Baum, Stevens, Inc. Biographies

The following article was written by David Bargman Esq. in February 2005.
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One day during my second year at a midtown firm, I received a call from an executive who had been referred by a sole practitioner I knew. My friend knew that I worked for one of the top securities litigators in the city and this executive was under investigation by the SEC for insider trading. I assumed that the firm would not be interested in any business I brought in, so I told the executive that I needed to check with my partner before setting up a meeting. I asked the partner, scheduled a meeting, and the new client paid the firm a $5000 retainer.

About a week later, I cancelled a lunch with a friend who was a rising young real estate broker because I had been asked to take a law student applicant to lunch. I thought that was more important than a "social" lunch with my friend. The applicant did not receive an offer and the real estate broker, with whom I lost touch, now has his own agency and could have been a lucrative client. It would have been helpful if someone had encouraged my business development potential; but that was not the way things worked then.

When I began practicing law twenty-five years ago, law firms typically had one office, the partnership was divided into rainmakers and service partners and associates were merely the means of production. Years ago, a smart, hard working, likable associate with luck would become a partner without having to bring in new clients and more business. And being a partner was more like being a tenured professor than a corporate executive.

Today, individual production, either in originations or billables, prevails in the legal profession and partners are expected to be rainmakers as well as practicing lawyers. Law practice has also become a national profession with the advent of the multi-state firm and a more transparent profit making business. Most firms employ management and marketing executives or consultants. The trend toward transparency and profit orientation has also increased competition to attract and retain top associates. As a result, firms now pay more attention to marketing their services to clients and to the professional development of their associates as well as offering credit toward billable hours for pro bono work and firm administration.

The following is a news article from The New York Law Journal by David Bargman Esq. dated September, 1999.
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Mentoring is at least as old as its name. Mentor was the friend to whom Ulysses entrusted the care and education of his son Telemachus while he was away. In essence, mentoring is the process of an experienced person providing guidance, wisdom, knowledge and support to a less experienced person. In time, the mentored person, or protégé, takes on the role of mentor to some less experienced person. Mentoring in some form is a part of almost all cultures. Formal mentoring programs at law firms have a history of success, not just for the protégé, but for the firm and the mentor. Such programs pair protégés with more experienced attorneys in the firm according to defined criteria for about one year.

Since the 1980's programs which pair adults with at-risk youths-such as the
National Mentoring Council or School to Work-have grown considerably. These social programs provide training, supervision and evaluation in a variety of parent/child/community or schoolbased mentoring programs. These programs have shown to be successful in reducing violence and recidivism and in increasing and improving rates of graduation and employment. Mentors also report great satisfaction from the experience...