The firm didn’t write the LPQ to trip you up. And yet the LPQ is where partners can do the most damage to their own candidacy — not because the firm laid a trap, but because they made an unforced error.

Three of them come up again and again. Two are opposite mistakes about the same thing, and the third can cost you a great deal more than an offer. Let me take them in turn.

The first, and the most common, is underselling. Partners are trained to be conservative — to under-promise, play it safe — and on the LPQ that instinct costs them.

When you discount your own portable business — shave your originations, lowball what will move with you, hedge every number — you hand the firm a smaller, less profitable version of yourself. And they price you on what you gave them — and then discount it further. A self-inflicted discount on your book can drastically reduce the offer you get, or prevent one altogether. You don’t get credit for modesty here. You get priced on it.

Now, the fix for underselling is not to swing the other way — which is the second mistake.

Overpromising is underselling’s mirror image, and it’s just as costly — only the bill comes later. If you inflate your book, claim business that won’t really follow you, or paint a rosier picture than you can defend, one of two things happens.

If it’s caught before the offer, during diligence, you lose credibility at the worst possible moment — and credibility, once gone, colors everything else in your file. If it’s caught after you join, when the business doesn’t materialize the way you promised, you’re looking at a drastic comp correction or a hasty, painful exit. Either way, the inflated number you reached for becomes the standard you’re measured against — and then miss.

So the target is the honest, well-supported middle. The third mistake is a different animal entirely, and it’s the one that can follow you out the door.

The LPQ asks about your clients and your business, and in the rush to make your case, you can cross a line — disclose something confidential, or breach the fiduciary duties you still owe your current partnership. This is the one that isn’t about your number at all.

Breach client confidentiality or your fiduciary obligations, and the consequences are on a different scale entirely: you can forfeit capital and bonuses at your current firm, and you can embroil yourself — and your new firm — in litigation. The very move you were trying to make becomes the thing that detonates. Making your case and protecting yourself aren’t in tension — but it takes real care to do both, and the LPQ is exactly where that care matters most.

So there are the three. Underselling, which prices you low. Overpromising, which prices you high and then punishes you for it. And breaching your duties, which can cost you money, stress, relationships, and reputation.

The first two are two sides of one coin — get your number honest and well-supported, neither shaved nor inflated. The third is the guardrail around the whole exercise. None of this means playing small. It means making your strongest case, accurately, without stepping on a landmine to do it — which, not coincidentally, is exactly what a good advisor is there to help you do.