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As a law firm associate, you have to do your job.
Or get fired.
If a partner asks you to draft a brief, you generally must draft a brief. You can’t punt.
If, say, a sixth-year associate asked to draft a brief turns to, say, a second-year associate to do the work, the partner probably won’t approve. The second-year associate has to be assigned to the case team, and many cases don’t merit thick staffing. Even if there’s a junior person available, the partner knows that he asked you to write the brief. The partner reviews the bills that show that you didn’t do this. The brief was written by two people instead of one. The partner is not happy.
In-house is a little different.
What’s the status of your case?
“I’ll set up a call with outside counsel.”
What damages are the plaintiffs seeking in that class action?
“I’ll set up a call with outside counsel.”
What’s our strategy for defending this thing?
“I’ll set up a call with outside counsel.”
Can you send me a summary of the case and the important issues?
“I’ll ask outside counsel to prepare something.”
This a type of freeloading that’s easier to do, and conceal, in-house than at a firm.
The in-house freeloader may have authority to approve bills, without review, up to a certain level. Suppose the freeloader asks outside counsel to do $20,000 worth of the freeloader’s work, and the freeloader is authorized to approve bills of less than $25,000. The freeloader’s unrestrained approval of the bill conceals the evidence of freeloading. It’s the perfect sloth!
Or you may have an alternative fee deal, where the law firm does all work on cases for a specified annual fee. It’s thus costless to the corporation for the freeloader to avoid doing his work. (The only cost to the corporation is the freeloader’s salary. But that’s sort of my point.)
Within the corporation, of course, it’s obvious to everyone who works with the freeloader that the freeloader is not a real lawyer. A real lawyer knows a little bit about his cases; a freeloader does not. A lawyer knows who the witnesses are; the freeloader does not. A lawyer can write up a short summary of one of his matters in a half hour; a freeloader requires a day or more for the task, as the freeloader assigns the task to outside counsel and then awaits a response.
Eventually, corporate freeloaders are likely to be exposed. But that may take far longer at a corporation than it does at a law firm.
Mark Herrmann spent 17 years as a partner at a leading international law firm and is now deputy general counsel at a large international company. He is the author of The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Practicing Law and Drug and Device Product Liability Litigation Strategy (affiliate links). You can reach him by email at inhouse@abovethelaw.com.