Titles are the Opium of the Masses

In the old days, there were associates and partners. Every lawyer planned to work ridiculously hard as an associate for about seven years, after which the firm would invite them to become a partner. Or not.

If you were not invited to become a partner, you were expected to hang your head in shame and slink out of the firm. The system was called “Up or Out”. 

On the other hand, if you were invited to become a partner, you were a success. A member of the team. You had won the opportunity to continue to work hard until you retired, albeit for a great deal more money.

Much has changed since the good old days as firms struggle to maintain or increase partner income. Some other day we can discuss whether these changes resulted from law firms becoming less profitable or partners becoming greedier.

Whatever the reason, law firms today do not want to have so many partners that the compensation pie must be split into too many pieces. In order to maintain their incomes, partners have stretched out the time period to achieve partnership by an additional three to five years.

As lawyers tend to be competitive and impatient, firms have found it necessary to distract associates while they wait in the partnership line. What better way to do that than with titles?

So now, in addition to associates and partners, we have senior associates, salaried partners, associate partners, and income partners.  Don’t be fooled by the last three – they are not real equity partners.

This morning, I read a post from a well-known firm congratulating a number of associates on being “promoted” to senior associate.

I have no idea what it takes to earn that promotion. In my day you became a senior associate (which was not an official title and did not come by promotion) by not being fired while you were a more junior associate. After three or four years, “Poof” – you were a senior associate. I imagine that maybe there is more involved nowadays as the process involves a “promotion” and a formal announcement on LinkedIn.

It all sounds like nonsense to me. I attribute it to common wisdom in the legal profession having morphed from “law is a noble profession” to “law is both a profession and a business” to what we have now, which is “law is primarily a business, albeit also (somewhat inconveniently) a regulated profession”.

Like the rest of the corporate world, law firms are now about profits first and people second, granting ownership status only if absolutely necessary to retain high performers. give them a “promotion” and a new title. Announce it on LinkedIn so that their friends can see it. That ought to keep them quiet for a bit.

Murray is a happily retired lawyer who lives in the country, drives a pick-up truck, writes, teaches and mentors. You can reach him at [email protected] or see what he is up to at lawanddisorderinc.com.