Boutique Law Firms

Netflix Has It Right With Firm Values -- Does Your Law Firm?

Does your law firm do what Netflix is trying to do? Meaning really hiring and promoting based on these values?

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law firm family circleNetflix has one of the coolest statements of values I have ever seen. About 100 pages long but only a few words on each page. They start out:

Many companies have nice sounding value statements displayed in the lobby, such as:

Integrity

Communication

Respect

Excellence

Enron, whose leaders went to jail, and which went bankrupt from fraud, had these values displayed in their lobby:

Integrity

Communication

Respect

Excellence

The actual company values, as opposed to the nice-sounding values, are shown by who gets rewarded, promoted, or let go.

Actual company values are the behaviors and skills that are valued in fellow employees

At Netflix, we particularly value the following nine behaviors and skills in our colleagues … meaning we hire and promote people who demonstrate these nine.

Pretty cool stuff isn’t it? It is a dramatic and powerful call to action.

As you read this, consider your law firm. Does it have cool values? I bet it does somewhere.

But — and this is a big but (so to speak) — does your law firm do what Netflix is trying to do? Meaning really hiring and promoting based on these values?

If so — you probably are in a great law firm.

If not — I wonder how it makes you feel when leadership is trumpeting values that are simply not being followed?

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Well, I don’t need to wonder. Of course I know exactly how you feel. Disillusioned at best and angry at worst and most likely not really bought into that law firm.

My view is that it is better — much better — to have no values at all than to espouse values that are ignored when it counts.

For example, does your law firm say that teamwork and collegiality are critical but at the end of the year all that goes into compensation is cold hard hours and origination credit for client work?

I mean, at such a law firm, if teamwork and collegiality are so critical why are they then ignored in compensation?

Or, does your law firm really mean it and essentially penalize those who are not into the team or collegiality or over-reward those who are?

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Notably, it gets even worse for law firm management if it espouses values that are not followed. This is because people assume that if management is essentially lying — yes, it is lying — about something this fundamental, then management is probably lying about other things.

And if you think about it more, there is no reason to stay at such a firm other than the cold hard cash they are paying you. And if someone offers more you might as well just take it, right?

In this age where attracting and retaining talent is so important, management should really think about this kind of thing.

To conclude, management of a well-run law firm should assess values in the following manner:

First — determine what are the values? I mean the real, true values. Don’t lie to  yourself, as everyone will figure it out. If you are really truly in business to make a sh*tload of money, it is not illegal to do that, and it is a possible business model.  And that — ruthless — environment might be excellent for some types of lawyers.  But if that is what you are really about, then be true to it, as opposed to mouthing fake platitudes about caring about people and society.

Second — when you figure out your values — make sure you do what Netflix does: namely, promote and hire and fire based on those values.

Third — make clear to everyone exactly what you are doing — be completely transparent about it.

I must say that during my — now very long — career, I have worked for different kinds of law firms. I remember that one of them told me how wonderful their values were but when tested didn’t follow those values. The other one told me up front it wasn’t a nice place, and it wasn’t nice at all. I must say I liked the latter a lot better than the former.

Our firm has some cool values — among others:

Do the right thing even when it hurts.

I hope and pray that we follow these values punctiliously at all times.

Bruce Stachenfeld is the chairman of Duval & Stachenfeld LLP, an approximately 50-lawyer law firm based in midtown Manhattan. The firm is known as “The Pure Play in Real Estate Law” because all of its practice areas are focused around real estate. With almost 50 full-time real estate lawyers, the firm is one of the largest real estate law practices in New York City. You can contact Bruce by email at bstachenfeld@dsllp.com. Bruce also writes The Real Estate Philosopher™, which contains applications of Bruce’s eclectic, insightful, and outside-the-box thinking to the real estate world. If you would like to read previous articles or subscribe, please click here.

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