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What If Your Attorney Got Down in the Trenches with the Staff for a Week?

By Lynne DeVenny

Mark A. Cohen, attorney and editor-in-chief of Minnesota Lawyer, poses an interesting hypothetical in this week's commentary for Finance & Commerce, "What if your boss spent a week back on the bottom rung?" After viewing the first episode of "Undercover Boss," the latest reality offering from CBS, Cohen wonders what would happen if a managing partner tried to sneak in among the rank and file.

In any case, the show got me wondering what would happen if we could apply the ?Undercover Boss? concept to local law firms. It would, of course, never work in real life because even the biggest firms are small enough where the managing partner would be recognized by the rank and file. But what if it could be done?

Can you imagine the managing partner of a big, buttoned-down firm taking on the role of an anonymous entry-level associate? A paralegal? A legal secretary?

What would the managing partner learn about how these people are treated within the culture of the firm?

I?d tune in to see that.

I'd tune in to see that, too. What do you think the managing partner would learn?

And more important, even if you recognized the managing partner posing as the mail room clerk, would you share half of your peanut butter and jelly sandwich with him in the lunch room?

Source: Finance & Commerce

Full post as published by Practical Paralegalism on February 15, 2010 (boomark / email).