Shannon Montgomery is a lawyer I know who handles contracts, trademarks, and other legal issues for clients such as social media influencers. We were both presenting at a CLE conference (right before COVID-19), and we got to talking about her training for an upcoming bodybuilding competition. I said something about how hard it would be for me to stick to the kind of strict nutrition plan bodybuilders have to follow. 

I don’t remember her exact words, but her response stuck with me. She said something to the effect of, “it’s no different from the things you do as a lawyer that require discipline, you just have to decide to do it.” 

You just have to decide to do it. I thought it was great advice. So true, so simple, yet so difficult. 

Fast forward a few months, and I found out not only did Shannon enter the competition, she won it. I knew I would have to get her lessons from that experience into a blog post.

I envisioned it as sort of a companion to my post 7 Things Physical Fitness Teaches You About Professional Success. But that post was about physical fitness for ordinary people, like me. I was curious what lessons could be drawn from someone who competes at an elite level.

So here’s my interview with Shannon. 

Why don’t you start with telling us a little bit about your law practice?

I do intellectual property and some transactional business work, but it’s mostly contract drafting and review, trademark, and copyright. Most of my clients are fitness entrepreneurs or fitness influencers. And I’m getting into sort of the supplement space as well and doing some work in that arena. I do have clients who are not fitness related, but the majority of my clients are somehow connected to the fitness industry.

How did you end up with these clients in the fitness-related industry?

It all started on Instagram. I had a personal Instagram, @liftinglawyer, which I started back in law school, and I used it to post fitness-related content. And then I started getting legal questions from influencers and different people that I was following. They would pop into my DMs or comment on something and ask me some sort of legal question.

I realized that there are a lot of influencers out there who are business owners or who want to start businesses or who just make a lot of money on the Internet, and they didn’t have any legal help. So I thought, you know what, I’m going to go ahead and be the person to help these people out. In law school I spent a lot of time in the sports world. I worked with a lot of sports agents, and it’s kind of the same thing.

What I do now is obviously a little bit more. I help them with their businesses more than I would for an athlete, but a lot of the contract principles and IP issues are the same for influencers as for athletes. I thought maybe I’m a good fit for this because it’s what I wanted to do in first place.

Before you were a lawyer, were you a weightlifter?

Yeah. I started working out when I was very young. My dad took me to the gym when I was in high school at 15, maybe 16. I don’t know if I could drive.

My older sister was really into lifting. She did powerlifting at the high school. She was very athletic. I was always a gymnast and a cheerleader, so I was athletic, but not quite like her. She was working out with my dad, and I went and I just got became obsessed.

So I have been lifting and working out in some capacity since I was in high school, and I just never stopped. When I got to college, I would skip class to go to the gym. I would plan my day around going to the gym.

Were you able to continue a disciplined weightlifting schedule in law school or was that difficult?

Law school was the first time in my life when I couldn’t skip class to go to the gym, because you had to go to class. But I definitely made sure that I planned all of my classes around my ability to get to the gym.

I prioritize the gym. I always have. So you know how they say if you if you really want something and you don’t have time for it, make time. That’s always been the case. It was never a matter of, oh, I don’t have time for this today. It was what else can I take off my plate? Because I have to be able to get to the gym and keep that structure, because it really keeps me sane and focused and allows me to be productive in the rest of my life.

I was going to joke and say, well, it sounds like you had your priorities straight in law school, but it sounds like having that sort of regular schedule helped you with your school.

Yeah, absolutely. I’m one of those people that if I’m not crazy busy and I’m not productive at all, so I need to have structure. I need to have my time blocked out. So I was in the gym every day by 7:00 a.m., typically because I love to work out in the morning or if class didn’t allow, then it was right after class. There was always a slot for the workout because it keeps me focused.

This may be a dumb question, but what’s the difference between weightlifting and bodybuilding?

There’s a lot of different ways to lift weights, so it depends on the context.

When you see people doing clean and jerks, or snatches, which are the two Olympic lifts, that’s technically called weightlifting. Bodybuilding is you lift weights, you can power lift, you can do whatever in order to build your muscle, build your body so you can get on stage in a very small outfit and be judged for how well you build muscle and lean down.

Weightlifting takes a lot of skill. And if you’re competing in weightlifting, you’re obviously a very good athlete.

Bodybuilding is one of those things that takes extreme dedication and discipline. But you don’t really have to be an athlete. You just have to you have to get to the gym and be very disciplined.

How did you make the transition from just the weightlifting to lifting weights for bodybuilding?

I would get questions a lot in the gym. People would be like, what are you training for? Are you a bodybuilder? Do you do physique sports? Are you a Cross-fitter, all that stuff.

When I was in law school, actually, was my first sort of exposure to bodybuilding. I had always thought about it, as the Arnold Schwarzeneggers of the world, and I did not think women competed, or if they did, they looked like a female version of Arnold Schwarzenegger, and I was not interested in that.

But then Instagram, social media in general, but mostly Instagram shed light on these other divisions. There is the Bikini division and the Figure division, which are for women and it’s not this extreme, you’re not huge. It’s really meant to be more someone who’s generally into health and fitness, and it’s a place for you to compete and showcase that.

So when people started asking me, I started looking into it and it just looked like something that was right up my alley. One thing led to another, and here we are six years later, and I’ve done four seasons and 12 shows at this point.

Wow, that’s a lot of shows. Tell us about the most recent competition that you did.

Yeah, so I did the NPC [National Physique Committee] Oklahoma Championship. NPC is the governing body. The NPC is what leads into the IFBB [International Federation of Bodybuilding and Fitness], which is for pro bodybuilders. You can go pro, and you can earn money, although not many of them earn a lot of money.

It was the second show this year to go on because of COVID everything that we had originally planned to do. I started dieting in January, and then every show I was supposed to compete in early May that got canceled. And then I picked another one, and that got canceled.

So it was just like a domino, everything just kept falling. But I got lucky. And this show in Oklahoma was like, are we going to go on? We’re going to take precautions. They limited the amount of people that signed up, a lot of people that could come and I went. It was my first show actually. For years I haven’t competed since 2016.

And I did the Bikini Division, which was actually the two years prior competing I’ve done Figure. So I was kind of going back down into Bikini so I wasn’t used to the posing or just that division in general and very, very nervous. But I went and it was a great show, it was really well run. Everybody was super nice.

There were thirteen girls in my height class. I won my height class, and then I won the overall, which means I beat out all the other girls and all the other height classes too. And it turned out really well. I was not expecting that at all, but I did well and I enjoyed it. So I’m really happy that I got to do it this year.

Congratulations. What was it that made you want to get back into competition after four years of not competing?

It just never feels done, or at least I don’t feel done. I knew the last time that I competed that I was going to take a nice long break, and I was just kind of waiting for the right time. In between I moved from Florida back to Texas, and so when I first got back to Texas, I thought maybe that would be the year and that just wasn’t right. And then last year, I moved to Houston.

Finally this year, January rolled around and I was like, I’m ready to diet and I’m ready to focus. If you’re not one 100% mentally ready to take it on, you should not even try, because it’s exhausting. It takes up a lot of mental space. It takes up a lot of your time. So, I was in a good place, both career-wise and everything else kind of fell into place. I was ready to give it another shot.

When you decided to enter this competition, was your mindset like, ok, I’ll do this competition and I’ll have fun with it and see how it goes? Or was it like, I’m going to do this competition and I’m going to win?

I didn’t necessarily think about winning, but in order to go pro, you have to get first or second place at a national show and there are only four or five national shows throughout the year. So I knew that I needed to get first or second so that I could get nationally qualified. Eventually I would like to compete at the national level and go for that pro card.

I do get on stage just because I love it, but I have been told that I stand a chance of winning a pro card in Bikini. So I was like, this is the year I’m actually going to go in there. I’m going to win first or second and get nationally qualified. That was the expectation. I kind of figured I would just get second, and I kept telling my coach that I wanted to do a really small show so that there would maybe only be like girls in my division and I could get second place, and then I could step on stage at Nationals.

I had no idea that I would take the overall by any stretch of the imagination, especially because I’m not used to Bikini and the posing is just totally different than what I’m used to. So I didn’t have huge expectations.

What was the planning process like?

I started planning way back in September of last year. As far as I knew, I wanted to start dieting in January for a May show. So I have a nice long diet phase so I could go slow instead of because crash dieting is not a good idea.

I started structuring my training around what I know they look for, so I changed up the way I was training a little bit. I kind of stepped back from powerlifting and focused a little more on so hypertrophy training for bodybuilding purposes to kind of grow certain muscles, and then certain muscles stop growing, because I have bigger arms and for Bikini you don’t need that.

The timeframe sounds pretty similar to my law practice where we’re getting ready for a trial, because you’re planning months out. And was there anything that you learned from that planning process that you can apply to professional life?

Absolutely. Fail to plan, plan to fail. Just like with me running my own practice. I don’t litigate, so I don’t have to worry about trial so much, but it’s the same idea with trademarks as they take six to eight months. You’re planning when you get to a client, you have to plan something out maybe even a year. You have to be able to see the big picture, while also seeing the little day-to-day picture, which is 100% what a bodybuilding prep is.

You wake up every single day and you have to take care of these many little tasks that all add up to your long-term goal of getting on stage, which could be a year away, it could be six months away. Until you look at the big larger picture and you can step back and look at things from a macro perspective, then it all adds up to one long bodybuilding prep.

Right. It reminds me a lot of really business development. And I know you have your own firm so I’m sure you know this, but so much so much of it is doing those little things, you know, every day or every week.

Yeah. And just being consistent in what you’re doing.

You mentioned your coach. How was your coach helpful to the process of getting ready for the competition?

I don’t think you can perform or get ready without having a coach. It’s really hard to be objective about the way you’re looking or how your training is going or your nutrition and all of that stuff for yourself. You need somebody who’s outside, looking in, controlling all of that.

Without a coach, I would just grind myself right into the ground almost instantly. I’d be like, we’re going to do one hundred hours of cardio, we’re going to train for three hours, we’re going to not eat anything. That’s not the way to do it.

So having a coach keeps me focused and it helps me stay out of my own head and out of my own way and really gives me the path that I have to follow. And I love structure. I mean, I’m a lawyer. I love it. And so really, somebody else gives me the plan and I can just follow along and makes it way less stressful to have a coach.

It sounds like your coach is not so much pushing you to do things but more like keeping you disciplined and not overdoing it.

Yeah, keeping me in line basically. I don’t struggle with the discipline part. I’m a very self-disciplined person, as I think most attorneys are, I would say, or else we probably wouldn’t have gone into this profession. So that part of it isn’t hard for me. But knowing when to push or knowing when to pull back, I kind of need help with because otherwise I’m just like push, push, push.

You mention self-discipline, which leads to a question about diet. That seems to me like maybe the hardest part of doing something like this. So what was your nutrition plan and your approach for that? How does one eat for a bodybuilding competition?

Well, it depends on who you ask. Obviously, nutrition is very personalized, but for me, I do what we call flexible dieting.

It’s been around for probably ten years now. So the typical old way of thinking was you had to eat fish and asparagus and chicken and flavorless things. And a certain amount of those things. And that was it. But with flexible dieting, you essentially get to eat whatever you want.

You have to track your macros, so your protein, carbs, and then within those macros I’m allowed to eat whatever I want. I typically eat very healthy anyway because you think of it like a bank account. If you eat a doughnut, for example, it’s going to eat up a huge chunk of your carbs and your fat for that day.

So I usually just eat healthy foods. I eat a lot of lean meats, a lot of vegetables. I do love carbs, but I’ll use like potatoes, rice—I do eat bread—that kind of stuff to hit my calorie goal. And then within that, my protein and carb goal for the day.

It sounds similar to the Weight Watchers concept, which I think studies have shown is one of the most effective methods.

It is just like that. Weight Watchers is not as detailed, but it’s the same concept and it’s from a psychological perspective, it helps people adhere to their diet way more because you’re not saying no to anything and you kind of learn to not want anything all that much because you know that you can have it at any point in time, you know, as opposed to say, oh, I can’t eat carbs.

And then when they do let themselves have carbs, they eat a box of cereal and 10 doughnuts and you’re like, no, that’s probably not a good idea.

Most people have a lot of trouble sticking to eating right. How do you do that?

I do love healthy food, and I do love being in control of my nutrition, but really, it’s just making the decision to do something and then doing that thing. I don’t know if that’s a personality trait that I just have, so I always feel like I’m the world’s worst advice giver because I don’t know, is that something that everyone does?

But for me personally, when it comes to sticking to my nutrition or when it came to the bodybuilding and sticking it out even through COVID and the lockdown’s and all of this stuff, it’s just I made a decision to do something.

So I’m going to honor that, and I’m going to continue to make the right choices because I made this decision. I’m going to stick to it.

Are you able to take that mindset of just deciding to do it and use it in your law practice?

100%. Honestly, that’s when I decided to start my law practice. It was kind of like I made the decision and then two days later, I had a law firm.

So again, I’m not the best at giving advice, because when I decide to do something like, I have to do it, I have to get started on that thing right away, or I have to make some sort of move towards accomplishing that thing. So when it comes to the law, when it comes to my practice, that’s pretty much how I get myself to do everything.

You don’t want to do everything it takes to run a law firm every single day. Some of it’s not that fun. Sometimes I’m like, you don’t want to do this. But if I make the decision and I tell myself this exercise is getting done today, then I have no choice. I have to do it. It doesn’t get put off until later, it gets done because I make the decision to do it.

Practicing as a solo attorney, what’s the thing that you really dislike having to do every day or every week?

For one, the accounting. I have software for most of it. So, you know, it’s kind of seamless, but I still just hate getting on there. And I don’t like numbers. Yeah, I’m a lawyer, so I hate the accounting part of it.

And then what I would consider the administrative type stuff like some of the emails and intake, the invoicing and all of that, and just those little tedious things.

One more question on nutrition. I know a lot of people are like me in that when you get really stressed, you tend to eat the wrong things. I think most people can relate to that. When you’re training and sticking to this this very specific nutrition plan and running a law practice, I’m sure there’s a lot of stress that comes along with that. How do you deal with the stress?

Well, first, let me say, if you are a stress eater, don’t tell yourself that you’re eating something that’s wrong or bad. You’re just eating something that maybe isn’t ideal for that moment in time. In general, there are healthier choices and then there are less healthy choices, just as a disclaimer for people so that they don’t feel guilty about stuff like that. And for me personally, I’m not immune to wanting to do that.

And now that I’m not bodybuilding, if I’m having a moment of anxiety, it’s like a glass of wine. But when you can’t turn to food or wine or whatever to relieve some of that stress, I might pick a podcast that has nothing to do with business growth. I pick a podcast that is either about training or something fun, something that I just want to listen to. Or go for a walk, or get a book, sit in the corner and read for 10, 15 minutes uninterrupted, and just take a breather and take a moment to myself.

That’s really the only thing you can do when you’re in a bodybuilding preop because everything else is so controlled. Your activity is controlling your nutrition, your water intake, your sleep, all of it. So when you just need that stress relief, it’s really about finding something just a few moments to yourself to shut everything out and then just kind of focus. If you meditate, perfect. I don’t do that. I would love to, but something like that essentially is my version of meditating.

Those sound like much more constructive ways to deal with stress. And you mentioned sleep, which is really interesting to me. One of my most popular blog posts was about how lawyers are so sleep deprived. And I contrasted that with professional athletes who are usually very careful about getting enough sleep. Is getting a certain amount of sleep part of your training for a competition?

Absolutely. And it should be a part of everybody’s training for life, because if you don’t sleep enough, your body doesn’t function properly. And so not only do you have to sleep for muscle recovery, and actually everyone thinks that you’re building muscle in the gym, but you’re not. What you’re doing in the gym is tearing it down. And then when you sleep is when the muscle gets built.

So if you’re not sleeping, you’re not building any muscle. So I am obviously not going to get eight quality hours every single night. But I aim to have everything, have the lights off, have the phone down, everything by 9:30 and in bed.

And I’m very strict about my work-life balance. I will cut things off at 6:30, 7:00. I’m done. I don’t want to check my email. I’m not going to answer a client if they text or call after a certain point in time, you just have to put your foot down and prioritize your sleep. I mean really, truly prioritizing sleep over all the other stuff first and foremost. It’s the most important aspect.

Now let’s talk about getting in the gym. I would say most guys at least, you know, they go in the gym, they throw a bunch of weights on the bench, they do a bench press and they stand around for a few minutes, maybe do some more bench press, maybe go get on the StairMaster. I’m guessing that kind of approach is not going to work for someone like you training for a serious competition.

It’s not ideal. I would say you’re not wasting your time, but you’re certainly not utilizing your time wisely. So, yeah, my programming, my training days are very thought out, usually in two to three-month blocks, and things are progressively overloaded. Everything is very structured.

Even in an off season, when I go to the gym, I don’t just go in without a plan. I go in with maybe it’s a chest day or maybe it’s a shoulder test day. I write things down, I keep track of how I feel, how the weight felt. I track all of that because you really have to train with a purpose and with an intent to actually make progress.

So in or out of bodybuilding, you really should train with intent or else don’t bother going to the gym. Go do something else.

A lot of people will start an exercise program and they don’t really see results from it. What do you think most people are doing wrong when they get in the gym?

Either they’re not doing a good program, maybe they’re just following along haphazardly with different exercises or different workouts that they see online or they’re not giving themselves enough time. I’ve been doing essentially the same types of workouts since I started working out. I don’t do a lot of fancy stuff. Things don’t really change, the bread and butter: the squat, bench press, deadlift. There are some accessory movements that go along with that. But I go and do the same things day in and day out, and then you just have to be patient.

Everybody always wants to change up every couple of weeks, to “confuse” the body. I don’t know where that came from; you can’t confuse your body. You just go in and do the movements that, you know, work, the movements that are hard, that challenge you. And you do the same things over and over. Maybe you’re going to add some weight from week to week, or maybe you’re going to add some reps. But be patient. You’re not going to see results in a few weeks. It’s going to take time.

So we’re not going to see Shannon Montgomery doing a lot of rope climbing or tire flipping?

No, unless I’m having a totally crazy day and I feel like just having fun and doing something totally out there, but not typically. And that works for cardio, I mean, it definitely works, but the same thing goes. If you’re going to tire flip, if you use the same weight tire every single time you do it, you’re not going to get any stronger. So start with a small tire and move up to the giant tire.

Another thing I would guess most lawyers would say about physical fitness is just that it’s hard to find the time, because they’re so busy. For someone like you, where you’re doing client work and the administrative work all on your own, how do you manage your time when you’re doing this training?

So, one, you don’t have to spend tons of time in the gym. You don’t need any more time than 45 minutes to an hour.

And two, like I said earlier, if you want something, you will make it happen. So sometimes it means I’m up at 4:00 a.m. to make sure that I get that workout in before the meeting, or before when I was with the firm, I was in the office by 8:00 a.m., so I was at the gym by 4:40 every single day.

I don’t have kids, so I know a lot of people who have kids, it’s a lot there. There are a lot of moving parts. But you can make something happen. You don’t have to go to a gym, not necessarily. You can go for a run or work out in your garage. If you want to do it, you will find the time to do it.

It’s just about understanding you don’t need to spend two hours and it doesn’t have to be the biggest gym work. It can be a 30-minute, 45-minute body-weight workout in your garage.

That’s great advice. I was also wondering about competing on stage, and I’m thinking that most people, including me, would be terrified to get on stage like in a bathing suit. And not only that, where the people are scrutinizing everything about your appearance. Does that make you nervous? And how do you deal with that?

Yes, super nervous. And still, it makes me nervous every single time. I don’t know if that is something that will ever go away. Maybe I’ll let you know in a few years, but I still get nervous because it is it’s very awkward.

And especially for me. I’m just not like a very flashy center of attention kind of person. And you’re getting up on stage in literally nothing and you’re being scrutinized, and as a female, our biggest insecurity is typically our body. But over the years, I’ve been able to kind of separate that being on stage and what the judges are going to say or think from who I am.

It’s definitely given me so much confidence because if I can get on stage in a bikini and some clear plastic heels, I can probably do just about anything, and that bleeds into just everything else in life, having that confidence.

It has led me to starting my own law firm. It’s like, well, if I can get on stage and do this very awkward thing and withstand that, there’s no way I can’t open my own law firm and be at least mildly successful.

My next question was inspired by watching that documentary, The Last Dance about Michael Jordan. One thing that comes out of that is you see this burning desire to compete and win. You just won a competition. How important is that will to win to actually winning?

I think particularly in bodybuilding, if you don’t have the ability to at least visualize yourself winning, you might never get there, because when it comes to bodybuilding, your stage presentation is most of the battle. So having that desire to win will give you more confidence on stage and will give you the ability to really showcase what you worked so hard for.

It’s perfectly fine to compete and have no expectation and want to just do it for fun, but if you want to compete and you want to win, that will to win has to be paramount.  Because there are times during prep where you’re just like, why am I doing this? I’m tired, I’m hungry, I have to go do an hour of cardio, and I don’t want to do it. But the desire to actually get on stage and win something just kind of pushes you through those times.

Are you fun to be around in the final weeks of your training?

Ooh, probably not, honestly. You’re kind of hungry and you’re tired and you’re just like, I’m ready to be on stage. I’m over this. So probably not.

After you won the overall competition, what was the first, I’ll say “bad” food—foods are not bad or good, but you know what I mean. What was the first thing you wanted to eat that you couldn’t before?

One, wine. I had a little glass of wine. And then I made myself I guess they call them brookies, but it’s a brownie and chocolate chip cookie thing. I’m a sweets person. My sweet tooth is terrible. So that’s what I always want. I want the sweetest chocolateiest peanut-butteriest thing I can find.

That sounds great. So overall, what was the most important lesson you took out of this experience of training for and winning this competition?

Well, this year was special because of COVID and because of the gym shutdowns and all the show cancellations and everything. So, I think the number one lesson I learned from prepping through all of this was how resilient I am, but also just how resilient humans are, because there are so many people who were doing the same thing as I was. And we were training in our garages with chairs and stuff so that we can get on stage.

Just knowing that not only can I adapt, I can change, I can pivot when I need to. I am apparently very resilient. So it was a it was a very good life lesson this year.

Resilience. Yeah, we all need that right now for sure. So what’s your next bodybuilding goal?

Right now I am taking a break. I actually am kind of dealing with a little bit of a back injury, so my training has been not great.

Probably in the beginning of next year, I will start another prep for hopefully the national shows that originally are in the summertime. We’re hoping that everything goes back to normal next year, and then I can get on stage at a national show and see what the judges say. Maybe they’ll like me as I am and I can win that card.

Or maybe they’ll tell me, hit the hit the gym, do these three things and then come back. So that’s kind of the goal. But the long-term goal is to win a pro card. So hopefully that’ll happen soon.

Well, I expect we’re going to see that sometime in the future. Now, what is your next big professional goal and related to that, people who want to help you professionally, what can they do to help?

I would love to be able to bring on help to do the things I hate to do. So figuring out how to do that the right way.

And scaling the business a little bit, getting better about that, because I have a tendency to just sort of take everything on and just keep everything. I’m starting to do a little more work, like hiring freelancers for certain things, because they always say hire out, hire out. But being a control freak, that’s so hard for me. But I’m getting better at it.

So professionally, I would hopefully by the end of this year, I’m in a position to where I can bring somebody in maybe part time, if not full time, for some of the administrative stuff and actually be a good manager and actually be able to tell them what it is I need, because I feel like I’m really bad about that.

That’s definitely the goal. And then maybe by next year, who knows, hiring an associate or something, that would be crazy, but also awesome.

Well maybe people who see this interview can help with that. And if people want to keep up with what you’re doing, they can follow you on Instagram?

Yes, they can follow my firm Instagram @montgomerylawpllc, and my personal Instagram focused on weightlifting is @liftinglawyer. I haven’t been super active on either of them lately because I’ve just been so busy, but hopefully I’ll get back on there soon because I do love being on social media.

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Zach Wolfe (zwolfe@fleckman.com) is a Texas trial lawyer who handles non-compete and trade secret litigation at his firm Fleckman & McGlynn, PLLC. Follow @zachwolfelaw on Instagram to keep up with his latest shenanigans.

It was a rite of passage this past year in the Wolfe casa, when I watched the classic 1980 film The Blues Brothers with my 11YO son, just as I had done with my dad back in the day.

Some of you will remember the opening scene. “Joliet” Jake Blues is finally getting out of prison. Dressed in his jailhouse fatigues, he is led to the property room to claim his personal belongings. He steps up to the counter, and an officer holding a clipboard glares at him (played by none other than Frank Oz of Muppets and Yoda fame). The two escorting officers pull him back to stand behind the yellow-taped line on the floor.

“Sign here,” the officer sneers. Jake sarcastically plants his feet behind the yellow line while cartoonishly leaning forward to sign his “X” on the line. Right off the bat you get a sense of Jake’s personality.

I experienced something similar as a teenager when I went to get my driver’s license. I walked up to the counter, and the lady behind it said “please stand behind the line until you’re called.” Afterwards, I remember my dad saying something like “you give people a little bit of power . . .”

I’ll come back to that.

The 2020 bar exam controversy

You may have heard there has been some controversy about the bar exam this year. The problem is obvious. The last thing you want in the middle of a pandemic is hundreds of test-takers assembled in one big room together for hours on end.

This has presented bar examiners with several options. I’ll list them in order from worst to best:

1. Cancel the exam and just wait until next year. Graduating law school students can just figure something out for a year.

2. Grin and bear it. Stick with the in-person bar exam, but maybe with some extra social distancing. How bad could it be?

3. Switch to an online exam. If monitoring the test-takers is too much of a logistical challenge, then just make it an open-book exam (as many exam critics have already suggested).

4. Considering the unprecedented nature of the COVID-19 epidemic, the threat of spreading the virus to test-takers, the anxiety that the threat of the virus must visit on already-stressed-out examinees, and the fact that the bar exam is not really that essential in the first place, grant admission to the bar based on diploma privilege—at least just this one year.

(Diploma privilege means accepting graduation from an accredited law school in lieu of passing the bar exam.)

My ranking of the options is of course just my opinion, and there are pros and cons to each. I’ll concede this is not an easy issue for bar examiners to deal with. Same for the state supreme courts that, in most cases, ultimately oversee the bar examiners.

But that’s about the best I can say for the bar examiners. Overall, if I had to grade their collective response to the COVID-19 crisis, they would get an F. Ok, maybe some of them would get a C, if we’re being charitable.

They should have just made it simple and granted diploma privilege for this one year. That would earn an A.

Granted, as indicated earlier, my grade is based on the premise that the bar exam is not really that valuable. If my premise is wrong, then maybe my grade is too low.

So it comes down to this: what is the real purpose of the bar exam, and how well does it serve that purpose?

Are you ready for some football?

Let’s put it in football terms. NFL teams use the scouting combine to help evaluate college players for the draft.

At the combine, players run a gauntlet of physical fitness challenges that includes things like the 40-yard dash, the vertical jump, and bench pressing 225 pounds as many times as possible. They also get interviewed and take a sort of IQ test called the Wonderlic.

Of course, the tests at the combine are just part of the puzzle. It’s a sports talk show cliché for some former player to say, “I don’t care how good he looks running around in shorts, let me see him on the field in pads getting hit.”

But the physical tests at the combine give the teams some relevant information they find valuable.

No, on game day you don’t get points for running a 40-yard dash in a straight line with no pads for time. But if the defensive back you’re scouting has a subpar time on the 40, that tells you he may not have the speed needed to stay with a Tyreek Hill streaking down the sideline. Seeing that prospective offensive lineman bench press 225 pounds like it’s nothing gives you some idea of what he can do to a blitzing linebacker.

In the same way, testing future lawyers on their knowledge of specific areas of law is obviously not the same as watching them actually practice law, but it gives you some indication of their legal acumen, right?

Well, not so much. The NFL combine is perhaps what the bar exam wants to be, but the reality is different.

Imagine you’re a college football player arriving at the NFL combine, and a team scout hands you a stack of 15 detailed rulebooks from various sports. The sports include everything from tennis to basketball to golf, and maybe—maybe—football. “You’ve got a week to memorize these rulebooks, kid, and then there’s going to be a written test.”

That’s the bar exam.

You can see the problem. First, knowing all the intricate rules to football is no test of how well you are prepared to play football. Second, knowing the rules of, say, professional bowling has no relevance whatsoever to playing football.

Now, in fairness, making NFL prospects memorize these rulebooks and take a test on them might have some value. For one thing, the ability to memorize that much information and apply it on a written test would be some indication of a player’s intelligence. For another, this ordeal would give teams some sense of a player’s grit, determination, and discipline.

It would also serve as a sort of rite of passage, building camaraderie among players. Someday they’ll sit at a bar reminiscing about the experience. “You remember when we had to memorize all those crazy rules of table tennis, that was insane!”

And finally, let’s say the rulebooks include the rules of the NFL. In that case, a player’s knowledge of the rulebook might have some value, even if it’s not the thing that really matters.

So how is my combine hypothetical like the bar exam?

An exam for a bygone era?

The first problem is that the ability to memorize a bunch of legal rules and apply them on a written test isn’t even close to how lawyers actually practice law. It is both too difficult and too easy. It’s too difficult because in practice, if a lawyer doesn’t remember all the elements of the business records exception to hearsay, she’s just going to look them up. It’s too easy because real flesh-and-blood client matters don’t come in neat little fact patterns with right or wrong multiple-choice answers.

But that’s just the least of it. The bigger problem is specialization.

There was a bygone era when small-town lawyers had to know a little about a lot of different areas of law practice. You might draft a will on Monday, appear in court for a criminal defendant on Tuesday, and review an oil and gas lease on Wednesday. The typical selection of bar exam topics seems built for this kind of practice.

But hardly anyone practices like that anymore. Almost every lawyer today specializes in some specific area of law. Sure, the level of specialization varies, and some lawyers have more than one specialty, but very few lawyers now have the kind of general practice that the bar exam attempts to test for.

Let’s say a lawyer specializes in patent law. Testing that lawyer on her knowledge of criminal procedure is about as relevant as testing a wide receiver on his knowledge of the rules of baseball. That would be unnecessary and over-inclusive.

And there’s a less obvious problem. No matter what topics you pick, the bar exam is also going to be under-inclusive. I’ll use myself as an example. My practice focuses on non-compete and trade secret litigation. Sometimes I also handle trademark matters. (This is by happenstance; the two practice areas have nothing to do with each other.)

Guess what? The bar exam I took had nothing about either one of these practice areas.

How can this be? How could the Texas Board of Law Examiners set me loose on an unsuspecting public without first testing my competence in these areas of law?

The answer is twofold and, I think, illustrative.

First, in the case of trademark law, I learned it the old-fashioned way: apprenticeship. I don’t mean any kind of formal apprenticeship. I just mean that I learned it by working with a lawyer who was experienced in trademark matters. I wouldn’t call myself a trademark law expert, but it didn’t take long for me to achieve basic competence in it.

This is how almost every new lawyer learns to practice law.

Granted, there are some intrepid souls who get out of law school and immediately hang up the proverbial shingle. But we don’t need to worry too much about them. Anybody who goes that route is likely to have an unusually high amount of initiative and motivation, which I’ll bet more than compensates for lack of experience.

And that is the exception, not the rule. Very few clients hire a lawyer who just got out of law school and has no experience. So, naturally, the vast majority of new lawyers go to work under the supervision of a more experienced lawyer. Effectively, most lawyers start their careers serving an informal apprenticeship that effectively lasts 1-3 years, or even longer.

This informal apprenticeship—not the bar exam—is the main way the profession trains lawyers for basic competence.

The second way the profession ensures competence is through self-study and the free market. Here’s what I mean. Remember I said the main focus of my practice is non-compete and trade secret litigation? I’m not too modest to say I am an expert in that area of law.

And here’s the funny thing. I didn’t become an expert on non-compete and trade secret litigation through studying for an exam on it, or even through some kind of informal apprenticeship. I learned it on my own through on-the-job training, and then tried to make a name for myself in it. Then the free market does its thing, and people who hear that I’m an expert call me up.

These examples teach us that the bar exam is neither necessary nor sufficient to ensure competency of lawyers.

Having said that, I must give the bar exam its due. Like our hypothetical NFL rulebook ordeal, the bar exam doesn’t prove nothing. Passing the bar exam is probably some indication of intelligence. It is definitely some indication of perseverance and dedication. And, like making NFL prospects memorize the rules of badminton, it may have some value as a sort of shared rite of passage.

Still, these are pretty weak justifications for the bar exam.

I think the real purpose of the bar exam is public relations. The public thinks that some test of legal competence is necessary, and that the bar exam serves that purpose. Lawyers are already an unpopular group. The last thing we want is the PR disaster of the public thinking “they’ll let anyone practice law these days, you don’t even have to take a test.”

So I get it. We probably need some kind of bar exam to assuage an already hostile public. But just among us lawyers, let’s not pretend that the purpose goes much further than that.

And with that backdrop, let’s look at how bar examiners have handled the bar exam in 2020.

What is wrong with these people?

Perhaps the greatest shortcoming has been the simple failure or refusal to grasp the seriousness of the health risks of taking an in-person bar exam, combined with an inflated sense of the value of the exam. The response from the North Carolina Board of Law Examiners typifies this attitude:

For the reasons addressed above, I think this position puts too much faith in the value of the bar exam. It just isn’t grounded in the reality of how new lawyers learn to practice law.

But I will concede that this is at least a plausible position, and one the average John Q. Public probably agrees with. Reasonable people can disagree over whether temporary diploma privilege is the best way to respond to COVID-19.

The problem, though, is not so much that bar examiners have made bad decisions, it’s the way they have done it. Their attitudes have not reflected well on our profession.

Sure, I’m basing this on anecdotal evidence, but the stories I’ve seen suggest that bar examiners have reacted to the COVID-19 crisis with a disappointing combination of pettiness, arbitrariness, lack of compassion and empathy, and even outright hostility towards law school graduates preparing to enter the profession.

I’ll give you some examples.

In the hypocrisy category, let’s start with the fact that many bar examiners, while insisting that we continue with an in-person exam, have required examinees to sign COVID-19 waivers. See also the bar examiner boards that are working from home but still insist on an in-person exam.

In the procrastination category, how about waiting until the last minute to tell law school graduates studying for the bar exam that the exam has been canceled or postponed? Breaking: Florida Man cancels online bar exam three days out.

Then there’s New York. Here’s the New York Court of Appeals explaining why an online exam would not work:

“As the nation’s largest legal market . . .” I can only hear that in the voice of Thurston Howell III. Or maybe Dan Aykroyd in Trading Places, when he complains “that’s my Harvard tie!” The message seems to be that an online exam might be ok for some backwoods state, like maybe Texas, but not a civilized place like New York.

And I love the combination of arrogance and resistance to innovation. “We’re the most important legal market in the world, but using the Internet for an exam sounds way too sophisticated.” (Plus, later they changed their minds.)

In fairness, the response of the Southern states hasn’t been much better.

In the “bold thinking” category, Virginia responded to the unprecedented crisis with a radical change: waiving its necktie requirement. This was a big deal for the Virginia Board of Bar Examiners, which is not down with the whole “casual Fridays” thing:

This notice has such a high-school-principal-measuring-mini-skirts-with-a-ruler vibe, but without the actual concern for the students.

It also has the feel of the law firm managing partner announcing that, in lieu of bonuses this year, lawyers won’t be required to wear ties on Fridays. Wow, thanks.

And of course, “no further discussion of this topic will be necessary.”

Discouraging bar applicants from expressing dissent seems to be a theme. One prominent bar exam official said that complaints from examinees to her board were raising “character and fitness” issues.

That’s like saying “nice application to the bar you have there, it would be a shame if something happened to it.” See NCBE Prez Issues Threat To Tie Up Licenses of Bar Exam Critics.

What does it say about our profession that our response to future leaders of the bar who take the initiative to propose changes is to say, in effect, “hey, snitches get stitches”?

There also seems to be some generational prejudice at play. You get the feeling the bar examiners look at the bar applicants as “entitled” millennials who think law licenses should be handed out like participation trophies. “You want us to make special arrangements just because you could catch Coronavirus? What’s next, demanding free soy lattes during the breaks?” The collective response from bar examiners has had a tone of “just suck it up and deal.”

This was apparent in the “eye roll” incident. You can look it up.

Rolling your eyes at legitimate concerns from bar applicants strikes me as the wrong attitude. Same with dozing off during a Zoom conference with concerned bar applicants. And then there are the bar officials who suggested law school graduates who couldn’t take the bar exam and get jobs could just ask alumni for money. It’s like telling people who get evicted just to move into their summer homes.

But nothing captures the pettiness of the bar examiners quite like the anti-cheating precautions they have adopted for both in-person and online exams.

Before I get to some examples, let me be clear. Cheating on the bar exam would be wrong, and I don’t fault bar examiners for taking reasonable precautions against cheating.

But let’s be real about this. Cheating on the bar exam would be extremely difficult. You could make it an open-book exam, and it probably wouldn’t make a big difference. You’re not going to have enough time to look up the answer to each question, and looking up a rule isn’t going to help you apply the rule to a specific situation. Plus, there is no way you’re going to cram all the testable information on to some kind of crib sheet. It’s just not the kind of exam where you can write the answers on your hand.

Considering this reality, some of the anti-cheating rules bar examiners have adopted are downright bizarre.

Imagine you’re 38 weeks pregnant and taking the bar exam. Surely it would be reasonable to request a few additional bathroom breaks, right? Nope, the Illinois bar examiners said. You might have written the Rule Against Perpetuities on a roll of toilet paper in the bathroom.

And whatever you do, don’t fidget. Consider these rules from the Tennessee Board of Law Examiners:

Seriously? Reading notes on your hand?

And the part about not looking up, down, or to the side for more than a few seconds cracks me up. It’s like the scene in This Is Spinal Tap when Christopher Guest tells Rob Reiner not to look at one of his special guitars. “Don’t touch it. Don’t point even.”

It would be funny if wasn’t so serious for the people taking the exam.

But for sheer absurdity, nothing can top the Great Tampon Caper of 2020.

It turns out that many states, including Texas where I practice, prohibit bringing menstrual products into the bar exam. I’m not making this up.

This of course raises gender equality issues. See If You’re Menstruating or Lactating During The Bar Exam You’re Screwed. Obviously, it puts a burden on women that men don’t have to worry about.

But for me, it’s even more fundamental than that. There’s something that’s just so petty and idiotic about it. Why did someone ever think this policy was a good idea? Did they think women were going to write all of the hearsay exceptions on a tampon with a Sharpie?

I mean, what is wrong with people?

Abuse of Power

Ultimately, that’s my big takeaway from all of this. There is something wrong with people. I think the abysmal way that bar examiners have responded to concerns about the COVID-19 virus points out something dark about human nature. People just can’t be trusted with power.

Give us authority over other people, even—or maybe especially—in some small sphere of life, and we just can’t help ourselves. We want to use that power. We want to lord it over other people. We get an inflated sense of the importance of our little rules, and we bristle at any suggestion that we change them.

It’s why the property clerk in The Blues Brothers makes Jake stand behind the yellow line. It’s why the driver’s license lady—who was probably a very nice person to her friends and family—did the same thing to me.

And I think it must be part of why bar examiners have dropped the ball when it comes to dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic.

p.s. The Great Tampon Caper at least had a happy ending in Texas. Kudos to Texas Supreme Court Justices Brett Busby and Eva Guzman for helping to get this policy changed. See Texas lifts tampon ban at bar exam after complaints over discriminatory policy. Maybe human nature isn’t all bad.

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Zach Wolfe (zwolfe@fleckman.com) is a Texas trial lawyer who handles non-compete and trade secret litigation at his firm Fleckman & McGlynn, PLLC. Follow @zachwolfelaw on Instagram to keep up with his latest shenanigans.

These are his opinions, not the opinions of his firm or clients.

A totally objective and unbiased analysis by a practicing small-firm lawyer

I have many friends and acquaintances at big-name law firms, and I fear this week’s post may ruffle some feathers. But stay with me, BigLaw Fivers. As you will see, I conclude that it sometimes makes sense for clients to pay the high rates commanded by lawyers at big-name law firms. This is no manifesto against those firms.

Still, have you seen the hourly rates that the most prominent law firms charge business clients these days? I would give some examples, but if I say something like “can you believe partners at XYZ firm charge $950/hour?” the next thing you know people will think, “Ha! that’s nothing, ABC firm is charging . . .”

So I won’t get into numbers. But you know what I’m talking about.

These super-premium rates seem to coincide with the increased importance of branding in the competition for high-end business clients. I’m guessing this is no accident. If you look at the firms charging the very highest rates, I would bet most of them have one thing in common: they are firms everyone has heard of (at least everyone who has some familiarity with the legal field).

I doubt you will find a lot of “no-name” firms charging the highest rates for legal services. Those that are, I congratulate you. But most of the firms that charge the kind of rates I’m talking about are the “household names” of law practice.

Are these sky-high hourly rates justified? Should lawyers criticize these rates as excessive, or should we accept them as what the “market will bear”?

Personally, I’m ok with sophisticated clients paying whatever they agree to pay for their legal work. I don’t see it as an ethical issue.

But is it smart for business clients to pay premium rates for big-name law firms? Let’s look at the main reasons clients pay these rates, and whether those reasons hold up to scrutiny.

1. They’re just better

The first reason clients are willing to pay a premium for big-name law firms is the reason those firms want clients to think is the reason: they’re just better. But are they actually better? And even if they’re better, are they that much better?

Full disclosure: I do not work for a big-name firm, so I am probably a wee bit biased.

But I will give the prominent firms their due. The reality is that most superstar attorneys are going to work at law firms everybody has heard of. If you’re a superstar lawyer at a lesser-known firm, don’t be offended. I said “most,” not “all.”

And if us small-firm lawyers are honest, we’ll admit to ourselves that most of the very best lawyers work in BigLaw, because that’s where the money is. And the prestige. But mostly it’s the money. And we might be just a slight bit envious.

Second, even aside from the superstar attorneys, it is unlikely that a partner at a prominent BigLaw firm is going to be incompetent. (Notice I said “unlikely,” not “impossible.”) So when clients hire big-name law firms, they can usually rest assured that the lawyer in charge of their case will at least be competent. That lawyer probably wouldn’t have made partner otherwise.

But it’s not that unlikely that a partner at a big-name law firm will be mediocre. If that sounds critical, it’s not really. By “mediocre” I just mean someone with average practice skills. Yes, there are many top-notch lawyers at big-name law firms, but believe me, there are plenty of average ones too.

How do mediocre lawyers become partners at elite law firms? In most cases I would bet it’s because they bring something else to the table, like excellent business development skills, or a family, personal, or political connection to a major client. In some cases, they are just good at promoting themselves and taking credit.

But let’s not be too snarky. Most of these lawyers have worked their butts off. And like I said, most of the very best lawyers are at big-name firms. If your lawyer really is that much better than the competition at the no-name firms, and if your company can afford it (more about that later), then there is some logic to paying a premium for excellent legal services.

Also, let’s acknowledge there are plenty of lawyers at well-known law firms who are not charging the kind of rates I’m talking about. So if you’re a client paying reasonable rates for a lawyer at a big-name firm and you’re happy with the work, that’s great.

This post is about the rates that make eyes pop. Are there any other reasons to justify such rates?

1a. Expertise and specialization

I call this reason “1a” because it’s related to reason 1, but slightly different. Big-name law firms don’t just tout their lawyers as better, they also promise expertise in highly specialized areas of law practice that business clients sometimes need.

This is not just hype. There are some practice areas where you’re not going to find anybody experienced who isn’t at a big law firm or a high-priced boutique. For example, I’m guessing there aren’t a lot of inexpensive small-firm lawyers who have done a lot of bet-the-company patent litigation. And a typical small firm is not going to have experience defending massive securities fraud class actions, or doing M&A work for Fortune 500 companies, etc. You get the idea.

Still, if you are a client who is willing to pay a premium for specialization, ask yourself two questions. First, is the work you are sending that big-name firm really that specialized? I often see prominent law firms handling what I would call fairly “routine” matters.

Second, are there lawyers with similar expertise at lesser-known firms who charge less? It may take some hustle to find them, but I would bet that in most cases the answer is yes. You might even already know some lawyers like that. But you stick with the well-known firm because . . .

2. “Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM”

Now we’re moving into the less compelling reasons to pay high rates for legal work. But this one still has a certain logic to it. If you own the company, you can hire whoever you want and if it goes bad, you’re probably not going to fire yourself. But if you just work at the company, then the last thing you want is to hire a law firm nobody’s heard of, have the case go south, and then get blamed for hiring the wrong firm.

In the computer world (where, full disclosure, my dad owned a small business, so more bias), this concept is expressed in the cliché “nobody ever got fired for buying IBM.”

Is this a good reason to choose a big-name law firm over a no-name law firm with similar experience and expertise?

I guess it depends on your perspective. If you’re an in-house lawyer at a big company and you’re looking out for numero uno, then it makes sense to insulate yourself from criticism by selecting the firm your CEO will instantly recognize.

But if you’re truly looking out for the company’s interests, then you should at least consider less expensive options. After all, the company has entrusted you with spending its money wisely.

Which brings me to . . .

3. The “steakhouse” or “expense account” effect

I specifically remember the last time I had dinner with my wife at one of those expensive steakhouses (and I don’t mean Saltgrass). Bear in mind, as a kid growing up in south Austin, for me a fancy restaurant was the Red Lobster on South Lamar. I’m just as happy to get dinner from a taco truck, but I have to admit, this upscale steakhouse was really good.

The prices, on the other hand, were outrageous.

Prices that high give me some moral discomfort; there is something almost obscene about paying that much for a meal when millions of people don’t have enough food to eat. Then again, the amount of money I spend on Starbucks in a year could probably bring clean drinking water to a third-world village, so maybe I’m just a hypocrite.

Anyway, the point is that I was fine with paying the exorbitant price at the swanky steakhouse. Was it because the food was so exquisite? Well, it was good, but not that good. No, the reason I was fine with shelling out big bucks for a piece of grilled meat is that a client had generously sent me a gift card as a thank-you for doing a good job on his company’s case. In short, I wasn’t spending my own money.

I’d bet this is part of the reason upscale steakhouses exist in the first place: many of their patrons are business people taking clients to dinner on the company’s dime. It’s the “expense account” effect.

This is the same reason clients will sometimes select a law firm that charges twice as much for the same quality of work: the person making the decision is not spending his own money. I would even venture to say this could be the main reason.

This strikes me as an understandable reason for paying more, but not a good reason. Would the company’s general counsel pick the most expensive firm if she had to pay the fees out of her own pocket? I doubt it.

Unless . . .

4. Snob appeal, or the “Mercedes” effect

Let’s say the general counsel is rich. And let’s say he wants everyone to know it. In that case, what better way to let everyone know how much money you have to burn than to hire the most expensive law firms?

Now apply that to big companies as a whole.

Snob appeal. It’s the reason people are willing to pay more for a Lexus than for a Camry. Granted, the Lexus may be a really good car. It might even perform a little better than the Camry.

But that’s not why people pay more for a Lexus. Do you think they would pay the same price for a Lexus if they had to slap a Toyota emblem on it? No way. The whole point is to send the message “I make enough money to afford a Lexus.”

Again, I think the same principle is sometimes at work when big companies pick their lawyers. They’re not just paying for the services, they’re paying for the name. They want people to know their lawyers are expensive. It sends a message: “We’re [insert name of global company], our revenue is more than the GDP of most nations, and we can afford to pay for the very best lawyers to be found.”

This strikes me as the least compelling reason to pay a premium for legal services.

But again, we must give big-name firms their due. The motivations for hiring them are usually intertwined. If companies are willing to pay high rates because the lawyers really are that good, I don’t see much harm if a little snob appeal gets mixed in.

My advice to clients: just be clear with yourself what your reasons are.

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Zach Wolfe (zwolfe@fleckman.com) is a Texas trial lawyer who handles non-compete and trade secret litigation at his firm Fleckman & McGlynn, PLLC. He aspires to someday charge the same hourly rate as a third-year associate at a big New York Law firm.

These are his opinions, not the opinions of his firm or clients, so don’t cite part of this post against him in an actual case. Every case is different, so don’t rely on this post as legal advice for your case.