I vividly recall sitting in our law firm's library late one night, as a first-year lawyer, listening to two senior associates wax rhapsodically about one of the firm's biggest rainmakers, who had just departed for the night. If I didn't know better, I would have thought the Red Sea had somehow seeped into our office and parted when that partner left.

My mind was comfortably numb (to pirate a phrase from Pink Floyd) at that point after spending hours Shepardizing cases—the archaic way, actually, which didn't entail looking at a computer screen but meant going through physical books and pocket parts, if anyone remembers those things! Although my brain may not have been firing on all cylinders, one aspect of the conversation really stuck with me: both of the younger lawyers commented, almost in unison, how much they hoped to build a book like that rainmaking partner, since "all the pressure would be off, and we'd be on easy street."