Ed. notice: The Rainmaker is a brand new Above the Legislation sequence highlighting attorneys who’ve constructed distinguished practices by excelling not solely within the courtroom and on the negotiating desk, but in addition in enterprise improvement, mentorship, and management. Every installment will function candid reflections on what it takes to succeed as a rainmaker in as we speak’s authorized business. Our first featured rainmaker is Neal Katyal.
About 20 years in the past, I wrote a chunk for Authorized Occasions arguing that legislation faculties fail to show what issues most: tips on how to work in teams. Contemporary from the Justice Division, I had discovered the laborious manner that sensible authorized arguments imply nothing in the event you can’t deliver folks together with you. I assumed I understood that lesson.
I used to be mistaken. Understanding it intellectually and dwelling it each day are totally various things.
Right here’s the paradox of constructing a thriving Supreme Court docket apply: you succeed not by being the neatest particular person within the room, however by making everybody else within the room smarter. Supreme Court docket legal professionals aren’t precisely identified for his or her humility—we’ve constructed our reputations arguing earlier than 9 justices who can eviscerate your reasoning with a single query. But the rainmakers I’ve noticed, and the apply I’ve tried to construct, succeeds exactly as a result of it inverts that stereotype.
The Improv Precept
For years, I’ve been finding out improv comedy, and it’s reworked how I take into consideration authorized apply. The cardinal rule of improv is “sure, and”—you settle for what your scene companions provide and construct on it. You don’t say “no” or shut down their contribution. You make your companions look good, and in flip they make you look good.
This sounds tender. It’s not. It’s the toughest self-discipline I do know.
In a gathering, when an affiliate gives an concept that appears off-base, the intuition is to right them, to point out why you’re the skilled lead counsel. The improv intuition is totally different: discover what’s useful of their contribution and construct on it. “Sure, and we might take that framework and apply it to the jurisdictional query.” All of the sudden, the affiliate isn’t embarrassed—they’re energized. They’ve contributed one thing actual. They’ll work twice as laborious for you, and subsequent time, their concept is perhaps the one which wins the case.
This isn’t synthetic, it’s positively not about giving false reward. A sensible affiliate, in spite of everything, will see by way of that in a second. It’s fairly about looking for the diamond within the tough, the perception that the affiliate has and that may be constructed upon. I type of stumbled upon that concept once I did my first case, difficult Guantanamo. At my aspect had been a dozen legislation college students – and they might all have varied writing assignments and my obligation was to kind by way of all their insights and construct a coherent product out of it. Many had been off-the-wall, to make sure, however many had been sensible, too. It simply took work to search out these flashes of brilliance and to construct upon them. That type of “bottom-up” technique is one I’ve taken to coronary heart – a lot in order that as we speak I routinely take recommendation on crafting arguments from my Researcher at Milbank. My Researcher is somebody who has graduated from school and but has not attended legislation faculty.
This isn’t nearly associates or your inside group, it’s simply as a lot about purchasers. When a consumer pushes again in your technique, you would dig in and clarify why you’re proper. Or you would hear—actually hear—to what’s driving their concern. Often, they’re telling you one thing vital about their enterprise actuality, their threat tolerance, or their board dynamics. “Sure, and provided that constraint, what if we structured the argument this fashion?” Now you’re not simply their lawyer; you’re their accomplice.
Why Purchasers Return
Twenty-three years in the past once I wrote that piece, I assumed purchasers employed you in your authorized brilliance. They don’t. They rent you since you make their issues smaller, not greater.
I’ve represented the identical purchasers by way of a number of Supreme Court docket circumstances, not as a result of I received each time (I haven’t), however as a result of they belief that I’ll take heed to what they really want. Generally what they want is an aggressive cert petition. Generally what they want is somebody to inform them that the case isn’t definitely worth the institutional threat of taking to the Court docket. The purchasers who preserve coming again are those who know you’ll give them the second reply when it’s true, regardless that it prices you a significant case and vital charges.
This requires a particular type of humility: the humility to know that the consumer understands their enterprise higher than you do, and that your authorized judgment is in service of their objectives, not the opposite manner round. Supreme Court docket legal professionals can battle with this as a result of we’re educated to consider doctrinal purity and authorized structure. However purchasers don’t care about your elegant principle of administrative legislation. They care about whether or not they can construct the undertaking, launch the product, or keep away from the devastating legal responsibility.
One of the best piece of recommendation I ever acquired got here from Eric Holder, who mentored me on the Justice Division in my first stint there, proper after my clerkships. He watched me fail to influence senior officers of a place that I used to be completely sure was proper. Afterward, he pulled me apart. “Your evaluation was excellent,” he mentioned. “However you didn’t take heed to their considerations. You tried to persuade them you had been proper as an alternative of understanding why they had been fearful. Subsequent time, begin by understanding their perspective.”
That lesson echoes by way of each consumer relationship, each oral argument, each transient. Begin by understanding their perspective.
Constructing a Group
The authorized market is filled with sensible legal professionals. What’s scarce is sensible legal professionals who different sensible legal professionals need to work with.
I’ve been lucky to draw extraordinary expertise to our apply at Milbank, and I’ve spent numerous time occupied with why. It’s not compensation—loads of companies pay nicely. It’s not simply attention-grabbing circumstances, although we’ve had our share. It’s that individuals need to work in an setting the place their contributions matter, the place they’re not simply executing another person’s imaginative and prescient however actively shaping the technique.
This implies involving associates and junior companions in consumer conversations sooner than is perhaps conventional. It means crediting their concepts explicitly in conferences and briefs. It means creating an setting the place somebody can say “I feel we’re lacking one thing” with out worry. One of the best authorized work occurs when good folks really feel secure being sincere about uncertainty, about gaps within the argument, about weaknesses within the case. That security solely exists when egos are checked on the door.
In my 2002 piece, I argued that legislation faculties, which concentrate on solitary examination writing, ship the message that “to succeed I needed to work as an island unto myself.” Essentially the most profitable practices do the alternative. They’re archipelagos—distinct skills linked by shared function and mutual respect.
Different Companies
Right here’s what stunned me most about constructing a apply: a few of our greatest work comes from different legislation companies bringing us in on their circumstances. This appears counterintuitive. Why would a significant agency need to break up charges and credit score with us?
As a result of we’re not a risk.
Once you construct a status for collaboration fairly than competitors, for making others look good fairly than claiming all of the credit score, companies belief that you simply’ll improve their consumer relationship fairly than making an attempt to steal it. We’ve been introduced in on dozens of circumstances the place the referring agency maintains the consumer relationship, handles many of the case, and brings us in particularly for the appellate-like stage, which is most frequently on the trial courtroom. Every little thing from dispositive motions like motions to dismiss to difficulty preservation. We do the work, share the credit score, and strengthen their relationship with their consumer.
This solely works in the event you genuinely consider that there’s sufficient success to go round. The shortage mindset—that each case is a zero-sum competitors for status and credit score—is poison to a sustainable apply. The abundance mindset—that by serving to others succeed, you create extra alternatives for everybody—is what builds a apply that lasts.
The Lengthy Sport
None of that is quick. You don’t construct belief with purchasers, groups, and co-counsel by way of a single sensible efficiency. You construct it by way of a whole lot of small interactions the place you persistently select collaboration over ego, listening over speaking, “sure, and” over “no, however.”
The paradox of rainmaking is that you simply succeed by specializing in one thing aside from success. You concentrate on making others profitable—your purchasers, your group, your co-counsel. You construct a apply the place folks need to return not since you received (although successful helps), however as a result of working with you made them higher at what they do.
Is that this the one approach to construct a profitable apply? In fact not. Loads of rainmakers succeed by way of sheer drive of will and brilliance. However I’ve discovered that the practices constructed on collaboration are inclined to last more, climate storms higher, and—mockingly—entice extra enterprise than these constructed on particular person genius.
The true world works in teams. Twenty years after writing that, I’m nonetheless studying what it means.
Neal Katyal is among the nation’s foremost attorneys and former Performing Solicitor Normal of the US. He’s a accomplice at Milbank’s Washington, DC workplace, and serves because the Paul Saunders Professor of Legislation at Georgetown College, the place he was one of many youngest professors to have acquired tenure and a chaired professorship within the college’s historical past. He has argued 52 circumstances on the Supreme Court docket, together with landmark circumstances on gene patents, Guantanamo, the Voting Rights Act, and company legislation. He acquired the very best honor the Justice Division can bestow on a civilian, the Edmund Randolph Award, and has received all kinds of different awards, together with being named one in all GQ’s Males of the Yr. He has carried out in each Netflix’s Home of Playing cards and Showtime’s Billions (each instances taking part in himself).
