Why Are Branch Offices Dangerous for Attorneys?

Description

• Decision Challenges: Advancement decisions often originate in the main office, making progress in branch offices challenging.
• Work Dynamics: Main offices typically control most of the work, posing challenges for branch office attorneys.
• Recruitment Pitfalls: Branch offices often recruit attorneys who may be dissatisfied or incompatible with the firm's culture, leading to potential issues.
• Unreliable Business Projections: Partners recruited for branch offices may overstate their business potential, leading to dissatisfaction and turnover.
• Cultural Mismatch: Different cultures between main and branch offices can make partners feel undervalued and face conflicts.
• Approval Hurdles: Partners in branch offices may need help gaining client approval, leading to business challenges.
• Vulnerability to Recruitment: Attorneys recruited for branch offices may become targets for other firms, causing instability and dissatisfaction.
• Turmoil and Turnover: Power imbalances, cultural differences, and recruitment vulnerabilities contribute to overall turmoil and high turnover.
• Exceptions Exist: While many branch offices pose challenges, some top-tier firms, such as Quinn Emanuel and Gibson Dunn, maintain successful and admirable branch offices.
• Management Complexity: Branch offices, especially for new firms, face challenges due to management being located elsewhere, requiring careful consideration.

Transcript:

So someone asked, this is a while ago. What are the reasons that you weren't about branch offices? Okay. So why, the question is why are branch offices dangerous for people's careers? This is a good question. I'm going to answer it because it's okay. So here's why branch offices are dangerous. So branch offices are dangerous for a lot of reasons.

They're not all dangerous. Like I want to be clear, like you're in a branch office for Quinn Emanuel in New York or Latham and Watkins in New York or Gibson Dunn, which is in Washington, DC. You're in one of these branch offices. That's fricking awesome. Those are great firms and they're great branch offices.

Gibson Dunn in Washington, DC. Is one of their top. It's great. But anyway, so a lot of branch offices are very good, but here's typically what happens in branch offices decisions. Are made decisions about advancement advancement are made are made in the main office, right? So made in the main office.

So that means it's very difficult to make a partner, right? Sometimes it's less because they want to show that they're promoting people in branch offices, but probably it's difficult to make partner or advanced. Often work comes from the main office, so work comes from the main office. So what a lot of times law firms will do is they will have, they will basically want to open a branch office.

And so think about this. So the law firm wants to open a branch office. Many times it may send one, one person or a couple of people from the main office, but then it goes and needs to have Get local attorneys to join the branch office. So local attorneys, that means they need to attorneys need to be recruited.

So when they recruit local attorneys need to be recruited and those local attorneys are typically not always, but they're going to be people that are unhappy in existing firm, happy from a different culture. Of the firm to different culture, a different culture and often and often may not have business, even though they say they do.

So what does that mean? So unhappy means that if someone's unhappy in one firm and they're recruited to go to another firm, the odds are. That they may be unhappy in the new firm. So these partners that go to the branch offices that are recruited are often haven't been happy in the firm that they're recruited from.

So that's one thing. They may come into the new firm and also be unhappy. They may be coming from a different culture. So certain firms are very siloed where partners will all protect their business. Other firms are not siloed, meaning they're, that everyone can meet. Cooperates a different culture, a lot of times when people are recruited from different firms, they may not have business.

So what does that mean? That means that a lot of times when partners are moving from laterally, they will say, Hey, I've got all this business and I can bring this much over and stuff. And then what happens a good portion of the time, not always, but a lot, a large portion of the time. Is that turns out to be BS, so that turns out to be BS meaning the business projections turns out to be BS projections turns out to be BS, BBS, maybe 50 percent plus the time.

So what does that mean? So that means that these partners join the firm and these partners and, are basically in trouble the second they join, right? So then there's often a lot of turnover. So there's a lot of turnover and turnover. And then often the partners that were unhappy at new firms.

They will move again because they're unhappy, right? So they'll move again because I'm happy. So then the second they get there, there's all this issues with being unhappy. Then the cultures, they, the cultures won't be compatible. So they will move from one firm with one culture and then move to another with a different culture.

So that's a big issue. Not compatible. So different people will be that the partners will feel like second fiddle to the people in the main office partners, second fiddle, and they won't, and they won't have as much. They won't have, they will feel like less than right. Let's feel less than We'll feel like they will, sorry, they'll face new conflicts of conflicts with bringing in business, meaning the law firm may have conflicts about a client and the law firm may not approve a client that they might've been approved at another firm.

All of these things are happening and there's more. I could keep going, but if you recruit a bunch of people or the bunch of people in a branch office feel like the power partners feel like they don't have power. That a lot of stuff is coming from, the decisions are coming from the main office, that the culture is different that the partners feel less than the partners from the main office, and they need to get their approval, that they're not able to bring the type of work they bring in, and that they may not have, their business may not transfer when they're hired.

Or they may have been not telling the truth about their business that creates problems too. So all of this stuff ends up creating a situation where there's just a lot of freaking turmoil. Not only that, but then these same partners will be the ones that were recruited from another firm will be vulnerable to leaving for a new firm, right?

So they'll be vulnerable to being recruited again. So then you wind up with the situation. Where a lot of the partners are unhappy where people are coming, they're not they don't they haven't started the main office. They don't understand the culture where they're leaving where many times not because they don't bring enough work over because they don't have enough work.

They have you need to get it from you need to get the work from. Work from the main office, which is a non starter because the partners in the main office have, they'll have relationships, the associates will have relationships with those partners with those relationships it's easier to make partner, with those relationships, it's easier to get work, when you have people that may not have the work, it's much more difficult, all this stuff is really needs to be thought about.

Now, again, I'm not saying that every branch office is bad because there are some good Frankly, kick ass firms that have great branch offices. I'm talking about your Latham's your Skadden's, your Gibson's, your Quinn's, your, a lot of firms have just these fricking awesome branch offices. Sidley and Austin, a lot of these, there's a lot of firms out there that are fricking great.

And to have good branch offices, you're Morrison and Forrester's what an awesome firm. So you just, there's a lot of firms that have great branch offices, but this is the big problem with branch offices, especially with new firms. Think about management is elsewhere, like management elsewhere. Just so many things.

So branch offices are fricking, yeah, they are dangerous. So there's something for some firms you need to be very careful with. Okay. Someone said, how do I replay the recording of today's call? The presentation will be online. I don't know how long it will take, but it will be online. And so that's something you'll be able to see.