Dare to Care: “Creeping Humanism” as the Paradigm for the Successful Defense Firm of the 21st Century

By Mitchell A. Orpett

Mitchell A. Orpett, managing director of Tribler Orpett & Meyer in Chicago, chaired the ABA Tort Trial & Insurance Practice Section in 2000-2001.

I offer this article as an idea piece, prepared in the hope that it might cause us to stop and reflect on who we are, what we do, and how it all fits together. The article focuses on the management and leadership of civil defense firms, particularly those practicing primarily in insurance-related fields. It addresses the question of whether these firms are likely to thrive in the twenty-first century and, if so, how they will manage to do so. Rather than any demonstrable expertise, it offers ideas, and will hopefully be accepted in that vein. I must note that the views and ideas expressed are mine alone and may or may not reflect those of Tribler Orpett & Meyer, P.C., any of its individual lawyers, or its clients. Clearly, nothing expressed here should be taken as representing the views of the ABA’s Tort Trial & Insurance Practice Section.

Success in the Twenty-First Century

Defense firms in the late twentieth century were forced to confront substantial challenges to their well-being and existence. Insurance company and corporate cost control (otherwise known as “litigation management”), coupled with industry consolidation, a Wall Street mentality focused on the short-term bottom line, and increased law firm competition, forced some firms to retrench and reorganize—and others to close their doors for good. Staff counsel operations were opened, expanded, and then, within a decade or so, have been reduced or eliminated. Lawyers’ income assumptions and firm budgets have been revisited as firms struggled to meet their goals and expectations. Relationships between insurers and their outside counsel-long agreed to be the bedrock of the tripartite relationship-have been dramatically eroded and increasingly strained. What does this portend for defense firms in the years ahead? Will firms be able to carry on “business as usual,” or has the proverbial worm finally turned, leaving lawyers to scramble to stay alive? Which defense firms, if any, will prosper in such an environment, and what will be the key to their success?

This article is based on the firm conviction that some defense firms serving the insurance industry will indeed prosper. The road to success, however, is not likely to be without risk, and even successful firms are likely to experience the pain brought about by change. The question for each of us is whether we will do what is necessary to be among those that do thrive.

I write this with the conviction that there are steps that can and should be taken to better meet the known challenges of today and the uncertainties of the future. I also admit to a strong bias, namely, that there is a “right” way to conduct our legal businesses. Happily, this “right” way should also be the successful way, although our collective clients could, by ignoring what properly makes for quality legal representation, prove this proposition wrong. This article calls for firms to “dare to care”: to allow for old-fashioned (and perhaps out-of-favor) notions of client service and professionalism to serve as the guideposts for firm management and culture. While seemingly counterintuitive in this day of heightened attacks on every dollar spent on legal representation, this new brand of “creeping humanism” may indeed be the hallmark of those defense firms that survive and thrive in the new legal order.

The Defense Lawyer as Business Visionary

Until very recently, the concept of lawyers as effective businesspeople was considered something of an oxymoron. While undoubtedly overstated, it should come as no surprise that, as a broad class, civil defense lawyers were not highly regarded for their business and management skills. There are several compelling reasons for this, which combine to condemn us to the back of the business administration class and our firms to the relative dark ages of corporate management.

Lack of education. Law schools still largely teach the same substantive subjects that were offered at the beginning of the twentieth century, although clinics and skills courses have modernized the curriculum to some extent. Law students are rarely offered the opportunity to take law office management or business skills courses unless they are part of a joint degree or other exchange program with the business school. We are trained to be lawyers, not business executives or even sole proprietors. Accordingly, we are born into the real world without the benefit of having been taught certain fundamental business skills.

Lack of training. The absence of significant business education for lawyers is compounded by the lack of real world training after the lawyer begins his or her career. Although one now sees a proliferation of law office management and marketing courses for lawyers, they are a quite recent phenomenon and did not previously exist to any great extent in the legal community. (Perhaps the most notable are those that, for approximately $1,500 per day, will teach us how to “diversify our insurance practice.”) As a result, we tend to learn only by doing and, more importantly, usually by adopting the tried and true practices that we learned as young associates. While we may be troubled by the vague notion that some of these practices may not be the best suited for our goals, they are often the only methods we know. The fact that most other similarly situated firms conduct their business in generally the same fashion further stultifies our own decision making.

Indeed, the business “training” we do receive as lawyers has typically been on the job and, almost uniformly, runs counter to accepted business practice. Thus, while the corporate world has embraced the mantra of client service, entire generations of lawyers have grown up focused on billable hour requirements and the partnership track. “Partnering” in the business world is replaced with “eat what you kill” in the law firm. As lawyers become motivated and directed by the need to meet their own internal rules, they move farther away from any real dedication to their clients’ needs and interests. In this manner, the law firm “training” probably leaves many experienced lawyers less client-focused than they were when they first graduated law school.

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Lack of experience. Defense lawyers tend to practice law. Upon entry into the management of the firm, they may work on or lead a committee within the firm. Generally speaking, however, the opportunities for defense lawyers to manage and lead a business enterprise, much less a legal business enterprise, are not in great abundance until the day comes when they may be called upon to lead their firm. In the business world, in contrast, managers more typically follow a leadership ladder, performing a series of increasingly more complex or comprehensive management functions before taking over. When one considers that these managers are also often formally educated and subsequently trained to perform these tasks, whereas lawyers are educated and trained to perform legal work for their clients, the important differences between these two groups are even more apparent.

The makeup of the defense lawyer. Our profession’s concern with corporate practices and management principles is relatively new in any event. Perhaps because of our general lack of education, training, and experience in the traditional business world, lawyers running firms have relied on their own devices or followed the models of other law firms, often those that they had left. This has led to a rather conservative profession, in which lawyers could go from firm to firm and not notice any significant difference in the way they were run. The unwritten rules (be they billable hours, partnership tracks, role of partners, associates, paralegals, and secretaries, the staffing of files, or the “pyramid” structure of the firms themselves) were meant to be followed. Nonconformity made everyone very nervous. Viewed in this manner, the difference between an elite profession and one that is merely insular may be quite insignificant.

Recently, however, our profession has begun to look outside itself for guidance. This has led to the creation of a new cottage industry: teaching “law firm management" to law firms. Self-declared experts in the business of running firms have published considerable tomes and offer numerous and costly seminars on every aspect of law firm management. Many of these offer rather traditional notions of corporate business philosophy. Others specialize more in the “pocket parts,” by which they present the latest management fad, from “total quality management” to client surveys to “re-engineering for profitability.” Almost all are long on generalization and very, very short on practical survival advice. It is up to us as practicing lawyers in defense firms to recognize the differences between law firms and other businesses and to hold advice based only on corporate models under the light of very strict scrutiny.

Good defense lawyers are intense, driven, at least a bit egotistical, stubborn, convinced that they and few others can do the job properly, and extremely protective of their particular goal, however defined. And these are their good traits! It takes a certain kind of personality or a certain kind of mind-set to be a successful defense lawyer, and it takes a certain kind of personality or certain kind of mind-set to be a successful business leader. These personalities and characteristics may not, however, be the same. Indeed, many business leaders would be ineffective as advocates in courts of law. Similarly, the personality traits of many defense lawyers do not always translate into effective management styles. This is by no means stated as an absolute or even as a general rule. It should be noted, however, that individual characteristics that lead to success in one field might not engender or even facilitate the same result in another. Which path, then, are we to follow?

Today’s Challenges to Effective Management

These lawyerly shortcomings are not the only barriers to the effective management of defense firms. Several additional factors-which, even if not unique to the last decade, were certainly the subject of heightened scrutiny and concern-make the strict application of corporate management principles to law firms a dubious proposition.

Different pages/different goals. Corporations typically apply a hierarchy of leadership and responsibility that is clearer than that of a common law firm. Indeed, especially in firms with different and somewhat independent practice groups, leadership in law firms may be quite diffuse. The managing partner of a firm is often viewed as less important than the successful rainmaker, the top trial gun, or the consummate biller, a dilemma less often faced by a corporate CEO. Because the responsibilities of leadership and the ultimate direction of law firms are usually shared by many partners, one of the greatest difficulties facing firm management is making certain that all of those partners are on the same page and have the same goals for the firm as a whole. This challenge may range from the immediate and concrete—for example, the extent to which a firm’s investment in the future (through training, expense for technology, or associates’ salaries) should compromise the partners’ current compensation—to the more long-term and abstract—such as whether and how a defense firm should diversify from its core insurance business. When partners have different goals, firm management becomes exceedingly difficult on anything other than a caretaker, or day-to-day, level. Consensus building among partners in a firm who are at different stages of their lives and who have different backgrounds and different interests can be a near impossibility and presents a clear and dramatic obstacle to effective and enlightened leadership.

Business versus profession. One of the great battles fought by lawyers in the last couple of decades was whether the practice of law was a business or profession. Indeed, it has been said that "[t]he legal profession is dead or dying. It is rotting away into an occupation.1 Since lawyers hit the airwaves and media with advertisements of varying taste and appeal, we have been challenged to balance the almighty dollar against traditional principles of client service and dedication to others. Unfortunately, according to many, that battle may be nearly over, with the notion of the law as a profession emerging bloodied and all but vanquished. This is likely to be even more of an issue in the near future as potential changes to the rules of professional ethics and the inevitable impact of technology are considered. It is significant, in any event, that this struggle has even plagued many corporations and that therefore ought to raise questions about blindly adopting a corporate approach to law firm management. Leading a law firm to an acceptable balance between business and professionalism is a daunting task. When law firms fail to achieve that balance they are likely to flounder ineffectively between the two, unable to enjoy the benefits of either.

Career commitment versus balanced lives. Another outgrowth of the last decade that has significantly affected the management of many law firms is what many perceive as the decline of young lawyers’ commitment to the practice of law as a career. Those espousing that view often complain that, unlike when they were young lawyers and wallowed in delight in the law as a Dickensian “jealous mistress,” lawyers today are uninterested in or simply unwilling to make the commitment to their own careers. These critics tend to believe that such a commitment is evidenced only by long hours, hard work, and uncompromising standards of quality. They fear that the young lawyer of today readily sacrifices career commitments at the altar of a “balanced life.” Taken to the extreme, in this world “career” is viewed as the biggest threat to “family” and the two cannot easily coexist. As in the past, "career" and the “corporate rut” in this sense may be rejected. Although the 1990s may be noted for the reemergence of the 1960s’ version of the Volkswagen “bug,” and its flower power daisy, some cannot help but observe that rejecting the establishment in the 1960s did not seem to require a starting salary of $140,000.2

Today’s generation gap between the “greed is good” lawyers of the early 1980s and the balanced “bottled water set" of the late 1990s—whether real or merely perceived—also presents a substantial obstacle to effective law firm management. If law firm management believes, rightly or wrongly, that its younger lawyers are unwilling to do what the managers did to build their own careers, the resulting disconnect can easily lead to a much wider chasm caused by lack of respect and frustration. In an environment where even the most recent law school graduate nevertheless has expectations of being treated as a fellow professional, this chasm can greatly impede a firm’’s ability to move forward as a business organization. This, too, is different than the usual corporate model and might again suggest that law firms cannot simply adopt the bottom-line philosophy that is so much in vogue these days on Wall Street.

Tomorrow’s Challenges to Effective Management

It is not at all unrealistic to wonder whether the question of how law firms might thrive in the twenty-first century is even relevant. We are already confronted with the likelihood that the practice of law as we have known it for our entire careers will change drastically in the very near future. Three phenomena that, alone, would clearly alter how we do business may combine to obliterate our current view of practicing law.

Multidisciplinary practices. Although a plethora of highly publicized corporate scandals has at least temporarily taken the steam out of the concept, the future is likely to offer more flirtations with multidisciplinary practices (MDPs). In MDPs, law firms and nonlegal businesses could practice together and split fees. It is anticipated that, under the MDP model, accountancy firms would offer a wide variety of legal services to their clients. In such a setting, will any nonaffiliated law firms thrive in the twenty-first century? Will our friends in the accountancy firms, banks, or chiropractors’ offices make law firm management, if not the law firm itself, obsolete? Will those that do remain be able to continue business as usual or will fundamental notions of the practice of law have to change?

Internet legal services: “My attorney has more bytes than yours!” Technology, which, we are constantly reminded, must be viewed as our friend, has already changed the way we practice law. That change will undoubtedly continue at an even faster pace in an increasingly dramatic fashion. One such phenomenon was the explosion in the use of the Internet as the medium for transacting business. Just as Amazon.com and eBay have opened new doors for moving goods from seller to buyer with a quick click of a mouse, we know that the widespread sale of legal services online is an idea that cannot be ignored. For example, we know that several insurance companies have retained counsel by opening up their cases for “bidding” online. Banks, which can now offer insurance products as well, have already moved heavily into e-commerce and are likely to be aggressive users of that medium for conducting all of their affairs. Lawyers, long accustomed to the relationship-based retention of their services, have already found themselves caught in a time warp and left behind, clinging to yesterday’s model, which has already been erased by the single stroke of the delete key.

The electronic office: “There’s no place like home.” Another interesting possibility offered by technology is the ability to create an electronic firm in which lawyers consult and work with one another from remote locations through their computers. Why spend thousands on central office space in expensive urban centers when everyone wants to work out of his or her home? It is not difficult to envision the typical civil defense law firm of the mid twenty-first century as being a small suite of conference rooms (assuming that live depositions have not already been replaced by remote video/audio feeds) and a series of computer stations where road warriors can dock for whatever time they choose. Those insisting on the luxury of the corner office will do so at their own expense and to fit their own chosen lifestyle—and will soon to be viewed like a dinosaur or other relic of a bygone age.

These and other as-yet-unforeseen issues will clearly pose interesting challenges for the defense firm of the twenty-first century. Given the inevitability of change, it is worth noting one man’s definition of insanity as “expecting different results from doing things the same way.” Law firms, too, will need to change and change quickly. As George Allen used to say when he was busy trading away the Washington Redskins’ future draft choices for grizzled veterans: “The future is now!” Firms unwilling or unable to anticipate and adapt to these and other changes will undoubtedly remain in the Dark Ages of an obsolete management philosophy. Although they may survive, they will most certainly be at risk while others prosper.

“Creeping Humanism” for the Successful Defense Firm

How is law firm management to escape the Dark Ages? Again, the answer probably lies outside of the profession and, being a profession of the brain and not of brawn, we would do well to note how history has treated this issue on a broad scale. Immanuel Kant, who is today better known for the Monty Python parodies he inspired than for his own writings, certainly had nothing directly to say about how law firms should be run. He did, however, speak to the question of following the models set by others. He asserted that man failed to reach his potential, not because of any lack of intelligence, but from “lack of determination and courage to use that intelligence without another’s guidance. Sapere aude! Dare to know! Have the courage to use your own intelligence.”3

Just as we instruct our jurors that they need not leave common sense at the door, so might we remind ourselves that it is the intelligence and wisdom with which we enter the profession, honed by years of practice, that can be our best guide. Rediscovering that human side of lawyers and perhaps acting in some unlawyerly ways might prove to be the best road to enlightened law firm management. This article uses the term “creeping humanism” with tongue deliberately in cheek because we well know that humanism is not the hallmark of the modern law firm. Nevertheless, firms that attempt to follow a more humanistic approach to their business may indeed find that they not only enjoy it more, but that it is also more profitable at the end of the day. Some specific thoughts as to how to begin that process are offered below.

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Know thyself. Each law firm is unique in one very obvious way. Each is made up of specific people who are going to be the key to the ultimate success or failure of that firm. The firm necessarily revolves around those people and takes on their collective personality. It is crucial for successful management that firm leaders know and understand that personality. They must know themselves.

For example, what is the value of money in your firm? Is it the primary motivator for your lawyers? If so, team-building exercises, sabbaticals, and flexible or part-time schedules for lawyers may not be worthy of your attention. Similarly, if your firm is based more on collegiality or self-direction, the advice of current law firm management gurus to have “zero tolerance” for “nonperforming” partners and to increase your “diligence in write-off control” may likewise be misdirected. In short, before you can determine what course you should follow, you need to know where you as a firm really want to go, whether you stand alone as a private firm or whether you exist as part of a larger corporation. As Yogi Berra supposedly said, “If you don’t know where you’re going, when you get there you’ll be lost.” Good advice to one kind of firm may be anathema to another. Only by first knowing what your own firm is all about can you begin to determine how you can thrive. It will not be by trying to copy what the next law firm is doing or by blindly adopting the latest management technique from the business leaders who populate the best-seller list.

For a time, a number of firms received a fair amount of press for having published their own manifestos or creeds. These statements attempted to identify what the firms stood for. They were used both within the firm and outside of it. Although, as a pure marketing piece, these creeds were of questionable value, the exercise of preparing such a document can be very valuable and educational. As with the organizational mission statements now in vogue, having your firm’s leadership identify and reduce your firm’s values to writing is an effective way to know thyself, and an important first step toward enlightened management.

Be creative: Look outside the law. Refusing to follow others’ models unless appropriate to the personality and goals of your firm is fine. It does not, however, mean that you should ignore the best practices of others when those practices can be adapted to fit your needs. Doing so requires thought and creativity and a certain acceptance of risk that inevitably follows any breaking of the mold. Far too often, leadership is risk averse. Independence can be invigorating. This can be as simple as being among the first firms to abandon the dress code and go “business casual,” 4 or more complicated, such as eliminating a billable hour “requirement,”5 sending a lawyer to work in a client’s office, or firing a client. Ideas for your firm are not good or bad based on the number of times other lawyers have tried them. Rather, decisions must be evaluated on whether they will help your firm realize its own unique goals in a manner consistent with its values and personality.

We have all heard about “breaking paradigms” to the point that the concept has become a bit of a cliché. Nevertheless, the lessons of paradigm breaking should not be lost. Our world is indeed narrowed when we look only to our own kind or think only in the same manner we have employed throughout our lives as lawyers. Only when we break outside that box and bring life’s lessons into the firm do new ideas take shape. “Frequent client discounts,” appropriated from the airline and hospitality industries, may or may not work in a legal setting, but the idea shows a willingness to be creative and look outside of the law. In the world of health maintenance organizations, are controlled legal services far behind? Are there lessons we can learn from doctors, whose “client” sensitivities are questionable but who seem to deliver what their patients want? Have you even considered the paradigm offered by the medical, accounting, advertising, or engineering professions given some of the similar changes affecting our respective practices? Looking only to our own or other law firms for ready and existing answers will not help because the changes that are already under way are new and the responses untested. Rather, as Kant might suggest, we should have the courage to use our own intelligence and to use it creatively to meet our own firm’s particular needs and values. Dare to know what is right for your firm, and have the courage to apply it.

Leadership vision: Stand for something. There has been considerable debate about insurers’ recent emphasis on litigation cost control and management and whether it will continue unabated or whether it is just another swing of the pendulum and all will soon return to normal. Several law firm management consultants have suggested that life will never be the same for insurance defense firms and that few will survive in the same manner they exist today.

The conclusion here is that we probably will not return to the same environment we enjoyed for most of the last 25 years. Nonetheless, this does not need to be a death knell for defense firms. To the contrary, many firms will undoubtedly survive. For example, niche firms with specialties in complex or emerging areas of law will continue to be relied upon by the insurance industry for their expertise. Firms that successfully convey a particular message will, in all probability, continue to do well. Recent examples of this include firms with an anti-hourly fee philosophy, the technologically advanced “road warrior” firms that sell their ability to communicate with clients and send them deposition transcripts in several different computer languages at all hours of the morning and night, and firms that offer a quality or satisfaction “guarantee.”

All of these firms share at least one characteristic: they have decided that they stand for something. That something may be different from firm to firm, but they have each focused on a particular message that, hopefully, has some attraction to their targeted audience of clients and potential clients. Indeed, this focus can often be the natural by-product of knowing thyself. Once a firm has determined what it is all about, conveying a clear and focused message to clients becomes much easier. As Curly suggests in City Slickers, the secret to continued law firm life may be just “one thing,” as long as that one thing can be effectively used to distinguish your firm from the rest of the pack.

Leadership vision II: Stand for the right something. The concept of standing for something is not particularly humanistic and certainly reflects no particular value system. Just as Dorothy must ask in The Wizard of Oz, “Are you a good witch or a bad witch?” so we should determine whether we, as law firms, have bothered to stand for the “right” things.

Cynics among us would correctly note that standing for something can simply be the result of a cold and calculated market-driven analysis of what the lawyers’ target market will buy. The truth of such a view cannot be doubted. We must remember, however, that the subject of this overall discussion is thriving defense firms in the twenty-first century. Firms that know themselves, firms that focus on a particular message, both internally and externally, and firms that identify themselves with that message are indeed in a better position to flourish in the years ahead. As past political elections remind us, and as Joe McGinniss’s The Selling of the President demonstrated decades ago, people and ideas can be packaged and sold like cigarettes or other products. If governments are elected by virtue of such analyses, why should we believe that law firm services are much different, whether marketed to the public or within a corporation?

Clearly, some firms understand these principles and have taken advantage of marketing opportunities. For example, alternative fees, thought by some in the industry to be the best answer for controlling litigation costs, quickly became little more than the latest marketing gimmick. Firms that had abused the hourly bill were certainly able to do the same with flat fees, blended rates, and caps. Nevertheless, their ability to take advantage of the industry’s receptiveness to the concept of alternative fees allowed them to thrive. Whether that particular fad has been exhausted remains to be seen.

Happily, standing for the right something also sells. Law firms should strive to become leaders in their profession and in the industry in which they practice. They should understand the issues faced by their clients, collaborate with them to address those issues, and be seen as part of the ultimate solution to industry crises, rather than as examples of the problem. This is the kind of “partnership” that is meaningful to corporate and insurance leaders and can be cogent evidence of a firm’s commitment to its clients’ interests.

How is this done? “Dare to know!” is again appropriate because the answer might seem at first to be counterintuitive. In a time of tightening belts, most defense firms have responded with an increased—perhaps maniacal—attention to the immediate bottom line. Although eliminating unnecessary expense in firms is certainly appropriate, it takes great courage to stand for something that cannot be counted in direct dollars and cents, especially if it entails additional expense of its own.

One example of a pathway to leadership in the legal industry is activity in professional organizations. Officers of the ABA’s Tort Trial & Insurance Practice Section, as well as of other organizations, have seen an alarming reduction in certain quarters in the ability of formerly active members to continue participating in the organization’s activities. Even those who have invested years in establishing themselves and placing themselves on the brink of leadership are pulling back or being pulled back by their firms, which fear the time and expense of a commitment to a professional organization. As a result, those who have best represented the firm to the outside world are being called back home to bill a few more hours.

Is this what firms want to stand for? Is this what guarantees that a firm will thrive? Besides demeaning the importance of the lawyer and his or her years of effort, this response reduces the firm to the status of any manufacturer of widgets. While the corporate management gurus might be satisfied by such developments, we, as lawyers, should be appalled. As lawyers, we should aim higher and do better.

The most compelling words on this subject were spoken by Marvin Karp, an attorney with Ulmer & Berne in Cleveland, Ohio, who is also a former chair of the Tort Trial & Insurance Practice Section. His thoughts beautifully illustrate the benefits of active participation in professional organizations. In describing a conversation he would have liked to have had before a colleague’s untimely death, Mr. Karp wrote:

What would I have said to him if I had had that opportunity? I would like to think that I would have told him that he had taught me the value and the joy of devoting time and energy and creativity to professional organizations—that he had taught me that lawyers from distant cities, who would never encounter each other in the course of representing clients, can nevertheless develop deep and enduring friendships through their work in organizations such as the ABA.

And I would have told him that he had shown me how such activities and the development of such friendships can add new dimensions to our professional lives. I would have told him too that, simply by following his example, I had achieved enormous personal satisfaction and a true sense of professional fulfillment. And I would have told him that, because of all of these things, my life had been eternally enriched.6

This article argues that a somewhat humanistic approach be taken in the management and leadership of law firms. Such an approach recognizes and rewards the talents and achievements of the individual and encourages each lawyer to continuously work towards attaining his or her highest potential. The humanistic firm that understands itself can celebrate its diversity and differences rather than attempting to shoehorn every lawyer into an artificial and predefined mold. Such a firm can discuss its core values with clients rather than merely highlighting its most recent trial. It is committed to its clients and to finding solutions for their problems rather than being focused on its own internal administration and bottom line. It understands the importance of vision, which will better enable both its clients and itself to meet the changes and challenges of the future. It recognizes that lawyers must be inspired and that its greatest strength as a firm is the unbridled, raw intelligence and energy of its lawyers. These are the qualities that, when used to better our professional world, will ensure a firm’s lasting success. Don’t just stand for something, stand for the right something. Work for a better profession, if not a better world.

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Dare to care. We all want to be successful. We all want to thrive. Perhaps, in the flood of “how to make more money” management forums and magazine articles, it is appropriate to ask how we want to define success. Will we thrive in the future simply by increasing our take-home pay? Why are lawyers today so dissatisfied with their careers? It is silly and self-defeating to suggest that insurance companies have made us miserable by closely reviewing our bills. If we are unhappy, we must look at ourselves, not to third-party audits or litigation guidelines. Know thyself!

Tribler Orpett & Meyer recently created a new firm brochure and a new Web site. Our goal was to gently bare our souls and try to express what we thought we were all about. It was a journey of self-discovery and one of reaffirmation as we were reminded about how much we care and are committed to a certain set of values and ideals. We recommend the process to others.

As noted above, this article was meant to provoke thought and reexamination rather than to lecture. Its focus is initially on management, but it is ultimately meant for all lawyers in all firms and may even extend to lawyers in other practice settings. Lawyers can and should take concrete steps to raise the level of their firms’ success. Our firm brochure ends with the charge given to all lawyers by Louis Brandeis: “If we would guide by the light of reason, we must let our minds be bold.” Now is as good a time as any to reaffirm this fundamental principle and to boldly set our minds to work.

Just as law firms can adopt a more humanistic approach to management and business, so can we as individual lawyers—whether partners or associates—do the same. Each of us can do more to truly know ourselves, to have the courage to use our intelligence creatively, regardless of what others may be doing, and to harness our own potential and our own talents to become better lawyers. More importantly, all of us as individual lawyers can take control of our own careers and seek fulfillment and satisfaction by working with others who share those same goals. But, to do so, you must dare to care. You should care about your clients, your work, and your profession, and you should aggressively seek out opportunities that will enable you to grow, both as a lawyer and as a human being. Be someone who stands for the right thing.

Marvin Karp concluded his observations by hoping that each person listening to or reading his words might go back to his or her firm, gather colleagues around and tell them:

I want you to realize that there is more to being a lawyer than simply grinding out the chargeable hours and hustling for clients. It’s time for you to recognize that there are other dimensions to living a full professional life which most of you haven’t even considered, let alone experienced.

I want you to understand that one of the true joys of being a lawyer, and one of the greatest satisfactions that you can achieve-in addition to that which comes from believing that you have been a good lawyer for your clients-is the satisfaction that comes from being an active participant in professional organizations, where you can help educate your fellow lawyers, advance the standards and qualities of our profession, improve the public good—and, in the course of which, you are able to develop close personal friendships with men and women from other parts of the country, who are not only fine lawyers, but also extraordinary human beings.

So get started now, today, make the effort, invest the time, so that you, too, can live—and enjoy—a full professional life.7

Dare to know. Have the courage to use your intelligence creatively and to allow a little humanism to creep into your professional lives. As Daniel H. Burnham urged, “Make no little plans-they have no magic to stir men’s blood. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work.”

Through the enlightened approach, where we recognize that lawyers, like everyone else, can aspire to do better and to aim higher in hope and work, we can be certain that we will indeed thrive-as individuals, as firms, and as a profession—despite the many unknown challenges of the future.

Notes

1. Carl T. Bogus, The Death of an Honorable Profession, 71 IND. L.J. 911 (Fall 1996).
2. See CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, Feb. 14, 2000, at 1.
3. PETER GAY, THE ENLIGHTENMENT 13 (Simon and Schuster 1973).
4. This is not to suggest that Tribler Orpett & Meyer, P.C. was one of the first firms to adopt the business casual mode of office dress, lo, those many years ago. Nevertheless, even though we were not, the positive feedback from lawyers and other employees was quite extraordinary given how unimportant many of us initially thought it really was.
5. Tribler Orpett & Meyer, P.C. has not eliminated billable hours from its practice. It has, however, implemented a policy whereby lawyers are recognized and potentially awarded greater compensation for certain practices that typically result in fewer billable hours, for example, the early, favorable resolution of lawsuits. This and other initiatives were created to make the firm’s internal goals identical to the client’s goals for the firm.
6. Marvin Karp, Friendships in the Law: Living a Full Professional Life, 1 TORTSOURCE Fall 1998, at 6.
7. Id.

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