Okay, sure, I agree that my use of the term "book" is underinclusive as to what I meant to discuss. So let me revise: Almost everyone is making partner off the basis of either a book--inherently personally portable--or their relationships with existing clients. The important thing in any event is that you personally matter to the client. Anyone who doesn't is by definition replaceable and not worth much. A few points worth mentioning:Anonymous User wrote: ↑Sun May 15, 2022 12:10 amI'm just not sure you understand what "book" means. When you, as a partner at a firm, get 10 emails a day from legal recruiters offering to place you as a partner at a "great firm with great comp" if you have a "book" of at least $2 million, that means that you are able to poach away $2 million/year of annual billings from your current firm. That is what legal recruiters, and the industry as a whole, mean by having a "book". Having great relationships with existing firm clients that "belong" to another relationship partner means that you have 0 "book". At top firms, no one expects you to have any "book" when promoting you to equity partner. This is radically different than the story at a rando v50 or whatever, where, for generalists, getting promoted to equity partner is often 100% about your current "book" and ability to grow it.
1. Service partners, even those with nominal equity, are up and down the Vault rankings, and the fact that they don't by themselves control that basis is more relevant than rather it's a megaclient with tendrils in 100 partners or it's just some rainmaker's baby that the service partner think he's gonna inherit in a decade.
2. Someone who successfully handles institutional business is by definition doing more "business development" than someone who lands some micro-client starting his first fund. It's bigger and already established and therefore keeping one shark with the firm is worth much more money than if you picked up 10 minnows. This is a very high-value thing to be doing, even if it's not in one's "book", because...
3. In addition to the trend of business loyalty to individuals over firms (slow, like everything else in this industry, but steadily growing), megaclients have long been increasingly their breadth. The likes of Goldman or Citi use *hundreds* of different firms, not just because they do so many different things (and there's always competition for new and evolving spaces clients get into), but because they rarely are using a single firm even in any given area and can readily shift everything down the street. This is, of course, a specific strategy businesses use not to let their firms turn into monopoly providers.
So yes, in addition to playing the right internal politics, some people are demonstrating potential to grow their books and some people are just doing a good job at keeping a big fish happy so it sticks around. Again, the key is personally mattering to current and future clients. Of course a great way to do that is billing a ton and being substantively good, but that's often not enough to differentiate oneself. Hence why becoming valuable is a difficult exercise.
