A Christian Reflection on Commercial Law Firm Practice

Mark Sneddon, Partner, Clayton Utz, formerly Associate Professor of Law, University of Melbourne. 

For some years in the early 1980s I practised commercial law as an associate in a large legal firm in Australia. I found it a spiritually barren experience socially and in terms of expressing my faith through socially useful work. While I kept the wheels of commercial and dispute resolution greased in an honest and diligent manner I felt the result was that the rich still got richer and the poor no better off and the world was not a significantly better place for my efforts.

Subsequently I left full time practice for law reform and academia. For about 11 years I maintained a part time commercial law practice on my own account which was interwoven with my principal work as a university teacher and researcher in commercial law and constitutional law. I enjoyed my part time practice and found opportunities to express my Christian faith and beliefs through it. Every year I saw present or former students who are Christians (or who are strongly motivated by a desire to be socially useful) struggling with the choice of whether to join or stay in commercial law firms or stay in the practice of law at all because they find it difficult to serve their Lord in such environments. The struggle seems to be about why and how questions. Why choose to practise commercial law - is it a worthwhile vocation consistent with God s call compared with other possible uses of my work life? How can a Christian firm or a Christian attorney practise commercial law in the midst of a culture of work pressure, competition and money-focus and stay faithful to Christ?

I wrote the original version of this paper as an academic and part time practitioner in 1992 to suggest some possible approaches to these questions. I re-entered full time legal practice in 1999 and became a partner (in another large commercial law firm) in the middle of 2000. I find today that the same questions are no less difficult and just as pressing (and I have less time to reflect on the answers). My summary answer is that I find I can serve God in this role by influencing good policy, regulation and behaviour (both government and corporate). That answers much of my "why" question. The "how" is more difficult. I find the pressures of legal work limit my service outside of work and the deeply embedded milieu of money, achievement, competition and keeping clients happy in which I live often pulls against spiritual disciplines, Christian values and can even undermine the "why" by restricting my ability to influence better behavioural, social and policy outcomes.

The practice and business of commercial law is not necessarily inimical to Christian faith and life but it is laden with dangers and can dull our awareness of our own sin and the sin of the systems in which we live and work. Commercial law practice and law firms are hardly unique in that regard. All professions and professional structures (scholars and universities included) have their pitfalls for Christians: see Kraybill and Good, Perils of Professionalism: Essays on Christian Faith and Professionalism (1982) Herald Press and John H. Wade, "The Pitfalls of Professionalism" (198) Christian Legal Society Quarterly. What follows are some thoughts about reforming commercial law practice offered humbly by someone who has more uncomfortable questions than answers in the hope that it will stimulate input from other Christian lawyers with other experience.

Christianity and the Business of Commercial Law

A law practice is a business. The business has to make money to pay its staff and overheads and distribute profits to its partners and keep operating. But how much it should make, how it does this (eg how it markets and the promises it makes its clients and the way it charges) and what it does with its revenue and profits are all questions with moral dimensions.

The pressures of practice in a large law firm

Commercial law firms of any significant size usually have high charge-out rates and high overheads, pay their associates and partners very well and work their associates and partners very hard. In Australia, the largest firms require working hours of 55-65 hours a week or more and provide annual salaries for the more senior associates of the order of $100,000 and upwards and remuneration for partners of $250,000 and upwards. In smaller commercial law firms the expectations and rewards are proportionately less.

In order to maintain these incomes large firms must charge high hourly rates and accordingly need rich, mainly corporate or government clients for whom the firm seeks to provide a one-stop, on-tap service offering a wide range of specialist legal services. The high rewards and competitive nature of the commercial law practice and many of the individuals it attracts put enormous pressure on the legal practitioners in the firm and many lawyers get out early, burn out later or retire by 50-55 or earlier because the satisfactions of practice have turned sour (or no longer compensate for the effort) or their physical stamina fails.

It is not clear to me why commercial law has to be practised thus with such imperialistic time demands and the consequences for family life and personal health they entail. It is partly driven by similar features of the broader commercial world, partly by the culture of the profession (in a personal service industry rewards go to those who work hardest and longest) and partly by the ambition, competition and desire of lawyers for wealth and success. In the broader community, at a deep and perhaps unconscious level, those who make up key business/professional classes of society have accepted that more money and what it can buy, more success in position and status and income personally, as corporate entities and, as a country, globally, are worth increased work hours, stress and tiredness. Probably there was not a choice to fully opt out of a globalised capitalist economy but where there were choices by and large the business/professional classes (and others) chose to work harder, make more money, consume more and have more stress and less leisure.

Ambition, competition and wealth are not inherently evil (they are not inherently virtuous either) but they can be means of evil in a world distorted by systemic and personal lust for money and power. Scripture exhorts us to "be not conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God" ( Rom 12:2). As Christian lawyers we need to examine the assumptions and practices of the institutions and systems and cultures in which we work for conformity to the call of Christ and to work with what influence we have to bring closer that conformity. We need to ask what those systems are doing to us and what we are doing to these systems. The ambition and drive to achieve, to make a mark, to have an influence are deep human traits. But in a fallen world they can be distorted by sin and misdirected away from God and his purposes. As a lawyer, what am I ambitious for, what am I driven to achieve, what type of influence do I have or want and what do I use it for (and why)? If the answers are not focused in practice on loving and servicing God and other people, then we are more likely to be conforming to the world than being transformed and being agents of transformation.

Time recording and Billing Targets: Fragmenting and Overvaluing Time

Time recording and billing is used in firms of all sizes, in many firms in units of 6 minutes. It is useful for time management, for costing files and for checking performance of fee earners. Targets for billable hours and monthly budgets are also commonplace. These recording and management tools may be neutral in themselves but can become instruments of control and oppression where the targets are inflated by greed and recorded performance is used as the definitive measure of an attorney s worth. One firm I have heard of adopted the practice of circulating monthly among all attorneys a list of each attorney s billing and budget figures for the last month in rank order. The message to the people at the bottom of the list is clear but encouragement or displeasure surely could be communicated in a manner more consistent with human dignity and good firm morale. Clearly there is a balance to be struck between encouragement of attorney productivity as measured by these records and psychological oppression by misuse of these records as a one-dimensional measure of a person s worth. My firm tries to have a well rounded set of measures, expressed in the firm s values statement, against which the performance of legal staff is measured.

Unrealistic time and billing targets in a competitive environment also produce temptations to cheat. An attorney may falsely inflate time spent on a file. Senior attorneys may appropriate or write down time spent by subordinates in order to maintain their own billable hours on a file. A system of time recorded billing alone can also encourage inefficiency and discourage efficiency.

Time recording in small units and high charge out rates can also fragment lawyers view of time and can imbue lawyers with an inflated and unreal sense of the value of their time encouraging arrogance towards others. Such overvaluing of time as an economic commodity (and fear of not reaching targets) can cause lawyers to devalue and avoid non-billable activities in the office such as listening, praying, caring and relating to clients and co-workers. How often does a lawyer sense that the legal problem which a client has presented with is but a symptom of a wider spiritual or emotional problem which the lawyer cannot stop to care about because of the demands of the time sheet and the billable hours target? This fragmentation and overvaluing of the lawyer s own time and importance can be carried outside the office and affect relations with family and friends.

As Christian lawyers we need to subordinate the economic, competitive and ego pressures of practice to fulfil the call to develop and exhibit the fruit of the Spirit -love, joy, peace, patience, humility and self-control - Galatians 5:22-23.

Attitude to Money

Commercial law is inextricably tied up with money - clients are usually businesses making money, contracts are drafted to ensure money is paid and value obtained, and the practice of commercial law can earn large sums of money.

What is the Christian attitude to money? In his excellent book Money, Sex and Power Richard Foster describes the two strands of teaching about money in the New Testament. It warns of the dark side of money - of the dangers of loving money - 1 Tim. 6:9-11, of serving mammon instead of serving God, of money distorting our relationships and of the use of money to manipulate people e.g. Luke 12:13-34. But it also presents the light side of money. We should enjoy God s bounty to us and use money for good to advance the kingdom of God and God s purposes: 1 Tim 6:17-19. Foster concludes that the call on Christians is to take money with all its dangerous qualities and use it for God s purposes - not to avoid money or be its slave but to master it for good.

This is no easy task in a thorough-going materialist age where "needs" have been inflated to include luxury cars, beach houses and Italian leather shoes. Commercial lawyers work in a milieu of money and many lawyers earn enough to live in extreme comfort.

Foster suggests the Christian s personal response to the issue of money is not asceticism but simplicity - living simply, not ostentatiously and giving generously of ourselves and our money. Generous giving is one of our chief weapons in conquering mammon - giving scandalises the world of commerce and competition and wins money for the cause of Christ. Money can grip the heart and possessions can tie the hands of giving. A key litmus test is our generosity with time and money.

An Organisational Response by Law Firms

The organisational response of a Christian law firm (that is one committed to operating on Christian principles) to money and time pressures (the two are intertwined) is perhaps more difficult to outline than the response of an individual but let me suggest some ideas for consideration:-

Give 

A law firm can perform discounted or free legal work for the poor and needy and to advance the kingdom of God. Not only does this counteract greed but it is a credible Christian witness to clients and other lawyers. Some firms, mine included, have "adopted" a charitable organisation that involves giving beyond discounted legal work. We work with a foundation for needy children that involves covering their rent, providing their IT needs and ongoing support, legal work, a pen pal program between our staff and primary school kids and a mentor program with secondary school students.

Care for staff including partners, associates and non-legal staff 

Competitive pressures might restrict the ability of a Christian law firm to implement some of these suggestions. But we must be careful that "competitive pressure" is not an excuse to stick with the familiar and avoid the hard work of changing cultures and expectations to create more freedom. Nor should it be an excuse to avoid disentangling our own need for the trappings of success from the real needs of our clients, staff and families. That said, law firms operate in a fallen world and some Christian goals may not be fully attainable now in the organisational structures of this world. We can work and pray for inspiration and creative solutions as to how we can live in the world but not be of it. For example, if competitive pressures make it impossible to lower client expectations as to hours of service, it might be possible in medium to large firms to have attorneys on shorter working weeks and reduced salaries work overlapping hours and share file management and client contact.

It is interesting that some of the work practice changes are being pushed through the profession by the increasing number of women who want to combine work with family. More younger lawyers who are not single minded, ambitious types also want flexible hours to do more and varied things with their days.

Christians in a non-Christian Firm

There are real limitations on what one Christian employee of a firm or one Christian partner can do to achieve systemic or organisational reform. There may also be real limits on what a solo attorney or a small firm can do if it faces stiff marketplace competition. But those of us who are trapped in a gilded cage may still be able to trade some gilt for some freedom. In all attempts to live counter-culturally (whether the culture be that of the firm, the profession, the client or the marketplace) we need the support of other Christians through the church and through organisations such as Christian Lawyers and a strong personal relationship with God. God is well able to deliver us from prisons of our own or others making and sustain us through trials which he has called us to.

Whether or not we can presently loosen the bonds of stress and money with which systemic, institutional or personal greed have shackled us, we can give a good Christian witness through love, faith and generosity and the word of our testimony to clients and co-workers. We can be clear about our own boundaries and our own integrity (eg. the way we relate to other staff, treating people as human beings with respect, giving feedback and encouragement and avoiding gossip and slander and inappropriate humour). We can try not to pass on destructive pressures to our staff and co-workers, encourage time for relationship-building, work to expand the firm culture s measures of a person s worth and be sympathetic to the family and non-work needs of fellow workers and ourselves. Within our personal sphere of influence, however great or small that be, we can shine what light we have and we can pray and join with others of like mind to work and pray that through us God might bring new life and reformation to ourselves, to those we touch and to the structures of which we are part.