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Partner Purges: Practical or Perilous?

By William C. Cobb

There's a new trend on the horizon: partner purges. Are they necessary? Is such a drastic move ultimately good for the law firm?

I generally agree that sometimes such a move is needed, but there are some tough issues involved. Partners of firms that have spun off from Big-Law firms have isolated part of the problem. Those founders of the spin-off firms say one of the reasons they left their large firms in the first place was because of the increasing focus on an “eat what you kill” culture, and the valuation of “book of business” over partnership and collaboration. Whole Foods CEO John Mackey recently made a great comment: “We all need for our red blood cells to keep producing, but if they stop reproducing, we die.” Law firms need to continue to create red blood cells within the firm or the firm dies. If “book of business” is the primary metric used by law firms to classify partners to purge, several problems may produce unintended consequences:

  • Internal competition for client credit increases along with lack of trust among lawyers.
  • Lawyers begin to hoard clients to the detriment of the client, who will not get the right expertise applied to the problem.
  • “Eat what you kill” partners tend not to delegate work to people who can perform the work more efficiently and with less costs to the client.
  • Laterals brought in because of their books become more focused on their own clients rather than trying to institutionalize the clients into the firm.
  • The firm may cut into the muscle of contributions that cannot be traced by the book of business, including training, mentorship, interview skills, expert systems creation, and glueing clients to the firm.

What, Exactly, Is 'Deadwood'?

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