United Parcel Service once ran a commercial showcasing a number of its employees contending for medals at the Olympics. Don’t expect The Firm to do the same. Most lawyers would not have much of a chance of winning any medals in the Olympics.
Practicing law simply does not lend itself to keeping in very good physical condition or excelling at sports. After a year or two of practice, most attorneys aren’t in good enough shape to pursue any sport competitively. For one thing, the law takes too much time. Another hurdle for attorney athletes is that lawyering does not involve much physical exertion unless, of course, you happen to be an ambulance chaser.
Lawyers basically sit there all day exercising brains over bodies. If only, just once, someone would want us for our bodies instead of only for our minds! But then again, if this were to happen, we would all have to lower our billable hour rates.
Fortunately, nowadays members of the legal profession, no matter how poor physical specimens they may be, can get involved in the athletic arena. Criminal defense of college and professional athletes is a rapidly growing area of the law.
While athletic prowess is not something you see a lot of around The Firm, it is, nonetheless, something you will hear a lot about. Anyone at The Firm who has ever competed at a level higher than college intramurals is likely to tell you about it—over and over again. These stories, just like lawyers’ résumés, tend to get embellished over the years.
One wonders what would be discovered if a little background checking was done to verify what the would-be/has-been/never-was attorney athlete says about his or her athletic career. I was recently tempted to do exactly this after having lunch with a partner who told me she had once been a champion figure skater. This partner, I was told, would have gone to the Olympics had she not opted to attend law school instead. Because this former Olympic-caliber figure skater is now heavier than most Olympic weightlifters, and because she had just stolen my appetizer and was telling me this story between gulps of French onion soup, I was skeptical.
Instead of competing with outsiders who, by definition, are better athletes, lawyers seek the human drama of athletic competition within the confines of The Firm. Listed below are some of the athletic events lawyers have invented and are held right here at The Firm:
- Cross Country Run Up the Client’s Expense Account
- Synchronized Billing
- State Bar Ethics Committee Sprint
- Paralegal Toss
- Uneven Billing Competition
- Ambulance Steeplechase
- Roman-Greco Corner Office Vacancy Wrestle
- Free-Style Billing
- Billathon
- Partner Coming Down the Corridor in Search of an Associate to Work Over the Weekend Under Your Desk Dive
- Litigation Brief Filing Relay
- High Billing Rate Jump
- Client Chase
- Partner Put
There is one more law firm sport I should mention. According to Firm folklore, this game was invented by lawyers at a Chicago law firm. While working late one night, a group of associates took off their shoes, got a running start and slid on the slick conference room floor.
These lawyers, being lawyers, made the game into a competition to see who could slide the farthest. As the story goes, one especially hard-charging associate got a full head of steam and slid farther than anyone else. Unfortunately, he slid so far that he went headfirst through a window of the skyscraper and plunged to his death.
This story, whether true or not, gets even better—or, I guess I should say it gets worse. Supposedly, the firm where the deceased but victorious associate worked issued a press release saying how sad everyone was about the accident. It went on to say that the death was especially tragic because this particular associate had been on the partnership track.
A few words of advice to lawyer athletes. First, if you want to compete seriously, get out of the law and go work for UPS. Second, be content to simply watch the Summer Olympics on television with law firm colleagues. When you witness a gold medal performance, say out loud, “I can do that.” Finally, if you are going to compete in lawyer games, be sure to do so a safe distance from the windows of your office building.
See the following articles for more information:
- How Much Does It Pay?
- Lawyers and Money
- 2015 Summer Associate Salaries of Top Law Firms
- Top 7 Tips for Succeeding as a First Year Associate: How to Succeed as a New Associate in a Law Firm
