What You Need To Know About How to Make Partner at Your Law Firm
When attorneys start thinking about their path to law firm partnership, often they overlook important factors in that process. If your goal is to make partner in your law firm, don’t assume that just doing good work and being a certain number of years out of law school is enough. Here are some examples of what you need to know when you’re trying to make partner:
Almost no one makes (equity) partner without being a rainmaker
For election to equity partnership in particular, demonstrating that you bring in valuable business is key. That doesn’t necessarily mean you need to originate every client for which you want to claim credit, or that you need an eight-figure book of business. But you should be prepared to show how you are instrumental to the firm getting business and making money. For example, are there clients who hired the firm because they wanted you to lead specific matters, even if there was a broader, existing firm relationship with those clients? Do you regularly manage and lead matters that generate substantial revenue and profit? Are your clients willing to call or email key partners in the firm to emphasize that they support your partnership candidacy and attribute their ongoing relationship with the firm to your work? And are your clients ones that the firm values working with because of their industry or market position?
You need multiple sponsors who will advocate for you
Having a single partner who favors your election to partnership is probably not enough to get you over the partnership threshold, unless that partner is the chair of the firm. You want many partners who not only support you, but who really know you and will actively encourage and promote your candidacy. Partners who can be critical sponsors include: the head of the partner nominating committee, the chairs of your practice group, the leaders of your department, and other partners who will attest to your importance to keeping and increasing revenue from prized clients.
What got someone elected to partnership last year may not work this year
It’s great that someone with a profile similar to yours made partner in your firm last year, but consider whether the environment at your firm has changed since then. Has the firm had a down year economically that makes it difficult to promote as many people to partner? Did your practice group hire a significant number of lateral partners this year that changed the associate-partner leverage ratio? What other unique variables might affect who is elected to partnership at the firm now? Talk to your colleagues who made partner recently in order to understand their path, but also take steps to understand what may look different for you.
Understand the key terms and metrics that your law firm values as a business
Beyond your demonstrated ability to bring in and retain business, it’s not just your billable hours that matter — it’s also your billable rate. And it’s not just how much time and pounds, dollars, yen, euros, or other currency amounts you bill — it’s also your realization rate. You need to understand these and other metrics like leverage, average revenue per lawyer, client retention rates, average days for billing and collection, and run rates. If you just skim these terms when you see them in legal publications or only occasionally listen when someone in the firm mentions them, you need to start learning more and educating yourself about why and how they matter in your firm. Understanding the business performance measurements for your law firm helps you to think about how to build the best business case for your election to partnership.
The path to partnership requires strategic planning and execution
Thinking several years in advance about what you need to do to be a serious candidate for partnership gives you an advantage. Don’t wait to arrive at the first year when you are told you will be considered for partnership and assume that you have been doing all the right things to be elected. Associates who are even several years away from being formally submitted for partnership should be thinking now about what they can do to build a strong foundation for their candidacy. If there are areas where you need to strengthen - maybe having leadership roles in client matters, improving your business development skills, or increasing your profile and reputation within the firm — you should start listing those, setting strategies for how to address them, and tracking how you are progressing towards those goals on a regular basis.
If you’re working to make partner at your law firm, coaching on these and other issues can be helpful in that journey. Please contact me if you would like to discuss how coaching can assist you in this way.