FEBRUARY 29, 2024 – (Cont.) Perhaps the biggest display of repulsive arrogance I experienced in the workplace occurred during an “off-site” meeting of my department at Oppenheimer Wolff & Donnelly. The idea was for partners and associates to gather at a corporate meeting center where isolated from our (land line) phones and (desktop) screens and the tactical work of day-to-day lawyering, we could engage in strategic planning. I’d suffered through many of these gatherings over the years, especially at the bank, and each reminded me of a parliamentary session in which every member of the House of Commons (vice presidents (bank) and associates (law firm)) had a voice but no vote and behind the scenes, every member of the House of Lords (senior and executive vice presidents (bank) and partners (law firm)) had a vote and therefore, needed no voice.
But at the law firm “off-site” that was the venue of the present anecdote, one of the Lords attending my particular “Break-out Group [C],” brought a voice that none of us associates would forget.
Our assigned topic was qualification for partnership—specifically, criteria we were expected to meet to make partner and reap its financial rewards. By that stage of evolution within the ranks of major law firms (the year being 1992), actual proficiency at lawyering had become almost a secondary consideration for partnership: convincing command of your practice area was a sine qua non writ so large it required no special mention. The primary consideration, it now seemed, was economic and came down to two numbers: 1. The dollar value of business you were likely to bring to the firm based on what you were currently hauling in; and 2. The monthly average billable hours you’d racked up over the past 12 months.
In any event, the “Lord” who’d been assigned to our break-out group had a reputation for intensity and self-aggrandizement. He was one of those creatures with whom you couldn’t win. On the one hand, he expected you to be like him—a sharp-fanged, wide-eyed, bristle-tongued billing machine who stuffed his opponents and for extra credit ran 10 miles before breakfast, then from his mansion on Tony Row (with a 700-series Beamer in the garage) rode his $5,000 bike into work (wearing $800 sport sunglasses and a tight-fitting Tour de France outfit bearing 500 endorsements), showered, changed into his $1,000 suit and started his billing meter an hour before anyone else showed up. On the other hand, he couldn’t bear to be beaten, so if you so much as dared to try, you’d bear the unhappy consequences.
On that particular occasion, I don’t think he viewed any of us as current competition. In fact, he was correct. We slug associates ran, we biked, we skied[1], we wore suits, we showed up early, we racked up billable hours, but in all relevant categories we were minor leaguers compared to him, and none of us aspired to be like him. It seemed that his primary goal for his session with us was to ensure that none of us would aspire to compete with him. He communicated this by a shot across our collective bows.
The exact setting was on the nicely manicured grass just outside the break-out room to which our group had been assigned. Our “Lord” was one of those people whose self-esteem was very much dependent on people’s perceptions of him both on and off the field. In fact, in his mind, there was no distinction between the impression that he was a power-lawyer and the view that he was a power-athlete, or more specifically, an outdoor power-athlete—running, biking, and skiing, both downhill and x-c.[2] An important component of the latter impression, in turn, was the image that he was, in fact, an outdoor person, a guy who was as comfortable competing with nature and the elements as he was facing off against human beings in some epic legal battle. Accordingly, he’d led us outside—to the grass and dirt no less, where he could advance his image as a tough outdoors guy.
“Let’s face reality,” he began. “You guys—and gals—” adding the women gratuitously, “can’t take partnership for granted. If you’re serious about making partner, you’ve got to crank it up quite a few notches.” Fine, we all thought. Nothing new here.
But then came the unforgettable:
“Now, if you’re okay taking the bus to work and sending your kids to public school, then fine, don’t bust your butts. But if you want more out of life . . .”
Our group went so quiet you could hear people gulp. In my own case I rode the bus to work and at the time our kids were attending public schools. Did this mean I wasn’t partnership material? It took me three seconds before I flushed this correlation from my mind—and another three seconds to get over the fact it had taken me that long to dismiss Mr. Power-Monger’s ludicrous statement. I realized that he didn’t care whether we made partner or not. What mattered was that he remind us that he was a power-partner who couldn’t be touched—if we too should one day become voting “Lords.”
From that moment onward partnership was no longer the holy grail for any of us members of the “House of Commons.”
In my case panned out for me, I didn’t make partner, and it had nothing to do with whether I rode the bus and sent our kids to public school; whether I hauled in biz and piled up billable hours. What mattered in my case, I learned, was that my sponsoring partner—the head of my division of the department—had gotten sideways with other partners. As punishment, his opponents made sure that none of the senior associates he was sponsoring made partner that year.
My wife was furious. I chalked it up to bad blood and bad politics. The outcome made me receptive to a head-hunter’s call, and six months later I accepted a position at Norwest Bank. I was still able to take the bus to work—and log 20 minutes of reading each way. (Cont.)
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© 2024 by Eric Nilsson
[1] Actually, I (quietly) beat his time in the Birkebeiner Ski Marathon.
[2]I remember stumbling into him one time at the base of Vail. At the time I was lugging around my anciently classic Rossignol Strato 102 skis with equally anciently classic Marker bindings with a turntable heel. My garb was my same old ski bum “uniform.” He, on the other hand, made sure I noticed his state-of-the-art “powder boards” and top of the line ski boots and snappy outfit. Part of me wanted to see him ski but most of me didn’t care. I was confident I could out-wedeln him at Vail or anywhere else. After an exchange long enough to fulfill his need to be noticed and short enough for my need to escape, we went our separate ways.
