{"id":134189,"date":"2025-09-30T18:36:59","date_gmt":"2025-10-01T02:36:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2025\/09\/30\/the-rainmaker-what-20-years-in-supreme-court-practice-have-taught-me\/"},"modified":"2025-09-30T18:36:59","modified_gmt":"2025-10-01T02:36:59","slug":"the-rainmaker-what-20-years-in-supreme-court-practice-have-taught-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2025\/09\/30\/the-rainmaker-what-20-years-in-supreme-court-practice-have-taught-me\/","title":{"rendered":"The Rainmaker: What 20 Years In Supreme Court Practice Have Taught Me"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ed. note<\/u>: The Rainmaker is a new Above the Law series highlighting attorneys who have built distinguished practices by excelling not only in the courtroom and at the negotiating table, but also in business development, mentorship, and leadership. Each installment will feature candid reflections on what it takes to succeed as a rainmaker in today\u2019s legal industry. Our first featured rainmaker is Neal Katyal<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

About 20 years ago, I wrote a piece for Legal Times arguing that law schools fail to teach what matters most: how to work in groups. Fresh from the Justice Department, I had learned the hard way that brilliant legal arguments mean nothing if you can\u2019t bring people along with you. I thought I understood that lesson.<\/p>\n

I was wrong. Understanding it intellectually and living it daily are entirely different things.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the paradox of building a thriving Supreme Court practice: you succeed not by being the smartest person in the room, but by making everyone else in the room smarter. Supreme Court lawyers aren\u2019t exactly known for their humility\u2014we\u2019ve built our reputations arguing before nine justices who can eviscerate your reasoning with a single question. Yet the rainmakers I\u2019ve observed, and the practice I\u2019ve tried to build, succeeds precisely because it inverts that stereotype.<\/p>\n

The Improv Principle<\/strong><\/p>\n

For years, I\u2019ve been studying improv comedy, and it\u2019s transformed how I think about legal practice. The cardinal rule of improv is \u201cyes, and\u201d\u2014you accept what your scene partners offer and build on it. You don\u2019t say \u201cno\u201d or shut down their contribution. You make your partners look good, and in turn they make you look good.<\/p>\n

This sounds soft. It\u2019s not. It\u2019s the hardest discipline I know.<\/p>\n

In a meeting, when an associate offers an idea that seems off-base, the instinct is to correct them, to show why you\u2019re the experienced lead counsel. The improv instinct is different: find what\u2019s valuable in their contribution and build on it. \u201cYes, and we could take that framework and apply it to the jurisdictional question.\u201d Suddenly, the associate isn\u2019t embarrassed\u2014they\u2019re energized. They\u2019ve contributed something real. They\u2019ll work twice as hard for you, and next time, their idea might be the one that wins the case.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t artificial, it\u2019s definitely not about giving false praise.\u00a0 A smart associate, after all, will see through that in a second.\u00a0 It\u2019s rather about trying to find the diamond in the rough, the insight that the associate has and that can be built upon. I kind of stumbled upon that idea when I did my first case, challenging Guantanamo. At my side were a dozen law students \u2013 and they would all have various writing assignments and my duty was to sort through all their insights and build a coherent product out of it. Many were off-the-wall, to be sure, but many were brilliant, too.\u00a0It just took work to find those flashes of brilliance and to build upon them. That kind of \u201cbottom-up\u201d strategy is one I have taken to heart \u2013 so much so that today I routinely take advice on crafting arguments from my Researcher at Milbank. My Researcher is someone who has graduated from college and yet has not attended law school.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t just about associates or your internal team, it\u2019s just as much about clients. When a client pushes back on your strategy, you could dig in and explain why you\u2019re right. Or you could listen\u2014really listen\u2014to what\u2019s driving their concern. Usually, they\u2019re telling you something important about their business reality, their risk tolerance, or their board dynamics. \u201cYes, and given that constraint, what if we structured the argument this way?\u201d Now you\u2019re not just their lawyer; you\u2019re their partner.<\/p>\n

Why Clients Return<\/strong><\/p>\n

Twenty-three years ago when I wrote that piece, I thought clients hired you for your legal brilliance. They don\u2019t. They hire you because you make their problems smaller, not bigger.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve represented the same clients through multiple Supreme Court cases, not because I won every time (I haven\u2019t), but because they trust that I\u2019ll listen to what they actually need. Sometimes what they need is an aggressive cert petition. Sometimes what they need is someone to tell them that the case isn\u2019t worth the institutional risk of taking to the Court. The clients who keep coming back are the ones who know you\u2019ll give them the second answer when it\u2019s true, even though it costs you a major case and significant fees.<\/p>\n

This requires a specific kind of humility: the humility to know that the client understands their business better than you do, and that your legal judgment is in service of their goals, not the other way around. Supreme Court lawyers can struggle with this because we\u2019re trained to think about doctrinal purity and legal architecture. But clients don\u2019t care about your elegant theory of administrative law. They care about whether they can build the project, launch the product, or avoid the devastating liability.<\/p>\n

The best piece of advice I ever received came from Eric Holder, who mentored me at the Justice Department in my first stint there, right after my clerkships. He watched me fail to persuade senior officials of a position that I was absolutely certain was right. Afterward, he pulled me aside. \u201cYour analysis was perfect,\u201d he said. \u201cBut you didn\u2019t listen to their concerns. You tried to convince them you were right instead of understanding why they were worried. Next time, start by understanding their perspective.\u201d<\/p>\n

That lesson echoes through every client relationship, every oral argument, every brief. Start by understanding their perspective.<\/p>\n

Building a Team<\/strong><\/p>\n

The legal market is full of brilliant lawyers. What\u2019s scarce is brilliant lawyers who other brilliant lawyers want to work with.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been fortunate to attract extraordinary talent to our practice at Milbank, and I\u2019ve spent a lot of time thinking about why. It\u2019s not compensation\u2014plenty of firms pay well. It\u2019s not just interesting cases, though we\u2019ve had our share. It\u2019s that people want to work in an environment where their contributions matter, where they\u2019re not just executing someone else\u2019s vision but actively shaping the strategy.<\/p>\n

This means involving associates and junior partners in client conversations earlier than might be traditional. It means crediting their ideas explicitly in meetings and briefs. It means creating an environment where someone can say \u201cI think we\u2019re missing something\u201d without fear. The best legal work happens when smart people feel safe being honest about uncertainty, about gaps in the argument, about weaknesses in the case. That safety only exists when egos are checked at the door.<\/p>\n

In my 2002 piece, I argued that law schools, which focus on solitary exam writing, send the message that \u201cto succeed I had to work as an island unto myself.\u201d The most successful practices do the opposite. They\u2019re archipelagos\u2014distinct talents connected by shared purpose and mutual respect.<\/p>\n

Other Firms<\/strong><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what surprised me most about building a practice: some of our best work comes from other law firms bringing us in on their cases. This seems counterintuitive. Why would a major firm want to split fees and credit with us?<\/p>\n

Because we\u2019re not a threat.<\/p>\n

When you build a reputation for collaboration rather than competition, for making others look good rather than claiming all the credit, firms trust that you\u2019ll enhance their client relationship rather than trying to steal it. We\u2019ve been brought in on dozens of cases where the referring firm maintains the client relationship, handles most of the case, and brings us in specifically for the appellate-like stage<\/a>, which is most often at the trial court. Everything from dispositive motions like motions to dismiss to issue preservation. We do the work, share the credit, and strengthen their relationship with their client.<\/p>\n

This only works if you genuinely believe that there\u2019s enough success to go around. The scarcity mindset\u2014that every case is a zero-sum competition for prestige and credit\u2014is poison to a sustainable practice. The abundance mindset\u2014that by helping others succeed, you create more opportunities for everyone\u2014is what builds a practice that lasts.<\/p>\n

The Long Game<\/strong><\/p>\n

None of this is fast. You don\u2019t build trust with clients, teams, and co-counsel through a single brilliant performance. You build it through hundreds of small interactions where you consistently choose collaboration over ego, listening over talking, \u201cyes, and\u201d over \u201cno, but.\u201d<\/p>\n

The paradox of rainmaking is that you succeed by focusing on something other than success. You focus on making others successful\u2014your clients, your team, your co-counsel. You build a practice where people want to return not because you won (though winning helps), but because working with you made them better at what they do.<\/p>\n

Is this the only way to build a successful practice? Of course not. Plenty of rainmakers succeed through sheer force of will and brilliance. But I\u2019ve found that the practices built on collaboration tend to last longer, weather storms better, and\u2014ironically\u2014attract more business than those built on individual genius.<\/p>\n

The real world works in groups. Twenty years after writing that, I\u2019m still learning what it means.<\/p>\n

\n

Neal Katyal is one of the nation\u2019s foremost attorneys and former Acting Solicitor General of the United States. He is a partner at Milbank\u2019s Washington, DC office, and serves as the Paul Saunders Professor of Law at Georgetown University, where he was one of the youngest professors to have received tenure and a chaired professorship in the university\u2019s history. He has argued 52 cases at the Supreme Court, including landmark cases on gene patents, Guantanamo, the Voting Rights Act, and corporate law. He received the highest honor the Justice Department can bestow on a civilian, the Edmund Randolph Award, and has won all sorts of other awards, including being named one of GQ\u2019s Men of the Year. He has performed in both Netflix\u2019s House of Cards and Showtime\u2019s Billions (both times playing himself).<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The post The Rainmaker: What 20 Years In Supreme Court Practice Have Taught Me<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tNeal Katyal (Courtesy photo)\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Ed. note<\/u>: The Rainmaker is a new Above the Law series highlighting attorneys who have built distinguished practices by excelling not only in the courtroom and at the negotiating table, but also in business development, mentorship, and leadership. Each installment will feature candid reflections on what it takes to succeed as a rainmaker in today\u2019s legal industry. Our first featured rainmaker is Neal Katyal<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

About 20 years ago, I wrote a piece for Legal Times arguing that law schools fail to teach what matters most: how to work in groups. Fresh from the Justice Department, I had learned the hard way that brilliant legal arguments mean nothing if you can\u2019t bring people along with you. I thought I understood that lesson.<\/p>\n

I was wrong. Understanding it intellectually and living it daily are entirely different things.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the paradox of building a thriving Supreme Court practice: you succeed not by being the smartest person in the room, but by making everyone else in the room smarter. Supreme Court lawyers aren\u2019t exactly known for their humility\u2014we\u2019ve built our reputations arguing before nine justices who can eviscerate your reasoning with a single question. Yet the rainmakers I\u2019ve observed, and the practice I\u2019ve tried to build, succeeds precisely because it inverts that stereotype.<\/p>\n

The Improv Principle<\/strong><\/p>\n

For years, I\u2019ve been studying improv comedy, and it\u2019s transformed how I think about legal practice. The cardinal rule of improv is \u201cyes, and\u201d\u2014you accept what your scene partners offer and build on it. You don\u2019t say \u201cno\u201d or shut down their contribution. You make your partners look good, and in turn they make you look good.<\/p>\n

This sounds soft. It\u2019s not. It\u2019s the hardest discipline I know.<\/p>\n

In a meeting, when an associate offers an idea that seems off-base, the instinct is to correct them, to show why you\u2019re the experienced lead counsel. The improv instinct is different: find what\u2019s valuable in their contribution and build on it. \u201cYes, and we could take that framework and apply it to the jurisdictional question.\u201d Suddenly, the associate isn\u2019t embarrassed\u2014they\u2019re energized. They\u2019ve contributed something real. They\u2019ll work twice as hard for you, and next time, their idea might be the one that wins the case.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t artificial, it\u2019s definitely not about giving false praise.\u00a0 A smart associate, after all, will see through that in a second.\u00a0 It\u2019s rather about trying to find the diamond in the rough, the insight that the associate has and that can be built upon. I kind of stumbled upon that idea when I did my first case, challenging Guantanamo. At my side were a dozen law students \u2013 and they would all have various writing assignments and my duty was to sort through all their insights and build a coherent product out of it. Many were off-the-wall, to be sure, but many were brilliant, too.\u00a0It just took work to find those flashes of brilliance and to build upon them. That kind of \u201cbottom-up\u201d strategy is one I have taken to heart \u2013 so much so that today I routinely take advice on crafting arguments from my Researcher at Milbank. My Researcher is someone who has graduated from college and yet has not attended law school.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t just about associates or your internal team, it\u2019s just as much about clients. When a client pushes back on your strategy, you could dig in and explain why you\u2019re right. Or you could listen\u2014really listen\u2014to what\u2019s driving their concern. Usually, they\u2019re telling you something important about their business reality, their risk tolerance, or their board dynamics. \u201cYes, and given that constraint, what if we structured the argument this way?\u201d Now you\u2019re not just their lawyer; you\u2019re their partner.<\/p>\n

Why Clients Return<\/strong><\/p>\n

Twenty-three years ago when I wrote that piece, I thought clients hired you for your legal brilliance. They don\u2019t. They hire you because you make their problems smaller, not bigger.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve represented the same clients through multiple Supreme Court cases, not because I won every time (I haven\u2019t), but because they trust that I\u2019ll listen to what they actually need. Sometimes what they need is an aggressive cert petition. Sometimes what they need is someone to tell them that the case isn\u2019t worth the institutional risk of taking to the Court. The clients who keep coming back are the ones who know you\u2019ll give them the second answer when it\u2019s true, even though it costs you a major case and significant fees.<\/p>\n

This requires a specific kind of humility: the humility to know that the client understands their business better than you do, and that your legal judgment is in service of their goals, not the other way around. Supreme Court lawyers can struggle with this because we\u2019re trained to think about doctrinal purity and legal architecture. But clients don\u2019t care about your elegant theory of administrative law. They care about whether they can build the project, launch the product, or avoid the devastating liability.<\/p>\n

The best piece of advice I ever received came from Eric Holder, who mentored me at the Justice Department in my first stint there, right after my clerkships. He watched me fail to persuade senior officials of a position that I was absolutely certain was right. Afterward, he pulled me aside. \u201cYour analysis was perfect,\u201d he said. \u201cBut you didn\u2019t listen to their concerns. You tried to convince them you were right instead of understanding why they were worried. Next time, start by understanding their perspective.\u201d<\/p>\n

That lesson echoes through every client relationship, every oral argument, every brief. Start by understanding their perspective.<\/p>\n

Building a Team<\/strong><\/p>\n

The legal market is full of brilliant lawyers. What\u2019s scarce is brilliant lawyers who other brilliant lawyers want to work with.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been fortunate to attract extraordinary talent to our practice at Milbank, and I\u2019ve spent a lot of time thinking about why. It\u2019s not compensation\u2014plenty of firms pay well. It\u2019s not just interesting cases, though we\u2019ve had our share. It\u2019s that people want to work in an environment where their contributions matter, where they\u2019re not just executing someone else\u2019s vision but actively shaping the strategy.<\/p>\n

This means involving associates and junior partners in client conversations earlier than might be traditional. It means crediting their ideas explicitly in meetings and briefs. It means creating an environment where someone can say \u201cI think we\u2019re missing something\u201d without fear. The best legal work happens when smart people feel safe being honest about uncertainty, about gaps in the argument, about weaknesses in the case. That safety only exists when egos are checked at the door.<\/p>\n

In my 2002 piece, I argued that law schools, which focus on solitary exam writing, send the message that \u201cto succeed I had to work as an island unto myself.\u201d The most successful practices do the opposite. They\u2019re archipelagos\u2014distinct talents connected by shared purpose and mutual respect.<\/p>\n

Other Firms<\/strong><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what surprised me most about building a practice: some of our best work comes from other law firms bringing us in on their cases. This seems counterintuitive. Why would a major firm want to split fees and credit with us?<\/p>\n

Because we\u2019re not a threat.<\/p>\n

When you build a reputation for collaboration rather than competition, for making others look good rather than claiming all the credit, firms trust that you\u2019ll enhance their client relationship rather than trying to steal it. We\u2019ve been brought in on dozens of cases where the referring firm maintains the client relationship, handles most of the case, and brings us in specifically for the appellate-like stage<\/a>, which is most often at the trial court. Everything from dispositive motions like motions to dismiss to issue preservation. We do the work, share the credit, and strengthen their relationship with their client.<\/p>\n

This only works if you genuinely believe that there\u2019s enough success to go around. The scarcity mindset\u2014that every case is a zero-sum competition for prestige and credit\u2014is poison to a sustainable practice. The abundance mindset\u2014that by helping others succeed, you create more opportunities for everyone\u2014is what builds a practice that lasts.<\/p>\n

The Long Game<\/strong><\/p>\n

None of this is fast. You don\u2019t build trust with clients, teams, and co-counsel through a single brilliant performance. You build it through hundreds of small interactions where you consistently choose collaboration over ego, listening over talking, \u201cyes, and\u201d over \u201cno, but.\u201d<\/p>\n

The paradox of rainmaking is that you succeed by focusing on something other than success. You focus on making others successful\u2014your clients, your team, your co-counsel. You build a practice where people want to return not because you won (though winning helps), but because working with you made them better at what they do.<\/p>\n

Is this the only way to build a successful practice? Of course not. Plenty of rainmakers succeed through sheer force of will and brilliance. But I\u2019ve found that the practices built on collaboration tend to last longer, weather storms better, and\u2014ironically\u2014attract more business than those built on individual genius.<\/p>\n

The real world works in groups. Twenty years after writing that, I\u2019m still learning what it means.<\/p>\n

\n

Neal Katyal is one of the nation\u2019s foremost attorneys and former Acting Solicitor General of the United States. He is a partner at Milbank\u2019s Washington, DC office, and serves as the Paul Saunders Professor of Law at Georgetown University, where he was one of the youngest professors to have received tenure and a chaired professorship in the university\u2019s history. He has argued 52 cases at the Supreme Court, including landmark cases on gene patents, Guantanamo, the Voting Rights Act, and corporate law. He received the highest honor the Justice Department can bestow on a civilian, the Edmund Randolph Award, and has won all sorts of other awards, including being named one of GQ\u2019s Men of the Year. He has performed in both Netflix\u2019s House of Cards and Showtime\u2019s Billions (both times playing himself).<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ed. note: The Rainmaker is a new Above the Law series highlighting attorneys who have built distinguished practices by excelling not only in the courtroom and at the negotiating table, but also in business development, mentorship, and leadership. Each installment will feature candid reflections on what it takes to succeed as a rainmaker in today\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":134190,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-134189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-above_the_law"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/xira.com\/p\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Katyal_Neal_62196-0336_DC_Hres-BF4RDz.jpg?fit=2048%2C1365&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134189\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/134190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}