At Above the Law, Brian Tannebaum offered the apparently controversial notion that

the internet and those that “sell” the internet to lawyers, as well as this notion of “branding” and spending your day reading self-fulfilling predictions on “the future of law” from the losers of our profession is, well, maybe not the be-all and end-all in the practice of law.

This is part of his on-going theme that it’s better to actually be a skilled and competent lawyer than play one on the internet.  His fellow ATL columnist, Tom Wallerstein, takes back-door issue with this notion, arguing:

I agree with Tannebaum that success requires far more than “being able to obtain a volume of calls from a fake presence, a creation of a ‘brand,’ and trying very, very hard to get our hand to the top of the baseball bat of the internet.” But I also think that success doesn’t come just from doing good legal work. In my experience, the most talented lawyers often are not the most successful, at least by traditional definitions. Nor are the most successful lawyers the best lawyers.

By this, Wallerstein continues, the popular kid becomes partner in Biglaw rather than the best lawyer, which has little bearing on small law, the focus of his column. And then there is this:

A law practice is, fundamentally, like many other businesses that sell their services. Success comes from controlling your expenses, managing your employees, properly setting your prices, and attracting sufficient customers. Of these, generating business is the most important factor governing success in both in Biglaw and in running your own firm.

It’s true that a law practice, particularly a solo practice, must be thoughtfully run in order to maximize financial success.  Such questions as whether it’s sufficiently crucial to have your name embossed in gold on your legal pads to make the extra expense worthwhile, or which firm credit card to get if you want the most cash back. 

If you ponder such questions, as well as the million other bits of minituae that comprise any enterprise, the answer is no one cares if your name is embossed on your yellow pads, and go to NerdWallet and find whatever credit card floats your boat.  But none of this amounts to anything if you don’t have paying clients to begin with.  Run the best managed shop in town, but without revenues, you won’t eat. Do you really need someone to tell you not to piss away revenues on worthless vanity items? A penny saved is a penny earned, and in small law, every penny comes straight from your pocket.

But while Wallerstein concedes it’s better to be a skilled lawyer than not, he suggests that it’s the show pony who wins the day.

The disconnect between being a talented attorney, on the one hand, and a successful one, on the other, isn’t necessarily a terrible thing. If you are not the most naturally skilled lawyer, you can take heart that you can still be successful.

There are, and have always been, lawyers who are remarkably mediocre in the courtroom but have an incredible knack of getting business. They are usually quite extroverted, fabulous raconteurs and wonderfully engaging human beings around whom other seem to naturally want to flock.  If you’re one of these fortunate lawyers, then you don’t need to worry about any of this, and certainly have no use for creating a false internet persona to compensate for your worthless off-line reality. 

Even so, there is a pretty good chance that if your skills as a lawyer are inadequate, people may want to hang out with you at the bar, but choose someone else to stand next to them in the courtroom.  People are funny that way, not willing to spend an extra decade in prison because their lawyer is a cool, fun and incompetent guy.  

As a coda to Wallerstein’s post, the cool kid who becomes a Biglaw partner, or even a partner in a ten person firm, has an advantage that we do not.  The cool kid rainmaker partner can eat, drink and schmooze clients, and then hand off their work to the local grunt, often referred to as associates, who may have mad lawyer skills to make the magic happen.  We have only ourselves to do the work. If we can’t do it, and do it right, then no amount of schmoozing is going to make up for lousy lawyering.

While Wallerstein’s curious need to undermine Tannebaum’s call for competency added nothing substantive to the mix,  Mark Bennett highlights the distinction in his homage to Jimi Hendrix and exposé of one of the most pervasive marketing shams in criminal defense.

I never saw a criminal-defense lawyer advertising himself as “never a prosecutor” before I started doing so; when I would point out to a potential client that he was more likely to suffer than benefit as a result of the long-term relationships between a former prosecutor and him (if he has to choose between maintaining those relationships and burning bridges on your behalf, which do you think he’ll pick?) his eyes would get wide. His checkbook would come out.

Jason H. Howard has no reason to remember the practice of law in those days because he was a freshman in high school, fighting acne and maybe hoping to get to second base.

For this former prosecutor, the benefit he provides his clients is E-X-P-E-R-I-E-N-C-E. 

Perhaps Jason wasn’t one of the cool kids, to whom clients are attracted like Wallerstein’s successful lawyers or moths to a flame.  So he was left with a few choices, to develop and hone his skills as a criminal defense lawyer or use the old former prosecutor claim to suggest he knows the secret handshake that will set his clients free.

It’s true that good-looking, likeable, engaging people have a leg up on success, in the law as well as in any other endeavor.  But anything that suggests it’s enough to be successful as a solo lawyer, especially a criminal defense lawyer, is not only wrong, but dangerous.

Maybe Wallerstein is right that Biglaw partners can fake it to make it, but not us. We must be competent, and no fake claims or false internet personas will do the trick.  The glaring omission is that our success isn’t measured only by our ability to score the new case, but our ability to fulfill our duty to zealously represent our client.  Too bad Wallerstein never mentioned that aspect of success.