Suggestions
Aaron Baer
Providing Practical Legal Advice to Clients | 'Partner' at Renno & Co | Co-Founder at each of 4L Academy and Build Your Book | SMB M&A | Tech | Crypto/Blockchain | Neurodiversity Stuff
Aaron Baer is a Partner at Renno & Co, a modern law firm focusing on tech, emerging tech, and M&A.2 He leads the SMB M&A division and oversees training and development.1 Baer is known for providing practical, plain-language legal advice, especially to clients buying and selling businesses for the first time.3
Baer's career highlights include:
- Co-founder of 4L Academy, which provides modern, interactive training for lawyers and law students.23
- Co-founder of Build Your Book, offering modern business development training to lawyers globally.2
- Previously an Equity Partner at Aird & Berlis, a large Canadian law firm, becoming partner at age 29.24
- Named one of the Top 25 Most Influential Lawyers in Canada and a winner of the 2021 Precedent Setter Awards.3
Baer is passionate about legal tech and actively participates in Toronto's legal tech community.2 He maintains a strong thought leadership presence on LinkedIn, where his posts have generated millions of views.23 Baer holds an HBA in Business from Ivey Business School, a JD in Law from Western University, and a Doctor of Law from the National University of Singapore.1
Highlights
I'd fail the bar exam if I took it tomorrow.
Yet I'm allowed to run criminal trials, lead litigation cases, and run real estate deals.
To be clear, I know how to do 0 of these things.
I last took criminal law in 1L.
My last litigation experience was in small claims court, where I was told by a less-than-thrilled judge that I couldn't be both the lawyer for a client and a witness (whoops!)
I know nothing about real estate, other than that it's expensive.
But with the way our Law Society works, I can do all of these things!
It continues to blow my mind that so many provinces and states (and other jurisdictions) continue to have the most idiotic and inequitable barriers to entry in the legal profession imaginable.
In Canada, we have plenty of British traditions in some areas and lots of American traditions in other areas.
Where I live, you have to write both a 'barrister' and a 'solicitor' exam. You must pass both to be a lawyer. Once a lawyer, you can do whatever the heck you want.
One of our students wrote their bar exams recently. They're never going to do barrister work since ... we don't do barrister work, and they don't want to do barrister work.
Yet despite the shortage of lawyers and a ridiculous access to justice crisis, they can't be a lawyer unless they pass both exams.
One of my bigger long-term goals is to allow people to become corporate lawyers without going to law school at all.
Why should law schools have a monopoly on entry to the legal profession (especially one that is expensive and isn't focused on training people to be good lawyers)?
Why can't someone who wants to be a corporate lawyer teach themselves the necessary skills (which to be clear, I want to teach them and am more than qualified to teach them), pass a competence exam, and become a lawyer who can only practice in that area and is subject to ongoing competency evaluations?
It's a complete joke that, once you become a lawyer where I live, you can take CLE/CPD courses in ANY area (whether or not related to your practice area) and remain sufficiently competent in the eyes of the regulator.
It's time to stop pretending that these barriers are there to protect the public.
If anyone is looking to hire the world's worst criminal lawyer who is licensed to practice criminal law in Canada, let's just say I know a guy who is apparently qualified to do this because it's in the public interest!
#lawyers #lawfirms #legalprofession
Are we setting up 1st year associates to fail?
-
Please draft the disclosure schedules, even though we've never taught you to read a purchase agreement.
-
Please review all the contracts in the dataroom and summarize them, even though we've never taught you how to read a commercial contract (and you never read any in law school).
-
Take time for yourself so that you don't burnout, but don't you dare miss a deadline or turn in subpar work product (and make sure to keep your hours up!). Why didn't you take time for yourself?
-
Deliver the output the assigning lawyer wanted, even though they can't articulate what they want and it turns out their preferences are completely inconsistent with everyone else's.
--
One of the biggest challenges as a new lawyer is the expectation that you'll do things competently, despite not having ever been taught how to do them.
That's a recipe for stress and anxiety.
Unfortunately, for so many people assigning work, they've forgotten what it's like to be brand new to the legal profession.
Especially if you do corporate law, you pretty much know nothing.
The number of things you actually need to understand to do anything productively is shockingly high.
It's a shame that we don't provide students more opportunities in law school to shadow practicing lawyers and watch them work.
New lawyers need a lot more low-stress opportunities to learn. Unfortunately, the business realities of most law firms mean that doesn't come on the job.
What else would you add to the list in terms of things you were asked to do that you were woefully unprepared to actually do?
#lawyers #lawfirms #lawstudents
