Tuesday, March 11, 2008 7:01 AM
Bruce McEwen, writing at Adam Smith, Esq., recently highlighted an article appearing in this month's American Lawyer, The Lost Generation?, in his post Process or Passion?
The article looks at associate churn at big law firms: Demoralized and dispirited, big-firm associates are defecting in droves. Here's what firms, and their clients, can do about it.
While agreeing with many of the ideas presented in the article, Mr. McEwen expands on the role he believes corporate law departments play in this storyline:
The authors are far too generous to corporate clients and put essentially the entire burden of associate development on law firms. Yes, I understand the financial pressures on GC's to cut costs just as their other C-suite comrades are doing, but I'll bet you that the CFO is not second-guessing junior trainees being on the outside auditor's team and the CMO is not telling the ad agency to leave the assistant account executives back at the office.
It's actually worse than that, because the same GC who (for example) instructs outside counsel not even to bother putting first-year's on the bill because their time will only be zero'ed out is going to go right back to those same firms to poach mid-level's when the inhouse department needs to staff up. Economists call this free-riding, but it doesn't take an economics background to label it for what it is: Patently hypocritical, exploitative, and plain old unfair.
Corporate America, which presumably benefits first and foremost from the services of BigLaw, needs to behave more as a business partner and less as a distant third-party willing to exploit the reality that right now there's a lot of sand in the gears when the interests of law firms and the interests of young associates try to mesh.
Reading The Lost Generation? along with Process or Passion? makes for an interesting look at an issue that does not appear to be going away anytime soon.