paralegal, partner, etc.) has the most up-to-date timesheet? 
2. You’ve just added a time entry, did the other associates download the most recent spreadsheet? 
3. Did any of the other timekeepers on your client’s matter overwrite your time entries? 
4. Is double-billing an issue with any of the clients due to two associates working on the same, exact task? 

It’s an easy way to lose thousands or millions in revenue that’s rightfully yours. A partner added their time to an old spreadsheet overwriting your most recent work. It’s gone. The 15 hours of work you spent on your client’s matter has vanished.

But you don’t know that it’s gone. 

It also means you’re below your firm’s quota in terms of billable hours. Thanks to an inefficient time tracking system (spreadsheets) you’re working hard, yet you’re falling behind. You could have sworn you had more hours than this, but you’re too exhausted to audit the timesheets yourself.

You simply add to your existing workload.

Plug the leak: Eliminate timesheets

There are a few simple ways to fix this problem. 

1. Switch to contemporaneous (as-it-happens) time tracking: Choose a tool that provides automatic time tracking. This encourages good habits and consistent behavior from your timekeepers. The easier it is for timekeepers in your firm to track their time, the more likely they are to do it. Make sure timekeepers know how to use the tool and verify that it’s used throughout the day. 
2. Designate a minder to audit timekeeping daily: If you’re like most firms, you already have a minder, a managing partner, director or executive that’s responsible for managing the firm. The person responsible for these audits should have adequate power and authority to deal with non-compliance. 
3. Create an incentive system: This system should have two components: the carrot and the stick. Your timesheets are inventory; it’s important that your auditor or manager treats them that way. This mindset should be driven from the top down. It’s incredibly important, even if you rely on alternative fee arrangements. 
4. Follow your incentive system explicitly: Resistance should be expected. You should expect resistance from both the top and bottom. You may not be well-liked in your firm at first. Stay the course. Remove chronic non-performers, reward top performers. Show everyone in your firm that you’re consistent and true to your word. 

You’ll want to lay out a system of responses for compliant and non-compliant timekeepers in your firm. How will you handle non-compliance on the first, second or third offense? How will you reward consistent top performers? Are there any other requirements tied to your incentive system (e.g., non-compliant don’t receive bonuses, aren’t considered for key projects, promotions or partnership?)?

Revenue leak #2: Reconstructive billing 

What’s the easiest way to eliminate reconstructive billing? 

Change your team’s behavior. 

It sounds simple but it’s definitely not easy. Your associates may resist. Your partners will probably resist your change efforts. How do you get your team to voluntarily eliminate reconstructive billing?

With a behavior model. 

BJ Fogg, a researcher at the Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab, created the Fogg Behavioral Model (FBM).  The FBM answers a simple question.

“What causes behavior change?”

The FBM shows there are three elements to behavior change.

1. Motivation. A compelling reason for people to change their behavior. This includes pain (getting fired) and pleasure (a large quarterly bonus). They can be subjective, objective or both. 
2. Ability. The capability to change behavior in the desired fashion. This encompasses two subcategories, the ability and willingness to change. The easier it is to do, the more likely your timekeepers will do it. The harder it is, the less likely they are to do what you ask. 
3. Triggers. A prompt or call-to-action that tells people to “do it now!” Triggers come in three flavors: 
   1. Spark – a trigger + motivator (i.e., pain or pleasure + deadlines) that’s perfect for those with low motivation, high ability. 
   2. Facilitator – a trigger designed for those with high motivation but low ability. A good example of a facilitator is training that improves team ability. 
   3. Signals – these are simply reminders. They’re perfect for those with both high motivation and high ability. These signals are simple, concise and clear. 

These are the elements that work whether we want them to or not. This is how you change behavior and results in the long term. Here’s a detailed breakdown of the FBM. 

This is how you eliminate reconstructive time tracking. 

Why bother though? 

It’s worth the effort to deal with reconstructive billing because it erodes client trust significantly. It creates an environment that encourages underbilling or overbilling.

Remember, a 24 delay in recording time = a 25 percent loss in revenue. 

This may not seem like a big deal to timekeepers in your firm. It most definitely is. It’s the auditor’s job to give this issue the attention it deserves. But that all depends on the system you use. 

The right system increases revenue. 

A good time tracking system…

• Automatically records time as-it-happens, increasing revenue by 50 to 70 percent.
• Automatically convert appointments into time entries.
• Automatically records billable and non-billable time, identifying profitable/unprofitable practice areas.
• Tracks time automatically, independent of location via desktop, laptop and mobile devices.
• Provides daily, weekly and monthly time summaries to monitor and analyze timekeeper performance.

What does this mean? 

The timekeepers in your firm are less likely to forget about their time entries. They’re motivated, incentivized and reminded consistently. 

It’s everything they need. 

Law firms with good time tracking habits make 70% more

Many attorneys see time tracking as a necessary evil. 

These attorneys don’t see their timesheets for what they are, inventory. Your timesheets are the lifeblood of your firm, even if you rely on alternative fee arrangements. They give you the precious intel you need to improve the financial performance of your firm. 

But it all depends on your tools. 

The best legal time tracking tools make recording time automatic, enabling timekeepers to record their time as-it-happens. The right tool works with your incentive system, motivating your team to go above and beyond. It provides managers and partners with the data they need to optimize firm performance over time.

It’s one of the best things attorneys can do with their time. With the right tools, systems and approach you’ll find time tracking is an indispensable benefit to your firm.