Wednesday, March 09, 2005 12:53 PM
Want to keep your associates on board? Hide them...
At least that is what it seems some law firms are doing reports this piece from The National Law Journal. According to the article, due to an uptick in the lateral hiring, "[s]ome firms are limiting the contact information about associates provided on their Web sites. Others have deleted biographical and practice area details as well. Still others are said to be scaling back information in law firm directories."
If true, the idea seems to be that by providing less information about their associates, the law firms will make it more difficult for other firms to poach them. Given that we all (like it or not) are living in the Information Age, such an approach certainly would not qualify as forward-thinking.
In the end, hiding information won't significantly help with associate retention. Those who wish to leave, will leave. Indeed, for younger, web-savvy associates, hiding information may ultimately prove to be more detrimental to retention than proactively publishing information. As the legal vertical looks towards the bigger picture of information-sharing and the web, let's just hope that such restrictive approaches are the exception rather than the rule.