The pyramid within law firms, particularly the top 20 law firms, gets very extreme at the top. So everybody starts on sort of decent-ish money out of university and then they become more specialized and they work their way up. And some of them have partners as mentors, some of them have senior associates as mentors, but it’s a complicated life, that they don’t understand that just being a good lawyer sometimes isn’t good enough. You need some patronage as well. And when they get to senior associate, this is probably in their mid-30s, early 30s, depending on how good they are, they’ve probably spent 10 years lawyering. Their spouse has probably been raising the kids single-handedly for 10 years, and the kind of deal is, “You look after that part of our life, I’ll look after this part of our life and in 10 years my salary will go up six-fold, seven-fold, eight-fold immediately.” And in another 10 years, it’ll be in the one-point what million, and you’ve proper money.
But if you fail in that partner selection panel, you probably get another chance next year. And there’s maybe four or five of your friends in the final, your former friends. And then they choose two. And the other three of you, you’ll have another go next year. And after that, you’re pretty much toast with that company. Now you have to go to an American company who makes you work even harder and longer hours. You have to go somewhere else. And you then you have to tell them why you didn’t make partner. It’s a big, big deal for lawyers to get right. The price for success or the cost of failure is a big tangible, immediate result.