September 7, 2023 • 34 mins
“What does the book look like?” is generally one of the first questions asked by a firm when evaluating a potential lateral partner candidate. But is this really the best way to evaluate a candidate? Firms and candidates spend considerable time completing and evaluating detailed lateral partner questioners. Yet, the portable business the lateral can (hopefully) deliver is often the overriding factor in considering whether a lateral candidate is the right person to bring into the firm. In this episode Steve challenges this idea and provides his thoughts on additional context and criteria firms should look to when evaluating a lateral candidate. And he schools Murray on some of the finer ethical points around the recruiting process. Steve also provides a quick update on the lateral recruiting market in Washington DC. (Hint, it has been active.)
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Episode Transcript
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Unknown (00:00):
Murray, welcome to Steve's rules, periodic podcast
(00:10):
featuring Steve Nelson,executive principal at McCormick
group in the law and governmentaffairs practice. My name is
Murray Coffey, and I am theprincipal of Adam Coffey, a law
firm marketing and businessdevelopment Boutique. For more
information, please visit mywebsite at M coffey.net Steve
has been an executive recruiterfor nearly three decades, and
without naming names, he isready to spill the tea on best
(00:32):
practices, and maybe a few notso best practices by firms and
candidates that he has seenduring his career, recruiting
some of the most driven andsuccessful professional into
highly profitable and growingfirms. Steve is a former lawyer
and journalist and is a fellowof the college of law practice
management and a proud son ofWilkes Barre, Pennsylvania. Full
(00:52):
transparency here, Steve hashelped my career immensely
through the years and has becomesomething of a career shaman to
me and I know many others. HeySteve, welcome back. We are at
episode four. Are we in episodefour? Is this episode four? Of
(01:13):
Steve's rules? Sounds
Steve (01:14):
like Star Wars. You know it's like, go backwards. You
know we're
Unknown (01:18):
gonna go backwards.
Yeah, we're at, we're at episodethree, but, but anyhow, we are
it. We're cranking along here,which is great. How are you
today?
Steve (01:28):
Oh, good, good. It's, it's August, the end of August.
So, yeah, you know, you wouldthink that, you know, I'm just
laying around the house, butit's been active. It's been
Unknown (01:40):
active, yeah, yeah. And speaking of activity, you know,
and we'll dive into our subject,which is one I am so interested
in hearing your thoughts on,but, but let's talk for just a
minute about a couple of bit ofthe marketplace intelligence
that that McCormick Place is sogreat at known for just released
(02:05):
a couple of key reports. I thinkwe got the DC report, we got the
Texas report. And, you know, forthose listeners who remember our
first episode, we talked a lotabout the nature of recruitment
out of the federal government,and kind of that niche that
McCormick group and you havehave built over the years. So
(02:29):
what are you seeing? What'sgoing on? What kind of trend are
you picking up on? Right?
Steve (02:36):
Well, definitely, I think it continues to be busy for the
summer, surprisingly busy,particularly in DC, Texas has
been more static, but the marketis strong. There's a fair number
of group moves. There's a totalnumber of moves. You know, is
high, higher than last year. Andlast year was a good year. And I
(03:02):
and we saw in July, 14 movesfrom the federal government into
firms in Washington, which is apretty high number, and we
expect it to increase, as weindicated earlier in one of our
podcasts. This is the time for alot of government people, for
them to move, because once youget into 2024 they're going to
(03:28):
be heavily, heavily demandedthat they stay in the
administration until the end. SoI think we're we'll see a number
of moves now and then we see,let, we'll see last next
Unknown (03:41):
year, will they start to tighten down on some of these
folks after the primaries, orafter the generals? What's the
timing of Yeah,
Steve (03:50):
I think it's really towards the end of this year,
once we get into November,December. I think then the the,
you know, the agency heads andand the key political
appointees, people in the WhiteHouse, etc, they're going to get
the word out that you can'tleave us in that in a in an
(04:14):
election, because we won't beable to replace you. I mean,
who's going to come in in, youknow, may of 2024 for what could
be
Unknown (04:25):
a six month period, right? Or so, right, right? So I
guess the message for for thefor the folks out there who are
thinking of making a move is youbetter get on it. Right? You
should already
Steve (04:38):
be in the process of doing it. You should be in the
process. And if you're not, ifyou're not, it'll take you to
the end of the year to find thefind the right job.
Unknown (04:47):
So, and at that point, and the firms have probably, you
know, the firms are probablyfull up on the amount of people
they're going to take out ofgovernment at some point, you
know, they say, Okay, no more.
No because, as we've talked.
About coming out of governmenthas its own set of issues and
all kind of somewhat, you know,related to the topic of today's
(05:11):
podcast episode, which is themyth of the portable business.
And this is somebody in my rolewho, you know, worked on helping
to evaluate the candidates thatwere coming into the firm that I
was working at. The first thingon everybody's lips was portable
(05:34):
business. And, you know, alwaysturning to that end of the end
of the LPQ, again, somethingthat we talked about before, to
look at, look at at those, thosenumbers. And as rosy as those
numbers always looked, thereality was often not quite as
(05:55):
rosy and had implications forthe firm. So you know, Steve,
talk about, right? But let's goin. Let's go, let's go into
levels of detail here. But talkabout the the myth, and why it's
a myth of portable business,
Steve (06:10):
right? Well, um, first of all, I wanted, I'd like to point
out that in any other industry,any other you know, company
recruiting for major positionsin corporate America, you know,
you, they don't ask these kindsof questions. In other words,
(06:32):
you're hiring a CFO. They're notgoing to ask them, okay? I want
to see your balance sheets foryour companies the last four
years and tell me where you are,where you save money, right? So
this is unique among the legalindustry, maybe other
professional services, certainlybig for consulting. There is
some of that as well. But sothat's the starting point.
(06:55):
Second thing is, you're right.
It's, it's a preoccupation, andit's, and there's, it's a myth,
really, on both sides. Numberone is, as you know, very you
know, the percentage of ofbusiness that actually comes in
based on what is, what isprojected, is usually somewhere
(07:17):
in the 50 to 60% range as anaverage. So it's not reliable
number one and number two, it'sit's a misleading, misleading
statistic based on what reallythe law firm is looking for. Law
Firm is, in most cases, you'retrying to you're trying to
(07:39):
recruit talent, people who willbe your leaders in the future,
people who will developpractices, people will be the go
to lawyers for either firmclients or new clients. What
they did last year or what theydid two years ago, it's only
part of the story, and it'sprobably a pretty small part of
the story, because five yearsdown the line, even in the best
(08:01):
cases, most of those clientswill not be there. They'll get
acquired new leadership, newgeneral counsels. And so you're
looking at this small snapshotand making judgment calls about
how what that means to the valueof the individual, and just
jumping off one more point onthis is what we see often, is
(08:22):
that the values that the firmhas, oh, that in most firms that
they, that they advocate, thevalues that they want, are the
ability to not just bring inbusiness, but to be able to be a
resource, if you're the, Ifyou're the, you know, the go to
person for ERISA, for example,you you, they want you to be
(08:46):
able to be available for theirkey clients. Plus, if you're,
you know, if you're a greatcorporate lawyer, they want you
to actually send work to otherlawyers in the firm, maybe to
other people who have expertise,and so forth. And so for many of
the people who are at otherfirms, their their originations,
(09:09):
or their value to their currentfirm, it doesn't translate to a
portable number that's anywhereclose to that. And so all this,
you've got a person who'sincredibly valuable to their
firm and is making theircompensation is based on that
value, which is based on theactual metrics that the firms
use, which relates to managingwork and relates to doing the
(09:33):
work. It relates tooriginations. Originations does
not always mean portable. And soyou're you've got this number
that's just like, totally offkilter. And invariably, I think
first tend to be soconservative, they'll go with
the person with the mostreliable portables. And in many
cases, that's somebody whodoesn't share. Is the IS THE.
(09:57):
Called lone wolf. That's theeasiest thing, you know that the
business is coming, or at leastyou think it's coming, and that
person comes over, and they stayfor a few years, and then they
find out, you know, they getanother offer to go somewhere
else for more money, and they'llleave, and they don't give you
any value,
Unknown (10:17):
yeah. And, and in in their wake, they may have left
some, you know, some, somedestruction behind. I mean, the
cultural damage that can be doneto a firm by, you know, a lone
wolf who decides it's time toeat all the sheep. Is, is, you
know, is, is can be significant.
And you know the other thing.
(10:39):
And you know in conversationswith with in house counsel. They
don't believe themselves to beat quite as portable as the
partners who are saying they'reportable are. You know, they may
be very supportive of a partnermoving from Firm A to firm B for
(10:59):
any number of reasons, but ifyou haven't had that
conversation, lateral partnerwith your with your client, your
good client, who you're countingon coming over, about sort of
what you're planning on doing,don't expect that to be portable
business. And I, you know, and Inever, in the time that I was
working on this stuff, I neverheard an inquiry toward the
(11:22):
lateral partner, asking themwhether they had spent any time
with these key clients talkingabout the move. Now, sometimes
they volunteered it, which isgreat, but it wasn't an inquiry.
There wasn't, you know, wasn'ton the LPQ, right? Well,
Steve (11:38):
there is, there is an ethical question that
complicates that issue. Andthere is even a difference of
opinion among legal ethicsexperts on this. I have heard, I
mean, I've heard two differentsort of viewpoints. One is the
sort of strict viewpoint, whichis, you're not allowed, since
(12:00):
you're not allowed to solicitclients, that's clear, right,
yep, but that has beeninterpreted by many as you're
not even allowed to ask themabout to go to a client said,
you know, I'm thinking of makinga move. I'm thinking of going to
x firm. You know, what's yourthoughts? That is not directly
(12:21):
solicitation, certainly, butsort of hints at it, sure. But
some people, some some lawyers,view that as remote. Yeah, there
are other lawyers who believe,not only is that permissible,
but that, since it is a an eventthat is has implications for the
client, that you actually owethe client, the the
(12:44):
responsibility to actually tellthem what your plans are. And so
there's, it's very unclear. Ithink that generally, I think
because lawyers are risk averse,they tend not to do that, they
feel like, well, if I do that, Imight be, you know, I might be
(13:04):
charged with ethical issues. Butof course, it may also be that
they're not really sure that theclient's going to come, right?
So it's kind of a combination offactors. I would say that most
of the time, in my experience,most of the time, I think that
the lawyers who are, you know,making a move are are pretty
(13:28):
much they believe that theclients will come, that it isn't
as if they're trying tomisrepresent anything. It's more
that they don't reallyunderstand all what's going on.
They don't understand all thedifferent relationships that a
client has with a firm. Theydon't understand you know that
it's not just one lawyer in thegeneral counsel's office that
(13:51):
that that makes a decision, butit's many, and there may have
different relationships, and sotherefore, moving that client is
not as easy as the partnerthinks it would be. And that's
where a lot of times, that'swhere they you know, the
disconnect comes what,
Unknown (14:11):
what we would try to do, and I knocked on tails out
of school, because I don't thinkthis is, this is, you know,
particularly insightful, butwhat we would try to do is
determine level of stickinessfor a for a client to their, to
their, if a partner is comingfrom Firm A, clearly, there's
been work that's been done byFirm A what's the level of
(14:34):
stickiness to firm A for thatclient, regardless of what this
lateral partner is Saying theycan bring over. And so there's
ways to look at relationshipsthat this, that this particular
client has within that firm andand in not necessarily specific
lawyers, but tranches of work.
So you know, if there, if it's alitigation client, but. They're
(14:57):
also, you know, they're alsoworking with them on labor and
employment. They're also workingwith them on sec. They're also
working with them on regulatoryissues, all of which you can,
you can, if you do enoughdigging around, you can find out
if they've got a lot of if thatfirm has a lot of hooks in that
client, no matter how great thatrelationship is. Dislodging them
(15:21):
may just be literallyimpossible, that because you
can't, you just can't pick upand move 10 years of SEC,
representation, enforcement,representation, over to another
firm. It's not. It doesn't, itdoesn't move that well. So that,
to me, was always a questionabout the level of stickiness
that there was with the with theclients. So what do you think
(15:45):
the mix of of considerationsshould be understanding that
that you know, book is alwaysgoing to be part of it, but sort
of as you think about about thebasket of considerations, how
to, how do, how do youapportion? Maybe you don't
(16:05):
apportion, but how do you lookat that?
Steve (16:10):
Well, I, I definitely agree that this idea of looking
at the at the actual client, andthe other relationships within
the firm, and the history ofthat lawyer and so forth. I
think firms don't, firms don'tpursue those questions as
(16:30):
aggressively as they could. Ithink that my view is that
practicality wise, a partnerneeds to ensure that in their
first year going to a new firm,they're going to keep, at least
keep themselves mostly busyotherwise. And of course, it
(16:51):
depends on the role a personplays and so forth. You know, if
you have a lot of work thatyou're actually projecting to go
to the new lawyer, that's alittle different. But generally,
I think you've got to, I thinkthe firms have to, you know, it
makes sense for them to beassured that this person's going
to keep busy, because you're notbusy. It's a real problem for a
lot of reasons. So I thinkthat's number one. I think it's
(17:12):
where it really falls down is onthe compensation side, because a
good of many of these reallystrong laterals. And they were
usually very honest with us whenthey they'll tell us, well, you
know, I'm doing this. I mean,you know, this is my
originations, but I can onlytake so much with me. I be if
(17:33):
I'm a firm, I'm going to lookmore into Okay, where are these
originations? What is theoriginalization? Where is the
business coming from, whodeveloped the business? Right?
How much you know, how muchcross selling is being done?
How, what kind of citizen,corporate citizen, is this
lawyer within the firm? And Ithink, and it's a tricky
situation for a firm,particularly in an Oh, very open
(17:56):
compensation system. But, Imean, I think a firm has to pay
what the, you know, the marketrate for these attorneys, and
the market rate is the firstthing to look at is, what are
they being paid? Now, right? Ifa firm is valuing that and the
and the metric supported to go,you know, you're going to have
(18:19):
to go to your partnership andsay, I know that the portables
look like this, but three yearsdown the road, this person could
be a tremendous contributor tothe firm. And of course, all the
laterals know that if they don'tproduce within a couple of
years, certainly with two orthree, that'll have an impact on
(18:40):
their compensation. Butcompensation is often a barrier.
I mean, we've run into that youhave two different candidates
right now. We've run into thatwhere the you know, the person
has a leadership role in a firmis is responsible, not just for
his or her his own work, but isalso helping recruit people. Is
(19:03):
helping develop the work,helping the cross selling of the
work that goes to other peopleand and, you know, the first,
just the immediate reaction is,what's the book of business? We
can't afford, you know, we can'tafford to pay, pay this person
more than half of what is socalled portable. And I just
think you're missing the boat onthat if you're really looking,
(19:26):
if you're really looking todevelop your talent, you've got
to start looking at things alittle
Unknown (19:34):
differently. Yeah, yeah, I agree. And I think that,
you know, one of the levels ofinquiry that I rarely would see,
and I would always try to delveinto this a little bit is, what
are they doing to develop thebusiness that they are saying
that they have, like, how didthat business come in? Tell me
the story of how that businesscame in. Because what you also
(19:56):
want to know is, you know, didthey grow it into. Institutional
relationship, or did they growrelationship from a green shoot
and and the the the businessdevelopment acumen and the
business development disciplinethat a that a partner, a lateral
(20:17):
partner, can bring in, I thinkhas to be part of the
consideration, you know,building building, a book of
business, is not just luck, butat the same time, you know, is,
does this person follow abusiness development pattern and
route that is that they canduplicate here at our firm, or
(20:38):
that is acceptable within ourfirm? That's a big question. And
you'll find out a lot about acandidate, if you if you find
out how they develop their bookof business. And you're also
going to find out about some ofthose cultural intangibilities
That we, we know are soimportant, but are hard to hard,
to hard to surface in lpqs. Andyou know the 3535 partner
(21:02):
interviews, where the partnersare spending half their time on
the email and half their timetalking to the candidate, you
know, and then they they send inthe summary of the of the
interview, saying, yeah, heseemed nice. I liked him,
Steve (21:16):
right? Exactly. Yeah. No, I think it's absolutely right,
the approach that you've laidout. And I would add that a good
business plan should be, shouldbe required for just about any
any lateral. I want to see whatthe practice description is
like, the way they describetheir practice, and what, you
(21:37):
know, what they what theynormally do to to develop
clients of what they plan to do,go into all of the different
things, relating to socialmedia, relating to, you know,
being out there, speaking andwriting and just going to visit
clients, etc, and organizationsthat you're members of. So I
(22:01):
think that's important. And tobe honest, most firms just never
do it. They never ask for them.
I think most, most of thecandidates, if they're serious
about a firm, they'll do it.
They'll do it because they maybe doing it themselves. Anything
Unknown (22:15):
that's exactly right, that's exactly right. And if
they're not doing it, thatshould be a question. That's a
question too. The two thingsabout I'll add about, about my
from my perspective, about howlateral partner needs to come
into a firm. One is when you'recoming in to the firm and you're
(22:39):
about to get that engagementletter strong. I strongly
recommend that if you know thatyou need $50,000 to do your BD
in the course of a year, getthat put into the engagement
letter. I can't tell you howmany times I saw the standard
operating procedure. You know,engagement letter with no, sort
(23:02):
of nothing in there, in therewith a signature on it that,
yeah, we're gonna, we're gonnacommit $30,000 to you for
business development in thefirst year. Do that get it done?
I've seen a few partners who didit, and it really helps. And the
other thing I would say to thefirms out there is, and this is
(23:22):
coming from me, trying to managebudgets. Build a build a build a
contingency budget that's justfor lateral partner marketing
purposes. So if you have apractice, and they've put in
their their your yearly annualpractice budget, and they're
(23:47):
going to start to do someserious lateral recruiting, or
there's a serious lateralrecruitment opportunity, and
that person comes in and it canjust knock your budget out of
the water. Now you can try to goback to the firm and say, Boy,
we need to expand the budget formy, for my department, but
that's hard, that's, that'sportion of rock up a steep hill,
(24:08):
if, if you're, if you're able tosay to, and I was in charge of
that budget, that was in mybudget as a Cmo, they could the,
practice head could come to meand say, Yeah, so I know we said
it was going to be $100,000budget this year. This new
(24:28):
person is coming in. They need$20,000 to get out of the box.
Do we have another 20,000 in thebudget? And I would be able to
go into this fund, and as longas I could tag it to to a to a
specific lateral I didn't haveto go through all the mountains
of oks and reviews to get that,to get that cleared. Now, that
(24:52):
requires management to trust youas a CMO and management, there's
a lot of trust involved in that,but it can really. Can really
keep things moving along sopeople don't get caught, you
know, just stuck in the mudtrying to get some money for for
their, their their businessdevelopment, and they're going
to have higher businessdevelopment expenses in year one
and year two than they'll havein year three. It's just how
(25:13):
it's going to be that they'rejust, they're just going to have
Steve (25:17):
to be spending it. Yeah, at a related point is, I think
we're, we're seeing morecandidates indicate that a
reason for their looking at newopportunities, or reason for
leaving their firm, is that theydon't feel they're getting the
business development support attheir current firm. And
(25:38):
sometimes, sometimes that can beyou, if you've got a really good
program that's running thatcould actually help you land the
lateral. And so part of that isto find out what they're, how
they're how they're using thebusiness development staff.
That's right. I mean, if, Imean, if you're getting, if you
get an answer that says, Well, Ireally don't use them at all
(26:00):
because I have like,relationships. That's a little
bit of a red flag, right? You'renot really, you're not really
doing it. Now you might get theanswer that you said, I'm trying
to use the business developmentstaff, but there's doesn't seem
like they're they'reparticularly supportive of my
practice. But that could be agood reason, because maybe,
maybe your environmentalpractice is not favored
(26:23):
currently at your at your firm,and therefore you support so I
think that's a good line ofinquiry for the firms, as well
as as for the candidates, totalk about what the business
development support is. BecauseI tell you, I I've talked to
some laterals after they'vegotten to their firm, and the
and the thing they they swearthat the business development
(26:45):
support they've got has made ahuge difference.
Unknown (26:49):
Yeah, and we would hear that regularly too. We'd get
laterals coming in, and afterthe first six months, and said,
Oh my gosh, I can't believe thelevel of support I can get here.
And to me, it was just, this ishow we do our business. Is that
we got to know what you do. Wegot to know why you're doing it
and how we can help you. Andthat's another, you know, that's
(27:10):
another. The the firms don'tseem to be planning for the
planning integration part of ofthis out. They're kind of like,
they get them in, and then it's,then it's sort of like, okay,
go, go play with the puppies.
And doesn't always work thatway. I mean, there's, there has
to be some integration plan. AndI will say, my former firm, they
(27:30):
got around to the point wherethey had, they had developed a
pretty, pretty, pretty decentintegration plan that helped,
you know, keep people, keeppeople from get, especially
during the pandemic, fromgetting too isolated. You know,
so well. What else do you wantto cover with this? Steve, and
(27:52):
we've got, this is a, this is awide ranging area, and I think
that, I think that there's athere's a lot of ways that that
firms can be evaluating that getoutside of the portables. But
where else do you think we needto we need to be touching on
here, right?
Steve (28:12):
I really think it really relates to how, how they have
developed their clients, what'sbeen their strategy, what's
their approach? Part of it is, Ithink that many lawyers that
they were not trained inbusiness development in law
school, right? That was not acourse, and so a lot of them are
(28:38):
need, need the sort of blockingand tackling help and so
sometimes you can see, I think,in the process, you might be
able to see that this person hasgot some skill set, maybe has a
little bit of developmental youknow, has shown Some some
(28:58):
increases and some some growthpatterns. But is, you know, is
just needs, needs to be trained,needs to be coached. Um, so I
think that if you see thatsometimes something that might
look like a negative, becausethey don't, they don't really
know, can turn into a positive,because you can, you can see, we
(29:20):
can, you know, we can hire thisperson. We're just going to have
to invest in the time and effortand money to to make him or her
successful, yeah. And so I thinkthat's part of the the equation
is to take a look, really a 360degree look. I mean, part of it
is also just straight, sort ofpersonality assessment. I want
(29:43):
to get into assessment testingright now, but that's come. You
know, it's becoming a morepopular strategy for firms. But
to evaluate, you know, how thisperson seems to to share, share
business, because in the end,you. Uh, being a good colleague
is 50% of the is certainly 50%of the equation.
Unknown (30:07):
And and you know, there are, and there are some
methodologies, and we could talkabout this at a different point,
but there are methodologies forevaluating the the the relative
business development strength,or strengths, I should say, of a
of a particular individual orcandidate. And there's, there's
organizations out there thatcan, that can help you with
(30:29):
this, this testing, and we didsome of that testing, and it was
really interesting, because whatit really comes down to is that
there's a continuum of businessdone. There's a business
development continuum, andeverybody can fit into one or
more of the points on thecontinuum. So it's not, you
know, just just, just going outand getting new business is not
(30:49):
is only one part of thecontinuum. There's, there's
different points in thecontinuum. And if you're really
thinking strategically, andthere's some firms out there
that do this very, very well,thinking strategically about
what they need, what wherethey're where, when they look at
that continuum, what do theyneed, that helps them make some
(31:10):
really strategic decisions,about laterals, about promoting
people into partner, about whereto put their resources. And I,
you know, to those, to thosemanaging partners out there who
might be listening, I stronglysuggest that you, you invest in
(31:30):
some understanding of how toassess business development
strengths, because there are,there there's, there's ways to
do it, And they're darnedaccurate, from what? From my
perspective, and it really helpsmake, really helps make some
decisions surface faster and getyou to a decision point quicker.
Steve (31:54):
Yeah, I'd also say, of course, a lot of this depends on
the role that you're expecting,the lateral play at your firm,
correct? So, if you're, ifyou're in a succession situation
where you've got a retiringpartner, you're bringing in
someone. There's probably enoughbusiness on the table that you
(32:15):
don't have to worry so muchabout what's portable, right?
Then the, then the, the reallyinquiry goes to, you know, how
does this person deal withclients? So in that situation,
you want to see evidence of,tell me some clients that have
come to your firm you've beenassigned the management of
(32:37):
particular responsibilities, andtell us whether there's been
more business that that has beendeveloped because of your skill
set and abilities.
Unknown (32:47):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, Steve, I think the clock on the
wall is telling us that we'rewe're getting a little bit close
on time here we like to keepthese things at 2025, minutes.
Any other closing thoughts, youwant to make sure that we're
aware of and make sure that wewere factoring into this, this,
(33:08):
this is a, been a pretty richdiscussion, especially for those
people who are trying toevaluate candidates. Yeah, we
could. We
Steve (33:15):
could probably go for an hour on this more, but sure, I
think we've hit most of the highpoints, and we'd be, I'd be
interested in hearing frompeople out there about their
thoughts, you know what, whattheir you know, what their views
are. Certainly interested inhaving a dialog and and also,
just remember that if you wantany of our reports, our lateral
(33:38):
reports for either Texas or DC,or anything else that we're
doing right now. Please, youknow, send us a note
Unknown (33:49):
and well, well, you know, Steve's talking about
Texas and DC. I know McCormickgroup is, is, you know, coast to
coast, and have gathered a lotof information. Steve and I have
had conversations the past abouta whole variety of jurisdictions
around the around the country,and there's, you know, that's
his heat, Steve and his teamreally keep an eye on what's
(34:11):
going on across the across thehorizon. So Well, Steve, thank
you as always, a pleasure and anhonor, and we will come back
with episode five at some pointor another. It'll be, we'll
have, we'll say goodbye to thesummer and hello to hopefully
(34:31):
some decent fall weather, atleast here in in Dallas, Texas,
it is just been brutal. Yeah.
Steve (34:39):
All right. Thank you again, Murray, take care. Good
as always. You.
Murray, welcome to Steve's rules, periodic podcast
(00:10):
featuring Steve Nelson,executive principal at McCormick
group in the law and governmentaffairs practice. My name is
Murray Coffey, and I am theprincipal of Adam Coffey, a law
firm marketing and businessdevelopment Boutique. For more
information, please visit mywebsite at M coffey.net Steve
has been an executive recruiterfor nearly three decades, and
without naming names, he isready to spill the tea on best
(00:32):
practices, and maybe a few notso best practices by firms and
candidates that he has seenduring his career, recruiting
some of the most driven andsuccessful professional into
highly profitable and growingfirms. Steve is a former lawyer
and journalist and is a fellowof the college of law practice
management and a proud son ofWilkes Barre, Pennsylvania. Full
(00:52):
transparency here, Steve hashelped my career immensely
through the years and has becomesomething of a career shaman to
me and I know many others. HeySteve, welcome back. We are at
episode four. Are we in episodefour? Is this episode four? Of
(01:13):
Steve's rules? Sounds
Steve (01:14):
like Star Wars. You know it's like, go backwards. You
know we're
Unknown (01:18):
gonna go backwards.
Yeah, we're at, we're at episodethree, but, but anyhow, we are
it. We're cranking along here,which is great. How are you
today?
Steve (01:28):
Oh, good, good. It's, it's August, the end of August.
So, yeah, you know, you wouldthink that, you know, I'm just
laying around the house, butit's been active. It's been
Unknown (01:40):
active, yeah, yeah. And speaking of activity, you know,
and we'll dive into our subject,which is one I am so interested
in hearing your thoughts on,but, but let's talk for just a
minute about a couple of bit ofthe marketplace intelligence
that that McCormick Place is sogreat at known for just released
(02:05):
a couple of key reports. I thinkwe got the DC report, we got the
Texas report. And, you know, forthose listeners who remember our
first episode, we talked a lotabout the nature of recruitment
out of the federal government,and kind of that niche that
McCormick group and you havehave built over the years. So
(02:29):
what are you seeing? What'sgoing on? What kind of trend are
you picking up on? Right?
Steve (02:36):
Well, definitely, I think it continues to be busy for the
summer, surprisingly busy,particularly in DC, Texas has
been more static, but the marketis strong. There's a fair number
of group moves. There's a totalnumber of moves. You know, is
high, higher than last year. Andlast year was a good year. And I
(03:02):
and we saw in July, 14 movesfrom the federal government into
firms in Washington, which is apretty high number, and we
expect it to increase, as weindicated earlier in one of our
podcasts. This is the time for alot of government people, for
them to move, because once youget into 2024 they're going to
(03:28):
be heavily, heavily demandedthat they stay in the
administration until the end. SoI think we're we'll see a number
of moves now and then we see,let, we'll see last next
Unknown (03:41):
year, will they start to tighten down on some of these
folks after the primaries, orafter the generals? What's the
timing of Yeah,
Steve (03:50):
I think it's really towards the end of this year,
once we get into November,December. I think then the the,
you know, the agency heads andand the key political
appointees, people in the WhiteHouse, etc, they're going to get
the word out that you can'tleave us in that in a in an
(04:14):
election, because we won't beable to replace you. I mean,
who's going to come in in, youknow, may of 2024 for what could
be
Unknown (04:25):
a six month period, right? Or so, right, right? So I
guess the message for for thefor the folks out there who are
thinking of making a move is youbetter get on it. Right? You
should already
Steve (04:38):
be in the process of doing it. You should be in the
process. And if you're not, ifyou're not, it'll take you to
the end of the year to find thefind the right job.
Unknown (04:47):
So, and at that point, and the firms have probably, you
know, the firms are probablyfull up on the amount of people
they're going to take out ofgovernment at some point, you
know, they say, Okay, no more.
No because, as we've talked.
About coming out of governmenthas its own set of issues and
all kind of somewhat, you know,related to the topic of today's
(05:11):
podcast episode, which is themyth of the portable business.
And this is somebody in my rolewho, you know, worked on helping
to evaluate the candidates thatwere coming into the firm that I
was working at. The first thingon everybody's lips was portable
(05:34):
business. And, you know, alwaysturning to that end of the end
of the LPQ, again, somethingthat we talked about before, to
look at, look at at those, thosenumbers. And as rosy as those
numbers always looked, thereality was often not quite as
(05:55):
rosy and had implications forthe firm. So you know, Steve,
talk about, right? But let's goin. Let's go, let's go into
levels of detail here. But talkabout the the myth, and why it's
a myth of portable business,
Steve (06:10):
right? Well, um, first of all, I wanted, I'd like to point
out that in any other industry,any other you know, company
recruiting for major positionsin corporate America, you know,
you, they don't ask these kindsof questions. In other words,
(06:32):
you're hiring a CFO. They're notgoing to ask them, okay? I want
to see your balance sheets foryour companies the last four
years and tell me where you are,where you save money, right? So
this is unique among the legalindustry, maybe other
professional services, certainlybig for consulting. There is
some of that as well. But sothat's the starting point.
(06:55):
Second thing is, you're right.
It's, it's a preoccupation, andit's, and there's, it's a myth,
really, on both sides. Numberone is, as you know, very you
know, the percentage of ofbusiness that actually comes in
based on what is, what isprojected, is usually somewhere
(07:17):
in the 50 to 60% range as anaverage. So it's not reliable
number one and number two, it'sit's a misleading, misleading
statistic based on what reallythe law firm is looking for. Law
Firm is, in most cases, you'retrying to you're trying to
(07:39):
recruit talent, people who willbe your leaders in the future,
people who will developpractices, people will be the go
to lawyers for either firmclients or new clients. What
they did last year or what theydid two years ago, it's only
part of the story, and it'sprobably a pretty small part of
the story, because five yearsdown the line, even in the best
(08:01):
cases, most of those clientswill not be there. They'll get
acquired new leadership, newgeneral counsels. And so you're
looking at this small snapshotand making judgment calls about
how what that means to the valueof the individual, and just
jumping off one more point onthis is what we see often, is
(08:22):
that the values that the firmhas, oh, that in most firms that
they, that they advocate, thevalues that they want, are the
ability to not just bring inbusiness, but to be able to be a
resource, if you're the, Ifyou're the, you know, the go to
person for ERISA, for example,you you, they want you to be
(08:46):
able to be available for theirkey clients. Plus, if you're,
you know, if you're a greatcorporate lawyer, they want you
to actually send work to otherlawyers in the firm, maybe to
other people who have expertise,and so forth. And so for many of
the people who are at otherfirms, their their originations,
(09:09):
or their value to their currentfirm, it doesn't translate to a
portable number that's anywhereclose to that. And so all this,
you've got a person who'sincredibly valuable to their
firm and is making theircompensation is based on that
value, which is based on theactual metrics that the firms
use, which relates to managingwork and relates to doing the
(09:33):
work. It relates tooriginations. Originations does
not always mean portable. And soyou're you've got this number
that's just like, totally offkilter. And invariably, I think
first tend to be soconservative, they'll go with
the person with the mostreliable portables. And in many
cases, that's somebody whodoesn't share. Is the IS THE.
(09:57):
Called lone wolf. That's theeasiest thing, you know that the
business is coming, or at leastyou think it's coming, and that
person comes over, and they stayfor a few years, and then they
find out, you know, they getanother offer to go somewhere
else for more money, and they'llleave, and they don't give you
any value,
Unknown (10:17):
yeah. And, and in in their wake, they may have left
some, you know, some, somedestruction behind. I mean, the
cultural damage that can be doneto a firm by, you know, a lone
wolf who decides it's time toeat all the sheep. Is, is, you
know, is, is can be significant.
And you know the other thing.
(10:39):
And you know in conversationswith with in house counsel. They
don't believe themselves to beat quite as portable as the
partners who are saying they'reportable are. You know, they may
be very supportive of a partnermoving from Firm A to firm B for
(10:59):
any number of reasons, but ifyou haven't had that
conversation, lateral partnerwith your with your client, your
good client, who you're countingon coming over, about sort of
what you're planning on doing,don't expect that to be portable
business. And I, you know, and Inever, in the time that I was
working on this stuff, I neverheard an inquiry toward the
(11:22):
lateral partner, asking themwhether they had spent any time
with these key clients talkingabout the move. Now, sometimes
they volunteered it, which isgreat, but it wasn't an inquiry.
There wasn't, you know, wasn'ton the LPQ, right? Well,
Steve (11:38):
there is, there is an ethical question that
complicates that issue. Andthere is even a difference of
opinion among legal ethicsexperts on this. I have heard, I
mean, I've heard two differentsort of viewpoints. One is the
sort of strict viewpoint, whichis, you're not allowed, since
(12:00):
you're not allowed to solicitclients, that's clear, right,
yep, but that has beeninterpreted by many as you're
not even allowed to ask themabout to go to a client said,
you know, I'm thinking of makinga move. I'm thinking of going to
x firm. You know, what's yourthoughts? That is not directly
(12:21):
solicitation, certainly, butsort of hints at it, sure. But
some people, some some lawyers,view that as remote. Yeah, there
are other lawyers who believe,not only is that permissible,
but that, since it is a an eventthat is has implications for the
client, that you actually owethe client, the the
(12:44):
responsibility to actually tellthem what your plans are. And so
there's, it's very unclear. Ithink that generally, I think
because lawyers are risk averse,they tend not to do that, they
feel like, well, if I do that, Imight be, you know, I might be
(13:04):
charged with ethical issues. Butof course, it may also be that
they're not really sure that theclient's going to come, right?
So it's kind of a combination offactors. I would say that most
of the time, in my experience,most of the time, I think that
the lawyers who are, you know,making a move are are pretty
(13:28):
much they believe that theclients will come, that it isn't
as if they're trying tomisrepresent anything. It's more
that they don't reallyunderstand all what's going on.
They don't understand all thedifferent relationships that a
client has with a firm. Theydon't understand you know that
it's not just one lawyer in thegeneral counsel's office that
(13:51):
that that makes a decision, butit's many, and there may have
different relationships, and sotherefore, moving that client is
not as easy as the partnerthinks it would be. And that's
where a lot of times, that'swhere they you know, the
disconnect comes what,
Unknown (14:11):
what we would try to do, and I knocked on tails out
of school, because I don't thinkthis is, this is, you know,
particularly insightful, butwhat we would try to do is
determine level of stickinessfor a for a client to their, to
their, if a partner is comingfrom Firm A, clearly, there's
been work that's been done byFirm A what's the level of
(14:34):
stickiness to firm A for thatclient, regardless of what this
lateral partner is Saying theycan bring over. And so there's
ways to look at relationshipsthat this, that this particular
client has within that firm andand in not necessarily specific
lawyers, but tranches of work.
So you know, if there, if it's alitigation client, but. They're
(14:57):
also, you know, they're alsoworking with them on labor and
employment. They're also workingwith them on sec. They're also
working with them on regulatoryissues, all of which you can,
you can, if you do enoughdigging around, you can find out
if they've got a lot of if thatfirm has a lot of hooks in that
client, no matter how great thatrelationship is. Dislodging them
(15:21):
may just be literallyimpossible, that because you
can't, you just can't pick upand move 10 years of SEC,
representation, enforcement,representation, over to another
firm. It's not. It doesn't, itdoesn't move that well. So that,
to me, was always a questionabout the level of stickiness
that there was with the with theclients. So what do you think
(15:45):
the mix of of considerationsshould be understanding that
that you know, book is alwaysgoing to be part of it, but sort
of as you think about about thebasket of considerations, how
to, how do, how do youapportion? Maybe you don't
(16:05):
apportion, but how do you lookat that?
Steve (16:10):
Well, I, I definitely agree that this idea of looking
at the at the actual client, andthe other relationships within
the firm, and the history ofthat lawyer and so forth. I
think firms don't, firms don'tpursue those questions as
(16:30):
aggressively as they could. Ithink that my view is that
practicality wise, a partnerneeds to ensure that in their
first year going to a new firm,they're going to keep, at least
keep themselves mostly busyotherwise. And of course, it
(16:51):
depends on the role a personplays and so forth. You know, if
you have a lot of work thatyou're actually projecting to go
to the new lawyer, that's alittle different. But generally,
I think you've got to, I thinkthe firms have to, you know, it
makes sense for them to beassured that this person's going
to keep busy, because you're notbusy. It's a real problem for a
lot of reasons. So I thinkthat's number one. I think it's
(17:12):
where it really falls down is onthe compensation side, because a
good of many of these reallystrong laterals. And they were
usually very honest with us whenthey they'll tell us, well, you
know, I'm doing this. I mean,you know, this is my
originations, but I can onlytake so much with me. I be if
(17:33):
I'm a firm, I'm going to lookmore into Okay, where are these
originations? What is theoriginalization? Where is the
business coming from, whodeveloped the business? Right?
How much you know, how muchcross selling is being done?
How, what kind of citizen,corporate citizen, is this
lawyer within the firm? And Ithink, and it's a tricky
situation for a firm,particularly in an Oh, very open
(17:56):
compensation system. But, Imean, I think a firm has to pay
what the, you know, the marketrate for these attorneys, and
the market rate is the firstthing to look at is, what are
they being paid? Now, right? Ifa firm is valuing that and the
and the metric supported to go,you know, you're going to have
(18:19):
to go to your partnership andsay, I know that the portables
look like this, but three yearsdown the road, this person could
be a tremendous contributor tothe firm. And of course, all the
laterals know that if they don'tproduce within a couple of
years, certainly with two orthree, that'll have an impact on
(18:40):
their compensation. Butcompensation is often a barrier.
I mean, we've run into that youhave two different candidates
right now. We've run into thatwhere the you know, the person
has a leadership role in a firmis is responsible, not just for
his or her his own work, but isalso helping recruit people. Is
(19:03):
helping develop the work,helping the cross selling of the
work that goes to other peopleand and, you know, the first,
just the immediate reaction is,what's the book of business? We
can't afford, you know, we can'tafford to pay, pay this person
more than half of what is socalled portable. And I just
think you're missing the boat onthat if you're really looking,
(19:26):
if you're really looking todevelop your talent, you've got
to start looking at things alittle
Unknown (19:34):
differently. Yeah, yeah, I agree. And I think that,
you know, one of the levels ofinquiry that I rarely would see,
and I would always try to delveinto this a little bit is, what
are they doing to develop thebusiness that they are saying
that they have, like, how didthat business come in? Tell me
the story of how that businesscame in. Because what you also
(19:56):
want to know is, you know, didthey grow it into. Institutional
relationship, or did they growrelationship from a green shoot
and and the the the businessdevelopment acumen and the
business development disciplinethat a that a partner, a lateral
(20:17):
partner, can bring in, I thinkhas to be part of the
consideration, you know,building building, a book of
business, is not just luck, butat the same time, you know, is,
does this person follow abusiness development pattern and
route that is that they canduplicate here at our firm, or
(20:38):
that is acceptable within ourfirm? That's a big question. And
you'll find out a lot about acandidate, if you if you find
out how they develop their bookof business. And you're also
going to find out about some ofthose cultural intangibilities
That we, we know are soimportant, but are hard to hard,
to hard to surface in lpqs. Andyou know the 3535 partner
(21:02):
interviews, where the partnersare spending half their time on
the email and half their timetalking to the candidate, you
know, and then they they send inthe summary of the of the
interview, saying, yeah, heseemed nice. I liked him,
Steve (21:16):
right? Exactly. Yeah. No, I think it's absolutely right,
the approach that you've laidout. And I would add that a good
business plan should be, shouldbe required for just about any
any lateral. I want to see whatthe practice description is
like, the way they describetheir practice, and what, you
(21:37):
know, what they what theynormally do to to develop
clients of what they plan to do,go into all of the different
things, relating to socialmedia, relating to, you know,
being out there, speaking andwriting and just going to visit
clients, etc, and organizationsthat you're members of. So I
(22:01):
think that's important. And tobe honest, most firms just never
do it. They never ask for them.
I think most, most of thecandidates, if they're serious
about a firm, they'll do it.
They'll do it because they maybe doing it themselves. Anything
Unknown (22:15):
that's exactly right, that's exactly right. And if
they're not doing it, thatshould be a question. That's a
question too. The two thingsabout I'll add about, about my
from my perspective, about howlateral partner needs to come
into a firm. One is when you'recoming in to the firm and you're
(22:39):
about to get that engagementletter strong. I strongly
recommend that if you know thatyou need $50,000 to do your BD
in the course of a year, getthat put into the engagement
letter. I can't tell you howmany times I saw the standard
operating procedure. You know,engagement letter with no, sort
(23:02):
of nothing in there, in therewith a signature on it that,
yeah, we're gonna, we're gonnacommit $30,000 to you for
business development in thefirst year. Do that get it done?
I've seen a few partners who didit, and it really helps. And the
other thing I would say to thefirms out there is, and this is
(23:22):
coming from me, trying to managebudgets. Build a build a build a
contingency budget that's justfor lateral partner marketing
purposes. So if you have apractice, and they've put in
their their your yearly annualpractice budget, and they're
(23:47):
going to start to do someserious lateral recruiting, or
there's a serious lateralrecruitment opportunity, and
that person comes in and it canjust knock your budget out of
the water. Now you can try to goback to the firm and say, Boy,
we need to expand the budget formy, for my department, but
that's hard, that's, that'sportion of rock up a steep hill,
(24:08):
if, if you're, if you're able tosay to, and I was in charge of
that budget, that was in mybudget as a Cmo, they could the,
practice head could come to meand say, Yeah, so I know we said
it was going to be $100,000budget this year. This new
(24:28):
person is coming in. They need$20,000 to get out of the box.
Do we have another 20,000 in thebudget? And I would be able to
go into this fund, and as longas I could tag it to to a to a
specific lateral I didn't haveto go through all the mountains
of oks and reviews to get that,to get that cleared. Now, that
(24:52):
requires management to trust youas a CMO and management, there's
a lot of trust involved in that,but it can really. Can really
keep things moving along sopeople don't get caught, you
know, just stuck in the mudtrying to get some money for for
their, their their businessdevelopment, and they're going
to have higher businessdevelopment expenses in year one
and year two than they'll havein year three. It's just how
(25:13):
it's going to be that they'rejust, they're just going to have
Steve (25:17):
to be spending it. Yeah, at a related point is, I think
we're, we're seeing morecandidates indicate that a
reason for their looking at newopportunities, or reason for
leaving their firm, is that theydon't feel they're getting the
business development support attheir current firm. And
(25:38):
sometimes, sometimes that can beyou, if you've got a really good
program that's running thatcould actually help you land the
lateral. And so part of that isto find out what they're, how
they're how they're using thebusiness development staff.
That's right. I mean, if, Imean, if you're getting, if you
get an answer that says, Well, Ireally don't use them at all
(26:00):
because I have like,relationships. That's a little
bit of a red flag, right? You'renot really, you're not really
doing it. Now you might get theanswer that you said, I'm trying
to use the business developmentstaff, but there's doesn't seem
like they're they'reparticularly supportive of my
practice. But that could be agood reason, because maybe,
maybe your environmentalpractice is not favored
(26:23):
currently at your at your firm,and therefore you support so I
think that's a good line ofinquiry for the firms, as well
as as for the candidates, totalk about what the business
development support is. BecauseI tell you, I I've talked to
some laterals after they'vegotten to their firm, and the
and the thing they they swearthat the business development
(26:45):
support they've got has made ahuge difference.
Unknown (26:49):
Yeah, and we would hear that regularly too. We'd get
laterals coming in, and afterthe first six months, and said,
Oh my gosh, I can't believe thelevel of support I can get here.
And to me, it was just, this ishow we do our business. Is that
we got to know what you do. Wegot to know why you're doing it
and how we can help you. Andthat's another, you know, that's
(27:10):
another. The the firms don'tseem to be planning for the
planning integration part of ofthis out. They're kind of like,
they get them in, and then it's,then it's sort of like, okay,
go, go play with the puppies.
And doesn't always work thatway. I mean, there's, there has
to be some integration plan. AndI will say, my former firm, they
(27:30):
got around to the point wherethey had, they had developed a
pretty, pretty, pretty decentintegration plan that helped,
you know, keep people, keeppeople from get, especially
during the pandemic, fromgetting too isolated. You know,
so well. What else do you wantto cover with this? Steve, and
(27:52):
we've got, this is a, this is awide ranging area, and I think
that, I think that there's athere's a lot of ways that that
firms can be evaluating that getoutside of the portables. But
where else do you think we needto we need to be touching on
here, right?
Steve (28:12):
I really think it really relates to how, how they have
developed their clients, what'sbeen their strategy, what's
their approach? Part of it is, Ithink that many lawyers that
they were not trained inbusiness development in law
school, right? That was not acourse, and so a lot of them are
(28:38):
need, need the sort of blockingand tackling help and so
sometimes you can see, I think,in the process, you might be
able to see that this person hasgot some skill set, maybe has a
little bit of developmental youknow, has shown Some some
(28:58):
increases and some some growthpatterns. But is, you know, is
just needs, needs to be trained,needs to be coached. Um, so I
think that if you see thatsometimes something that might
look like a negative, becausethey don't, they don't really
know, can turn into a positive,because you can, you can see, we
(29:20):
can, you know, we can hire thisperson. We're just going to have
to invest in the time and effortand money to to make him or her
successful, yeah. And so I thinkthat's part of the the equation
is to take a look, really a 360degree look. I mean, part of it
is also just straight, sort ofpersonality assessment. I want
(29:43):
to get into assessment testingright now, but that's come. You
know, it's becoming a morepopular strategy for firms. But
to evaluate, you know, how thisperson seems to to share, share
business, because in the end,you. Uh, being a good colleague
is 50% of the is certainly 50%of the equation.
Unknown (30:07):
And and you know, there are, and there are some
methodologies, and we could talkabout this at a different point,
but there are methodologies forevaluating the the the relative
business development strength,or strengths, I should say, of a
of a particular individual orcandidate. And there's, there's
organizations out there thatcan, that can help you with
(30:29):
this, this testing, and we didsome of that testing, and it was
really interesting, because whatit really comes down to is that
there's a continuum of businessdone. There's a business
development continuum, andeverybody can fit into one or
more of the points on thecontinuum. So it's not, you
know, just just, just going outand getting new business is not
(30:49):
is only one part of thecontinuum. There's, there's
different points in thecontinuum. And if you're really
thinking strategically, andthere's some firms out there
that do this very, very well,thinking strategically about
what they need, what wherethey're where, when they look at
that continuum, what do theyneed, that helps them make some
(31:10):
really strategic decisions,about laterals, about promoting
people into partner, about whereto put their resources. And I,
you know, to those, to thosemanaging partners out there who
might be listening, I stronglysuggest that you, you invest in
(31:30):
some understanding of how toassess business development
strengths, because there are,there there's, there's ways to
do it, And they're darnedaccurate, from what? From my
perspective, and it really helpsmake, really helps make some
decisions surface faster and getyou to a decision point quicker.
Steve (31:54):
Yeah, I'd also say, of course, a lot of this depends on
the role that you're expecting,the lateral play at your firm,
correct? So, if you're, ifyou're in a succession situation
where you've got a retiringpartner, you're bringing in
someone. There's probably enoughbusiness on the table that you
(32:15):
don't have to worry so muchabout what's portable, right?
Then the, then the, the reallyinquiry goes to, you know, how
does this person deal withclients? So in that situation,
you want to see evidence of,tell me some clients that have
come to your firm you've beenassigned the management of
(32:37):
particular responsibilities, andtell us whether there's been
more business that that has beendeveloped because of your skill
set and abilities.
Unknown (32:47):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, Steve, I think the clock on the
wall is telling us that we'rewe're getting a little bit close
on time here we like to keepthese things at 2025, minutes.
Any other closing thoughts, youwant to make sure that we're
aware of and make sure that wewere factoring into this, this,
(33:08):
this is a, been a pretty richdiscussion, especially for those
people who are trying toevaluate candidates. Yeah, we
could. We
Steve (33:15):
could probably go for an hour on this more, but sure, I
think we've hit most of the highpoints, and we'd be, I'd be
interested in hearing frompeople out there about their
thoughts, you know what, whattheir you know, what their views
are. Certainly interested inhaving a dialog and and also,
just remember that if you wantany of our reports, our lateral
(33:38):
reports for either Texas or DC,or anything else that we're
doing right now. Please, youknow, send us a note
Unknown (33:49):
and well, well, you know, Steve's talking about
Texas and DC. I know McCormickgroup is, is, you know, coast to
coast, and have gathered a lotof information. Steve and I have
had conversations the past abouta whole variety of jurisdictions
around the around the country,and there's, you know, that's
his heat, Steve and his teamreally keep an eye on what's
(34:11):
going on across the across thehorizon. So Well, Steve, thank
you as always, a pleasure and anhonor, and we will come back
with episode five at some pointor another. It'll be, we'll
have, we'll say goodbye to thesummer and hello to hopefully
(34:31):
some decent fall weather, atleast here in in Dallas, Texas,
it is just been brutal. Yeah.
Steve (34:39):
All right. Thank you again, Murray, take care. Good
as always. You.
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