Academic

Bill Henderson, a professor at the University of Indiana Maurer School of Law, raised more fundamental questions about the current large law firm recruiting model. ?Law firms have essentially been on autopilot for ? several decades, maybe half a century, in terms of where they recruit,? he noted. Henderson proposed an apprenticeship model where ?you find people that really want to grow in your model.? The concept of an apprenticeship model continued to be a topic of discussion throughout the Roundtable?s exploration of recruiting, hiring, and professional development.

?What you have is a situation where you have roughly the same number of lawyers going after less work,? commented Wally Martinez. ?So how do you win that competition? You win that competition by, at every level of your organization, having the best team on the field, the best trained team, the most practical team. So I think that what law firms will need to do during this downturn is focus even more intensely on associate training and development, but it has to be practical training. And I happen to think that the biggest change that we?ll see is that what was driving a lot of ? the work ? around professional development and associate training was associate retention concerns. ? I think what training and development will be driven by now ? is client retention concerns.?

Kellye Walker, Senior VP and General Counsel for Diageo North America, noted, ?? the press is saying that clients don?t want to pay for brand new associates. That?s not necessarily true. Clients want to pay commensurate with the value that they?re seeing. And that?s a very different concept ? the apprenticeship model actually helps to bring that to fruition.?