In early October, I watched Charlie Rose interview Warren Buffett. When the richest man in the world speaks about the US economy, it’s worth listening. Clearly, the stock market is not only down but hasn’t yet hit bottom. Attorneys, like most all other business people and workers, must take care. They need to value their human capital as well as themselves to both survive and thrive.
Victoria Pynchon: I Remember Five Principles During Tough Economic Times
These are hard times and none of us is immune. I’ve been here before. In the early 1990s, my law firm announced we would ride out the economic crisis by henceforth buying legal pads without our firm name embossed on the binding. Layoffs of partners, associates and staff quickly followed. Some caught life rafts to other law firms; some were not so lucky. Those who stepped on others going up the compensation ladder were not treated well on their way back down. The water was cold and filled with sharks.
It seemed then, and seems now, that the entire profession has forgotten two critical principles of legal practice: clients, not profits, come first; and, partners see one another through the tough years in the same manner in which they share the profitable ones. Because people (our clients, our colleagues and our staff) are our only assets, I have five people-centered tips for surviving, perhaps even flourishing, in this challenging economic environment.
1. Listen more than you talk. I learned this from the General Counsel of a major international petroleum company. Here’s what he said. “As a business man, I am not interested in the law. I am interested in my business. If you’re talking, you’re not learning what you need to know to help my business succeed. Here’s what too many lawyers do not understand. I do not have legal problems. I have business problems with legal issues. If you don’t understand my business, you cannot solve my problem and I will not hire your firm no matter how prestigious it might be.”
2. Use litigation as an opportunity to negotiate a business deal. In hard economic times, GC’s are not in the “millions for defense but not a penny in tribute” mood. Google’s GC Eric Schmidt famously said that litigation is “just a business negotiation being conducted in the courts.” The more working parts any potential business deal has, the easier it is to find solutions that benefit both parties in different ways. Before we can explore the most effective and efficient business solution to a commercial problem, we must shed our merits-based resolution blinders and explore the parties’ commercial interests. One of the swiftest means of doing so is bringing the decision-makers on both sides to the planning, problem-solving and bargaining table. If the parties agree that these brain-storming sessions can be considered “mediations” you can avail yourself of state or federal confidentiality protections. Then let the business people do what they do best: plan for a productive future rather than fighting about an unproductive past.
3. Innovate, don’t litigate. This, along with “don’t sue your own market” is the foundation of Sun MicroSystems’ dispute resolution strategy. Now that technology and the economy are moving faster than the adversarial process, it’s time for litigators to follow suit by creating something new through study and experimentation, which is the very definition of “innovate.”
4. The new economy is more about being nimble than it is about being “right.” Though there’s often more money in war than there is in peace, war destroys where peace builds. Take a deep breath, close your eyes and dare to pretend that you’ve already produced, collected and coded a million-plus documents, taken weeks of deposition testimony and confirmed it’s the view of your case that you had when suit was filed. Now what? It’s time to negotiate a durable resolution to a predictably expensive and protracted piece of litigation
5. Though often ascribed to Warren Buffet, it was Fairfax M. Cone, one of the pre-eminent advertising men of the last century, who famously said that our human capital goes down the elevator every night and must be given good reasons to come back the next morning.
The end of the first part.
Tags by users:
- human capitals to be a lawyer
- law firm human capital
- human capital for lawyer
- human capital for lawyers
- every night the human capital goes down the elevator
- savvy lawyers
- the value and the capital written by
- The value of human capital in business
- value of human capital in business
- value of lawyer