Blog — Around the water cooler

Each week we will pose these three questions to different lawyers in the legal community.

 This week we talk with Linda K. Stevens, who has spent 20 years handling intellectual property and general commercial litigation. She is a partner at Schiff Hardin. 

– What do you find the most interesting about your practice?

In my litigation practice, I have handled many trade secrets and non-compete cases. These cases tend to be more interesting and fun than most commercial disputes: they usually involve allegations of theft and other wrongdoing, and if they are not settled, they get to a hearing very quickly. (If some commercial disputes resemble trench warfare, then the emergency injunction work I do can be considered a high noon shoot-out, and I much prefer the faster pace.)

Also, I get to deal with cutting-edge computer forensics and e-discovery issues, which has been quite interesting.  It is very common for me to be dealing with computer scrubbing and other types of evidence spoliation. 

I have been lucky to develop a dual practice. In addition to my litigation work, I do quite a bit of client counseling in areas related to intellectual property protection, including the drafting and implementation of contracts, policies and procedures, and I provide support to our transactional lawyers in various types of deals involving intellectual property and non-compete agreements.

I acted as outside general counsel for 15 years to a group of small and mid-sized manufacturing companies who were structured a bit like a co-op, operating their independent companies but jointly owning a “corporate office” that held the trademarks and other intellectual property and provided services, such as product development, marketing, and advertising, to the group of owner/licensees. Over the years, I got to know each of the owner/licensees and helped with all aspects of the business that they were building together. That kind of in-depth and long-term involvement with a client and the client’s business is very gratifying. 

– What makes a good lawyer?

Striving to have a happy client. When you try to make the client happy, you naturally do what a good lawyer does – you listen to the client, work to understand what the client wants and needs, and deliver that, as quickly and as cost-efficiently as possible. It’s important, too, for the lawyer to be happy. I don’t believe that a person can achieve excellence, in any field, unless it brings personal satisfaction.  I love what I do, and that helps me to do it well. 

– What is the biggest legal news right now, and what is its impact?

I know that there’s a lot of talk about the pressures facing law firms – to more aggressively go after business, to expand geographically, to raise the profits per partner – but I think that the biggest news is the looming generational shift facing all of our legal institutions and the clients we serve. Now and over the next several years, law firms, governmental agencies, and public interest groups will be losing their most senior lawyers – the baby boomers who most likely have built and controlled those institutions for decades.

The younger lawyers coming up through the ranks view their careers, and the world, very differently. They are already demanding changes and alternatives to the status quo, and they will only become more vocal and more insistent about effecting change as they increase in number and seniority. Many of the new generations’ ideas, approaches, and goals seem inconsistent with the assumptions and structures underlying the practice of law in most workplaces. 

The impact of this culture clash can be seen in all aspects of legal practice. Law firms, for example, are under pressure to reassess, and in some cases redesign, how they function. The legal press is full of articles about alternatives to the billable hour system, lockstep hours’ expectations, and the traditional partnership track. At the same time that younger lawyers are demanding a better quality of life, standard salaries for new lawyers continue to rise – a situation that does not seem to be making anybody very happy. And we still must find room in our days, and our budgets, to invest time in business development and to meet our pro bono commitments.

Meeting the wants and needs of today’s young lawyers within the traditional law firm structure, and within the economic constraints and realities that created that structure in the first place, can be a challenging task. Especially while keeping our primary focus on Mission One – providing outstanding legal services in an efficient manner. Tackling these issues is important, however, and law firms and lawyers everywhere are all going to be better off for having engaged in this dialog and for exercising some flexibility. At Schiff, we have been addressing these issues for some time now, and finding ways to meld the old and the new is both interesting and rewarding.