Building Your Business Case to Be Promoted to Partnership
To make partner in a law firm, you must establish not only that you are a skilled attorney but also that your economic case is strong. A law firm is a business, and as a business it must consider both the quality of the services it offers and how financially viable they are. In evaluating the people responsible for those services and the accompanying revenue, the law firm must ask what business a potential partner can generate, how quickly, and at what levels.
So how can you establish that the work you do will bring in revenue for your firm?
You don’t necessarily need to prove that upon elevation to partner that you can immediately generate a multi-million-dollar book of business annually. But you must demonstrate that you are already bringing great value to the firm, and that you can increase that value over time as a partner.
Most importantly, every firm considers a different set of factors to identify what business prospects best suit its financial goals and priorities. These factors may also vary substantially depending on whether your firm has both equity and non-equity partnership tiers.
If you don’t have an originated book of business, there are other ways that you may be able to form a persuasive financial case for partnership. For example:
Does the firm consider how you have helped grow or sustain business from clients that are originated by other partners? Is there a specific way you can measure this contribution? For example, does your firm offer matter-management credit where you handle the day-to-day work on an engagement with minimal partner supervision?
Do you have specific skills, such a fluency in a language or deep experience in a particular geography or jurisdiction, that are in demand for clients with whom the firm would like to strengthen or establish a relationship?
If you have a highly specialized practice that limits your ability to build your own book of business, is your practice still important to other partners’ clients? Does your firm’s system allow you to claim some percentage of credit for those matters?
Are you key to a specific area of work for one of the firm’s largest clients, particularly for work that would otherwise be difficult to maintain or expand if you were not available to handle it? For example, in working for a large company that has a large portfolio of matters, does your particular expertise in franchise law make you a critical player?
Does your firm expect new partners to enter immediately into partnership with substantial business, or will you have a runway over a period of years to build your own client base? Can you show progress that you have made to date in bringing in clients or matters that may grow over time?
Have any clients given you or others at the firm feedback which suggests that you have been integral to a client’s decision to engage the firm? For example, this might be a comment about how a client wanted you to be assigned to a case because you are already familiar with their plant operations in a certain location, or a comment about how much they have appreciated your keen attention to fees and billing.
Can your financial team at the firm, and the partners that you work with, help you estimate how much business you have helped bring into the firm, either on a monetary unit basis or as a percentage of overall fees?
As you explore these possible avenues, talk to your firm’s leaders about how they would weigh each of these variables in reviewing your partnership candidacy. Every firm and every lawyer are different. The key is identifying your strengths in your business case and matching them to the priorities of your firm.
If you’re focused on your partnership prospects and are trying to determine the best steps to move your candidacy forward, please reach out to me to discuss how I can help you get started on that path. Contact Laura