Toxic Culture and Values: Lessons from a Big Law Firm Debacle

But, yeah, the headline. You don't see your kids before the pandemic. You shouldn't expect to see them now. I mean, talk about saying the quiet part out loud. And I'd be interested to see if they try to brush that off as a rogue partner that doesn't represent the views of the firm. You're listening to the Circle C Project. Welcome to the Triple CE Project, the podcast that helps you gain clarity, boost confidence, build courage so you can live lifeless. I'm your host, Ryan Spence, the big lore dropout, life coach, author, speaker, lover of hoodies, hip hop and big hairy, audacious goals. If you're tired of living the life you think you should want and ready to start living the life you do want, this podcast will help you get from where you are to where you really want to be. Sit now with friends. I invite you to grab a drink, take a seat, allow me to guide you towards living a life that's lit. Hey. Hey. Welcome to episode 67 of the Triple C Project. I'm recording this just before I go off on holiday for the week. So when you listen to this, I will be away with my family, with the kids, either having the most delightful time or the most stressful time. So think of me. But I wanted to get this recorded before I went because something happened this week which I wanted to talk about in relation to values. And I've talked about values before, but I felt that the events of this week, and by this week, I mean the week that I'm recording this, not the week you're listening to it, was a really good reminder of why it's important to know, well, what's important to you, to allow you to make decisions and also to pay attention to what's going on around you and believe people when they tell you who they are. So let's dive into it. So earlier this year, you may have heard that there was a PowerPoint slide that went viral from law firm Paul Hastings. And that slide had on some ridiculous rules about how to be a good associate in a big law firm, how to succeed in a big law career at that firm, what's expected from you at that firm. And that slide was, quite rightly, pillory. There were so many posts across social media, particularly on LinkedIn, just talking about how toxic it is and how it was a representation of everything that's wrong with big law. And people who had been in big law talking about this is the reasons why they left, and talking about how the way where they work now was nothing like that. Whether they'd set up their own firm, gone to a smaller firm and I mean when different things had got in house. But it caused a lot of noise, a lot of chatter and if you didn't see it, I'm going to leave a link to it in the in the show notes. But three highlights of this wonderful, wonderful list were things such as pH. By that I guess they make Paul Hastings is an Amlor 20 law firm. You're in the big leagues. Act like it. Okay, another one you are online 24 7. No exceptions, no excuses. And my personal favorite, work from home is a luxury. So even with just those three, I think there were, I wouldn't say there were 10, maybe there was eight on there, you immediately get a sense of the culture, of the environment, of what it must be like to work within an environment like that. Now, as is always the way the firm played it down, they tried to play it down and they said in a statement, and I quote, that the list was prepared by an associate and the views expressed do not reflect the views of the firm or its partners. Not sure anyone's really readily or really buying that if I'm honest. But anyway that's just to set the scene for then what happened this week. So this week, last week for you in an article in above the Law that slides and the uproar over that was surpassed. It's one of those things, even when you think you can't surpass something, somebody goes ahead and does it. And this was surpassed as probably the most in my words, tone deaf or depending how you look at it, most honest representation of big law culture. And again I'm going to put a link to this in the show notes so you can check it out this time. What happened was an unnamed partner at US law firm Scadden was reported as saying and this was in an internal video circulated to all lawyers in the firm. And they said and this is the headline of the article, you didn't see your kids before the pandemic. You shouldn't expect to see them now. And as you can probably imagine this was in relation to work from home and this whole swathe of firms and organization and companies that are basically just forcing people to come back to the office telling them that you basically you come back or you don't have a job. Very heavy handed way. No sense of looking at why working from home works for some people and looking at ways that they can accommodate that while still creating a quote unquote team culture. And I mean making sure that juniors get training all the reasons that they kind of throw out there, why they're forcing people back, but without kind of putting any nuance on it. And really we all know that the real reason, they just want to see people's faces and they don't want to be paying for expensive real estate without anybody in them. Anyway, I'm going off the point now, but yeah, the headline, you don't see your kids before the pandemic, you shouldn't expect to see them now. I mean, talk about saying the quiet part out loud. And I'd be interested to see if they try to brush that off as a rogue partner that doesn't represent the views of the firm. But I think they're probably going to have a pretty hard job because the chair out there is that this was a kind of a senior partner. And to, to say that and to have that sway, to put that video out and that influence and to just do that, you've got to have some serious sway in the organization. So it's definitely top down, you would, you would say. So here's the thing. When I first saw the article, I tell you, my blood started to boil and my rage started to rise because it brought up all of the reasons why I so many other people, people that I know, people that I've coached, either either have left or want to leave big law. And when I talk about big law here, you can substitute this for big corporations. I mean, what I found in my, particularly through coaching, is that a lot of the things that I talk about in big law, which is relevant to the lawyers, you lawyers who are listening, is also relevant to people in the corporate world and other industries, whatever industry that is tech industry, you know, banking industry or whatever. So these are all interchangeable. And here in the headline reminded me of a conversation that I had in my firm with a partner where in this, let's call it a conversation, heated discussion maybe about my desire to work from home one day a week so I could actually be around to put my kid to bed at least one day, night during the week. And that was met with the response, everyone else has kids. What makes you so different? And to me that's systematic because it's kind of like, well, there's a job here, there's a job here, everybody else is doing it. Why should you not be around? This is obviously before the pandemic, when work from home just became what you had to do. And so this is why this article particularly kind of got a rise out of me initially. But I think this is what you Call growth. I took a moment and I took a breath. Thank you. Meditation practice. And I came to a slightly different view after I'd taken that moment. I mean, I'm still angry about it all. I mean, not angry for me, but angry for those poor lawyers that work at that firm and had to watch that video and hear those words. But then after a minute or two, I started to crack a smile. And the reason was, is that I was actually kind of happy. I was happy that that partner had said that and that it had become public. And I was happy because it was refreshing to have somebody say what we already knew. And what we already knew is, as I said in episode 59 of this podcast, is many, many, many, many, many of you, including me, need to understand that your job doesn't love you. You're simply a resource, a replaceable cog in the wheel who's there to make more money for the people at the top. Okay, that's, that's how it is. It's just the start reality. You can love it, you can hate it. That's the reality of it all in the stockist terms. And you see, there were so many firms and so many companies that pay lip service to well being. We look after our employees. We believe in work, life, balance. Hey, here's some yoga classes to tick mental health box. But if you attend them, we'll assume you don't have enough work to do. You are a committed team player. Because you know what? Actually, we don't give a. We just need you to bill more hours, make more money. More, more, more. They want you to be available 24 7. As the Paul Hastings Slide said, a rogue associate didn't just make that up out of thin air. They said that. And they believe that because that's what the culture that they've been working in has shown them. That's how they've been conditioned. And look, I'll say it again. You, me, we're the resource. You are the way that they make the money. You are the way that their profits increase. You are the way that they make hundreds of thousands or even millions of pounds a year. And while they'll make headlines with how much they pay you, you see newly qualified salaries sort of getting to astronomical numbers each year. And you know, people look around at lawyers and say, oh, you make so much money, but your salary, that salary is literally a tiny fraction of the profits that they bring in. And if you broke down your salary by the hour, when you think about those expectations of being on call 247 of canceling holidays, of working weekends, working through the night, you'd probably cry. You know, I mean, I've worked, I've worked in retail. I've worked in fast food joints. And the hourly rate, when you break it down, when you think about what's expected of you, some places could actually end up being lower. And that's a scary, miserable, depressing prospect. So having somebody actually say what they really mean, like this partner did, it reveals the thought process that permeates through. Not all. I mean, there are some really great organizations out there. I know some people who work in some great places that really look after their people and care for their people. It isn't just a pr. It isn't just lip service. But many of these organizations, of these firms, this reveals their thought process and it reveals it in a way that is refreshing, that's not hidden behind PR speak. This is helpful to you because if your values don't include sacrificing everything for your career or to pay for somebody else's racehorse or yacht or beachfront property, now you know where not to go for your next career move. You don't have to ask discreet questions and try to have conversations with people where you're trying to figure out who's telling the truth and who's. Who's just giving you the party line. Conversations where you try and gauge whether what's being told to you, what's being sold to you in the recruitment brochure or the interview about the culture is true or total bs. Because in this instant, now it's headline news and going viral on the Internet. Someone is clearly telling you that they don't give a shit. They don't give a shit if you see your kids. They don't give a shit about you beyond the hours you bill and the money you bring in. And if you don't have kids, you can replace that with anything else. Replace it with parents or friends or your cat or your dog. Or you can spin the headline to read, you didn't go to a yoga class before the pandemic. Why do you think you can start now? Or you didn't have a weekend off before the pandemic, or you didn't have dinner with your spouse during the week before the pandemic. You know, the people who say and believe things like that headline, they just don't give a shit if you have a life. It's actually quite refreshing to know that, you know, it's, it's, it's good when people are upfront about what they believe. Because it allows you to do something with that information. They don't give a shit if you have a life, and they just don't give a shit, period. All they care about is your face, being in the office when they demand it so you can make them more money to buy more things. Now, if you're listening to this episode and thinking, what the fuck? Or if you're listening and thinking, this is, this is my life, this is just like my firm, my company, my organization, I want you to know, and the purpose of this episode is that I want you to know that it doesn't have to be that way. Whether you want to stay in law, whether you want to stay at your company, whether you want to stay in your industry, whether you want to do something completely new, burn everything down and start again, I want you to know and to believe, more importantly, that you have choices, you have options. So if you don't want to work in a place where people don't give a shit about you, about your kids, about your well being, about your life, you don't have to do that. If you're there already, you can move on. If you're not there already, you can choose not to go. But before you exercise those options and take that leap or make that decision to go a different way, you've got to get clear on your values. And if you've listened to this podcast, you've probably heard me say this many times before, but I say it because it really is the foundation of changing your life, of taking you away from that life of lethargy, towards living a life that's lit. You've got to get clear. You've got to get that clarity. You've got to get clarity on what's important to you. Ask yourself questions like, does the value of health trump the value of money, of wealth? Does connection trump status? Does autonomy trump the fancy dinners and the business trips and the deals that get headline news in the financial papers? What's important to you, what's really important to you, what really lights you up, what really excites you and gets you out of bed in the morning. Because until you know the answers to those questions, you're just going to keep jumping ship and ending up doing the same, the same thing, end up feeling the same thing and attracting the same thing wherever it is that you go, you see values. I look at values as being the GPS of life. When you're clear on those values, when they're so deeply embedded within your soul that you feel it when something comes in, when There's a decision to be made. The majority of the time, it's going to be simple. You won't have that angst, that overwhelm, that worry, that weighing up a million different things and trying to decide whether to do this thing or that thing or what's the right thing. Because your values would allow you to do that. It will allow you to say no to things that don't align with them. And I've done that many times. I've had people send me messages asking, oh, I'd really love you to collaborate on this thing or to do this thing, or I've had the weird messages on Instagram saying, be a top 10 coach or whatever and headline in this magazine. But you, you kind of got to pay for it. And it's very easy for me to say no. I don't have to think, but it could be good and maybe I'll give it a go. And what if it works out? It's very easy for me to say no. And it's easy for me because it's not in alignment with my values. My value of, in that case, integrity. And doesn't mean that your five, I normally invite clients to choose five. Your five core values are the only values that you live by. It just means that they're the ones that are forefront in your mind and they may shift at different times in your life depending on what you're doing. But again, those values are your GPS for your life. So when you hear of somebody saying, you didn't see your kids before the pandemic, why do you think you should see them now? Your values will say to you, that's probably not a place you want to be. That's not a person you want to be around. And so even if you had an offer, a recruiter calls you and says, hey, we've got this great opportunity at X place, you can quite easily say, nah, not doing it, not for me, don't want to be there, because it doesn't help me. It doesn't align with what it is that I want to do. Yes, it could be prestigious, yes, they could. To pay me a lot of money. Yes, there might be that. The path to partnership, that's what you're seeking. But is all of that more important than your core values? That's a question that only you can answer. But you can only answer that once you've done the work to figure out what those values are. That's it for me this week. Last thing for you to say is, in my book, the triple C method. If you download the free workbook, there's actually a values exercise that you can do to help you to figure out what it is that's important to you and really get to the essence of what makes you tick, what excites you to allow you to make decisions in a more efficient, aligned way. Thank you for listening. As always, until next week, stop living a life of lethargy. Start living life. Thanks for tuning in to the Triple C project. If you love the show, if this resonated with you, you've got some valuable insights, let me know. You can find me on Instagram at iamrianspence or search for Ryan spence over on LinkedIn. To find out more about the show me or how to work with me as your coach, head to iamri ryanspence. Com and get on my mailing list. Grab hold of my free Confidence Journal to help you start to build the belief you can do the things that you want to do. Thanks for being here. As always, until next week, stop living a life of lethargy and start living life lit.