I often think back to a night we spent walking through Paris. We were there to broker a deal selling a large portion of his business. As we walked, I commented on how well the negotiations seemed to be going. Eddie stopped me and remarked, “Don’t judge a man by the promises he makes, but by the footsteps he leaves.”
He was right. The other side of that deal made promises they never kept—and in hindsight, I doubt they ever intended to.
At the time, even though Eddie made hundreds of millions in the sale, it felt to me like he was selling too soon. His profits were rising, and the reputation of his products was growing consistently. I asked him why he wanted to exit now. In a classic Eddie Phillips philosophical response, he answered, “Doug, once you get to a point where you feel in your heart that you’re not adding value to an enterprise when others could do better, you need to leave.”
I took that to heart, and it is a lesson that applies to anyone: when you know your heart is no longer in the daily grind, you must let go, change the model, or move on.
In the years since that walk in Paris, I have come to appreciate that adding value is a two-way street. I added immense value to the firm throughout the years I actively practiced law. But heeding Eddie’s words, I realized in late 2017 that others—many of whom I had mentored—could now add more value to the daily practice than I could. Moving on to new ventures before my contributions ebbed was the right thing to do. I could have stayed and done fine for myself, but Eddie would have asked me, “Is that what’s best for the enterprise?” The answer was a clear no.
Instead, I believed my next opportunity lay in adding value to the firm differently. That was the core of my 2021, 2022, and 2023 proposals. I outlined a framework to contribute through mentoring, marketing, rainmaking, and charting a path for other senior partners facing retirement but struggling to embrace it.
For that model to work, however, the firm needed to share that vision. While leadership recognized the value of my continued contributions, they never addressed the details of my proposals, nor were they willing to discuss a multi-year agreement. Instead, they reverted to a traditional metric, pinning my primary value to a goal for billable hours.
While that hour requirement was modest, it proved to be an artificial fit. As I noted in my 2022 proposal, my billable hours dropped precisely because I had successfully transitioned virtually all of my clients to younger attorneys with the intentional goal of stepping back. I purposely diminished the demands on my time so others could lead. My role in providing direct legal advice became increasingly limited. Furthermore, my high billing rate caused clients to balk—though I doubt I would have billed significantly more even at a lower rate.
In a successful transition plan, billable hours are a flawed metric for leadership and legacy; they are not a true measure of adding value. The proper measure is whether I added value in alternative, strategic ways that justified my compensation.
I believe, without question, that I did.