“I never bought a suit without buying a spare jacket” said the lady. “Of course, I was a lawyer in the eighties and people cared about appearances much more back then.”.The lady in question was a former lawyer with a Magic Circle firm and she was reminiscing about the f-word – facetime..Facetime is an old tradition at most law firms. As one great London lawyer put it, a top lawyer has three attributes – ability, affability and availability. For some reason, ambitious young associates often tend to put availability at the top of the list, perhaps because they’re modest about their abilities. What that means is that the young associate is a constant presence at the firm – she’s in first thing in the morning, she’s the last one out at night. There seems to be an unspoken belief that mere presence is sufficient to make up for a humble work product..“Eighty percent of success is just showing up” -Woody Allen.“I never bought a suit without buying a spare jacket” said the lady. “Of course, I was a lawyer in the eighties and people cared about appearances much more back then.”.The lady in question was a former lawyer with a Magic Circle firm. We were not discussing fashion trends among lawyers, though. Instead, she was reminiscing about the f-word – facetime..Facetime is an old tradition at most law firms. As one great London lawyer put it, a top lawyer has three attributes – ability, affability and availability. For some reason, ambitious young associates often tend to put availability at the top of the list, perhaps because they’re modest about their abilities. What that means is that the young associate is a constant presence at the firm – she’s in first thing in the morning, she’s the last one out at night. There seems to be an unspoken belief that mere presence is sufficient to make up for a humble work product..So why did the lady lawyer buy a spare jacket with every suit? The reason’s quite simple – when she left for the day, she would leave the spare jacket draped over her chair so that inquisitive partners and associates would think she’d only stepped out for a moment. Call it paranoid, but that’s the effect of facetime. You could never go home again..This belief in the importance of facetime has turned some young lawyers into pale creatures who never see the sun, emaciated Olympic sprinters who would dash into the traffic to make sure they were in their seats before the partner arrived and vampires who function best after nightfall. Is facetime all that important, though? Everything I’ve seen suggests that it’s not..My work has been with law firms in London and New York, each time with partners who were as tough on their associates as they were on themselves. My own concluson is that facetime is dead. No one cares about how long you’re in your office – only about what you do while you’re there. Over the course of the last few years, I’ve watched soccer on a Monday afternoon in New York, walked with that rare Ashes victory parade in London and even sat through a marathon Friday afternoon double screening of Kill Bill – all with no adverse effect on my relations with partners. What’s really required is that you turn your work in on time and that it be good – most partners realize that that’s hard enough..Another factor killing facetime today is aggressive clients. As the global downturn continues, clients are increasingly querying legal bills, pushing their lawyers to become more efficient. In this rapidly changing legal world, the best lawyer is the one who turns quality work around quickly and efficiently, not the lawyer who treats the office as a permanent residence..I’m not suggesting that law firms do not work long hours – they always have and always will. There’s no reason, though, to work longer hours than we have to..Lexpert is an Indian lawyer currently based out of the United States.
“I never bought a suit without buying a spare jacket” said the lady. “Of course, I was a lawyer in the eighties and people cared about appearances much more back then.”.The lady in question was a former lawyer with a Magic Circle firm and she was reminiscing about the f-word – facetime..Facetime is an old tradition at most law firms. As one great London lawyer put it, a top lawyer has three attributes – ability, affability and availability. For some reason, ambitious young associates often tend to put availability at the top of the list, perhaps because they’re modest about their abilities. What that means is that the young associate is a constant presence at the firm – she’s in first thing in the morning, she’s the last one out at night. There seems to be an unspoken belief that mere presence is sufficient to make up for a humble work product..“Eighty percent of success is just showing up” -Woody Allen.“I never bought a suit without buying a spare jacket” said the lady. “Of course, I was a lawyer in the eighties and people cared about appearances much more back then.”.The lady in question was a former lawyer with a Magic Circle firm. We were not discussing fashion trends among lawyers, though. Instead, she was reminiscing about the f-word – facetime..Facetime is an old tradition at most law firms. As one great London lawyer put it, a top lawyer has three attributes – ability, affability and availability. For some reason, ambitious young associates often tend to put availability at the top of the list, perhaps because they’re modest about their abilities. What that means is that the young associate is a constant presence at the firm – she’s in first thing in the morning, she’s the last one out at night. There seems to be an unspoken belief that mere presence is sufficient to make up for a humble work product..So why did the lady lawyer buy a spare jacket with every suit? The reason’s quite simple – when she left for the day, she would leave the spare jacket draped over her chair so that inquisitive partners and associates would think she’d only stepped out for a moment. Call it paranoid, but that’s the effect of facetime. You could never go home again..This belief in the importance of facetime has turned some young lawyers into pale creatures who never see the sun, emaciated Olympic sprinters who would dash into the traffic to make sure they were in their seats before the partner arrived and vampires who function best after nightfall. Is facetime all that important, though? Everything I’ve seen suggests that it’s not..My work has been with law firms in London and New York, each time with partners who were as tough on their associates as they were on themselves. My own concluson is that facetime is dead. No one cares about how long you’re in your office – only about what you do while you’re there. Over the course of the last few years, I’ve watched soccer on a Monday afternoon in New York, walked with that rare Ashes victory parade in London and even sat through a marathon Friday afternoon double screening of Kill Bill – all with no adverse effect on my relations with partners. What’s really required is that you turn your work in on time and that it be good – most partners realize that that’s hard enough..Another factor killing facetime today is aggressive clients. As the global downturn continues, clients are increasingly querying legal bills, pushing their lawyers to become more efficient. In this rapidly changing legal world, the best lawyer is the one who turns quality work around quickly and efficiently, not the lawyer who treats the office as a permanent residence..I’m not suggesting that law firms do not work long hours – they always have and always will. There’s no reason, though, to work longer hours than we have to..Lexpert is an Indian lawyer currently based out of the United States.