Getting Business

• Author: Kenneth P. Nolan
• Pages: 17-21

Getting Business

17

So you wanna be a big shot, make the big bucks, have your

mug on the cover of Time magazine. Or maybe, just maybe, your

dream is different—a polite practice, help a few widows and or-

phans, earn just enough to afford pre-pre-K tuition. To do either,

you need the Holy Grail—clients.

I know they’re pains, demanding this, asking for that, changing

minds, complaining about fees, expenses, driving you batty with

irrational ideas. But without them, you starve, your house gets fore-

closed, and your kids whine day and night that they’ll have to limit

their texts to 1,000 a month.

If Utopia allowed lawyers, the most accomplished would make

the millions, garner the accolades, and be revered on the blogs. But

this is the law biz where job security, as they say in The Sopranos,

is commensurate with the amount of money in the last envelope

handed to The Boss.

At one time, thoughtful, reserved attorneys, those who sat si-

lently in offices contemplating strategy until an ingenious plan was

created, were as highly valued as the guy whose sister-in-law was

CEO of Exxon. But no more, not in this economy, not in this pro-

fession, which reveres profits over performance.

At noisy brunches on gentrified Smith Street in Brooklyn, we

trumpet art, principle, and love over the dollar, but occasionally