#160: Getting On Partner Track (The Real Secret)

[00:01:13] I was passed over for partnership again, Heather. They told me I didn’t do enough, even though I billed more hours last year than the two people they did promote. What, exactly, am I missing?

[00:01:25] This was the first thing out of the mouth of a new client, and we had a pretty tough conversation around what is actually required to be on partner track, which today I want to share what I shared with him. Because being on partner track, getting on partner track, isn’t just about billable hours.

[00:01:46] Yes, that is obviously part of it. But let me tell you, it’s not enough to bill a lot. It’s also not enough to be the highest collector of what you’ve billed. Sometimes you might even need to let go of some of your billables and replace them with other things.

[00:02:06] This is what we are getting into today.

Hey there, everybody. This is Heather Moulder, host of the Life & Law Podcast. And I’m super excited, as always, for you to be here with me today.

So, because this does tend to come up in conversation with senior counsel, of counsel and senior associates, I wanted to get in here and address it today.

What We Will Be Covering In Today’s Episode About Getting On Partner Track

And we’re going to address it in a couple of areas:

From the very beginning – on what should you be doing for getting on partnership track, how do you get on partnership track, what are people looking at, what do they want from you?

You likely already know the metrics, and the metrics are pretty easy because they’re out there, right? What are your minimum billables and then there’s some other stuff that may or may not be written in stone. But as you practice, you’re gonna get a handle of I need to also collect.

So if you’re billing 2400 hours a year, but only 1600 of those are being collected, that is obviously a problem. So I’m going in with the assumption that you know those basic things. We’re going to go into something a little bit different today.

What else? What are the unwritten things, the non obvious things? Not only are they not written, but they’re not always obvious. And oftentimes people do not tell you these things. So that’s what we’re going get into today – because I hear about this so often.

Who Does This Apply To (Hint: Everyone)

And I don’t care what level you’re at, I want you to listen to this for a couple of reasons.

Anyone not yet a partner should listen.

Whether you are in your first year of practice, third year of practice, 8th year of practice, 10th or 12th year of practice, whether you are an associate, senior counsel, of counsel. I want you to listen to this.

Partners/Shareholders should listen, too.

And frankly, even if you are already a partner, listen and see what you can take from this to integrate into your management of younger attorneys. Remember back on all the things you didn’t know and the things nobody said unless you asked the specific questions.

So, I want you to listen to today’s podcast in terms of where you are now and what you can do with this information to take moving forward. And I promise you, you can do something with it regardless of what level you’re at. Okay?

In-house attorneys and non-lawyers will also benefit.

I would also add this. If you are in-house, if you’re not in private practice, or maybe you’re not even a lawyer, some of what we’re talking about today is still going to be applicable to you. Because what we’re really talking about is:

How do you get promoted? How do you get promoted to that next level, to that bigger, you know, management kind of a level, regardless of where you are, what is it that people are actually looking for and at, how are they analyzing you?

[00:04:50] So let’s get right into it.

What’s enough for getting on partner track?

So what you need to know is you’ve got to show that you are capable of being a partner before they will actually promote you.

Strategic Long-Term Thinking (For Yourself, Your Practice & Your Career)

[00:05:07] And that means you need to have a fair amount of non billables, and they need to be more than just hours spent doing non billable things that is haphazard and scattershot. This is something I see a lot in, especially those who are at the senior counsel or of council level who’ve been struggling to make it, who have all of the skills, who have the hours, who everybody says they’re great at what they do, and yet they’re still not getting promoted.

[00:05:35] So you need to be very strategic about your non billable time. To understand what I’m talking about, I want you to ask yourself a question, and be really honest with how you answer it:

What do I need to do and what do I need to show others to be considered partnership material?

[00:05:56] Now, let’s go over what that partnership material means so that you can effectively answer this question.

[00:06:02] Partnership material includes being a strategic, long term thinker about your practice, about how you want to grow it, about what you want out of it, about the clients you want to be targeting, about how it fits within to the firm that you’re at.

So you need to be very strategic about that.

Have a Long-Term, Strategic Vision for Your Career & Practice (& Work Backwards to Determine The Right Strategic Goals)

You need to have a vision. And I do sometimes get pushback on this vision thing. I am not talking about having a inflexible set in stone vision for exactly where your practice is going to be five or ten years from now. No, I am talking about something that’s more flexible.

You need a vision that you’re working towards and you need to be strategic about.

• Where am I now?
• Where is that vision?
• What’s the gap and what are those next steps that I need to be working on now into this next year or two?

You start forward and you work backward from there. And yes, you’re going to have a flexible vision because that vision is going to change over time. You’re going to change as you do, as you learn new things and do more, your vision’s going to change. Your circumstances might change – whether in your life or your practice.

Maybe some new area opens up that’s more exciting that you want to get into that can always change your vision. Maybe you change firms. Maybe something happens personally that changes your vision. Understand? That’s okay. The vision is flexible.

But you need to have something to start with so you can work backward from it. So that’s what I mean about you’re a strategic long term thinker.

Know How To Market & Sell

The second thing that is partnership material is knowing how to market, network and sell. And I do not care what level you are at, you need to know this now.

Maybe if you’re in your first year or your second year, you’re not doing so much of it. Although I would tell you it makes sense to be networking even in your first year.

And by the time, though, that you are in your third year of practice on up, you need to be networking more. You need to be marketing to some extent, doing marketing type activities.

And you need to be thinking about how do you sell, and not necessarily sell for yourself, to build your own book. But there is a form of selling that you can do, even at a lower to mid level associate on behalf of your practice and your firm.

And so you need to know these things and you need to be paying attention, number one, to who does it well in your firm. How do they do it? What do you like about what they do and what can you learn from them?

Now, let me be clear about something. This is not about mirroring other people. I do not want you to mirror other people. But I do want you to pay attention to who is successful and who isn’t and what the differentiations are and how you can learn something from them and then make it your own.

Because here’s the deal. You want to market, network, and sell in your own unique way, in a way that fits your personality, in a way that fits your values, and in a way that leverages your strengths. Everybody has different strengths. You want to utilize those.

This is something I help my clients with a lot. If you are not sure what I’m talking about, I have other podcasts on this. I even have a free resource. So reach out to me at heather@eathermoulder.com. Ask the questions. Tell me what it is you’re looking for, and I will point you to the right episodes and to the right resources. Okay?

So you need to know how to market, network, and sell.

Manage others effectively

The third thing to be considered partnership material is this: that you can manage other people so that you can one day build a team.

[00:09:35] Now, let me be clear about this. This does not mean that you have to grow a team or build your own book before making partner, okay? But as you grow up in the ranks, you need to show that you can manage people. You need to show that you have some basic leadership skills.

So this gets to your emotional intelligence, this gets to your communication skills, your listening skills, all of those so called soft skills. I don’t love that term because we tend to roll our eyes and discount it. They’re incredibly important when it comes to management and leadership.

You want to be able to show that you can manage other people and also yourself. Obviously, that kind of goes without saying. So we’re going into the next level. You need to manage other people.

Now, if you’re a first or second year attorney, maybe you’re not managing other people, but maybe you are. By the time I was a second year attorney, I was managing the paralegal. I was managing even in my first year, my secretary. Right.

So from the very beginning, you need to really hone in on those listening skills, those communication skills, some empathy, some higher levels of EQ. You’re not sure how good your EQ or your emotional intelligence skills are, I’ve got another episode coming up on how to improve emotional intelligence. So, be on the lookout for that. I also have a podcast on what is emotional intelligence, if you even just need a primer on that. So I will put a link to that episode in the show notes.

So those are the basic things. You’re a strategic, long term thinker. You know how to market, network and sell, and you can manage other people and one day build a team.

What does this mean for you as you progress through your legal career? How do you ensure that you’re getting on partnership track or you are on partnership track from the time you are a young to mid term associate?

Now let me be clear.

How Leadership Views Young Attorneys (& Why This Is Important To Getting On Partner Track)

[00:11:24] Partners are not going to look at a first, 2nd or third year and say, oh, they’re totally on partnership track, but what they will do is look at you and go, oh, they’ve got some really basic great skills, the things they need to continue.

Once you get into your mid years, a lot of partners do start looking at you to see, okay, are they doing the things? Are they putting more in? Are they, you know, what are their basic skills from a legal perspective? What are their hours? What are their collections?

And then also, what are their other skills? These other things, they start looking at those as well by the time you’re in those middle years. And by that point, I hate to tell you this, but a lot of times people will start writing people off. And that may not be fair, but it is what it is.

If you’re not already working on these things, this is why I say it’s so important from the time you start onwards, to be paying attention to this and to be developing your own personal and professional skills in this way is because people will start writing you off by the time you’re a third, 4th, 5th year. Even in those firms where you have to be a 10th, 11th, 12th year before they even consider you. This is why this is so important.

Why This All Matters Even If You’re Not Sure You Want To Be On Partner Track

Now, the other caveat to this is you do not know when you’re early in your career, and sometimes you’re not even sure when you’re in your 4th, 5th or 6th year whether or not you truly want to be partner. That’s okay, because here’s the deal, y’all. The stuff I’m talking about is going to be beneficial to you regardless of whether you ultimately want to get on partnership track or stay on partnership track, regardless of what you do.

All of these skills will help you in-house. All of these skills will help you if you start your own firm or own business. All of these skills will help you in life. They translate in other ways. So this is really important for your own personal and professional development as well. All right.

What To Do To Get (And Stay) On Partner Track: Stage-Specific Tips

Young Associate Stage

So as a young associate, so we’re talking especially about that, you know, the first one, two, three years. It kind of depends on the partnership track within your firm, maybe your fourth year as well. You really want to spend a lot of your time on personal skill development and professional development for you.

Here’s what I want you to really pay attention to and do.

Billables

Number one, pay attention to what is being billed of the time that you’re spending, and then also what is being collected on from the time that you are spending and that is billed.

[00:13:55] So you want to ensure that you are using your time efficiently and productively. But note, this does not mean spending the least amount of time. Learning time is okay as long as you’re actually learning to become more efficient and productive. And learning to become more efficient and productive is really about truly learning, gaining more knowledge about the law, gaining more knowledge about the business aspects of your clients, about the why behind, why you’re supposed to do things a certain way.

Ask why time is being written off

So if your time is not being billed out, if it’s being written off before it even gets billed, you want to go ask questions, ask, hey, what’s going on? What’s being written off? Why is it being written off? What do I need to work on? What do I need to know more?

[00:14:43] Oftentimes you’re going to find out, especially if you’re in your first two years, that this is expected. They’re totally okay with it. They’re tracking it, they’re looking at it. They want you to spend this time, they want you to bill this time.

Now, this is going to be dependent on the individual firm and sometimes the individual partner you’re working for. I always liked seeing that, and I would write it off if I needed to because it was too much time for what the client could pay and for what the job was. But I expected it in that first two years because you don’t know what you don’t know and you need to learn.

And what I would want to see is over that two to three years, a massive progression on less time. Build on those types of things so that you’re learning, you’re getting better, you’re getting more knowledgeable, you’re gaining wisdom, and you’re getting much more efficient and productive as a result.

So go ask the questions if they’re writing a lot of time off, because sometimes they’re also going to tell you, I don’t want you billing through all of this. There’s another matter I want you to put this in. That’s learning time, and I track it there. So make sure you’re doing whatever it is the partner wants you to be doing in that area.

Gain understanding around what clients want

[00:15:51] Also find out, because this is really important and this is really more about client relationships and how billing and collections sometimes work. There will be stuff that gets billed out, but the partner on that deal or that matter or that case looks at and goes, ok, you know, this time should be billed, and yet it’s not paid for and it gets written off after the fact.

Have conversations if you see that happening again and again around what’s going on and why, and that way you can kind of partner with that shareholder or partner around how to maybe approach something differently, how to record your time.

Sometimes it might be a matter of learning what the client will and will not pay for and figuring out how to describe what you’re doing in a different way, a better way that shows the value to the client. That is, you know, billing practices. Sometimes that’s what it is.

I learned really early in my career that having those conversations was super beneficial. And after having those conversations a couple of times with a particular partner, she started having me look over bills on her behalf because she realized we were on the same page. And I understood what she was saying and what the client wanted. And we were tired of writing off a lot of time that the client kept fighting over.

What we discovered was they wanted things described in a certain way. They really wanted, wanted to see the true value of the work we did. So we had to change our billing practices in how we described our time entries. Basically, it was our time entry practices. So before a bill went out, I got to look at the bill, or had to, depends on how you think of it, look at the bills before they went out. And I had to go through every single time entry of every single person. And if I didn’t think it was described in the way I knew the client really needed it described or wanted it to see what was really going on, I would have to rewrite them, which sometimes meant going and talking to that person, if it wasn’t me, to make sure we wrote it in a way that was honest, yet still got across the point that the client needed in order to be able to pay the bill.

So that’s something that I will tell you. Yes, it was time consuming. Yes, sometimes I didn’t love doing it, but later that benefited me a lot. I learned a lot through that. And FYI, by the time I had my own clients and was partner, I was one of those people who almost never had their time written off. And that’s because I learned how to bill and how to put time entries together that made sense to a client in a way that they would pay for it.

Okay, so that’s just a note to you. So number one is really pay attention to what is being billed of the time that you’re working and then what is being collected, and go have conversations about it when things aren’t being billed and or collected on your time.

Legal Skills & Knowledge

[00:18:43] Number two, focus on your skills and knowledge.

What do you not know or understand? Where can you find this out? What do you need to understand better? There are lots of CLE’s out there. Go there for obvious reasons. You need CLE credit anyway. Start there, but also find articles in other publications.

And I’m not just talking legal publications. Oftentimes some of the best information is not in the legal realm. It’s going to be based on the business of the clients that you serve and needing to understand that better. So find articles, find journals, find publications that will help you in that area and start reading more.

This was incredibly important for me early in my career because I did a lot of energy lending and energy financing, and there were different types of energy financing that we did. And I needed to understand the nuts and bolts of some of the business practices so that I could understand why we wrote credit agreements in the way that we did.

And so you probably have something like where you need to understand the business of the types of clients that you are representing. Go get that information on your own and make sure you understand it. Find workshops, find CLE’s, and then get in front of the people who have been doing this, find mentors in this area.

And by the way, this may not be for partners right now. You may have a partner you work with a lot who is a perfect mentor for this type of thing, for understanding the why behind why you do things, for understanding the business more. And that’s great, but sometimes the partners don’t have time. So look to people who are more senior to you that may not be the partners.

And by the way, do not underestimate paralegals who’ve been in the business for a long time. One of my best resources the first four years of my career was a paralegal who had been working in the group that I was in for many years and understood it. Another good resource was a staff attorney who’d been doing it like for 20 plus years, and she just didn’t want to be a partner. She was a really great resource as well.

So don’t just look to partners, look around, be a little more broad and really build your network around you to support this learning and find ways to ask questions, whether it’s, you know, in meetings. Always ask in meetings whether it’s going to lunch upon occasion, you know, get out, get those questions answered.

This is going to continue throughout your career. But please know that at the beginning stages in those first few years, you are drinking from a fire hose. Soak it in. Ask as many questions as you can. Keep moving forward. Don’t expect to learn it all overnight. It takes time. So be patient with yourself and just let it kind of happen.

But if you’re focusing on this, it will happen.

Network

Okay, so number three, start networking. Do not be afraid to network just because you know you haven’t been doing this. You can’t bring in business just yet. Networking is an art. Start now so you can get better at it and be comfortable with it and figure out how best to do it for you.

[00:21:55] Build your networking skills, build your confidence and build a your contacts because you never know where business will come from in the future. This includes two types of networking, y’all.

External and internal networking.

Both are incredibly important for your career and your personal professional development.

Internal Networking

So internal networking, when at firm functions, also seek out people that you might want to work with just because you want to get to know them better. Also includes identifying mentors.

You know, oftentimes firms will assign specific mentors which are great. Utilize them, but seek out your own as well. People that you feel more aligned to, that you have an affinity for. Those are probably going to be your best mentors anyway. And network as often as you can.

External Networking

Go also to networking events. Okay? And just go in with the aim to make some connections. Learn what you can and just work on your networking skills. That’s really what’s most important. Your first couple of years, work on those skills.

Don’t worry about bringing in business and it will help you in years to come. Okay, so those are my top three tips for young associates. Now let’s move into the mid years.

Mid-Year Associate Stage

So in those mid years, you’re going to need to add in more networking and maybe even some marketing activities while still developing your own skills and knowledge. So here’s what I want you to focus on.

Number one, keep doing all of the above things I already mentioned – at a higher level.

So keep learning more and more and more about the things you don’t know. Keep learning about the business. Go even deeper. Ask more questions.

Make sure that your time is being billed out. You should have less write offs at the beginning and in the collection stage. If write offs go up or you tend to see that write offs are happening with a particular person, a particular partner or particular client, go ask questions. Find out.

I will tell you. Your mid-years are the times where you start to gain enough knowledge, where you can start to ask for more and more work from the people that you really want and like to be working with, and that will crowd out your ability to work for those that you really don’t love working with. You can manage your own career in this way.

So I highly recommend that you do it because it is going to hurt you to continually work for somebody who writes off your time. If you are working for three different partners, two of which are 50% and one is 50%, but that one 50% person is known to write associate time off, you need to try to increase the other two and decrease the amount of time you’re working for the third. I hate to break it to you, but that is just life.

Okay, so keep doing all of the above, but at a much higher level.

Now, when it comes to networking, let’s talk about that. More specifically, you want to start paying more attention to where you are networking based on your own interests and the type of law you are currently practicing. Plus where you want your career to go.

This is where that bigger vision really starts to take place. Once you get into those mid years, mid associate years, you want to start having a vision for the type of law you want to practice, for the type of practice you might want to have based on what you know. Again, it’s going to change probably drastically over the next five to ten years, but that’s okay. You’ve got to start somewhere. So figure that out and then work backwards.

[00:25:30] Continue to learn and level up based on that, that bigger picture vision, and then also continue to network internally with people that you want to know – more potential mentors, potential sponsors for your advancement. There is a difference.

Sponsors have more political capital. They’re able to sponsor you and get you to that next level. You need those people in your back pocket. Okay? So you want to have those.

And this is the time, if you do not have anybody, to be identifying who they are, reaching out, and getting those relationships really going. You now know more about the people and the practices. So start taking a more active role in what you get staffed on, in the roles that you have asked to be on specific cases and deals. Ask to work with specific groups.

If there’s a gap in an area, something that you have yet to do that you know you need to be doing at your level or soon find ways to get staffed on those types of matters or those types of projects or that type of an agreement, whatever it is.

I have one client who is trying to make partner and there is one area that just, it doesn’t come up a lot in her practice that she’s really trying to gain more knowledge in this next year. So where are your gaps? Yes, you’re going to continue to do that, but your mid years are where you can really start to identify some of those. Figure out some ways to start filling the gaps.

Start mentoring others.

[00:26:57] Another networking tip, it’s time to start taking on a mentoring role to younger associates. This might include summer associates. If you have summer programs, this is how to start showing your management and leadership.

How can you mentor others? How can you help others? How can you pay it forward? This is an important piece to proving that you deserve to be on partnership track. So start doing this because you are senior enough in that mid level to start doing more and more and more of this.

Ask for more autonomy (and take ownership)

Finally, when it comes to learning and going deeper into the business side, ask questions of mentors to ensure you’re getting what you need and really level up that knowledge. Ask for more autonomy where it makes sense.

I remember very clearly in my fourth and fifth year being really annoyed, I have to say, because one partner had me do things that I was still, I was doing at my 1st, second and third year. And I’m like, guys, I can do more than this and I need to be doing more than this.

So I really had to advocate for myself. He didn’t like letting go of certain things and he had, as many lawyers do, I will just tell you, trust issues on letting go and letting people kind of step up. But once I went to him and explained to him, look, I’ve been doing this for this long, here’s the progress I’ve made. It’s time to move up. Here’s where I’m thinking, here’s what I’d like to do. Here’s how I’d like to.

He liked that I was being proactive and he allowed me that and I was able to do more and more and more.

So start advocating for yourself to be able to step up into that next level that you need to be stepping up in.

Okay, so that’s it for those mid years. Now we’re getting into becoming more senior. 

Your Senior Associate Years

How do you ensure that you’re getting on partner track as you become more senior? This is when it becomes really, really important.

So you’re going to need to uplevel your marketing and your networking activities while also adding in things that showcase your management and leadership abilities. Here’s what you need to focus on:

Number one, becoming more and more of a mentor to others.

Show you can lead others. Show you can lead a team. Get active internally within your group and in other leadership positions within the firm that might be available to senior associates and senior counsel.

This is the time to start showcasing your people skills, your EQ and how it can make a difference moving forward. And if you are not strong in this area, it is time to work to strengthen them. I would say start working on that earlier than this, but a lot of times for people, this is where it becomes more and more obvious. And let me just say, it doesn’t take millions of years. Okay.

[00:29:43] Personal development is key to being seen as a good leader and mentor.

[00:29:47] You can quickly, quickly strengthen your communication, your business development skills, your EQ skills by hiring experts. This is where you might need to think about hiring a coach. Whether it’s me or someone else, there’s plenty of coaches out there. Doesn’t have to be me. Hire somebody that’s like a fast forward button. You’re going to really show up differently and people are going to notice. So do not be afraid to go get help in that area.

Niche down

[00:30:16] Now when it comes to networking. Second thing, I want you to be more niche in your networking. Okay?

Make sure you’re targeting the right groups and the right people for the practice you actually want. You are in charge of the practice you build. It is not up to others. So get super clear and specific about what that vision is for you and that what that means for the practice you want as you become partner.

This is time for you to start thinking in terms of I’m going to be made partner soon. That’s my goal. So how can I start stepping up and building the right network of people?

[00:30:53] What conferences do I need to go to? Do I need to speak more often? Right? This is where marketing comes into play. That’s the third thing.

Market Proactively

So if you haven’t already been doing it, you need to start marketing yourself a lot more, both internally and also externally. So externally via writing, speaking, that type of thing. LinkedIn can be used very well this way.

If you like to use LinkedIn and don’t want to write long articles, you can write articles in places you want to show your thought leadership. If you don’t want to write because that takes too long, speak. You can speak. Okay?

Do not do just what is asked. Oftentimes as you become more senior, you get asked to do more and more of this stuff. And yes, you want to do a certain amount of those things. People are asking for a reason. You like to play ball, you like to be seen as a team player, but you need to do more, okay?

This is your marketing plan, not somebody else’s, okay? So take ownership and responsibility for your marketing and steer it the way you want. You have a couple of options here.

You can primarily work on your branding as who you are, why you do what you do, just to get noticed internally and externally. I have a client who’s. Her name is Emily Steadman. I’m not afraid to put that out there. Who has been on LinkedIn for years. She was doing it as an associate. She is now a partner. She now has a podcast of her own. I will put links to that podcast in the show notes. It’s especially great for associates. So go check it out. And the really great thing is, I think all of her episodes are less than 15 minutes. Most are in the like ten or less minute range. It’s awesome.

Or you can also start going further and create real thought leadership. And thought leadership being. We’ve talked about this before, I’m going to put a link in the show notes to at least one, maybe a couple of episodes where we’ve talked about this before, but that’s where you are talking about the kind of stuff that you do and the things that clients need to be aware of, maybe the questions they’re asking, the roadblocks, the problems and how to get out of them. You know, that kind of stuff, the things we write about or speak about, you can have that on LinkedIn as well in shorter posts and just like a series.

So these are areas that you need to be thinking about, and you need to be creating a really strategic plan for the kind of practice you actually want. You do this and people will start thinking of you as, oh, she’s acting like a partner. He’s acting like a partner. Before you’re ever made it. That’s what I mean.

If you go from young associate to mid to senior and you do these things, by the time you get to senior, it’s going to be more natural. People are going to be paying attention to you, right? They’re going to be, you know, noticing you more and in a good way because you’re going to be stepping up, you’re going to be mentoring, you’re going to be managing. You’re going to be already thinking strategically and getting out there with marketing activities that nobody else is really doing.

So let me give you some examples, okay, of what I’ve seen, and this is through clients. So I have one client. Her legal knowledge is amazing. Her billables were wonderful. Her collections are awesome. But there were two things that she still needed to focus on, and that was business development. So we put a strategic business development plan together that has been noticed. And then the next phase was you actually need to be working less. We need to see that you’re less stressed. We need to see that you can really step up into that next level and become a partner without being so overwhelmed and stressed. And so that’s where we are now.

And I’m seeing a lot of growth in her, and I’m pretty confident in the next year she’s going to be promoted because it is time. And she’s doing all of the things they’ve asked of her, and she’s really showing up, and not just showing up as a biller, but showing up as a business developer. She’s done an amazing job of networking externally and internally, is starting to bring in some of her own clients, is cross selling through the firm. That type of thing gets noticed. So that’s one example.

Here’s another example. I had one client, and this is actually the client that I mentioned at the very beginning. I’m billing more, I’m collecting more. Yet other people are being promoted. What gives? And that was the tough conversation that, look, you need to do other things, you need to show other things. It’s not just about having excellent legal skills and billing a lot. You need to act like a partner.

And so what we did is he actually decided that moving firms made sense for him. He moved from a bigger firm to a very small firm where he would be able to build his own team. And if he met certain metrics on business development and built a team, he would be made partner. Well, guess what? A year later he was made partner.

And then a year after that, he was able to grow his business big enough where he outgrew that little firm and moved back into another firm that was even bigger. What he really needed was the knowledge, number one, because nobody ever talked about it. And the biggest mistake I would say he made is not asking the questions. So don’t be afraid to ask these questions. Not everything’s written down.

[00:36:14] And then his second mistake is because he didn’t ask the questions he didn’t know, and he made assumptions. Don’t make assumptions that you’re doing enough. Always, always seek out feedback.

Figure out what else they want and need to see from you to get to that next level. And I would do this from the very beginning on, so that was the lesson learned there.

But also, he’s a perfect example. In two years, he massively grew his book and ended up from a mid tier law firm to another pretty good sized mid tier law firm, which is perfect for his practice with a huge, robust book of business where he’s now building a team. He’s just hired a new paralegal. He’s looking for another associate. I mean, it’s, it’s amazing what somebody can do in a couple of years.

All right, so regardless of what level you’re at, get started. Non billable work as an attorney is just as important as your billable work. Please be sure to treat it accordingly.

Before I go, I have a quick note. When it comes to success in both your legal practice and life, you want three main things. Mindset, strategy, execution, and mindset is your obvious starting point and ever present partner. Because whether you’re a first year attorney, have been practicing for 20 plus years, or are somewhere in between, your mindset is what determines how you show up, and it’s the foundation to lawyering effectively, managing skillfully, and growing your business successfully.

All the things we’ve been talking about today. That is why I created what I like to call the Legal Mindset Mastery Toolkit, which has ten evidence based stress busting, mood boosting, and mind sharpening tools that will make you a more effective and even more importantly, happier, lawyer. Be sure if you do not have this that you grab it, I will put a link in the show notes.

Okay y’all, that is it for today. We will be back next week. Bye for now.