Taking The Path Less Traveled: The Most Important Decision in Larry Sonsini's Career
Who would have guessed that taking a less prestigious, lower-paying job would lead to the creation of one of the greatest law firms in the 21st century?
A few days ago, I tweeted about the “real lesson” behind Larry Sonsini’s success founding Wilson Sonsini. Generally speaking, I’m not a huge fan of short form biographies because they oversimplify the path to success. They make it seem like these big wins came from bold decisions or innate talent. When in truth, it was more likely a series of small but important decisions made years earlier.
When I first noticed this pattern
I first realized this when I was an associate at Sullivan & Cromwell. I overheard a couple of colleagues talking about Rodge Cohen, the most prominent lawyer in the firm who had been recently featured in a glowing New York Times article called The Trauma Surgeon Of Wall Street. Someone mentioned that in his early days, Cohen worked in an area of law that was considered kind of a backwater. According to a this article:
[I]n 1970, he joined Sullivan & Cromwell. He was asked to join the firm's banking practice, which then lacked glamour. Mr. Cohen changed all that.
Hearing that story confirmed a hypothesis I had about careers, and business in general.1 It’s tempting to look at someone’s success today, and believe that it was linear and they were destined for great things. That’s when I decided to keep an eye out for this theme among lawyers I admired. It wasn’t long before I came across the story of the founder of one of the most influential law firms in the country, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati.
Choosing the option that’s less prestigious and pays less
When Larry Sonsini graduated from law school, he had a lot of options. As a graduate of U.C. Berkeley, he likely could have taken any Biglaw job in NY or LA. These jobs were prestigious and paid a lot more than the one he ended up taking. Instead he joined a small, three lawyer Palo Alto firm that was described as a “broad, eclectic rural, smaller-town practice.” Or, as the New York Times put it:
WHEN Mr. Sonsini graduated from the Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley in 1966, he chose to join a four-lawyer firm in a backwater whose very name, Silicon Valley, had yet to be coined.
It’s important to place this in the right context. Let’s say you’re about to graduate from one of the country’s top law firms. Your classmates are headed off to big cities to work at prestigious, high paying jobs. One of your classmates even ended up getting hired for a Supreme Court clerkship.
I wonder what it was like to be Larry Sonsini as a 3L. There was no social media then but what was it like, going out for drinks with your classmates and having to explain to them where you were headed next year?
It’s hard! Especially when Biglaw is an option on the table. When I was a 3L, I knew I wanted to be a trial lawyer and interviewed with the Manhattan DA. After going through part of the interview process, I ended up withdrawing my application to return to the firm I summed at, Sullivan & Cromwell.
It was just too hard to leave all that money on the table.
But not for Sonsini. Years later, when he was asked about why he decided to go to that Palo Alto firm, he credits his law professor for inspiring his decision, who told Sonsini:
"There's something going on down in the Valley. There are a lot of young businesses starting, and they're companies that are going to have to go public."
You could imagine what his friends and relatives probably said to him at the time of his decision. “Are you insane? You’ve got a pregnant wife and no savings. Boalt Law grads don’t throw away their careers by going to some shit firm!”
Don’t take advice from casual observers
Over the years I’ve noticed that law students exhibit the same thinking. It’s common among casual observers, friends, and well-meaning parents. It’s because outsiders don’t really understand the what’s happening in the industry. Sonisni did, though. He had a head start because of a key insight from his law professor (more on that in a second).