Why our lawyers work fewer hours

Background Reading:

When you hire a typical large high-end law firm, the lawyers you work with are generally required to work 60-80 hour weeks non-stop if they want to keep their jobs; and at the higher end of that range if they want to make partner (in 8-10 years).  This is considered totally normal among that tier of law, as a “price” for the privilege of working there. If you want to see the inevitable end-result of that kind of culture, read the NYT article I’ve linked to above. It may seem extreme, but that profile of life is far less rare in law than most outsiders would think.

On top of the work expectations, most non-partners take home about 25% of the revenue they generate from clients. The other 75% goes to firm overhead (infrastructure) and partners. So when elite BigLaw charges you $695/hr for a senior associate, maybe $175/hr goes to the associate, the rest goes elsewhere. Obviously, the big question becomes how much of that “other stuff” is really necessary; and the answer varies depending on the type of client.

The causal chain here is pretty straightforward: bloated overhead and bureaucracy -> lower take-home for lawyers (and higher rates for clients)-> elite lawyers work insane hours to make good money -> divorce, depression, therapy, drug addiction, etc. etc. This is why, as we’ve built and scaled out our leaner but still high-end boutique firm, people have often heard me speak of “bloat” as if it’s the next incarnation of satan. Because I know that, from having studied that causal chain very closely, the extra piece of bullshit technology, or administrative person who just over-complicates processes, is directly tied to why many lawyers’ marriages fall apart, or their kids end up in therapy; or why they can’t get married or build families/relationships in the first place.

If I generated a dollar, and you want to take a cut of it, you better believe I’m going to make you earn it. And I say “no” far more often than I say “yes.”

At E/N, our lawyers, including partners, work on average 25% fewer hours than their BigLaw counterparts, at rates about $200-300+/hr lower; and our credentials speak for themselves. Top-performers (on a number of metrics, not necessarily hours) actually out-earn what they’d expect to make in BigLaw, while everyone generally makes more than what they’d expect as a GC or in some other “lifestyle” lawyer-type job.

It hasn’t been easy to piece together – getting extremely intelligent (the 1%), highly-trained professionals to coordinate and integrate together into a new brand is way more complicated than most would think, and it’s why precious few boutique firms reach any meaningful level of scale before falling apart. It still takes quite a lot of scalable “infrastructure,” just designed very differently from how old firms build it. But ultimately it’s a great set up for clients and for lawyers; not just those at the top of the hierarchy. It works, and we’re growing, sustainably, by knowing what we’re building, and who we’re building it for.

I am 100% convinced that our emphasis on quality of life for lawyers translates to better service for clients, in terms of responsiveness, creative solutions, and ultimate value add for our time. When your lawyers aren’t forced to over-stuff their “plate” all day, every day, the clients they work with get better service. That’s demonstrated in our client testimonials.

Part of our focus on client satisfaction is in selecting for clients who, themselves, have a strong sense of balance. They want to build great things and make great money – and work hard, but they reject the toxic values, pervasive in so much of the market, that myopically celebrate the neglect of so many other important things in life in order to “win.” Trust me, we’re winning and our clients are winning, but at a much broader, more important game.

In my value structure and those of our lawyers, there’s no bigger “loser” than the guy with tons of money, but a failed personal life, horrible health, and nothing meaningful to come home to other than more work; and there’s no amount of spin that can get us to reframe that life as “crushing it” or “strong work ethic.”

I have no doubt that the hard-grinding culture of traditional elite law will continue, in the same way that it continues in big pockets of tech ecosystems. It has its place in the world. We see our role as simply building out an alternative, and letting people – both clients and lawyers – self-select for what they want and support.

 

 

 

Don’t be an Asshole.

TL;DR: You probably can’t afford to be one.

Background Reading:

A regular theme of SHL involves different ways for founders and executives to protect themselves from bad actors – often via advice that I’m able to give by being in a position of not representing any institutional investors, deliberately. If you want more on that, see: How to avoid “captive” company counsel. 

The purpose of this post is to flip the topic, and discuss why there are very real, non-warm-and-fuzzy, reasons why entrepreneurs/execs should be very careful not to behave like bad actors themselves.

If you apply Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs to the business world, you arrive at one very real truth: the most talented, value-additive people in any industry are virtually never in it just for the money. They have enough, and trust their ability to earn more. Their talent allows them to care about other things: like challenging work, trust, friendship, impact, fun, respect, etc. By no means does this suggest they don’t care about money at all – in some cases money is a way for them to ensure they are being valued and respected for what they deliver. But it does mean that anyone who approaches these people with a kind of opportunistic cost-benefit analysis is likely to get ice cold water poured on them, very fast.

Startup ecosystems are full of these kinds of people. If all they cared about was money, they’d never touch early-stage.  If they’re working with startups (and your very early-stage risky startup), there are non-financial motivations higher on the hierarchy of needs at play, and you need to be mindful of that as you interact with them.

When you’re building your brand new or very early-stage company, unless you have a LinkedIn profile that screams “winner,” people all around you are going to be risking their time and money in working with you. There are 1,000 reasons why they might say no, and move on to someone else with a different risk profile. The absolute last thing you want to do is give them a reason to walk away, because they smell an asshole. And trust me, they will walk away. 

“Startup people” react much more viscerally to assholes than “corporate people” do, because the startup world often selects for people who won’t do or tolerate anything for a big payout. The large hierarchies of corporate environments enable, naturally, more hierarchical behavior among peers. In contrast, the “flatter” nature of startup ecosystems generates, and enforces, more “democratic” (respect everyone) norms.

As startup lawyers, we’re often in a position to see firsthand who the assholes in the entrepreneurial community are. They treat lawyers and many other service providers as line items to be deferred, discounted, and written-off to the very last dime, as much as possible; and will play games to manipulate people into giving them more for less. Thinking extremely myopically, these assholes think they’re doing what’s best for their company by grabbing as much as possible on the table – but played out over time, they’re actually whittling down the number of people who will work with them to those who simply don’t have other options. And when someone doesn’t have options, it’s often for a reason. Interestingly, assholes have a way of ending up stuck with other assholes. 

All of this applies just as well to top investors, particularly angel investors (with more freedom than VCs) who know they deliver a lot more than money. God help you if you give them even the slightest reason to think you’re an asshole. Information travels fast.

The definition of a mercenary is someone whose every decision is cost-benefit calculated for money. The fact is that if you build a reputation in a startup ecosystem for being a mercenary – always maximize the valuation, minimize the equity grant, discount the bill – you’re dramatically reducing your chances of making money, simply because of the personalities and values you tend to find in the startup world.

Be careful out there. Don’t be an asshole. On top of it being simply wrong, you probably can’t afford it.

Startup Employee Offer Letters

TL;DR: A few simple principles can help founders avoid big legal landmines in making offers to their employees.

Background Reading:

Hiring an employee is one of the first areas in which I see poorly advised founders really start messing things up from a legal perspective; exposing themselves to liability and errors that can have very long-lasting effects.

Here are a few simple principles to keep in mind as you hire people and paper their employment.

An Employee Offer Letter is NOT the same thing as an “Employment Agreement.”

In the United States, the default for employer-employee relationships is “at will” employment, which means broadly speaking an employer can fire the employee for any reason, even without warning, apart from a narrow set of discriminatory reasons that violate labor laws. This is very different from other countries, which typically have more robust statutory defaults for employees.

When most people speak of an “employment agreement” they are referring to a negotiated document, usually reserved for high-level executives, that provides more robust protections to the employee/executive; including protections around how that executive can be fired, and the consequences of firing her/him. True employment agreements are quite rare in the very early days of startups.

When a startup hires a typical employee, they provide an Offer Letter that states high-level details like their position, compensation, etc., but also makes it clear that the relationship is at will; in other words, they don’t have the protections a high-level executive’s “employment agreement” would often provide. Offer Letters are not Employment Agreements. Know the difference, and that you should start with the assumption that an offer letter is what you need.

Everyone who works for you is not an Employee. Know the difference between a contractor and employee.

I often see founders casually, without really thinking about it, call everyone who does work for them an “employee.” It seems harmless, but in labor law the word “employee” can have very material implications for what you owe them, how you treat their compensation, how easily you can modify their terms or terminate them, etc. Don’t use that word indiscriminately.

Don’t forget IP / Confidentiality, which is not covered in the offer letter (usually).

The conventional structure of startup employee documentation is (i) a simple offer letter, and (ii) a more robust agreement covering confidentiality, intellectual property ownership, and (unless you’re in California or a few other states) a non-compete. This second document is usually called something like a Proprietary Information and Inventions Agreement (PIIA), Confidentiality and Inventions Agreement, or some variant of that. Missing this document can be a huge problem, and in some states fixing it is not as simple as having an employee sign it later. Don’t forget it.

Unlike most legal issues, local state law tends to govern in employment relationships. Docs vary by state.

Most tech startups are incorporated/organized in Delaware, and if they have a national footprint, a lot of their agreements will be governed by Delaware law. With respect to employees, however, that is rarely the case, unless the employee is actually located in Delaware. In employment documents, the location of your employee will often determine the documentation they have to sign, and that means the documentation can vary significantly by state. Work with your lawyers to ensure you don’t use the wrong forms.

Your offer letter might promise equity. But you still need to issue it, which is more complicated.

If you’re promising options or some other form of equity, the offer letter will usually cover that. But you need to understand that the letter is only promising the equity. To actually grant/issue the equity, more steps need to be taken, including a Board Consent and other processes.

Early-stage founders often get in hot water by signing lots of offer letters thinking that’s all they need to do for employee equity purposes, and then waiting a long time (as the value of their stock continues to go up) to be told by lawyers that the equity was never issued. Then they end up (for tax reasons) having to issue the equity at a much higher price than they would’ve if they had done it sooner, and the employees are understandably angry. Promise, then quickly grant. The offer letter is just the first step.