1. 1.800.973.1177CAREER COUNSELOR’S CORNER
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The Partnership Dilemma and the Moment
of Clarity We see it all the time: A graduate
of Yale or Stanford Law or wherever joins
a highly regarded international law firm in
New York City or Los Angeles. The lures
are spectacular: Name brand clients known
worldwide; Powerful senior partners, a few
of which may even be media figures; back-up
support staff to dream for -proofreaders,
legal assistants, schedulers; plus fellow
lawyers equally brilliant and success-driven.
For all-work-and-no-play achievers, such
an achievement is like landing in Heaven. All
that hard work has paid off.
The panic, if it can be called that, sets in
quickly.
You may not recognize the panic, or it
may rest just beneath the surface of your
conscious life. This panic is centered on
the uncertainty of a young lawyer’s life. The
firm’s standards may at times seem impos-
sibly high. A typo on a document might send
a pantheon of powerful partners into a fury.
The hours can be long. A client might want
something overnight. There are partners
with no private life, spending all their work-
ing hours at the firm. There appear to be no
benchmarks other than hours billed -and
the more hours the better. Stories circu-
late, such as: At X Firm, one senior associ-
ate billed 3,100 hours his eighth year and
another billed 2,950, the associate with the
most billed hours making partner and the
other lawyer forced to leave the firm. Such a
story may be merely apocryphal but serves
to highlight the overriding importance of
billable hours. In this type of environment, a
lawyer cannot help but ask him- or herself
the following questions:
1. Am I cutting it? And just what is required
to ‘cut it.?’ Am I up to this and can I keep it
up for 30 years?
2. Do some partners prefer working with
certain associates? If so, what are these as-
sociates doing that I’m not?
3. Which types of practice and which partners
seem to hold the most power?
4. Which partner might become my mentor?
Will any partner ever take on this role with
me? How do I get the process rolling?
5. Which associates seem to be making the
most headway?
6. And if certain associates do seem to be
making more headway, why is this happen-
ing? What are they doing that I’m not doing?
Or, what am I doing wrong?
7. How can I stand out from the other associ-
ates without causing some sort of backlash
from them?
8. Finally, how long will it take me to make
partner? What are my chances? Who is likely
to be my primary competition?
Metaphorically Moving From Hell to Heaven
Being an associate in a large firm can be
pleasant when a collegial atmosphere exists
nurtured by partners, associates, support
staff and clients. If an attorney lands in a
practice area which he or she finds intellec-
tually stimulating, so much the better. But
even if the work situation is optimal, there
remains doubt lying just below the surface,
an angst that concerns the unknown future
and the attorney’s position in it. To be an
associate is, in a sense, to always remain in a
form to indenture to the firm’s partners. This
may well be tolerable through the first, say,
four years, when the attorney is establish-
ing work habits and developing skills to
last a life time. But such indentured status
begins to grow somewhat stale as the typical
associate begins to run a docket of cases
with minimal partner supervision. Attorneys
typically report what can only be described
as a moment of ‘clarity’ somewhere between
the end of their third and beginning of their
sixth years.
The Moment of Clarity
The attorney has begun to realize that the
senior partners he or she works with every
day are not gods, and that most of the work
is routine and does not require a brilliant,
break-through intellectual analysis. In short,
the romance is gone. What is left is a future
stretching into decades filled with ‘more of
the same.’ The attorney realizes that he or
she is just as competent as everyone else but
has flaws. Perhaps these flaws have to do
with social-interaction skills. Perhaps there
is a lack of connection with certain partners
that may prove to be harmful. Perhaps the
attorney finds it impossible to bring in new
business. Perhaps there is a relationship
with another associate that causes daily,
gnawing resentment. What the Moment of
Clarity amounts to is a combination of sum-
ming up one’s experience in the firm and a
simultaneous dropping away of the veils of
expectation, idealization, hope and promise.
One’s life and one’s position in the firm is
The Partnership Dilemma and a Moment of Clarity
[Jamie Barnes]
Partnership is the ultimate goal for many attorneys - but what happens to those attorneys that wait it out at a firm and never move beyond the senior associ-
ate level?

2. 1.800.973.1177CAREER COUNSELOR’S CORNER
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seen simply and starkly for what it is.
The Search for Legal Nirvana
What rests behind this Moment of Clarity
is the contrast between what one’s life has
become and what an individual seeks, which
is complete control over one’s life. Such
freedom, if there is indeed such a state, is in-
stinctively sought, and this complete freedom
is envisioned by most associates as earning a
partnership in a big firm. Getting a partner-
ship offer is the problem. There are no rules
to follow, no G.P.A. to be achieved, not LSAT to
pass. Instead, political skills, sheer determi-
nation and billable hours come into play. It
may seem unfair that having run the gauntlet
of high school grades, SAT, college grades,
LSAT, law school G.P.A., law review, federal
clerkship, and acceptance by a name-brand
firm, the battle begins with new rules not cast
in stone. These rules, as undefined as they
are, seem to call upon one’s ability to form
bonds and deflect criticism. They seem to
involve outworking everyone else. They seem
to involve who can parlay enough family and
other contacts into billable clients. And what
does any of this have to do with being a good
lawyer?!!
The problem with the associate’s search for
ways to make partner is that just running up
the most billable hours is not enough. On the
other hand, bringing in several million dollars
of business and being able to keep at least
nominal control of it would certainly guaran-
tee a partnership -or, as a Plan B, the ability
to move elsewhere with clients in tow. If one
can achieve this, the associate’s personality
conflicts inside the firm, if any, become less
important.
But What If A Lawyer Doesn’t Want To Be A
Rainmaker?
What then? Can one still make partner without
bringing in clients? Yes. There are other ways.
One can become an unrivaled expert in some
narrow but revenue-producing corner of the
law. Clients with specific types of problems
will be drawn to the firm because it has a
reputation for solving them. The associate
with expertise in this field will get the bulk
of this new work or have an important say in
how this work is conducted. One can bill more
hours than his or her competition (other asso-
ciates in the same class). One can get visibility
outside the firm by serving on commissions
and boards. One can marry the managing
partner’s daughter or son. One can watch as
other associates jump ship and hope that he
or she will be the last one standing at the end
of eight or so years.
Conclusion
Okay, so you’ve got big-time angst. You don’t
know what to do. Here’s a solution. Let the
situation play out. The worst that can happen
is that you must leave big-firm life and try
for happiness at a medium-sized firm. You
might not make partner or find happiness
there either, but you are more likely to keep
your job and develop a life outside the firm. In
such a scenario, the trajectory of your life is
dictated for you by outside forces. Not a pleas-
ant thought. On the other hand, everyone’s
life is dictated by outside forces, even those
who stayed behind at your prior firm and
made partner. For instance, they will die at a
moment not likely to be of their own choos-
ing. In the meanwhile there will be deaths in
the family, divorces, possible disappointments
with children and other unpleasantness. The
key is to be content with a combination of what
you have achieved and what is forced upon
you. Partnerships are not at the center of such
considerations. You only think they are if you
allow the culture of the law firm to dominate
your thinking. It is in the Moment of Clarity
that you can gain a new perspective. Happi-
ness won’t likely be the result, but a sense
of calm and acceptance will make the rest of
your life that much better.