University of Minnesota - UMN Executive Leadership Insights
The Partner Track
Book

The Partner Track

How to Go from Associate to Partner in any Law Firm

Cliff Ennico
Kaplan Publishing, 2009
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Editorial Rating

9

Qualities

  • Innovative
  • Applicable

Recommendation

Attorney Cliff Ennico is an expert on what it takes to become a partner at a corporate law firm. In this insider’s career guidebook for young lawyers, he explains that making partner has little to do with your good work (though one sizable mistake will sink your prospects) and everything to do with whether the partners, associates and staffers like you. If they don’t, you stand a better chance of growing wings and flying backward to Neptune than of making partner. If you are willing to work 100-hour weeks for years, handling boring, technical legal matters, and if you are goof-proof, congenial and a bit Machiavellian, in 10 to 15 years you may become a partner. Ennico provides worthwhile recommendations on what you must do to grab that brass ring. getAbstract thinks his savvy book will improve your odds of joining the partners’ ranks, if you have the stamina (and don’t come to your senses before the race is run).

Summary

Most Law Firm Associates Will Never Become Partners

So you want to become a partner at a corporate law firm. That means you have to work like a dog to stay at the top of your class – in high school, university and law school. Corporate law firms select only the best, brightest law school grads as junior associates. In this capacity, you will be a “grinder,” working at the lowest level for years – proofing documents, organizing case materials, and doing research and other relatively unsophisticated legal tasks. You seldom will have direct contact with clients. The next step up is senior associate, managing cases under the direction of the partners. Few associates make it to the mountaintop where the partners reside. The partners work with clients, decide how to represent their interests and try cases. And, most importantly, partners bring in new business. That is the classic “partnership track.” Five recent developments:

  1. “Clients are not as loyal as they used to be” – They will move to a new firm more quickly than in the past and they are far more likely to divide work among several firms instead of giving it all to one office.

About the Author

Attorney Cliff Ennico is an expert on the legal ramifications of entrepreneurship. A prolific author, he formerly hosted PBS’s “MoneyHunt” and “MoneyHunt Small Business Challenge.”

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