Getting your law degree doesn’t always mean getting your day in court: Winston C. Tucker

Winston C. Tucker is a Senior Manager of Lateral Partner Recruiting at Ropes and Gray, LLC in New York. He received his J.D. from Fordham University School of Law in 2002 and his M. Ed in Higher Education Administration from Auburn University in 1999.

Transcript

Narrator:

Welcome to the Harbert College of Business podcast with your hosts, Sarah Gascon and Currie Dyess. Today's guest is Winston C. Tucker. He is a senior manager of lateral partner recruiting at Ropes and Gray, LLP and is a 1997 Harbert graduate in business administration.

Sarah Gascon:

Winston Tucker, welcome to the show. War Eagle

Winston C. Tucker:

War Eagle.

Sarah Gascon:

It's so great to have you.

Winston C. Tucker:

It's a pleasure.

Sarah Gascon:

Tell us a little bit about your journey at Auburn University.

Winston C. Tucker:

It was an interesting journey. So the funny thing is when I was applying to schools, I wasn't sure if I wanted to go and I had a friend who was a year older than me in high school. He went to Auburn, he invited me up one weekend, I got a chance to show the campus and we went to a fraternity party that night. Stayed the whole weekend and I just loved it. I came home and I sat with my parents where I wanted to go.

Currie Dyess:

Awesome. And could you share with us your path to becoming a senior manager of lateral partner recruiting and what drew you to this specific niche in legal recruiting?

Winston C. Tucker:

They had a job opening, so my journey is definitely a little bit different than most people because I didn't go straight from college to law school to the legal profession. I worked for a year and then went back to school, got my master's in order to get the GPA up or law school. And then after law school, I actually did not practice for five more years. I actually worked in every other, well, I say every other industry, but I worked in fashion, I worked in a nonprofit world and I was just trying to do anything other than practice law. And then a position at a firm came up and I just decided to apply for it and shockingly enough, I got it. So I practiced for a few years and then after that I knew I liked the environment of law, but I wasn't so sure if I enjoyed the lifestyle of the practice of law or your Friday night plans or canceled.

Actually, your vacations are canceled. I had lots of vacations canceled Friday, it's canceled. This did not happen to me, but someone I know had a partner, his office at five 30 in the afternoon says, I need to do this. And the guy says, well, but I have theater tickets and it's responsible. I don't pay you to have theater tickets. But yeah, so it can be a struggle sometimes. But again, I like the environment for some strangers and I guess because I'm just as mean and awful as every other lawyer, this boss who hired me in the first place to be a lawyer and I quit on him because the way I can't do this anymore. He then called me and a few months later and said, Hey, would you like to go into business development? Which is what I had a background in. And I said, sure.

And did that for several years actually. And then decided that my aspirations weren't to be the chief marketing officer. My aspirations were to be something different at a law firm and a good friend as a recruiter. And she was just helping me brainstorm what options I had. And in-house recruiting came up and she knew of a position and it just worked. And it's great because I deal with people all the time, but I get the people interaction. I don't have to deal with billable hours. And there's usually never an HR emergency on a Saturday night. Sometimes there are, but most times there they're not.

Sarah Gascon:

What does a typical day look like for you in your role, and what are the key responsibilities of a senior manager in lateral partner recruiting?

Winston C. Tucker:

Typical day looks nothing like a typical day. It's one of those things where one of those areas you walk in the door with a plan or what you're going to get accomplished and somebody else has something totally planned for you different. A typical day will be meeting with clients, meeting with partners to discuss the firm staffing needs being in. So we're a part of the HR team, although, so we do, my job is to hire lateral partners in council. So for those you aren't familiar with the law firm at entry level, you start off as an associate and then you might graduate towards a council, and then you might get promoted to partner. So I handle the top two, but when they're coming from another firm, so they've already been that another firm and they're coming and it's just part of business strategy, just like hiring. If you work for IBM and you want a good sales person, well maybe you go over to Oracle and you hire their sales person because they're good, they're good at what they do or something like that. So in that job there's trying to figure out, okay, what are the staffing needs of the term?

How many meetings are we having with external recruiters? We just rolled out a new hiring plan, hiring process. So there's development of that. But a typical day is usually me sitting in meetings trying to understand what they want to do and trying to tell them as politely as possible that they can't do it. A lot of the examples I use is law firms are woefully inadequate when it comes to diversity. 50% of female, more than 50% of law school graduating classes are female, but only 16% make its partnership.

That's a pretty awful number. Big men still dominate law firm partnerships. And so diversity is important in hiring. Diversity is important and everything. I think why should you just see people who look like you or talk the plants that look that are just one type of plant? And when I say talk, I mean that metaphor being a nuthouse kind of thing. Yeah. I don't think people appreciate diversity. Nothing until one of my, but firm does, which is good. And one of my friends was actually a lateral associate recruiter. She was saying that trying to find a minority lateral associate from a top school with background credentials, yada, yada, yada, is like trying to find a unicorn. And my response is always, yeah, but when you're trying to find a partner, a minority partner, it's like trying to find the stereos riding on the back of the unicorn because again, the numbers are pretty consistent at the graduating class, like minorities make up, black people make up about 10% of graduating law school class.

Black people make up about 13% of population in the us so the classes when they graduate are pretty normal. But then again, by the time you get to partnership, you have 16% of women, only 5% are black. I believe you might have six, 7% Asian, little Latino is generally one or two. And so the numbers are really, really low. So that is a big part of our job is that every day we're trying to figure out, okay, how do increases D numbers? How do you find that that's still a talent? Because I'm fortunate enough to work at a large firm, a large firm that does well, and so you only want good talent. And so we don't just still hire people to hire them. We don't hire redhead because we're like redhead. We hire somebody who's capable and competent. And so to be at a firm where they value that as well as value university helps me get through those long days of meetings.

Currie Dyess:

Sure. And I haven't seen any research on it, but do you have the reasons that there's such a drop off in those percentages, how once you get to the partner level, it's really not consistent with the general population demographics or even the graduating class demographics?

Winston C. Tucker:

So I can say this, I don't think law firms have traditionally been very concerned with matching the demographics throughout history. And so I think for them walking into a room full of white partners than usual, I do it every day. But to answer your question, there's a lot of anecdotal evidence. There's no survey. There are a few surveys. For women, it's generally the desire to have children because it's very hard to work till three o'clock in the morning every day and then be back at your desk at nine 30 and try to raise kids. And don't get me wrong, I know some female lawyers who their husbands stay at home and take care of the kids, or they both balance. But in my experience, it is very difficult to be the sole caretaker and lawyer. Another reason that people cite generally is minorities typically don't come from a background that has a parent or grandparent is a lawyer.

So they're the first generation lawyers. So they're not used to the lifestyle. Maybe they don't have the connections in order to make it to partner. So for example, you're Joe Schmo from Tiny Iowa and you went to Iowa State. Well, maybe you don't have the same professional and personal connections as James Norton. Howell who went to Princeton and his grandfather went to Princeton as grandfather's grandfather went to Prince, stuff like that. So that's one. Another reason. Another one is lifestyle. Look, I didn't want to keep those hours. I'm not saying that every black person didn't want to keep those hours here. I'm Tom. But I do think that, and I don't going to be in trouble for saying this, I do think that there are certain individuals, groups of people who value work balance life more than who balance that more so than the, my best friend was a straight white man and he totally knew something.

He's a partner of firm. His self worth is based on that, and he will work as hard as he needs to work in order to maintain that good repetition, have that good book of clients because that in his mind, that's what you do. Not the go home and have kids. And he has a lovely beautiful wife, but it's the work aspect of it. And so first, even if you, again, I don't want to stereotype, but first generation people generally just don't even see that, right? Don't get wrong. There's a whole lot of folks working very hard on, but maybe they don't see, they don't equate working two jobs as, okay, I got to work this one job, but they're morning. So those are generally some of the rules or some of the reasons that people say, but a lot of it's just personal. Then again, a lot of it is law firm structure, law firms, they think turning a closet into a mother's lactating room is progress and it's not.

Sarah Gascon:

How have you seen the legal industry change in terms of partner recruiting over the years and have you seen it throughout your role?

Winston C. Tucker:

I've seen the legal industry change a couple of particularly legal talent, but then definitely in my role. So my role used to not exist. There wasn't a lot of lateral hiring. 20 years ago, people started at a firm as a first year and they ended the same firm. Generally speaking, it was an anomaly to move or she'd moved. Joan only moved once. Now you have some people moved three or four times. I mean, I lateral as an associate. I went over with the partner who hired me said, we're going someplace else. Said, okay, you can stay here or you can have a job. I'm like, oh, okay. So that's definitely one change. Another change is the level of service that in-house, legal recruiting things provide. For example, my firm is a white gloves. We do a white glove service, right? Well, legal recruiting, meaning we're supposed to be nice to everybody and do everything for everybody, including some people.

You don't want to be nice to some recruiters who will lie to you about their client. And then it's typical. You walk in the door and somebody sells your Cadillac show up the next day to pick up and they give you a Chevy. So that is the level of service has changed dramatically the number of people in the field. And then another thing, I guess the biggest thing that strikes me about legal recruiting or legal talent in general, associates these days, the majority did not want to be partners. Usually 20 years ago, that was your goal. You started and you had to new partner. I know people, I know someone who literally quit the damn, she made partner just so she could say she made a partner. But now younger people are going into depression, don't seem partnership as the end all be all. And so they too look for work-life balance, and they too look for things to satisfy them, not just professional.

Currie Dyess:

I feel like everything that I've read and the folks that we get to speak to on the show here, there's a much greater push for that work-life balance work-life balance compared to my parents' generation and probably yours as well, I'm just assuming where my dad maybe worked at a manufacturing plan for 40 years and didn't miss a day, and now folks are asking for that remote job so they can go on vacation once a week

Sarah Gascon:

Or even spend a little bit of time with their families. Right?

Winston C. Tucker:

Right. I mean, don't get me wrong, COVID changed the world. Covid. Look, I didn't like it. I'm married. We're in a tiny New York City apartment, so I always tell people love is pound by 600 square feet because during Covid I had plenty of friends who were divorced lawyers, and lemme tell you, business was booming for them. Yeah, I definitely remember our parents. So my mom was a teacher and my dad worked, ran my grandfather's construction company and then eventually when education themselves and when they came home, they came home, there were no black bears, sorry for younger kids back in iPhones

And you had a life outside of work and don't remember the legal person has always been, but certain things you just couldn't do what our parents were around. I remember talking to a partner who retired and he just come into the office, I have something to do, and he was by this point I think seven, five, and I said, what was your typical day when you were an associate? He goes, well, you get in around 9, 9 30, you make pour yourself coffee, make yourself some, maybe you have a breakfast in the cafeteria and then you wait for the mail to be delivered. I'm like, wait, what? Yeah, you'd wait for the mail to be delivered because you couldn't start today until you got the mail. I'm like, oh yeah. So yeah, I'm sure lawyers worked on Saturdays back then too, whatnot. But yeah, there definitely was, I think at least where I grew up, definitely much more of emphasis on family and social and New York City, the right race. So they don't really care. I always say the best lawyers are the ones who hate their families.

Currie Dyess:

How do you measure success in your role, both in terms of your own performance and the performance of the partners you recruit?

Winston C. Tucker:

Whether we stay, whether we stay, whether they you not to keep you, whether you want to be there and how long you stay. So for us, you can't just say, oh, I want to bring in 20 partners, blah, blah, blah. As the hiring manager, you don't have a lot of say in how many people will get hired, done. You helped with projections, but you don't beyond the final work. But what you want to see, at least for me to see success, just to see someone come in the lateral and then thrive and stay. Because if they come and after two, three, maybe even four years they bounce, then it was just a placeholder. But if they come and they stay and they love it, they talk about it, then it's great. So for example, my work wife used to work at a firm that had an awful reputation externally. Everybody I know from the janitor to the partner love working in that place. So I think that success is if you like it and you stay and they want to keep you and you grow there. That's what I, and look, I'm the first one to tell you, I go to a job interview somebody, say, what do you want to do in your career? Have your job.

And I think you should always have whatever goal in mind on the back of your head. You don't have to have a written out plan, a type thesis or anything like that, but yeah, just to make sure that all your steps are moving towards that final goal. And that's what I think is going to make you successful.

Currie Dyess:

Great. Winston, what is the most valuable lesson you've learned from your time in legal recruiting and how has that shaped your approach to your work?

Winston C. Tucker:

Legal recruiting or in a law firm in general,

Currie Dyess:

At a law firm in general.

Winston C. Tucker:

Best point I've learned is, or actually two, the first, the importance of networking. People don't network enough. You need to network all the time. And I think a lot of people look at networking as a dirty little word. I don't, so St. Francis of assisting the famous quote that you must preach the gospel every day and if necessary use words. And I think that that is what networking is, right? You can't say, Hey, I'm only talking to you because I think you might have my career. But you go out and you do things and you talk to people and you introduce yourself people, and you make a concerted effort to keep up with those people and you take a genuine interest in what they're doing. And yeah, you're not going to be best friends with everybody. No, but does it hurt to have drinks every now and again with so-and-So at X, Y, Z investment bank, and especially that person's an interesting character and you like talking to 'em, maybe you wouldn't set 'em up with to date your sister, but they're still an interesting character and talk to and somebody who's a little different.

And everybody, you never know everybody. There's always somebody knows somebody. And I just don't think that people do that enough because when it does come top people do have a need. They don't have any resources. And I have seen things at that just by a simple little word. So the marketing background. So one of the things I was taught was the 32nd elevator pitch, and I actually got work that way one time and my coworkers were like, how did you do that? Marketing 1 0 1? But to tell a quick story, I was once at a pool party that had to be thrown by a realtor. I jokingly said, maybe I should buy a piece of rental property down here. It was a whole nother state. Five minutes later I had the mortgage banker lined up, I had a management company lined up. They were like, oh, I can help you do this.

Oh, Jim over there, Jim Sue, Sue. He was, because I think had I gone to that same party somewhere else, they would've been like, oh man, why are you talking about work? We're just here to have fun, right? I'm like, no, I'm not saying that your whole life has to be, but I do think that everybody has a name. It's not hard to listen to the names and you can learn so much and you find out their name and then who knows? Maybe it will help you down the road. And I guess the other thing is this is original to me. It's a question, not an indictment. To be able to question things in a non-emotional way, an emotional way, however that word, I'm sorry. Or a mother, she was an English teacher, but just to learn how to just think, okay, this is the task at hand.

I have to do it or paraphrase. There's no crying in law firm. Just get work done. And if you ask when someone questions you about it, they're not saying You're an awful human being. They simply want you to explain yourself and defend yourself. That's it. That's all you're doing. You're not saying, and what you're defending isn't, I think a lot of people get caught. Well, you think that I'm dumb or I don't understand what I'm doing. No, no. I just want to know how you got that point. Just like remember when you're in grade school and your teacher wouldn't give you, your math teacher wouldn't give you those points if you didn't show the formula or how you got the answer the same thing. So it's simple. Somebody just ask you a question. They're not making an indictment, they're not making a statement about your life. They're not calling your mama trash. They're just simply asking you a question and then you should be able to answer the question and move on.

Currie Dyess:

I love it. That reminds me of something my dad used to say. He used to say, information is just information. It's only good or bad based on how you interpret

Winston C. Tucker:

It. Exactly. Information. It's a good thing to have.

Sarah Gascon:

What advice would you give students to put themselves in a networking position?

Winston C. Tucker:

I think the simplest way is to probably be somewhat social. I'm not saying, oh yeah, I'm on a network by going off to turning party every weekend. I'm saying do the clubs, do the organizations, do extracurricular activities, intramural sports, those types of things. Do things where you're going to see people who do things that interest you have interesting personalities or maybe look nothing like you and you just want to learn more about, I don't know, the fact that they're a beekeeper or whatever. And then stay in touch. It doesn't have to be a fake staying in touch. It doesn't have to be a, oh, I got to call this person every two weeks. But stay in touch just every now and again, bring out the, you'd be surprised how many people like that just random out of the blue email, Hey, you want to go get or text you drinks one night?

Even if it's somebody that they're not that familiar with, right? Maybe they think, okay, well maybe Jenny is calling me because she knows I work at EBC place and I know she works at a place that does business with whatever. But yeah, don't ever use anybody. Not ever be used, but just be social. Try to maintain those relationships and just try to be active in things that are beyond your job and your family. And I think that's what will really help people. That's what it's lacking. I don't know if this is true, but I was told clubs really, or adults don't exist anymore, right? An extra example. My father was Mason, so he had whatever little music they had, I don't even know. Or he had, I think he was a member, a bowling league. Those things don't exist as much as they used to get us out of our houses and to get us out of our jobs. And so we have to create those things. And I think that not only will they do disagree and mental health because it gives you an alternate access or a outlet. It's just a way of many people.

Currie Dyess:

That's really excellent advice. Winston, you've been outstanding and you have so much information to share and a lot of good insight, especially for young folks that are interested in following a similar career path. But I do have one question. We do have one question for you before you go. How can our listeners keep up with your journey and if they are interested in asking more questions or like I said, just following in your career path, how can they maybe keep up with you if that's okay, and reach out to you?

Winston C. Tucker:

Sure. I mean, I'm only Ben, so you go find me there. And I do actually respond to messages, unlike some people. Yeah. Yeah. And I guess the one piece or advice I give anybody not is to go into what I do, but generally in life, be open. Nothing's black and white. There's a whole lot of great in this world. Things may not want you may think you want one thing, but that's the only thing else comfortable. So just be open.

Currie Dyess:

Well said.

Sarah Gascon:

We sincerely appreciate your time. Thank you so much.

Currie Dyess:

War Eagle!

Winston C. Tucker:

Thank you for having me. War Eagle.  War Eagle

Narrator:

Harbert. Inspiring business.

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