Most of us like winning. In fact, we’re drawn to competition, and it’s a lot more fun if we come out on top.

We Like to Compete

It’s not an accident that law schools rank law students. We like it. It’s appealing to us to be in the game, and we prefer ranking high to ranking low. I never bumped into anyone who said, “I’m aiming for last in my class.” I can tell you that the students in my wife’s Ph.D. program in literature didn’t walk around talking about class rank. That wasn’t anywhere on their radar screens. We’re a uniquely competitive group.

We took the SAT and the LSAT. Then we took the MPRE and the bar exam. Eavesdrop on some law students out drinking, and you’ll likely hear a discussion of their performance on one or all of these tests. It defines them.

It’s not an accident that many of us love to litigate. We like going to court and competing with one another. Again, we really enjoy walking away with a victory for our clients.

Lawyers love to compete in other settings as well. I did triathlons and ran races for a few years. I couldn’t believe the number of lawyers I’d bump into (literally) at these races. I’d meet four lawyers for every engineer or computer programmer. We’re a competitive group, and we have a hard time letting it go.

We Prefer to Win

It’s annoying to us when we can’t tell how we’re doing. We love the scoreboard. We like to know whether we’re ahead, and it’s motivating to us when we’re behind. It’s frustrating when we’re operating in an information vacuum. We don’t like the feeling of not knowing.

Any activity that doesn’t have a scoreboard is less appealing to many of us. For instance, throwing pottery isn’t a competitive sport. I don’t bump into many lawyer/potters. That’s not a coincidence. You’ll find plenty of philosophy majors who enjoy some time in front of the pottery wheel with their hands covered in wet clay.

There’s No Scoreboard in This Game

Unfortunately, there’s no scoreboard for our practices when it comes to money. In some businesses, the financial info is public. That’s obviously true for public companies, but it’s also true for lots of other companies as well. It’s even true among large law firms. The AmLaw 200 list gives us some data on those 200 firms, and you can compare yourself to them.

Unfortunately, however, comparing yourself to a big law firm handling corporate matters isn’t particularly helpful. It’s a bit like me comparing my basketball performance to Michael Jordan’s. We’re playing in different leagues.

I wish there were a scoreboard for small firms practicing my kind of law. I wish I could figure out whether I’m winning or losing. I’d really like to know how we compare, regardless of whether that would be good for me.

In our desperation for information, we grab the data we can find. The most obvious number we can use is the number of attorneys in a firm. We count our lawyers, and we compare it to their lawyers and we decide whether we’re winning or losing.

More Lawyers ≠ a Win

Sadly, that’s a dumb metric. Having lots of lawyers might be a good thing. It might also be a terrible thing. It doesn’t indicate the law firm’s profitability in any way. I’ve seen firms with dozens of lawyers borrowing money to meet payroll. I’ve seen firms with one lawyer spinning off more cash than I could ever imagine. Profits aren’t related to headcount.

The lawyer headcount metric is good for one thing: counting the number of lawyers. That’s all it’s good for. It has no relationship to profits, compensation, or anything else that matters in the real world. Sure, it’s a fun game to play, but it’s not rational. Lawyer headcount is a random measurement. You might as well count the number of volumes in the firm library.

Why, then, do we persist in comparing firms based on their number of lawyers? Because we’re incredibly competitive, and we desperately want a scoreboard. We’ll take a bad scoreboard over nothing.

I truly wish we had better metrics for comparison. I’d be a happier person (or an unhappy person) if I had more information. My consulting work has given me a better sense of what’s possible, but even that data isn’t totally satisfying as it’s from different markets and different situations.

I’ve always hoped that bar associations would gather and disseminate data we could put to use. Most of what I’ve seen from most bar associations isn’t especially useful. Either the data is poorly presented, or the firms fail to contribute to the study. It would be great if bar associations actually did some work in this arena.

It’s doubtful that we’ll get good data for comparison anytime soon. We’ll have to live in this information vacuum for a bit longer. In the meantime, it’s important that we recognize the uselessness of the attorney headcount metric and not use it to score ourselves in the game. It’s not a metric connected with anything that matters in the real world, and it’s a metric better left ignored.