Earlier this week, Weil Gotshal’s leadership recommended that the firm wind down. The firm was 95 years old, with roughly 1,200 lawyers, no debt, and some of the highest profits per partner in the country. The final unraveling took about a month.
The thing I keep coming back to is something a Weil partner shared with David Lat (in his fantastic summary of the entire saga). He said one of the reasons he picked Weil over other firms was stability. Even if things went badly, he figured Weil would be safe. Now he’s asking the obvious question: “If Weil isn’t safe, then what firm is safe?”
That one hit close to home. Two of the people I respect most from law school went to Weil. One is among my closest friends who was an associate there, and has praised the place for as long as I’ve known him. The other is a brilliant partner who happens to be kind and generous. So in my head, Weil has always been an elite firm.
(Funny how I built an entire firm’s reputation in my head based on who I know there. Suspect I’m not the only one who does that!)
Anyways. What Weil had, was legibility. They had cachet. Lawyers would the name “Weil” and immediately know you were the real deal. For a long time I assumed that type of legibility would guarantee security.1 This week is a good reminder that they never were.
A Ladder Lawyers Could Read
I’ve always wanted that legibility. My parents immigrated from Taiwan, and my mom went to one of the top schools in Taiwan before deciding to stay home. That was a deliberate choice by my parents to invest heavily in their children, so we could succeed professionally and eventually choose to do what we loved.
I wasn’t an obvious return on that investment early on. I was a mediocre student with a reputation as a slacker who never lived up to his potential. During my senior year of college, I decided to become a lawyer, which was (partly) my attempt to change all that.
And for a while, it worked, at least on paper. I got into a top law school, then landed at Sullivan & Cromwell. My parents’ friends didn’t know what either of those meant (doctor/engineer was the job everyone in that crowd respected).
But anyone in the legal world could place me right away. I went to S&C for many reasons, but an important one was proof, to myself and others, that the slacker had turned into someone successful. I wanted to have a highly legible achievement.
Harder to Explain
After securing a summer associate position at S&C in 2008, my subsequent meaningful wins got harder to explain, even to people who were lawyers.
For example, one of my biggest personal wins in law school was being elected graduation speaker, and then delivering a speech that received a standing ovation. But how do you quickly explain that to people who might assume that you only received that honor because you were the valedictorian, and that you delivered a boring, forgettable speech?
Then I left law for a sales job at a legal tech startup, and the questions started. Even though I was succeeding and thriving (and being promoted quickly), my achievements were illegible. What exactly does a “director of business development” do at a startup? Why would an ex-BigLaw and former federal clerk leave it all behind to do something in ... (shudder) sales?
My parents worried it wasn’t safe. They didn’t know anything about the industry, and it didn’t sound secure. But I seemed excited about it, so they supported it. Looking back, that was the whole point of what they’d invested in, wasn’t it? For me to do work I enjoyed. It just so happened that whatever that was turned out to be hard to explain to others.
It got even more ambiguous from there. After 5 years in sales, I left for a Gen Z type “influencer” job at Ironclad. The high point (or low point, depending on who you ask) was crossing 100,000 followers on TikTok and getting named a “memelord” by The American Lawyer. I’m certain that one didn’t come up in my parents’ conversations with their friends.
These days I’m pretty sure my parents would say I “work in business.” When I talk to people outside of the industry, I usually simply say I work for a legal staffing company, and I can see their reaction in their eyes. Ah, this guy’s just a temp. Which is exactly the effect I’m going for by the way. (Lawyers get a more polished version of my elevator pitch. I do still work in sales, after all!)
Being hard to explain doesn’t bother me much anymore. It doesn’t matter with my friends, and it doesn’t matter with clients. It only comes up with outsiders, and I’m ok with that. My identity isn’t tied to work the way it used to be, and I like it that way.
Recognizing My Portable Skills
What I didn’t appreciate until later is that the illegible path came with its own kind of security. It traveled with me, and let me leverage my superpowers.
Since high school, I’ve mixed the internet with real life. In college that meant AIM, social blogs, then Friendster (remember that?) and Facebook, all of which I used to build buzz for house parties and source recruits for my fraternity. The mediums eventually changed to LinkedIn and DMs, but the combo stayed the same.
That combo is what got me through sales. Landing an entry-level sales job was easy enough, since sales teams hire a lot of people. Succeeding at it was harder. The performance culture is ruthless in weeding out those who don’t work out.
My prospects were themselves busy lawyers, and they often ghosted my appointments. So I started connecting with them on LinkedIn before each meeting, and my show rate skyrocketed. Partly because it made me human, since they could see my face. And partly because they could see I was part of the same community they were.
Once again, I found a way to leverage the internet to help me achieve real-world goals.
Then the pandemic hit. My pipeline dried up, I was working for a brand nobody had heard of, and leads were impossible to come by. I thought I was going to get fired. With little to lose, I decided to rely on the power of the internet. I began making video skits and memes (and some ragebait if I’m being honest). It’s how I ended up on TikTok.
Then one day, I went viral and ended up with a small bit of fame among in-house lawyers. Ironclad’s clients started sharing my content with each other, which caught the company’s attention, and they reached out to me to see if I’d be interested in joining to build community full-time.
Interestingly, the first time an Ironclad exec saw me speak on stage, he told me he was surprised I had public speaking skills. This was intended as a compliment but suggested that my online persona caused him to put me in a neat box: the internet nerd. To be fair, he wasn’t totally wrong. That was the legible version of me. And yet I felt I brought more skills to the table than that--all of which were hard to explain succinctly--but no less valuable.
My collection of talents and skills didn’t show up on a resume, and none of it belonged to any one employer. When things got shaky, the combo is what got me to the next thing.
Back to Weil
Which brings me back to that one partner’s question. Weil is a hard lesson that a highly legible, prestigious employer can’t guarantee security. But I don’t think the people inside it are as stuck as some of the headlines make it sound.
Rainmakers will find new platforms because of the value they bring. Associates will have different exit options, and the next few months won’t be fun, but smart, hard-working lawyers will be in demand.
What I keep thinking about is the 3L who asked Lat how worried he should be about his future employer. If he’d asked me, I’m not sure I would have told him to go somewhere else. I don’t regret S&C, and its legibility on my resume afforded me the luxury of being illegible later.
I just don’t think the legible start is what kept me safe. There are no sure things in this economy, no remaining golden tickets to financial security in the future. Security comes from being successful in your own way. The kind of success that travels with you.
So go out there and do illegible things. Because that just might end up being the thing that keeps you secure in this crazy world we live in.
I understand the weirdness of being illegible professionally, and then also the advantage of it. With the way law school professionalizes us, it’s kind of a constant battle to be either in the clear category or not…Thanks for writing this, I really appreciate the message here.