Even though people may say that they don’t have favorites, favoritism is a fact of life for all of us. As one of five boys (I’m a triplet and my older brothers are twins, if you can believe it), I could tell that my late parents liked some of their kids more than others, even if they said they didn’t have favorites. It’s just natural that individuals get along better with certain types of people, and it is hard to avoid having favorites among a group. However, it is important that even if you have favorites, you should try not to show favoritism in a number of circumstances. This applies to law firm partners, and managers at law firms shouldn’t show favoritism toward associates because this can lead to a number of negative outcomes.
Let me say at the onset that partners should absolutely promote and favor associates who are better at performing their jobs. Partners can use a number of objective metrics to assess associates, and partners are justified in favoring associates who are simply better lawyers. However, there are a number of problems with partners favoring associates who have personalities that mesh better with the brass at a shop or are more socially involved with partners and important people at a firm.
I worked at a number of different law firms of all sizes before I started my own practice around a year ago. During this time, I worked at firms where I was treated better since I was part of the “in crowd” of a firm, and at shops where I definitely did not mesh with firm management. These experiences have taught me how showing favoritism toward associates based on subjective factors can have a number of consequences at a law firm.
For one, showing favoritism towards associates can have a negative impact on morale. No one wants to feel like they are being treated worse because of factors largely outside of their control. For instance, I once worked at a shop that paid thousands of dollars for some favored associates to attend conferences and trainings across the country. The expenses were purportedly justified so that these attorneys could network and obtain the CLE credits they needed to meet bar requirements.
For a variety of reasons, I was definitely not part of the “in crowd” at this firm. While working at this shop, I asked for permission to have the firm spend a few hundred dollars to attend a whole-day CLE event so that I could complete all of my live CLE credits for the year at once. Despite the fact that the firm had approved thousands of dollars in expenses for others to attend trainings, I was not given permission to spend a fraction of this sum on my request. I never received a good reason for why my request was declined, and since the live CLE classes were only a few hundred dollars, there wasn’t a good reason to reject my request. It was apparent that partners were simply showing favoritism toward some associates over others, and this negatively impacted the way I felt about the firm.
Another reason why partners shouldn’t show favoritism toward associates is because this may open partners up to criticism that they are favoring attorneys based on their gender or other similar reasons. For instance, I once worked at a firm that needed to get associates individually approved by a certain client for attorneys to perform work for that account. There did not appear to be any specific criteria to be approved to do work for this specific client other than being nominated by one partner, since it never seemed like a candidate was rejected by this client. Associates wanted to be approved to do work for this client, since this could increase the amount of matters an associate could be tasked to handle, and this might lead to an associate billing more time and hopefully receiving a higher bonus.
The partner responsible for this account decided to submit the names of all the attorneys he liked to perform work with to the client so that he could work most closely with associates he favored. On a certain level, it makes sense that a partner would want to work with associates she or he likes the most, since partners need to interact with associates they work with a lot more than other associates employed by a firm. However, one of the associates noticed that at a certain time, many of the associates authorized to perform work for this client were men. I’m not entirely sure there was a significant gender disparity among associates who worked on this account, but the partner involved with this client was an old-school type of male lawyer, and it could be perceived that he favored male associates. In any case, no one likes to be excluded, and if the partner made decisions based on objective criteria rather than how much he liked associates, the partner would have never been open to this criticism.
All told, it is difficult to avoid favoritism, whether it be in your family or in the workplace. However, partners should not show favoritism toward associates and should evaluate attorneys based on objective criteria. In this way, partners can help maintain morale at a firm and lower the risk of being accused of favoring attorneys for illicit reasons.
Jordan Rothman is a partner of The Rothman Law Firm, a full-service New York and New Jersey law firm. He is also the founder of Student Debt Diaries, a website discussing how he paid off his student loans. You can reach Jordan through email at jordan@rothmanlawyer.com.