Associates and Self-Education
It has been a regular theme in these columns that most new associates are ill-equipped to handle the business realities of law firm life. They enter law school with an undergraduate degree in the liberal arts. Law school curricula have little business focus, and the view that legal educators have of law as a profession means that they consider any business training to be trade-oriented and therefore inappropriate for law schools. This attitude is perpetuated by the lack of CLE courses in management and client service. What suffers is the concept of business competency. The associate who has it understands the operation of the firm as a business (budget, collections, profit, loss), the firm's billing structure, how each attorney determines firm profitability, and the importance of clients and their own businesses.
All lawyers today, and especially associates, need to be more sensitive to the financial needs and operation of their firm. The necessary conditions for this to happen are increased access to financial information, and better training in using it. How many associates, even partners, would possess the business competency to calculate, or even understand, the traditional key measures of law firm performance: realization, utilization, leverage and expenses? How many know, or understand, the firm's collection rate - or their own personal one? Until lawyers possess that kind of business competency, they are not truly qualified to be owners of their firms.
It's not necessary that an associate hold a business degree for such understanding. Except in unusual circumstances (as when a corporation wants a general counsel or deputy general counsel with a strong business background to participate in operations management), a business degree really confers no unusual benefits or advantages to most lawyers. However, even beyond any state bar association resources for business training, the associate who is serious about it has plenty of resources to pursue. The most readily available one is the Internet. Online resources include the comprehensive education programs found at the West Legal Education Center, which compiles business and legal education programs of the Practicing Law Institute and many others. The studies and reports of consultants like Altman Weil, as well as Bruce MacEwen's blog on law firm economics, are excellent for self-education.
These are just starters, but they can help all associates assess the value they provide to their firms, and create new ways to provide more of it. Associates who pursue such resources and the lessons the offer are the associates with the best chance to be tomorrow's partners.
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In February, we spent three weeks in Arizona, marveling at the desert sights and the extraordinary cacti. I had the pleasure of riding in a pro camp in Tucson. In March, I will ride in a second cycling camp in Santa Ynez Valley, CA. Then Chicago in April.
