Somewhere along the way you heard the number. Eight hundred thousand, a million, whatever the firm across town is said to require before it will take a meeting. If your book sits under it, you have probably filed yourself as not a lateral candidate and gone back to work.
That filing is wrong more often than it is right. A minimum is a filter a firm sets for its own convenience, and it screens on the one number that says least about what the firm is buying. Lawyers who could move never ask, because of a number that was never about them.
Written for lawyers with a practice of their own, at any size.
Hire a good lawyer whose plate is approximately half-full and who is hungry to help bring in more business.
Richard Brock, Win the Talent Game
Where the number comes from
A minimum is a screening cost, not a valuation.
Most good firms set one. Do not bring us anyone under $800,000. From inside the firm it feels like discipline. A firm that hears about forty lawyers a year cannot read forty practices, so it reads one figure and declines on it.
Our founder’s book treats a lateral hire as an acquisition, and asks of it what a buyer asks of any acquisition: is it accretive, is it strategic, what purpose does it serve. The size of the book answers none of those. A $400,000 practice that clears a conflict, lands in a city the firm wants, or brings a client the firm has chased for years is accretive and strategic. A $1.2 million practice that duplicates a bench the firm already has may be neither.
The case that proves it
Under the minimum, and almost $2 million a year to the firm that said yes.
Our founder once carried a $250,000 book to a firm that wanted $750,000. Behind the number was a client relationship worth more than a million dollars, and verifiable. The firm declined on the number. The lawyer went elsewhere, and that one client became almost $2 million a year for the firm that took her.
The same story, told to the firm
Recounted in Win the Talent Game
The first firm read a figure. The second firm was willing to see what sat behind it: how much of the book was hers, and what it would be worth there. Nothing about the lawyer changed between the two conversations.
What a firm is buying
Four things, and the size of your book is not one of them. It is a rough proxy for the first and silent on the other three.
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01Relationships that would follow you
Clients attached to a person move with the person. Clients attached to the institution tend to stay. A firm reading you properly wants to know who at each client would notice if you left, not what the billing report prints under your name. Three clients who call you by name are worth more than ten who call the firm.
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02Work you cannot take today
Conflicts at your current firm are often beyond anyone’s control, and they never show up where a minimum can see them, because they are work you never billed. A firm that does not act for the other side is buying the practice you have and the one you have been turning away. This is frequently the largest number in the whole conversation and the least often said out loud.
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03A book that could grow on a bigger platform
Platform and footprint is probably the most common reason lawyers move. A client asks for something the firm cannot do, in a practice it does not have or a city it is not in, and the work goes elsewhere. Firms know this. If your clients have been sending work past you, a firm with the right platform is buying the work you have been declining, not the work you bill.
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04A plate that is half full
Firms say they want a full, self-sustaining book and then ask the same lawyer to absorb the overflow. There are only so many hours in a day. Our founder’s advice to firms is to hire a good lawyer whose plate is about half full and who is hungry to fill it. Under the minimum is often exactly the lawyer a firm needs, if anyone tells the firm so.
Your case, in one sentence
Seven questions about your own practice. This is not a valuation. A number from seven answers would be wrong often enough to be dangerous. It writes the sentence a firm should hear first, and that sentence is almost never the size of your book.
The seven questions, in full
What the instrument above is weighing. The first two are roughly what a billing figure reflects. The other five are invisible to a minimum book, and they are most of the case.
| The question | Strongest for the case | In between | Weakest |
|---|---|---|---|
| When your top clients have a problem, who do they call? | Me, by name | My team, and I lead it | The firm. I am one of several they deal with |
| How did your main relationships start? | I brought them in | Inherited from a partner who retired | The firm assigned them to me |
| Work you cannot take at your current firm because of conflicts | Real matters, every year | Occasionally | Rarely or never |
| What your clients ask for that your firm cannot provide | Other practices or other cities, regularly | Now and then | Nothing. They get everything from us |
| Your rates against what your clients will pay | The firm keeps pushing them up and clients push back | Held down, because the firm cannot support more | About right |
| Your plate | About half full, and I want more | Under-used where I am | Full. I turn work away |
| Who would come with you | A team | An associate or two | Just me |
What a firm is buying, and what to lead with
- The relationships themselves. Clients who call you by name and whom you originated are the strongest predictor of what follows a lawyer across the street. Name them, and name who at each would notice you had gone.
- The work you cannot take today. It appears nowhere in your billing, and it is often the largest number in the conversation. Count it as matters and clients, not as a feeling.
- What your clients already send elsewhere. A firm with the practice or the office your clients keep asking for is paying for the work you have been turning away, and that work appears nowhere in your billing.
- Your clients at a rate card that fits them. A practice caught between a firm pushing rates up and clients pushing back is worth more at a firm that would love to have it at eighty percent of the rate.
- The room on your plate. Firms say they want a full book and then need overflow absorbed. A good lawyer with a half-full plate and the appetite to fill it is the hire our founder tells firms they actually need.
- The people who would come with you. A group moves the needle more than a single hire and brings the clients more smoothly, because nobody is left behind to fight for them. Most of the firms we work for ask for one.
Then the number comes third
Three things to have ready before anyone asks how big your book is.
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01Know which clients are yours
If you left tomorrow and called every client yourself, which would follow, which would stay, and which would go out to tender? A firm will ask, and it will verify the answer, so a plain one beats an inflated one. If you cannot answer it about your own practice, the firm will notice before you do.
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02Count the work you turn away
Conflicts, rates your clients will not pay, practices your firm does not have. Write it down as matters and clients, not as a feeling. Nobody at your current firm has ever measured it, and a hiring firm will pay for it.
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03Lead with the purpose, not the figure
A firm buys a market, a practice, deeper service to the clients it already has, or reputation in an industry. Say which one you are. “I have a $600,000 book” is a number under a minimum. “I am the construction practice your Dallas clients keep asking you for” is an acquisition.
What a no on the number tells you
Some firms will still decline without reading. Our founder lists relying on numbers alone as one of the eighteen ways a lateral hire goes wrong, and it is the firm’s mistake, not yours. A firm that cannot override its own filter when common sense and the figure disagree has shown you how it makes decisions, and you would have lived inside those decisions.
A retained search firm exists partly for this. We are in the room when the number comes up, and a case we carry is read rather than screened. There is no fee to a lawyer exploring a move.
The number is not the conversation
If you have a practice of your own and have been told you are too small to move, tell us what you actually bring. We will read it the way a firm should, and tell you honestly whether a firm would.
Keep reading
If a team would come with you, the number matters far less: don’t move alone. When the move is decided, what is left is the day itself: the day you resign.
The same book, from both chairs
Six pieces drawn from Win the Talent Game. Three for the firm doing the hiring, three for the lawyer deciding whether to move.
For firms
For lawyers
- The Minimum Book MythYou are here
- Don’t Move AloneFor partners with a team
- The Day You ResignFor lawyers who have decided