Large Firms
Jun. 18, 2002
Rainmaker Secrets
Since 1991, we have compiled a list of rainmakers each year. We survey hundreds of firms throughout the state asking for the names of their attorneys whose books of business are $5 million or more. And while some grouse that the list is "padded," the truth is that - like many other things in life - its quality rests largely in the eye of the beholder.
Every year, about this time, rainmakers throughout the state begin to engage in some curious behavior.
Some sit casually in their office, pretending to be hard at work on a document, while carefully scrutinizing the name of every person who purports to bring in at least $5 million a year.
"Harold," you think to yourself. "He hasn't brought in a client since 1973." Immediately, you're wracked with guilt at the evil thoughts about your own partner.
Others call in sick to their business dinner and scurry home to drink scotch and engage in the annual "cross the posers off the list" drill.
By the time you read this, a few lawyers will have framed the page with their name and e-mailed the list to all their clients and relatives. And headhunters will have loaded into their datebase phone numbers for all those who made the cut.
"The day after the issue comes out, I get about 100 calls," groans an attorney with a $10 million book of business.
A critic adds, "The weird thing about lists like this is that people dispute how accurate they are but scramble to read them."
So what's with the list? Is it a tally of who has business clout or a bunch of hokum better suited for marketing literature?
Since 1991, we have compiled a list of rainmakers each year. We survey hundreds of law firms throughout the state asking for the names of their attorneys whose books of business are $5 million or more. A vast majority of the firms do their best to provide an accurate roll of names, while we do our best to verify those names with sources both inside and outside the firms.
And while some grouse that the list is "padded," the truth is that - like many other things in life - its quality rests largely in the eye of the beholder. Any attempt to measure individual lawyers by a single measuring stick is doomed at some point because of the mysticism of client development and individual law firm compensation formulas.
For example, we report that Latham & Watkins has 35 rainmakers, Morrison & Foerster has 34 and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati has 30. Clearly, each of those firms is making lots of money, but none of them measures a partner's contribution to the bottom line in an identical fashion.
Consequently, competitors have ample opportunity for criticism.
One gripe is that firms pad the list to make individual law firms look plush with rainmakers.
"There are often times when lawyers may not quite make the $5 million number but still make a huge contribution to the firm in ways you can't always quantify," law firm marketing consultant Paul Ward says. "The temptation might be there to include some of those names."
Ward estimates that 80 percent of the list is indisputable and 20 percent is iffy. He also says that there may be another 20 or so rainmakers who aren't included on the list because they don't want to participate.
Legal recruiter Larry Watanabe says that the lists tend to be "outdated," meaning that firms name long-term partners who historically have been on it but by now probably should not be.
Despite criticism, many attorneys vouch for the list - and the veracity of the firms that provide names.
"It's like being on a football team and taking credit for touchdowns you didn't make," says John Ferrell, this year's lone rainmaker from Palo Alto's Carr & Ferrell.
If partners submit their own names, Ferrell says, their colleagues would know they were puffing.
Though that's probably true, partners are not always the source of the initial information, critics reply. By and large, the names come from marketing personnel who say they get the information from firm managers and financial administrators - leaving lots of room for padding.
Recruiters believe this gives partners an out: They'll gladly take a place on the list and blame administrators if colleagues question them about it.
The biggest difficulty we face in compiling the list each year is also the area of the greatest criticism: Even if all firms are honest, they use different methods of determining rainmakers.
"There's no way to compose a list that would take into consideration all the different ways firms look at determining responsibility for generating business," Ward says.
For example, one Los Angeles-based firm generates a list of revenues by client and looks at which partners "originated" each item of business. While administrators at the firm say the names they give us are from a report that can't be fudged, the definition of "origination" is inherently susceptible to interpretation.
Other firms admit that the process they use to select rainmakers is "not an exact science."
These firms look at a similar list of client revenues but give us the names of any number of "main" or "lead" or "top-billing" partners for those clients. Under such a system, partners who did not "originate" or "bring work into the firm" - the activity most commonly ascribed to a rainmaker - could make our list.
It didn't take too many calls to realize that, while some firms provided us with only business originators, others had given us both originators and other partners who are just damned good and busy.
According to Ferrell, rainmakers and "service partners" are equally important, but the skills that underlie both functions are distinct.
"The production and managing of business is necessary to sustain a firm in the long term, but it's not rainmaking," Ferrell says. "It's like the difference between marketing and production."
Some partners are both rainmakers and service partners, of course. For example, Larry Sonsini of Palo Alto's Wilson Sonsini, is known to control a massive book of business reportedly as high as $50 million and has maintained it by successfully managing client relationships.
Others point out that a service partner enters rainmaking territory by keeping clients happy and preventing business from going to another firm, thereby becoming an unquestioned "business generator."
After all, as an administrator at a San Francisco-based firm says, one of his firm's most important clients was brought into the firm many decades ago. Someone should receive "business generation" credit for the institutional client, the administrator says.
How partners are credited for institutional clients undoubtedly creates some inconsistency in our list.
A rainmaker from a large California firm says that, in recent years, partners from his firm made our list even though they hadn't dealt with important institutional clients in "five or 10 or more years."
But because they brought the clients into the firm many years back "or received billing credit" for certain clients, they made the list by resting on their laurels.
That partner believes that such lawyers should not make the list, and he suspects that some firms leave them off.
Even firms that rely on a strict definition of business origination - bringing a client into the firm - differ in how they award credit to partners.
For example, if a corporate partner nets a client that later uses the firm's litigation department, some firms credit that corporate partner for all work performed by the firm, while others credit the litigation work to the lead litigation partner.
"Every firm is different in some way," Watanabe says.
Despite criticism, no one has offered any better ideas to compare what are admittedly apples and oranges. (Some recruiters generously have offered to review an early draft of the list and cross off and add names, or at least provide suggestions.)
"I remember looking at it last year and seeing that, in several cases, it's not reliable," says Don Keller, a director at Menlo Park's Venture Law Group. "Some of it's reliable, and some isn't, so I tend to dismiss it."
"Ideally, you shouldn't print it," one large-firm rainmaker says. "It's not good for firms internally. It creates the false imagery of stardom. When not done accurately, it creates resentment within a firm."
This partner also says that clients who are closely associated with certain rainmakers despise the list. Printing these rainmakers' books of business is akin to printing what these clients are paying for legal services.
"I think it makes a lot of clients uneasy," the partner says.
Recruiters, in turn, dispute the list's value as a Yellow Pages of potential placements, citing its obvious inaccuracies and the fact that they already know who's who. (Leaving us to wonder, who are all these headhunters calling the $10 million rainmakers the day the list is published?)
Additionally, Watanabe says, recruiters negotiate placements based on a partner's portable book of business - what he can bring to a firm - something the list sheds no light on because institutional clients often are not portable.
Leading us back to the question, putting the noise aside: Why is the list so popular?
It may not be an ironclad list of books of business, but many in the industry think it's pretty damned good as a general "all-star team" of sorts.
Others say it's a well-justified attempt to measure individual achievement in a legal environment that is obsessed with profit numbers.
"So much of our profession now is measured in size and financial figures," Ferrell says. "It seems like a fairly natural metric to try to track."
The most common sentiment seems to be that the list is a necessary evil. Managers often say that the annual per-partner profit figures provided by firms are heavily manipulated, but most feel compelled to provide them to interested publications. Not participating in annual lists can give the appearance that a firm is struggling.
Thus, the reaction to our rainmakers list reflects the legal industry's love-hate relationship with publicly stated financial numbers. They never will be 100 percent accurate but have become the measure of success and what everyone talks about.
Several law firm marketers suggest that therein lies the true value of our list: gossip. And don't hardworking attorneys deserve a little fun gossiping between billable hours?
John Ryan
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