How Do I Make Partner?

Nailing your first paralegal position was difficult enough, now you’re having a real hard time moving upward. So how do you make Partner? Catherine Thomas, Partner and Co-Head of the London team at JMW Solicitors, talks Lawyer Monthly through the plan.

Elbowing your way into a law partnership requires a plan. Very few will stumble into partnership without thinking about it, but instead will actively chase it down, often over the course of several years. The earlier you start to plan, the better. Each legal partnership has its own particular personality, which will require careful studying if you want to join its ranks, but much of the key preparation for that promotion is common to all firms.

Start behaving as if you are already a partner. The advice I give to even the most junior fee earners in my law firm is always behave as if you are one promotion ahead of your current role. Projecting a more senior image will allow management to imagine you in that next role. If you are not perceived to be partnership material, you won’t get very far. This doesn’t mean starting to boss around your peers (this is unlikely to help with your popularity!) but rather conduct yourself as you believe a partner should. Undertake a critical appraisal of yourself. Think about how you communicate with your colleagues, with clients and everyone else with whom you interact in a professional context. Consider whether you should be putting more effort into training and developing the more junior members of the team; invest in the people around you in the way senior people should. Never underestimate the impact of your clothes on other’s perception of you. If you don’t look the part, you are unlikely to get it. Ditch the saggy cardigans or frayed ties and invest in a wardrobe upgrade. When in work always, without exception, dress like a partner.

A common distinction between partners and more junior fee earners is the extent to which they consider the wider needs and ambitions of the business. Non-partners will often focus their energies on their client work and billable targets without volunteering much, if any, of their time to the development of the business. A good partner will consider and juggle both. Managing clients and a business can often feel as though you have two jobs, with prioritisation of work becoming even more complicated. Show the law firm you are up to the challenge.

Prove your commitment to the partnership by showing you understand what it is trying to achieve and spend time thinking about how you can contribute to that joint effort. If the firm’s ambitions aren’t clear to you, speak to a partner and ask them to enlighten you. There may be detail they can’t share with you, but they should be able to give you the headlines. Make suggestions as to what you could do to help. If they don’t take to your ideas, explain how keen you are and ask them what you can do to help. Get this message out to as many of the decision-makers as you can.

If you are going to make partner, you will need internal support both from your own legal team and the wider firm. Unless you are in a small firm, you will need to become more visible. Extract yourself from your desk. Get to know more of your colleagues, be that through work events or just chatting to someone new at the coffee machine. Email less, step away from your computer and seek people out (this is good advice in life generally); speak to actual human beings face-to-face.

Create your own business plan setting out what you will achieve for the business and how. The process of putting this together is not only good discipline in itself, as it will allow you critically to assess the quality of your ideas, but it is the best way of ensuring you remain focussed over time and achieve your goals. It will also form an important record of what you have been doing. Many partnerships will expect you to submit a business plan as part of your partnership application. You will end up with a higher quality submission if you have been thinking along these lines already and have a record of your own achievements on which to draw.

Having said all of the above, before investing your time executing your plan, consider whether you are currently at the right firm for your ambitions. If it is going to take the retirement or untimely demise of an existing partner before there is even the chance of a promotion, consider a move now. If your law firm is stagnant, get yourself into a dynamic, growing firm where the opportunities for progression will be more plentiful.