It’s Time to Kill the “Non-Lawyers”

Remember the last time you were getting a check-up, and your physician referred to everyone else who helped you during your visit (including the nurse, physician’s assistant, office manager and billing clerk) as a “Non-Doctor?” I didn’t think so.

Yet that’s the experience many have in the legal industry, which for some reason insists upon labeling those who didn’t go to law school with the completely unhelpful — and often pejorative — term “non-lawyer.”

For example, what do many lawyers call an MBA with 25 years’ experience running sophisticated professional service firms in accounting, advertising, and law? A non-lawyer.

And how might they refer to a Chief Marketing Officer responsible for a global firm’s multi-million dollar marketing budget, an IT director managing thousands of users in dozens of offices worldwide, or a senior staff member who’s spent three decades wearing multiple hats in the firm? Yep, non-lawyers all.

It is time to kill the term Non-Lawyer.

Law firms are professional services businesses and its time to acknowledge the large group of diversely talented people who make them run — people who don’t deserve to be labeled “non”-anything.

Instead, let’s call them what they really are: Professionals.

“But the term ‘Professional’ could refer to anyone,” some attorneys will argue, “What about us, aren’t we Professionals, too?” Yes you are, and that’s precisely the point. As Seth Godin says:

Because, while we’re each unique, we have far more in common than we’re comfortable admitting. Amplifying our differences may make us feel special, but it’s not particularly useful when it comes to getting better.

Instead of lumping together our marketing, client service, technology, operations, and finance professionals into a single catch-all category of non-lawyer, let’s acknowledge them as peers and celebrate the crucial role they play in our collective legal profession.

There are enough challenges facing the law today. For us to divide the people who make our businesses run because they were smart enough to avoid law school shouldn’t be one of them.