Eventually, you’re going to hire a stupid associate.

I don’t mean that as an insult (to you or the associate). It’s just a fact.

Some people are stupid. (Are we allowed to say “stupid”? I looked it up, and it means “lacking ordinary quickness and keenness of mind.” Some people are like that, right?)

That doesn’t mean that they won’t work out as your employee.

Naturally, you’ll have doubts about the likelihood of stupid associates succeeding in your office. However, there’s a reasonable probability of success—if you take my advice.

When you hire stupid associates, you’re going to have to adjust your expectations. You’re also going to have to approach training stupid associates differently than you would approach training smart associates.

One Approach That Doesn’t Work

In the past, my approach to training stupid associates has been to berate them about what they don’t know. That wasn’t actually my intent. That’s just what happened over the few months of attempting to train them.

I’d explain something to them. They’d give it a try. They’d do it wrong, and I’d get pissed off. Then I’d scream at them (for the record, I never threw that stapler).

We’d go through this cycle—explain, try, fail, scream—over and over. The associates would come to hate me. They’d look for a job opening somewhere else, and they’d take it as soon as they could.

I couldn’t blame them for leaving. I was a major pain in the ass.

Stupid Is Not the Same as Unable to Learn

Eventually, these stupid associates turned into reasonably good lawyers. I struggled to understand how someone else could train them when all I could do was fantasize about throwing a stapler at them.

How did they do it? How did the other firm train them? How did the stupid associates learn?

What happened is that, over time, they learned what they needed to know. They’re stupid, but that doesn’t mean they can’t learn. It just means that they take longer.

You see, these stupid lawyers aren’t untrainable—they’re just slow. I like to think of them as having less bandwidth than some other lawyers. They have a lower-powered processor.

It takes more time for information to penetrate their consciousness. They require repetition: they need to see things over and over before they fully absorb them.

If given the time, they will eventually learn what they need to know to do the job. They can be very successful attorneys. In fact, some of them end up doing a better job than some of the really quick, smart lawyers. They’re happier doing the sorts of tasks required by some practice areas.

If these attorneys had stuck around my office—if they’d given me a chance to teach them what they needed to know—they could have been successful in my firm. Unfortunately, they learned to hate me. They couldn’t stand working with me because I made them so miserable. They were right to leave.

So they went somewhere else, where they probably went through much of what they went through with me, but because they’d already experienced half of it with me, they only had to experience the other half with the next person (or maybe the next person was actually nice).

They hated me, but they probably didn’t hate the next person quite as much, so they survived in that firm.

What’s the Secret to Training Stupid Associates?

The challenge for me is to find a way to teach them what they need to know without making them miserable. I want to get the information from my brain into their brain without them deciding that I’m an asshole.

Now, after having so much experience with these folks, I think I could actually pull it off. Knowing that they’re eventually going to get it, I could have the patience I need to train them.

In the past, I could not muster the patience necessary because I didn’t believe that they were going to succeed. I wrongly concluded that their stupidity would prevent them from ever becoming effective attorneys.

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Now that I know that there’s a path around their stupidity, I would have more patience and be more willing to give them the time they need to learn to do the job.

The key with these folks is patience.

• Give them the time they need to figure it out. Hold their hands and walk them through the processes repeatedly.
• Give them the lessons in a variety of ways: oral, written, and demonstrations.
• Give them the opportunity to watch you do it, practice it, and ask lots of questions.

Unfortunately, many of us are impatient. We expect others to approach issues the way we approach them. We assume that others are like us. We’re wrong.

Each person comes to the mix with different assets and liabilities. We each learn differently and absorb information in our own way. Our skills develop at different rates.

Give these lawyers a chance, and you’ll develop an asset for your firm. There’s a place for nearly everyone if you provide the proper assistance. Don’t let them drive you crazy. Do let them prove their worth. Save the stapler for stapling. Throwing things rarely accomplishes your objective.