Podcast Ep. 1: Why Do You Want To Be A Partner?
Welcome to The Pathway to Partnership Podcast, where we talk about what it really takes to succeed as a woman lawyer in a law firm.
I’m Cecilia Poullain — a former finance lawyer who now helps women lawyers make it to partnership, with the tools and insights I’ve developed in my Pathway to Partnership programme. In this podcast, you’ll get clarity on whether partnership is truly what you want, you will build your confidence and you will master client development in a way that feels sustainable.
Let’s get you walking into the office every morning clear on why you’re aiming for partnership, free of imposter syndrome and confident in your ability to bring in clients — without burning out.
Let’s dive in!
Simon Sinek famously says: “Start with Why”, so that’s exactly where we’re going to start.
With the “why” of partnership.
For many women lawyers, partnership is the ultimate goal — the reason for all those lunches at your desk, late nights and weekends at the office. Becoming a partner in a law firm, especially in the big international firms, can look incredibly glamorous from the outside. You have the money, the public recognition, the status. But it can also involve incredible sacrifices. It can be really tough. And the million dollar question is… is it all worth it? How can you know if partnership is for you before you put in all the hard work?
In this episode, you’ll be learning:
1 Why it’s so important to ask yourself “why” before you get on the partnership track
2 What partnership really involves
3 What questions you can ask yourself in order to get clear on your “why”.
Personal Story
But before we get into it, and because this is the first episode and we don't know each yet, I’d like to share a little of my own story.
At school, I loved English and the humanities but I hated science. In Australia, good students did either medicine or law. So for me, law seemed an obvious choice. In addition, my father was a lawyer - he was a partner at Minter Ellison, one of the big Australian law firms - and I really admired my father - he was my role model for so many years. For such a long time, I believed that partnership in a law firm was the be-all and end-all.
When I arrived in France in 1996, I found a job in the legal department of a bank and left the world of the law firm. But I dreamed of going back, so I passed the French bar exams and got a job at an American law firm in Paris.
And I hated it. I didn’t fit and it didn’t fit me. When I asked myself why I was putting myself through that and why I wanted to be a partner, it turned out that I was basing myself on who my father was rather than on who I was. And I was putting an enormous amount of pressure on myself to be perfect.
Eventually, I realised what I really wanted was to support women lawyers. At first, I hesitated — should I work with women who were leaving the law, or women aiming for partnership? I chose partnership, because I wanted to help women who stay in firms influence the culture from the inside and to make law firms better places for women - and in fact, everyone - to work.
And it turned out to be perfect for me. I love what I do now — working with women who want to thrive in law and helping them ask the right questions before they step onto the partnership track.
I often talk to women who become partners simply because it’s the next logical step, or because it’s what their families or societies expect of them, or because the income and status is incredibly attractive — without thinking about what they want. And then they feel trapped, under enormous pressure to bring in enough client work or doing all the different tasks involved running a business when in fact all they were interested in was the legal work. That is so incredibly sad. Lawyers are amazingly talented people - what a waste of their talent if they weren’t meant to be lawyers in the first place.
One of the biggest problems I see is that lawyers don’t fully understand all that becoming a partner involves. All those things that nobody teaches you as a lawyer.
Because as a partner, you are first and foremost a business owner. That has a huge impact on how you spend your time. As a partner, you need to:
Manage a team.
Recruit and develop talent.
Bring in new business, which involves positioning yourself and your team, marketing and selling.
Handle difficult conversations and conflicts, both inside the firm and with clients.
Stay on top of the firm’s finances.
Make decisions about the future of the firm.
Becoming a partner in a law firm is a fascinating, challenging role — but it’s not for everyone.
Some of the women I work with are absolutely focussed on partnership - there isn’t a shadow of doubt in their mind that that is where they are going. They don’t even mention it. And others aren’t so sure.
So - how do you know? If you’ve worked as a lawyer all your life, it can feel terrifying to even imagine doing something else altogether. The thought of losing the status and income that goes with being a lawyer can feel as though you are losing yourself. How can you know that you want to do something different if you’ve never done it?
In addition, many, many women lawyers are so used to doing what is expected of them by their families or by society, or doing what they think is expected of them, that they no longer know what they want. They live their lives second-guessing what other people think they should be doing. They have completely lost touch with themselves.
In my experience, many lawyers have spent so much time developing their left-hand brain skills, their rational, factual brain skills, that they are not very in touch with their feelings. When I ask my clients “how are you feeling right now?”, many of them tell me what they are thinking. They simply don’t know what they are feeling any more.
But when you are working out how you want to spend your life, those feelings are critical information about what we need and what will make us happy.
So, before you get onto the partnership track and spend all that time and energy in reaching for that goal, you need to ask yourself questions like:
What do I love about the law?
What do I hate about it?
What activities give me energy, both inside and outside work?
What do I really love doing?
What drains or exhausts me?
What gets me into “the zone”, where time seems to disappear?
And finally, when I look at all the tasks required of partner, do I actually want to do them? Do I want to be a business owner as well as a lawyer?
If you discover, as you work through those questions, that you love the law, you love being a lawyer, you’re ready for all the entrepreneurial challenges that partnership brings, then go for it! Congratulations! Leaving any residual doubts behind will release a ton of energy and help you achieve on the goal. You have an incredibly fulfilling, interesting life ahead of you, working with intelligent people, full of challenges and opportunities.
And if you discover that you don’t, then that’s OK. You don’t have to resign this second, and you probably shouldn’t. But at least you know that maybe, at some stage, you want to explore a different path.
Closing
So, just to recap, we’ve looked at:
1 Why it’s so important to ask yourself “why” before you get onto the partnership track
2 That partnership involves so much more than just being a good lawyer - and not everyone is cut out for that or wants to do it
3 That your feelings are vital information about whether partnership lights you up or whether your incredible, unique talents would be better off elsewhere.
Outro
Thank you so much for joining me on The Pathway to Partnership Podcast. I really appreciate it. I hope that today’s episode gave you greater clarity and confidence on your own pathway to partnership.
If you’ve enjoyed this conversation, please subscribe, share it with a colleague who might find it useful, and leave a review — let’s help more women make it to partnership and thrive when they get there.
And if you want to go deeper, head to www.ceciliapoullain.com where you’ll find resources and ways we can work together.
Until next time, remember: you don’t have to do this alone, and you get to define success as a woman lawyer on your own terms.
See you next time.