Iñigo Erlaiz, From intern to director: a lifetime at the firm | Cinco Días

Lawyers who put down roots in the same house are becoming increasingly rare. Lawyers of the ‘old guard’ analyse why young people are no longer tied to one firm.

Reaching the top of the career ladder after three decades in the same company is becoming less and less common. The genuine commitment and affiliation to the corporate culture and values of those who grow with the original project is a potential that no company should underestimate. Among them, we can highlight Iñigo Erlaiz, Managing Partner of Gómez-Acebo y Pombo.

His testimony highlights that there are factors that act as vectors of engagement with the firm. The feeling of being part of the project from the very beginning, the opportunities for professional growth, the atmosphere and camaraderie, equal opportunities and being listened to by the management in decision-making are some of the attractions that make a lawyer decide to commit to the firm. For example, Íñigo Erlaiz, found ‘a good atmosphere and a very horizontal structure, in which you assume responsibilities from day one’. Feeling that the project is your own makes you want to ‘see it and make it grow’, he says.

According to the experts, one of the secrets lies precisely in making the professional feel part of the project, rowing together with colleagues towards a goal that has a lot to do with the company’s values and DNA.

Iñigo has been managing Gómez Acebo y Pombo for two years, and says that ‘you feel like a real lawyer from day one’. He has been with the firm for 25 years and tells an anecdote that caught his attention and made him feel part of the project: when he had only been at the firm for a few days, he came across Fernando Pombo and ‘he knew perfectly well who I was. Not only what my name was, but also where I was from, where I had studied and what area I was assigned to’.

The philosopher Hannah Arendt, in her book The Human Condition (1959), investigates how work shapes man’s identity, where she explains the distinction between homo faber, who works to live, and homo laborans, who lives to work. This distinction helps to understand the problem of why young people no longer develop in the same law firm, because the conception of work is changing completely, as confirmed in a report by the Women in a Legal World talent commission, where Arendt’s work is also referenced.

Thus, the careers of new lawyers will no longer be focused on being a partner, but will proliferate alternative paths. This is an idea shared by partners and senior profiles as well as millennials and Generation Z.

One idea remains, however, and that is that when the match between law firm and lawyer is perfect, the bond is strengthened.

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