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Make Your Associates Happy by Opening an Office in Fantasy Land

By Eric Lipman

It made "news" the other week when the most recent mid-level associate survey revealed that even the associates who survived the BigLaw bloodbath were unhappy. You know, "news." In the same way a banner headline reading "WINTER TO BE SIGNIFICANTLY COLDER THAN SUMMER" or "GOVERNOR LEAVES WIFE FOR MALE INTERN" would be "news." You don't exactly expect a reactive spit take. What you do expect is that some observers will pose the question, "What should we do about it?" I, for one, think that question is essentially rhetorical at this point, but some others invariably try to answer it. Yesterday, Steven Harper penned what is, so far, my favorite answer, in the Am Law Daily. Harper, who last month weighed in on BigLaw suicides, suggested that the solution to the perennial unhappiness of associates is to have partners pretend that it matters. To have them close their eyes and conjure up a world where there is "a cost associated with young attorney dissatisfaction that their short-term profit-maximizing metrics aren't capturing." It's a refreshing perspective. Harper recognizes that it would be ludicrous to expect partners to actually believe that the well-being of their worker bees is relevant. So we need to...

Full post as published by Legal Blog Watch on September 13, 2010 (boomark / email).