Ben Johnson III, the managing partner of Alston & Bird, tells a story about being a young partner at the firm in the early 1970s.

He was sitting in on an interview between then-senior partner Philip Alston, Jr., and a second-year law student. The student said, “It must be really exciting to practice law here.” Alston would have none of it: “No, it’s not. Lawyers are paid to do things too tedious for anyone else to do.”