Wildly Successful, But Born Without the Ambition Gene

 A May 2025 business profile on law firm Paul, Weiss documents:

"The firm reported exceptional financial growth in 2025, with revenue up 32% to $2.63 billion and PEP growing 15% to $7.5 million[8]. This performance significantly outpaced the previous year's growth, reflecting the firm's strong market position and client demand for its services."

It's easy to conclude: Those lawyers must be very quite ambitious. 

But, maybe not. At least not all of them. And, maybe none of the stars.

See, the concept of "ambition" is ambiguous. 

A perceived overabundance of it as with Josh Shapiro and Jill Biden can be a negative. On the other hand, being sized as not having enough of it can mean never entering any of the big games, like Wall Street. Or allowed to marry into wealth.

More to the point, as a coach I have observed that what propels exceptional performance leading to a rapid rise to the top of a profession might not be ambition per se. 

Sometimes it's simply the intense passion for the work. 

It can also be the natural path of accomplishment by true genius. Was prolific William Shakespeare ambitious or did he "just have to keep writing?" 

That's often the situation in the arts, academia, the helping professions and entrepreneurship. 

Should the Class of 2025 at law firms such as Paul, Weiss be socialized to unleash passion, not chase commercial objectives. Not even one such as holding onto their jobs. 

Actually ambition, as tradtitionally understood, can get in the way. There's a raw self-consciousness about it. Superiors, colleagues and staff could be turned off and turn on them. Most careers collapse from invisible forces. 

In coaching a state government lawyer who hires newly minted JDs., they told me that they screen out those not fully present in interviews. You know the kind: They're watching you watch them, not engaged. Essentially, that's interpreted as a sign of the kind of ambition that gets in the way of performance: The addiction to always watching oneself, instead of being in the collective now of the team.

As an observer of Karp since 2000, I've concluded the internal driver is not only his passion for the mystique of lawyering. It seems to be more his reverence for the institution that is Paul, Weiss. Never lured away by more money, the guy is a lifer.

Here is an article on ambition I published in AOL in 2011. Compare and contrast now and then. 

Thrown off your game, maybe the first time since you started working? You made all the right moves and then the world moved in another direction.

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