The Lawyer of Great Commitment: a parable by Harrison Barnes
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Date: July 22nd, 2021 2:12 AM Author: Spectacular corn cake
When I was practicing law, I remember once working with an attorney, who had around 12 years of experience, yet he had very little self-confidence. He did not seem all that intelligent either, but he had been protected, promoted, and kept around by the higher ups in my law firm’s New York office, since he had started there after law school. This fellow had probably outlasted at least 100 people who had been hired at his level since he first started at the firm. He seemed to genuinely like the people he was working for; he laughed at all of their jokes, carried their bags, and looked out for them.
He also worked incredibly hard and tolerated a lot of abuse all those years. For example, he would do stuff like follow partners to the Jersey shore on the weekends, and run errands for them while staying in a cheap motel near their beach homes. He would be working all weekend-long, sometimes even taking phone calls about matters at 11:30 p.m. on a Saturday night. This was not the sort of thing attorneys in prestigious law firms typically do in their late 30s, but this guy could always be depended upon to do things like this–and he would do so without batting an eye. He would even run and pick up theater tickets for a boss if need be; this was not even something that secretaries were asked to do.
I was once on a flight from Los Angeles to New York with this attorney and a partner. From a few seats back in coach, I saw the partner seat the other attorney next to him, up in first class. I watched while the partner leaned over with various instructions to him from time to time during the flight, and the guy scribbled away on a notebook, while the partner sipped wine and read the paper. When the plane landed in New York, the guy jumped up and grabbed the partner’s suit coat and handed it to him, then grabbed his luggage and helped him through the airport with it. While none of this seems all that out-of-the-ordinary, the thing is that if I had offered to carry the partner’s luggage, the partner probably would have been uncomfortable with it. The guy carrying the luggage had ingratiated himself to such a degree with his superiors that they were not afraid to allow him to do things like this.
The higher ups knew this attorney was not that smart, but was committed beyond reason and could be pushed around. However, I think they also genuinely liked him and the fact that he was so committed. From what I understood then, he was probably making around $350,000 a year in his “counsel” role in the late 1990s. I remember all of the young attorneys used to make fun of the guy for being such a kiss ass, being taken advantage of so often, and being so generally accepting of and nice to his bosses.
He is still working at the law firm and I bet he is still laughing at bad jokes, carrying bags, kissing up, and now probably makes over $500,000 a year. In the time he has been at that firm, I have seen countless attorneys come and go, but this guy is still there and his job is still protected. All of the young attorneys I know that used to make fun of the guy would now be 10+ years out of law school. None of them are with the law firm, and none of them have done anywhere near as well in their careers.
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4883117&forum_id=2#42821646) |
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