Future Forum: Guilt, Innocence, and the Death Penalty 
HOUSTON LAW
HOUSTON LAW
Three of the nation's largest law firms are in Houston. They have kept their awesome power, their pervasive influence, and their closed societies out of the public eye. Until now.
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There are also forces peculiar to Houston that help keep the big firms big. Foremost among them is the special status, the patina of prestige, that they have acquired in social and legal circles. A lawyer loses it if he leaves. In Dallas no one would care; in Houston they do. A lawyer who severs his ties with one of the Big Three must face the fact that he is choosing to be an outsider from then on; it is not an easy thing for some men to do. Leaving that elite peer group relationship takes a bite out of his ego. If he is a partner, it may also take a sizeable bite out of his bank account. The lawyer on the move is always under economic pressure: the house always costs $10,000 more than he can afford. For a partner to abandon the built-in security of the big firm is usually judged to be a pretty poor gamble. Some of the firms have penalty clauses in their partnership agreements, requiring the departing ingrate to forfeit the value of his partnership interest, which can be substantial, and refrain from competing with Alma Mater's business for as long as five years. All in all, it is easier to stay put. Besides, most of the people in the big firms like what they are doing. It is a simple thing, but it escapes most of their critics, who reason that lawyers in large firms must somehow be miserable. "The cement that's kept the big firms together," says a lawyer at Vinson Elkins, "is the fact that they mediate the economic life of Texas. They resolve the most intriguing problems a lawyer can imagine, and they do it every day." Another young associate puts it even more simply: "I like large firms," he says, "because I can work on interesting problems with qualified people. . .for money."
Is Big Best? The Large and the Small of Things
IF YOU'RE LOOKING FOR A LAWYER to handle your business affairs, should you head for a big firm or seek out one of the smaller ones? It depends, naturally, on whom you ask.
Hank Webeldor (a pseudonym) is a promising young associate at Baker & Botts, wise beyond his years. He argues persuasively for the big firms. "Let's face it," he says, "they've got brand-name confidence. The client knows he's not going to get fly-by-night legal service. But even more importantly, he knows the big firm has as much to lose as he does if things aren't done right.
"You can find outstanding, brilliant lawyers who practice alone or in small groups. Look at their work and you can see they're worth their fee. But when you find an organization which is able as an institution to bring off work comparable in excellence to that of a brilliant, charismatic lawyer, then you've got a remarkable situation."
Webeldor concedes that big clients stand to gain the most from hiring a big firm. "A very big client can count on the firm to have all the available manpower he needs. Say you want to merge two companies and do it right. You'll have to merge their pension plans. That's intensely complicated. But there'll be a man in the big firm who does nothing but pension plans—and he'll be ready and available to talk to the client. The same thing goes for anti-trust questions, securities, and so forth. If it's a big deal, you'll probably have two anti-trust guys, four corporate guys, two tax guys, a patent-trademark guy, and some real estate guys. The whole thing can be done in one place without winding up in the soup."
But what about the little man, the small businessman who just wants to set up a corporation and doesn't need all that expertise? What's the point of his going to one of the giants? Webeldor's answer sums up the big firms' self-perpetuating success story: "A blue chip law firm gives instant credibility to a new business."
Ray Needham, an energetic and articulate young labor lawyer who has put his chips in with the four-man firm of Schlumberger, Hinsley & Westmoreland, sees, on the other hand, a new breed of businessman developing—one who doesn't want the same kind of relationship to his lawyer that his father had.
"Houston business was created by gunslinger-types," he says. "They were happy with the big firms because they'd grown up with them. But now their sons are taking over, and they want someone they can call 'their lawyer.' They want a guy whose advice they can trust, somebody who's not just a narrow specialist. They want a real person they can see, not a vast anonymous structure.
"They've been going to the big firms by default, because they know they can get good work done there; but they know the big firms are always going to give first attention to their big clients, and they'd much prefer to work instead with someone they know—if he's good. You're going to see things loosening up around here as they take over."
There are hazards for the small practice, though, attitudes which alarm solo practitioner Brooks Pollard (a pseudonym. Pollard was associated with one of the Big Six for several years; now on his own, he agrees that many good clients are intimidated by the larger firms. But he worries about some of them.
"You have a lot of businesses who don't particularly want the kind of professionalism the big firms represent," he says. "There are lots of lawyers in Houston making bundles of money with an eighth-rate practice. A client calls and says, 'I want a contract and I want it now and I want it on one page'—so the lawyer does it. It's gross, horrible, sloppy—but he does it. And the client is happy because he controls the lawyer.
"A large firm has the ability to maintain its professionalism and resist client wiles and manipulations much better than someone who depends on that client for perhaps one-fourth of his total income."
You pays your money and you takes your choice.
Life in the Firm: The Bonds of Affluence
AN ARTICLE IN FORBES MAGAZINE two years ago neatly capsuled the economic realities of a large law firm:
Economically speaking, a law firm is a very simple structure. It buys brainpower wholesale—by the year, that is—and sells it retail—by the hour.
Less than half the members of the large firms are partners. The rest are associates, working long hours for a fixed wage and waiting for the day when they may be allowed to "make partner." They typical starting salary for someone fresh out of law school who goes to work for one of the Big Three is now $15,400 a year. This figure has risen dramatically in a short time. In 1967, $7500 was considered good; in 1969, the going rate was $13,200. Compensation for this wholesale brainpower increases by about $2400 each year the associate remains with the firm; about the time he is getting nervous about being made a partner, six or seven years after he arrived, he can expect to be earning in the neighborhood of $25,000 to $30,000.
This may seem like a lot of money, but it is actually only a small fraction of the revenue he produces for the firm. Therein lies the rub, as far as many an associate is concerned. Billing clients by the hour for his work, he may bring in $80,000 to $100,000 in annual receipts. His overhead is perhaps $10,000, and the remaining $40,000 or so (after his salary is taken out) is siphoned into the coffers of the firm, to reappear at the end of the year in the pockets of the partners. This difference between the money an associate produces and the cost of hiring him—billing cost versus talent cost—is what makes the big firms roll.
Obviously it is in the partner's interest to squeeze as much profitable labor as possible out of their associates. The associates don't get paid extra for doing more; the partners keep the revenue. "The only way they make so much money is for the associates to overproduce," says a bright young lawyer who left one of the Big Three.
To the outsider there is something chilling about the cynical ways associates are induced to "overproduce." Long hours are expected and demanded; it is not uncommon for a young associate to be at work before 8:30 a.m. and come home after 9 at night. Work regularly spills over onto Saturdays and Sundays. Wives, families, and outside interests are neglected; the firm is an all-consuming thing. Some lawyers often work sixty and seventy hour weeks. "There is a moral imperative to spend long hours at the office," says an associate at one of the Big Six.
Fear is what keeps things going—fear of not being made a partner, fear of being resented as a laggard by one's peers. As an ex-Marine figuratively put it, "It's like basic training: if one guy falls behind on laps, the whole group has to do them over." An associate who tries to live a normal life is plagued by gnawing fears that one of his friends is back at the firm doing something he himself ought to be doing, and cussing him for it; or that displeased partners are preparing a package of switches and ashes for him at promotion time.
"The older men want to take too much out of the firm," says a young associate who left one of the Big Three considerably disillusioned. "By the time they draw a hundred-and-fifty, two-hundred, two-hundred-and-fifty thousand a year, they are rich men. But they derive satisfaction out of pushing it higher and higher, even though it's ordinary income and taxes take a huge bite. It hurts the firm and it discourages the associates. But it's a way of explaining to themselves that the treacherous climb to the top was worth it."
The firms are ruthless about exposing idlers who do not carry their share of the excessive load; conversely, they make certain that those who work themselves dizzy are properly rewarded—with praise, of course, not money. Baker & Botts annually circulates a sheet ranking the associates according to the number of hours each has billed during the year: woe betide the young man whose total slips much below 1750 hours, and 2000 is a safer figure. If an associate partner did nothing but "billable" work eight solid hours every workday for 50 weeks a year, he would barely reach the mark. Since, in the nature of things, it's impossible (ethically) to bill a client every minute he spends at his desk—six billable hours out of eight is doing well—most associates work nights and weekends to make up the difference. Others skip their vacations. Vinson Elkins is even more domineering: the billing totals for each lawyer are circulated each month. The sheets are reviewed by older partners who worked even harder in their day and don't take kindly to young whippersnappers who fail to appreciate how lucky they are. They know if you've been bad or good, so be good for goodness' sake!
The physical working conditions are, of course, superb. Messengers, day and night secretarial shifts, comprehensive libraries, even (at Baker & Botts) desk switches that open and close office doors by remote control. "You don't have to bother with the details of running a law office," says a happy associate. "You can concentrate on the law."
But the price for these advantages is steep, and it must be paid in the coin of personal independence and freedom. The firms regiment their members' dress, their access to clients, even the decor of their offices. A story now making the rounds in Houston tells of a young associate at Vinson Elkins who decided that his north-facing office did not need curtains; "heresy," said the office managers, and they hung the curtains anyway. For a decorative plant he chose a hanging basket instead of one that sat on the floor like everybody else's; soon he was summoned by the managing partner and ordered to take it down. Except at Fulbright Crooker, which has a reputation for leniency, political activity by associates is notoriously restricted. They can vote for whomever they please, but to take an active role in a campaign is courting disaster unless the management approves. In the opinion of a VE partner, a lawyer is taking an "active" role if he receives calls about the campaign through the firm's switchboard during the day.
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