The Habits Of A Law Firm Gunner

The gunner phenomenon is not limited to law schools.

Most legal professionals understand what a “gunner” is in the context of law schools. A gunner is a student who sits in the front of the class, brown-noses to the professors, and does everything they can to succeed academically, usually rubbing it in the faces of their colleagues that the gunner is doing well in class and in securing job offers. If all attorneys think back to their law school experience, they can probably picture one or two people (or more) who meet this description. However, from my own experience, gunners exist in law firms as well, although they manifest themselves in different ways.

One of the biggest habits of gunners at law firms is that they respond to emails at all time of the day and night and seem to be sending emails at odd hours to prove that they are working around the clock. We all know people who send emails at crazy hours when they really do not need to either because a matter is not emergent or can be handled at a more reasonable hour. Such gunners violate the boundaries of work-life balance in order to stand out before management.

I remember one time, a boss of my colleagues and myself sent several attorneys an email over the weekend about whether we liked a CLE we had attended the past week. There was absolutely no reason to respond to the email immediately. However, an attorney I knew was a gunner responded to the boss about five minutes after the email was sent, and it was somewhat clear that this person just responded immediately to show they were working on the weekend. Such actions can disturb the work-life balance without providing any benefits to a firm or its attorneys.

Another big sign of a law firm gunner is brown-nosing: praising their boss, usually to seek advancement. (I’ll let you google why its called brown-nosing if you do not know.) Of course, brown-nosing is part of the repertoire of law school gunners, but law firm gunners often take this tactic to the next level.

While law school gunners seek higher grades and recommendations, law firm gunners might seek promotions, raises, and other incentives from brown-nosing. Law firm gunners are more likely to brown-nose in private since there are few public opportunities to employ this tactic, but it happens in public from time to time. I remember one time, a shop I was working at had a law firm meeting about a new document-management system. A well-known law firm gunner with whom I worked called the boss “Mr. So and So,” which was weird since everyone was on a first-name basis at that shop and said how good this manager was at handling documents and filing them appropriately. Based on the body language of most people in the room, people were repulsed by this brown-nosing, and I am not sure how impactful it was at guaranteeing this person a promotion or other advancement in his career.

The habit of law school gunners to broadcast their accomplishments is also alive and well among most law firm gunners. While it is healthy and positive for people to advertise successes they have on behalf of clients, many law firm gunners broadcast successes that really do not matter to people outside of the firm and are not the type of accomplishments that other people might broadcast. For instance, law firm gunners might brag about being selected for a certain team or project, even though this is not really indicative of any quality of the gunner. Law firm gunners need the affirmation that used to be filled with law school grades and easily assessed accomplishments, and they might not have such easily assessable successes at a law firm to brag about.

Just like law school gunners might experience drawbacks to their actions, so too might gunning at a law firm create barriers to succeeding at a shop. The legal profession is extremely social, and how people perceive you can be a substantial factor in hiring and promotion decisions. People do not really like gunners. Of course, some bosses might appreciate the praise and brown-nosing a gunner might confer on a manager, but many people think that gunners are annoying and perhaps underhanded. This might make it less likely that a gunner will be chosen for certain teams or assigned certain kinds of work, which can have an impact on a lawyer’s career at a firm and after they leave a shop. As a result, law firm gunners should operate at their own risk since the activities of a gunner can have a number of negative consequences.

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All told, the gunner phenomenon is not limited to law schools, and many of the same tactics that are employed by law firm gunners are also employed by gunners once they graduate and begin working for law firms. However, gunners should operate at their own risk since their activities could actually hurt their career ambitions.


Jordan Rothman is a partner of The Rothman Law Firm, a full-service New York and New Jersey law firm. He is also the founder of Student Debt Diaries, a website discussing how he paid off his student loans. You can reach Jordan through email at jordan@rothmanlawyer.com.

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