Legal News

How Bad is Associate Life? A Manifesto Takes Aim

By Dan Slater

Big-firm associates, then, may be a lost generation: a cohort of junior lawyers whose initial professional experience is extremely unsatisfying, who are turned off by the traditional rite of passage in a large firm, and who are not developing as legal professionals in the broadest sense of that phrase. . . . Is this true for everyone, everywhere? Of course not. But is this a trend — a significant difference from the practices of 20 or 30 years ago? The answer seems to be yes. — from “Big-Firm Associates: Why They Go and How to Keep Them”

That’s the core observation about associate life at Big Law — written in the Jerry McGuire mold — published today in Corporate Counsel. The article — penned by Ben Heineman, the dean of corporate counsel and an alum of General Electric, and David Wilkins, a Harvard law professor — is based on a recent study, entitled “After the JD” (link unavailable), of 4,000 law school graduates in the class of 2000.

As the jumping-off point for the piece, the authors cite the following incongruity they see in Big-law life: As everything from summer associateships and associate class size, recruiting costs, salaries and stress management services are on the rise at big firms, one “critical indicator,” they say, is down. Larger firms, they report, are losing 30, 40 and 50 percent of associates after three to four years — with half to two-thirds of the defections due to associate, not firm, choice. (It’s a trend observed a couple of years back by Law Blog colleague Ashby Jones.)

So what’s causing this trend? The authors cite “a steady diet of drudge work” early on; no individual responsibility; lack of communication regarding firm finances and partnership prospects; busy partners failing to concern themselves with the professional development of associates; and corporate clients who are unwilling to to take risks on young associates or pay their rates, leading to a lack of interesting opportunities. In one particularly evocative image, the authors write: “Partners may not take time to communicate the overall issues and strategy in a large matter, but just send younger associates off to till a small part of the North 40.”

The solution, the authors say, lies with the firms themselves, which need cooperation from their corporate clients. “The answer is not late-night dinners from The Palm on silver servers. It is a stimulating, mind-expanding experience at the beginning of their professional careers that treats associates as adults, gives them responsibility and, most of all, communicates the intellectual and practical excitement of confronting the significant issues that the best partners enjoy. This challenging culture of professional service, more than pure dollars, can help firms become employers of choice.”

Loyal LB Readers, what say you? Have Heineman and Wilkins hit on real problems of associate dissatisfaction? What’s your take on the theme of their solution?

Law Blog Silver Tray Trivia: The silver-tray-delivered-dinners-from-the-Palm reference apparently refers to a Thanksgiving day NYT article that mentioned such a perk at Cravath. Portfolio.com later wrote that in fact, while Cravath associates do frequent the Palm, the young lawyers toiling into the night don’t have a green light to order from there.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on February 29, 2008 (boomark / email).