Law School Recruitment vs. Lateral Hiring
The debate continues to rage at many law firms as to whether the traditional law school recruiting programs produce better lawyers and higher retention than focused lateral recruiting. Unfortunately, statistics don’t seem to shed much light on whether a trend is emerging According to NALP, law school hiring dropped 8% in 2003 over 2002. In 35 of 38 cities entry level hiring dropped and only in San Francisco, Houston and Dallas did hiring stay the same or increase. But during that same period, large firm lateral recruiting dropped 32%. For 2004 lateral hiring seems to be increasing dramatically and, at the same time, law schools report a substantial increase in the number of firms signed up to recruit on campus this fall.

Most Valued Benefits
We conducted a very informal survey of administrative staff members about which benefits are the most highly valued. Not surprising, health insurance was overwhelmingly the most valued benefit followed by 401(k) matching programs and tuition reimbursement. The least valued seem to be group term life insurance, vision care and medical spending accounts.

Two interesting observations—even among those who highly value tuition reimbursement, few say they have actually used the benefit, and parking reimbursement seems to be a function of the norm for a city. In cities where parking is normally paid, employees expect it and do not place great value on the benefit. In cities where most firms do not pay for parking, it is viewed as a very valuable benefit.

Training of New Lawyers
One of the most fascinating recruiting trends is how the very different system of training lawyers in the U.S. and UK will mesh as more firms have offices in both countries. In the UK, Canada and other British legal system countries, law school graduates spend two years “articling.” The training program rotates new lawyers through all of a firm’s practices. Because salaries in the UK for “trainees” are generally £29,000 ($50,000), the program emphasizes learning rather than generating revenues. Upon completion of the training, lawyers are “qualified” and may or may not be offered jobs with their current firm. First year
qualified lawyers start at around £50,000 ($86,000).

The 80 U.S. law firms with offices in England find themselves ill-equipped to operate large scale training programs and prefer to hire laterally, often substantially overpaying to attract top talent. As UK firms increase their presence in the U.S. they are shocked by the high salaries commanded by young lawyers who are, by UK standards, untrained. With more mergers between U.S. and UK firms, it will be interesting to watch which system wins out.

More on UK Hiring
Just after all the major London firms announced that they were holding firm at the £50,000 ($86,000) salary level, Linklaters broke ranks and boosted salaries for newly qualified lawyers to £51,000. Clifford Chance, now the largest law firm in the world, had previously announced that it was cutting starting salaries to £48,000 but responding to the Linklaters increase by restoring their salary to £50,000.

Dealing with Problem Partners
Many law firms have focused a lot of their attention and energy on dealing with
under-performing partners while ignoring “culturally challenged” partners with large books of business. In fact, one of the most common reasons associates give us for changing jobs is their current firm’s unwillingness to deal with the bad behavior of a few partners.

It seems, however, that some law firms have gotten the message and are beginning to deal with partners who are abusive to staff and associates. Several large law firms have engaged organizational psychologists to consult with firm practice group managers on how to handle these 900 pound gorillas. Sometimes the process is much like an intervention with a substance abuse problem and may involve follow up with anger management and a variety of
other programs depending on the specific issues. Other firms have taken a less
confrontational approach, preferring to use professional coaches to help the problem partner understand how their behavior lowers their effectiveness. As one managing partner said, “having a psychologist for guidance helped give us the backbone to do what is best for the firm.”

Legal Resource Group LLC specializes in serving the executive and administrative recruiting needs of law firms. We maintain the largest data base of law firm executive and Administrative staff in the world.  This allows us to immediately identify the very best candidates. We find the best people, complete searches faster and have extremely reasonable fees. For further information, visit our website at www.LRGLLC.com , contact us by e-mail at inquiries@LRGLLC.com or by phone at 1-800-688-4147.