Redwood Analytics

The basic premise of the study is that there is value in breaking away from recruitment as usual.  Spending millions of dollars to recruit the same small pool of candidates everyone else is targeting is not efficient.  Within the context of a broader set of talented, accomplished law students, traits should emerge from deeper study that allow firms a more focused approach.  Firms who develop the sort of self-awareness a study of this type creates have an opportunity to create substantial competitive advantage in their ability to attract the candidate lawyers (entry-level and lateral) best suited to long term success in and for the firm.  On the flip side, retention rates (and the cost of associate attrition) should be dramatically reduced. 

 

With regard to the question about the application of these conclusions industry-wide, there are a number of important points to draw.  First, a sample size of 1 is far from telling.  In fact, I would expect to find a number of firms for whom the conclusions drawn would be exactly opposite of those for this first firm.  Of course, this is not to say that interesting trends won’t emerge as the study is expanded; they will.  Which ones, however, will only become clear with a greater sampling.  Secondly, and I believe most importantly, the point of the exercise is to not really one of knowing which candidates will make the most successful lawyers generally but specifically, in the context of the firm’s culture, business and experience.  This point cannot be overstressed.  Yes, we may find that some traits can be correlated with expected success in the profession.  That said, any particular firm may find this trait to be unimportant in its context or even negatively correlated.  The power of the Moneyball study resides its law firm specificity.