Academic

Paul Caron has a summary of blogs on moneyball for law firms and there is also a recent ABA Journal article on the study. We now know that two factors in associate success (as defined by hours billed and months tenure) are group hobbies/collegiate sports and grades in certain classes (no, we don’t know which ones). We also now know that ?The Harvard attorneys do not perform any better than those at the 30th-ranked law school.?

The study also reveals that some attributes are actually negatively associated with performance and sometimes counterintuitive - they revealed just one - foreign language fluency.

On the topic of grades the article reveals that they are primarily sorting on good versus excellent grades, although they do not define the cut off points. (They suggest that there is no one in the sample who had bad grades). More information will be needed to know if grades really matter and how they matter.

It might be interesting to know what the undisclosed law firm has decided to do with this information and if they found it useful (I certainly think that they would). Again, the authors of Voir Dire humbly offer their expertise and services to address these questions for large law firms - for the price of one summer associate outing (or at least what I perceive to be the price tag of such large law firm events) you could purchase valuable moneyball analysis to help your bottom line. What a bargain!