Climbing the Ladder: The kind of lawyer I want to be

By Kamau Coar
Ungaretti & Harris

About a year after I started with ­Ungaretti & Harris, I ended up going to a dinner reception and sitting right next to one of the name partners: Rich Ungaretti. Like any young associate in that situation, I was very excited and a bit nervous about the opportunity to get to know one of the founders of my firm. After about an hour of small talk, Rich asked me a question seemingly out of left field: “How many hours do you think it takes to be a good lawyer?”

Immediately, my mind started racing to how many billable hours I had the previous year. At that moment it sure felt like I was way below expectations.

As I tried to hide any signs of what was racing through my head, Rich started to work his way through his own computations out loud: “We expect you to bill around 2,000 hours. Then you figure about 500 hours keeping up-to-date on what’s going on with new decisions and court rules. You need about 400 hours marketing and getting out there to know the legal community. Another 200 hours doing pro bono. …”

I stopped counting after Rich got to about 3,300 hours, but he kept on. “… You’ll ­probably also spend a lot of time helping out younger lawyers. I don’t know how you guys do it. There aren’t enough hours in the day.”

I don’t recall what I said in response, but I do remember leaving that night and feeling uncomfortable as to whether or not I was doing enough. I love working with Rich now, but he scared me that night.

There are a couple of different ways I could have taken this conversation. I could have started looking for a new job. Or, I could think long and hard about what kind of lawyer I wanted to be, and what goes into being that lawyer.

Looking back it seems ­simple, but that night Rich helped me realize that being a good lawyer requires much more than just doing what’s assigned to you. To ­become a good lawyer, you have to make yourself a good lawyer.

The most important step in making yourself a good lawyer is to keep in mind the lawyer you want to be.

To give our clients the best possible service, you have to keep the client’s goals in mind. It only makes sense that you do the same for your own career. The ­isolated assignments you’re given as a young attorney are just the tip of the iceberg of what you need to know to become a good lawyer. You don’t get the full picture just writing memos or reviewing documents. You need to use these tasks and the opportunities as building blocks, to learn how to become a good lawyer.

To that end, it is imperative that you ­surround yourself with people who will help shape you into the lawyer you want to be.

As a young associate, you’re asked to­ contribute information that is used to make ­decisions, but are not always included in the decision-making process. You have to find a way to ­understand the decisions that are being made based on your work, so you can one day ­become the person making those ­decisions.

You should make it a priority to find people who will help you understand your assignment’s impact on the whole picture and how to transition from handing a piece of the ­puzzle to the partner, to actually putting the puzzle together for the client.

It’s also extremely important to understand the businesses you’re working for. This ­applies to both your client’s business, as well as your firm.

As a young associate, the partners you are working for are essentially your clients and should be treated as such. In order to give them the best possible work product and to ensure that they want to work with you again, you must understand what the client’s goals are.

Each client’s issues are unique, and the circumstances may dictate a different strategy. You have to be prepared to give your clients answers catered to their specific situations. This may mean that you need to do ­non-billable research of the client on your own time.

In the law firm context, it may mean that you ask other people who have worked with a particular partner how to best present your findings on a particular issue. To effectively answer a client or a partner’s questions, you have to be in tune with the how that ­person does business and what they really want.

You should also perform pro bono service. In addition to the altruistic reasons to do pro bono work, pro bono is an excellent way to get meaningful experience as a young ­attorney. Senior attorneys will give you more responsibility if they know you’ve handled the kind of work they need to assign. Use your pro bono experiences to your advantage to get ahead.

I’m not sure if these are the messages that Rich intended for me that night, but it ended up being one of the most important conversations to my career.

If it’s not what Rich was trying to tell me, then I guess the last important lesson I learned on how to be a good lawyer is to find something positive and ­useful in whatever advice someone offers, even if it’s not the intended message.