Law Firms Earn Their Legitimacy by Their Leaders Fighting in the Trenches

I’ve never owned an alarm clock. Before my feet hit the floor each morning, I’m already thinking about what the day will bring: which clients I’m scheduled to speak with, what their cases are about, and how I’m going to handle my scheduled meetings with opposing counsel and judges.

At 66 years old, I’m busier than I’ve ever been, but I have no desire to stop or to slow down. Representing injured workers and all that comes with it isn’t just something I do. It’s my identity, and it will remain so until I can’t walk or talk anymore.

I say all of this not to brag about my work ethic, but to make a point about the connection between a law firm’s leaders’ involvement in its clients’ cases and the legitimacy and credibility that law firm has among the bar, judges, and policymakers. By legitimacy, I mean the standing those audiences grant a firm; by credibility, I mean whether they believe what that firm tells them.

In my experience, a law firm cannot manufacture legitimacy and credibility through billboards or social media ads. Effective marketing brings clients in the door, but a law firm earns both only when its leaders and other senior attorneys fight for those clients in the trenches through consistent, ethical, zealous advocacy.

Legitimacy and Credibility Begin With a Law Firm’s Leadership

When their law firms grow to a certain size, it’s common for law firm leaders to handle less client work as they spend more time focused on managing the business of their firms. Some firm leaders will grace their firms’ advertisements, and maybe they’ll say “hello” to a client with a particularly valuable case. But clients will never reach that attorney by phone, and they’ll probably never see them in their courtroom or any other courtroom.

That’s not how law firm leaders should operate, and those that do risk ceding legitimacy and credibility to firms whose leaders maintain active legal practices. When clients call the latter type of firms, there’s a good chance they’ll get a senior attorney, if not one of the name partners, as their attorney. Certainly at our firm, when a client retains us, there’s a good chance they’ll get me, my partner Sam Pond, or one of our senior attorneys who has at least a decade or a decade-and-a-half’s worth of experience representing injured workers. When law firm leaders still have active caseloads, they set the standard that everyone else in their firm measures up to.

I have deliberately kept a full, active trial docket, despite holding a position that many attorneys see as a license to slow down their legal practice. There is no doubt that my choice to maintain a busy docket helps my firm earn a reputation for high levels of legitimacy and credibility within the local and national workers’ compensation bar.

Keeping a full docket deep into a legal career only makes sense if you still want to be doing the work. I know there are firm leaders who have lost that feeling. I don’t begrudge any attorney who decides they have had enough and would rather do something else. But it is a topic worth being honest with yourself about, because a firm’s legitimacy and credibility rest on whether the people leading it still want to be in the fight.

When a law firm establishes legitimacy and credibility through its work for clients in the courtroom and at the settlement table, both can boost the firm’s efforts to improve the legal system through the political process and by engaging with the administrative agencies whose regulations affect their clients and their cases. The firm’s efforts to raise an issue with a state or federal department or official are likely to carry legitimacy and credibility that other messengers’ efforts might not. While that legitimacy and credibility do not guarantee that a department or official will take the action that the attorneys are vouching for, it increases the chances that they will take the attorneys’ concerns seriously, which is a necessary first step toward change.

Leading From the Valley, Not the Mountaintop

The style of law firm leadership that builds a law firm’s legitimacy and credibility doesn’t bark orders at associates and staff. It sets the right example every day by staying intimately involved in the firm’s day-to-day practices, which also helps name partners and those in leadership positions maintain the hands-on skills they need to mentor younger attorneys.

There is a difference between a name or managing partner being a boss and being a leader. A boss issues instructions from a distance. A leader shows, by doing the work alongside everyone else, what the standard looks like. I don’t think of myself as anyone’s boss at our firm. I think of myself as a leader, and a key way that I lead my fellow attorneys is by maintaining a large docket of active files so they can see how I treat clients and advocate for them.

Effective law firm leaders are demanding of our associates and expect a lot, usually because we offer a genuine opportunity for advancement and increased responsibilities to anyone willing to work hard for our clients. But leaders can only be credible while being demanding if they walk the walk and show colleagues, through their own actions, how they expect cases to be run and clients to be served. Leaders are role models whose involvement in the day-to-day operations of their firms helps establish high standards for colleagues to match.

Continuing to practice law in the trenches is also one of the surest ways for leaders to stay current. Most areas of law, including workers’ compensation law, are fluid: Case law shifts, and statutes are interpreted differently. The tools change, too. When I started out, you couldn’t produce the video evidence that is routine today, when warehouses, manufacturing floors, and nearly every street corner are covered by cameras. A leader who has stepped away from active cases gradually stops noticing these changes, and a firm that stops noticing them falls behind its peers, losing legitimacy and credibility. In addition, when law firm leaders maintain an active practice, they have a front-row seat to the ever-changing technology tools that can help their firms practice law more effectively and efficiently. This gives them the opportunity to be early adopters of new technology and industry leaders in its use.

Law firm leaders cannot adopt this in-the-trenches leadership style for appearances. When they lead from the valley, alongside everyone else, rather than calling down instructions from the mountaintop, there is nowhere to hide. If the commitment were hollow, colleagues, clients, and adversaries would see through it instantly. That is precisely why this leadership style builds legitimacy and credibility: It cannot be faked.

Maintaining Legitimacy Without Chasing a Perception of Legitimacy

I recommend that as law firm leaders pursue and maintain their law firms’ legitimacy, they spend no time worrying about how a particular judge or opposing counsel perceives them. Perhaps my viewpoint here stems from all the Marcus Aurelius I’ve been reading recently, but we shouldn’t, as law firm leaders, worry about what others think about our firms because we cannot control that. If we talked to ten judges and ten lawyers about our respective firms, we’d get ten different opinions.

This does not contradict what I’ve said about legitimacy and credibility. Those characteristics are not favors we can talk a judge into granting; they result from how we carry ourselves, case after case. We cannot control the impression others form, but we can control the conduct that earns it.

What law firm leaders should spend time worrying about is pursuing a principled path of building and maintaining our firms’ legitimacy and credibility by being a zealous advocate for our clients, and making good-faith, legitimate, well-reasoned arguments on their behalf. Whether at the settlement table, in court, or in meetings with administrators and policymakers, law firm leaders earn our legitimacy and credibility by holding ourselves to the highest standards of ethical advocacy.

Our Clients Count on Our Firms’ Legitimacy

For those attorneys who serve injured people, the stakes for their clients are as high as they come. Most of the injured workers and their families who come to our firm are living paycheck to paycheck. Yet, cases where our clients’ benefits are contested or denied typically take nine to twelve months to litigate, leading our clients to face devastating financial difficulties at the moment they can least afford them. These are not the kinds of stakes a dedicated advocate can ignore. It’s not unusual for our clients to have their homes foreclosed on, their cars repossessed, their unpaid bills pile up, or even to be unable to afford gas to get to a doctor’s appointment.

And then there’s the emotional reality, which can strongly influence case outcomes, such as when a client’s emotions convince them they should settle early and at a discount. The litigation process can dehumanize our clients. They can feel discredited or dismissed by how insurers and employers treat them.

Our clients can’t afford a long wait for their claims to be resolved, and they certainly can’t afford to hire a law firm whose lack of legitimacy and credibility will hinder their chances of success. If the leaders of a law firm don’t understand that and do not do everything they can to improve their firm’s legitimacy and credibility in the eyes of judges, opposing counsel, and insurers, they’re failing their clients and their attorneys and staff.

Develop Your Firm’s Legitimacy and Credibility by Following the Leaders

If you want to improve your firm’s legitimacy and credibility, I have good news. The firms that care deeply about developing and maintaining their legitimacy and credibility have left public clues for others to find and emulate. Their attorneys are members of boards. They sit on committees. They market to clients. They write articles. They file court papers. They give interviews to the media. They appear on podcasts. Their strategy and values are out there for all to see and learn from, for those attorneys and firms willing to connect the dots.

A law firm derives its legitimacy and credibility ‌ from its leadership, who in turn develop and maintain their own legitimacy and credibility by remaining active in their clients’ matters and adhering to the highest standards of ethical, zealous advocacy. Law firm leaders who discount the importance of legitimacy and credibility may not drive their firms off a cliff, but they will artificially limit how much they can grow.