Building Your Ladder An Associate's Guide to Success Beyond Partnership

Once upon a time, you could do solid work as an associate, achieve some notable successes, bill a respectable number of hours, and reasonably expect to make partner in five to seven years. "Making partner" meant job security, and new partners had a grace period of several years to ramp up, learn how to build a practice, and find ways to add value as a co-owner of the firm.

Those days are over. Grappling with the market downturn, a fragile economy, reduced demand for legal services, and tighter client control over legal spending, law firms are promoting fewer associates to partnership and looking more closely at the performance of existing partners, particularly in the junior ranks. As a new partner in today's legal world, you can no longer ramp up at a leisurely pace. In a relatively short time, you need to prove you can produce and manage business, manage people, and add value to the firm in other ways as well. 

Meeting these new challenges requires skills and talents beyond those typically needed to succeed as an associate. Despite the significant differences in expectations, however, most firms provide surprisingly little guidance to associates about the skills they will need in order to succeed as partners. Because partner-level skills take years to develop, it's critical that as an associate, you look ahead to your ultimate goals. If owning your own practice and having control over your career are among them, this book can help you chart your course and build your ladder to ultimate success.