A high-voltage dispatch on the business of law and the future of legal careers. Read in 5 minutes.
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Trainees are as intelligent as the rainmaker partners in their team. Same grades. Same university. Same ability to learn. The difference between them isn't intelligence, it's experience. Every conference promises revolution, every LinkedIn post mourns another extinct job title and every managing partner is apparently "embracing AI".
Armed men seizing your gold mine is generally considered bad for business. Especially when the government stops answering the phone and local police discover an unexpected commitment to non-intervention. That's when Tim gets called.
Most lawyers begin their careers wanting to make a difference. Defending the innocent. Holding power to account. Then they discover Cravath newly-qualified salaries. Suddenly they're restructuring Argentine debt (again) with the rectitude of a Renaissance tax collector.
Most junior lawyers add very little value. In the past, trainees carried documents to court, acting as highly overpaid couriers. Today, the tasks look different but the commercial impact is the same. And that's okay.
We don't often associate lawyers with the buccaneering spirit of the likes of Aubrey or Cochrane. If anything, they're trained to keep well clear of the lee shore, carefully noting the shoals and sandbanks that may spell trouble. Risk is treated as something to be quietly skirted. However, that’s precisely where opportunity sits.