Make More Rain : economic outlook, hr

Law Firm Talent Management Doesn't Stop with Recruiting

Admin — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 21:57:09 GMT

Without question, gaining an understanding of the characteristics of successful lawyers within individual firms can help firms to make wiser recruiting investments. The “Moneyball” project worked on by Kerma Partners and Lexis Nexis’ Redwood Think Tank focused on the characteristics of lawyers before they entered the law firm studied. Valuable information for the firm to have? Certainly, if thoughtfully incorporated into a recruiting strategy.

However, recruiting the best candidates for success within a firm’s culture is only part of the story. What’s the strategy to develop these associates after they are hired? The most qualified new lawyer can be mismanaged (or unmanaged), whittling away at the likelihood of success. The good news is that regardless of the candidate’s development before being hired, his/her development is largely within the control of the firm.

While the recent spotlight on analytics around recruiting efforts is very positive momentum, a firm really should not focus on a recruiting strategy without building a complementary development strategy. Over the past year, the Think Tank has been studying what differentiates successful lawyers once they begin their careers. In the handful of firms we’ve looked at, we have seen a (varying) correlation to success for attributes such as the type of exposure an associate receives, the clients they work with, and the volume of work they perform. Look for an article summarizing these results in the near future. As with the Moneyball conclusions, it will be important for firm managers to view information about the success of their own lawyers in the context of their own firm’s culture.

I welcome feedback and ideas for attributes to test as we continue to apply real analytics to the issues surrounding talent management in law firms.

-Kris Satkunas

Moneyball Indeed!

Admin — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 23:13:18 GMT

Buzz abounds concerning the recent “Moneyball” project completed by the Redwood Think Tank and Kerma Partners. A lot of the reaction seems to focus on trying to apply the results for a specific firm to the industry as whole. This misses the point entirely.

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.

-Norm Mullock

Law Firms Pass On Arbitration In Employment Disputes

Admin — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 07:00:36 GMT

In an article for the upcoming issue of the National Law Journal (NLJ) posted yesterday on their site, law firms are not taking their own advice when it comes to arbitration clauses in employment disputes.

Is this a case of what's good for the goose isn't good for the gander? Why would arbitration be a good idea for other businesses but not good for law firms? The answer brings into question the utility of arbitration.

The arguments for arbitration come from those who have been burned in litigation. Litigation can have you sitting in front of a jury that likely has no experience in the subject matter at hand and may in fact have motives other than the subject matter at hand to deliver a large award to a plaintiff. Arbitrators, on the other hand, are picked from within the industry from which the dispute arises and ostensibly provide a more fair, though equally binding, resolution at less cost than litigation. Where litigation can hinge on perception, arbitration decisions are meant to be grounded in experience-laden fact.

According to the NLJ story, however, only 10% of 200 law firm respondents to a 2003 survey had "mandatory arbitration in place". I assume this means that equity partners were bound by it through the partner agreement and that other employees were bound by it as a condition of employment, though it isn't specified in the article. One reason cited is that arbitration clauses may have a detrimental effect on the workplace. Said a partner with DLA Piper, "Your attorneys can perceive that you are materially changing their position vis-a-vis the firm and attempting to circumscribe the rights they might otherwise have."

I believe that statement holds true to any situation where arbitration exists, not just when applicable to law firms. Any other reason to not have them? The article paraphrased a partner in the New York office of Greenberg Traurig, writing "Arbitration [] no longer offers the benefits of a speedier, cheaper resolution, as proceedings have become bogged down in discovery and quasi-motion work that mirrors litigation."

If that is truly the case, then arbitration has a gloomy future indeed, and not just with law firms. I brought up the article to an attorney I know who defends clients in arbitration and he told me some of his concerns with it:

Arbitration has become very inefficient, with no control over evidence admission (ie, evidence can come in at any time);
The arbitrators do not have the same fear of appeal that judges do and thus are unafraid to ignore precedent;
The quality of arbitrators has declined.

This indicates some serious problems with the arbitation system for dispute resolution. As the attorney I spoke with said, "Our clients used arbitration to get away from runaway juries. Now they are going back to the courts to get away from runaway arbitrators".

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