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What is the lateral hire process like?
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crying ceo killed everyone today on LinkedIn 🤣🤣🤣
Not a meme but…
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I’ve started a firm with three partners in 1996. We grew to 12 lawyers within a year and then maintained our size for the next three years. Even though we were very small, we had an institutional-quality practice with Wall Street clients. In year one, I made $300,000 and had a $50,000 expense account. By year 4, I was making over $1 million plus a $50,000 expense account.
The independence was everything, but I did not understand that at the time. After two financial crises (Long Term Capital Bank in 1998 and the fallout of 9/11 in 2001) which caused the phone to stop ringing, we merged with a 650-lawyer firm. In both cases, the work did not come back for five months.
As an independent firm, we had a monthly nut of $325,000 (excluding any payment to the equity partners). we were hemorrhaging cash and I felt that we had no choice but to merge.
After the merger, the clients and the work were no better or more prestigious and, in fact, my compensation was cut by 35% and my expense account by 50%. However, it was rock-solid stable, which is what I wanted.
My compensation went up and down, sometimes reaching as high as $900,000 and falling as low as $365,000. I had stability in that the phone never again stopped ringing, but I had no less volatility with my compensation, the politics were insane and I completely lost my independence.
I moved a lot in the next 25 years, looking for a more hospitable home that would pay me what I knew I was worth. I’ve just this year retired and my conclusion: being the master of your own destiny is the single, most important thing you can achieve in this profession. You succeed or fail entirely on your own, and you have one master (your clients) instead of two (your clients and your partners).
Incidentally, looking back after 20+ years, I never matched the comp I enjoyed from my 12-lawyer firm!
I represent small law firms as outside General Counsel. Generally, my clients that have done this have taken it as a quick pay day and structured the deal to retain autonomy in the new firm. I think your biggest risk is that they’re just trying to buy your clients and staff and will toss you as soon as possible. DM me if you’d like to chat.
Yeah but this is kinda reverse survivorship bias isn’t it? You are basing this off of a three year window in which you made it work and ignoring the next three years where you were “hemorrhaging cash.” Personally, my take away from your story seems to be the opposite of your own.