By Alex Barnett
Published in Law360 on May 21, 2025. © Copyright 2025, Portfolio Media, Inc., publisher of Law360. Reprinted here with permission.
While law school teaches everything from civil procedure to stare decisis, there are some aspects of practicing law that aren’t covered during the three years that lead up to the bar exam. In this Expert Analysis series, attorneys offer advice on navigating real-world aspects of legal practice that are often overlooked in law school. If there is a professional skill you would like to write about, email expertanalysis@law360.com.
Does law school teach you how to add value to your firm? I found myself thinking about this as the result of a debate about the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
What?
There’s a connection between these things — I promise. And it’s not that Chief Justice John Roberts famously once used a baseball metaphor in describing his position, saying that his job was to “call balls and strikes.”
A couple of years ago, I found myself in a heated debate about the election of a retired baseball player into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.
From my perspective — a perspective shared by many — the player’s career statistics, while quite good, were not quite hall-worthy.
But, my debate opponent argued, among the recent inductee’s notable statistics, perhaps the most notable was that he had ninth-highest wins against replacement, or WAR, at his position.
According to the MLB glossary, WAR “measures a player’s value in all facets of the game by deciphering how many more wins he’s worth than a replacement-level player at his same position (e.g., a minor league replacement or a readily available fill-in free agent).”[1]
WAR is calculated using a mathematical formula. For purposes of this discussion, and because very few lawyers really want to do mathematical calculations, suffice to say that the higher a player’s WAR, the more valuable that player is to his team.[2]
Apparently, the grand pooh-bahs of the MLB were, like my debate opponent, quite taken by the WAR statistic. And because of it — and the sum total of the player’s career — they elected this player to the Hall of Fame. Was that the correct decision? Maybe. Maybe not. Hall of Fame elections are not appealable to the U.S. Supreme Court (notwithstanding Chief Justice Roberts’ comments), so the decision, right or wrong, is final.
For days after this conversation, I couldn’t stop thinking about WAR, one of a bevy of the new sabermetrics that have become au courant in this “Moneyball” era of professional baseball.
And this led me to wonder whether such a statistic could be applied in a law office. In other words, can we rank the contributions of a lawyer by their WAR? In short, how much more valuable is a lawyer to their firm’s success than their replacement would be? And how would you measure this?
Let’s begin by acknowledging that all of us — in baseball and law — are replaceable. Babe Ruth has long since departed from this earth, but the New York Yankees have continued to flourish (much to the consternation of Boston Red Sox fans). Likewise, the founders of many of the biggest, most successful, most profitable law firms in the country have passed on, yet their firms continue to chug along, often more successfully than when the founders were at the helm.
Still, within our careers, our presence — or absence — can have profound effects. When a major rainmaker leaves a law firm, that can dramatically affect the firm’s profitability, success and even viability, at least in the short term. Likewise, firms have had their culture upended — going from a family-like atmosphere to a more sterile, corporate existence — when a popular partner, one beloved by staff and attorneys alike, and a mentor and confidante to all, dies or retires.
Accordingly, just as a baseball team wants a roster filled with players who have a high WAR, it would seem that a law firm would want as many lawyers as possible with the law equivalent of this type of measurement.
But what is that? What is the law equivalent?
At first blush, it would seem that profits are the metric. But is that really so?
In baseball, they measure wins, not profitability, against replacement. For even as much as baseball owners want to make lots of money, they understand that building a successful franchise — one that is profitable long term — is not just about maximizing revenues and slashing costs in the present. If that were the model, then the era of eight-figure salaries never would have begun, and the ideal player would be the one making the league minimum.
So, what is the metric, the hallmark of success that law firms obtain, that could be used as a substitute for WAR?
For litigators, theoretically, you could measure litigation victories above replacement. But is that a useful metric? Do those statistics really tell the whole story?
What about all the little things, the day-to-day dealings that go into achieving those victories? What about all the high-profile cases where a loss, however disappointing in the moment, can still prove to boost the firm’s profile; demonstrate that it’s willing to fight the good fight, especially on tough cases; and, therefore, beget greater visibility for the firm and, in so doing, bring in more business?
And what about other attorneys? Attorneys who are not involved in day-to-day battles across a “v.” — corporate practitioners, tax attorneys, estate attorneys and the like, who spend much of their time counseling clients on how to save or gain money or other resources. How do you measure wins for those practitioners? For them, perhaps the measure is assets preserved above replacement.
Clearly, it would take a far more granular analysis to figure out the precise metric that might apply for each type of attorney and how to calculate it.
Still, at a general level, it’s interesting to consider how valuable we are to our firm or company, and how much more (or less) valuable we are than any replacement would be. If you died or retired or were fired, could someone brought in to do your job do it as well? Better? And how long, and how much onboarding and training, would it take?
Obviously thinking about this is slightly distasteful. No one wants to dwell on their own mortality (in career or life). But it also causes us to think closely about what we do each day and how well (or how poorly) we do those things, measuring what we do and how much it draws us closer to, or pushes us away from, our goals and purposes. And, I would argue, just by consciously thinking about and measuring what we do and what we achieve, we become better at those things and, thus, more valuable to our enterprise.
By the way, I’m not alone in suggesting this. James Clear, author of “Atomic Habits,” notes: “The things we measure are the things we improve.”
And this brings me back to my initial question: Do law students learn in law school how to add value to their future firms? I certainly don’t recall that this was a focus when I attended law school in the days before email. Maybe things have changed, but based on conversations with junior associates, it’s not clear that things have changed that much.
At some level, of course, it’s implied — i.e., you should master your coursework and become adept at legal writing because that will make you more attractive as a candidate to be hired.
But, learning about the specific metrics that a lawyer should possess to create value for their firm are things most lawyers truly learn about, and, more importantly, only fully understand, after some years in their legal careers.
And maybe that’s inevitable. Maybe, no matter how many statistics and graphs we study, we can’t truly fathom what makes someone a valued and valuable contributor unless we’re enmeshed in that very activity. You can study baseball statistics all you want, but unless and until you play on a team, you may never fully grasp all the nuances that make you and your teammates valuable (or not).
How does one determine what those specific metrics are — the skills a lawyer must master to become a highly valued member of their firm? It’s impossible and would be foolhardy for me to claim to know what each firm, and each practice group within each firm, esteems and in what order.
That said, there are certain skills that are esteemed across the board, including: written and oral communication, networking, marketing, client development and retention, case evaluation, law firm management, hiring and interviewing techniques, mentorship, interpersonal coping skills, and stress and anxiety management, to name but a few.
But how these are valued by each firm and each practice group, and what other skills are considered important, critical and essential are, generally speaking, unique to each firm or group.
Having said that, much as in baseball, a great deal can be gleaned by studying the top practitioners of the craft. What do they do? How do they prepare? What extra steps do they take? Of course, no one is perfect, but modeling the top practitioners and their positive habits is a good first step.
Some of the learning will involve trial and error. But the sooner you learn the things that make a lawyer truly valuable to their firm or company, the more valuable — and valued — you can be early in your career. And, hopefully, this will lead to you a more rewarding, successful and satisfying career.
Maybe you won’t ever make it to the law Hall of Fame, but if you have a high enough WAR, you never know.