Legal News

Should Firms Be Coughing Up More Information on Partners?

By Ashby Jones

A few weeks ago, we highlighted an interesting little tiff that had arisen between some law firms, most notably Jones Day, and the National Association for Law Placement over an attempt to shift the timing of the law-firm hiring process.

Well, NALP and law firms are at it again, reports the American Lawyer’s Vivia Chen. At issue this time: whether law firms should divulge details of their partnership structures, as NALP recently requested.

Chen reports that law firms have largely dismissed a request made by NALP to give a breakdown of equity versus non-equity partners in their ranks. Women and minority lawyers are most peeved by the reluctance of the firms, saying there should be greater transparency about the number of equity and nonequity partners at law firms.

“If you’re making a career selection, you want a place where you have opportunity for real leadership; I think law students want to be full partners,” says Fernande Duffly, a judge on the Massachusetts Appeals Court and a former president of the National Association of Women Judges in explaining why the breakdown is important.

Chen reports that some of the law firms argued that the distinctions are a matter of firm business and firms aren’t obligated to share the information. “How we divide profits is our business,” says Joe Sims, a senior partner at Jones Day.

Michele Dauber, a professor at Stanford Law School, says the reluctance is “about protecting billing rates.” Dauber adds: “They don’t want clients to know who’s equity and who’s not; ambiguity allows them to bill at higher rates.”

Dauber also pointed the finger at NALP for dropping the project. “They caved in to firms that probably have shameful diversity statistics,” she says.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on February 25, 2010 (boomark / email).