Overstressed Law Firm Associates - A Solution?
Posted By Rob Millard - 0 Comments -
The issue of overworked and overstressed associates in law firms seems to be gathering momentum. Bruce MacEwen over at Adam Smith Esq has just blogged about it, quoting David Childs and Tony Angel, managing partners of Clifford Chance and Linklaters respectively. Certainly, there is no shortage of material on this. I blogged about it recently myself, here, following a winging email from an associate at a Magic Circle firm that was leaving because he couldn't take it any more. "Shocking place," he said, "I'm off!"
That's all well and good, I suppose, but juxtapose that with my friend and colleague Ed Wesemann's recent tale of the associate that kept an inflatable camp bed in his office because he found his work so cool that he was afraid that he'd miss something if he went home. Clearly there are many lawyers that thrive on a constant diet of intellectual adrenalin and pressure. The trouble is: there are not enough of them to populate the firms that need their lawyers to thrive on a constant diet of intellectual adrenalin and pressure....
As with many things in life the possible solutions are, superficially at least, intellectually trivial.
However, implementation of the solutions, within the complex reality that is a 21st Century law firm, is anything but trivial (intellectually or otherwise.)
In a nutshell, one or more of:
1) Only hire lawyers that behave like Ed's airbed junkie.
2) Pay associates less, to that they don't have to work as hard to yield the same profit margin on their efforts.
3) Accept lower profits (per partner).
4) Institute a staggered compensations system where those associates that want to work themselves three quarters to death are appropriately compensated, as are those that want to balance work and lifestyle.
5) Leverage technology to allow lawyers to work from home at least part of the time, converting at least time that would otherwise be spent commuting into productive billable time.
If anyone can add to these five I'd love to hear from you. Seriously.
To borrow again from Ed Wesemann, there are basically four reasons why people choose to practice law:
Type 1: I want to make as much money as quickly as possible
Type 2: I want to balance adequate income with my lifestyle aspirations
Type 3: I want to practice law because I love the profession
Type 4: I want to serve the public good
It is easy to see that the four types are not comfortably compatible.
Type 1 are well served by the status quo, with compensation for newly minted attorneys swinging past the $140k pa level in New York and increasing steadily elsewhere too. The other three types are often less well served.
There's no easy answer. The key is somehow to achieve that apparently impossible compromise where Type 1 aspirations can be met simultaneously with the other three, without sacrificing the firm's culture, strategy or economic performance. Easily said; far less easily done. But what's the alternative? It's all very well to have swimming pools, concierge services and restaurants to support those that are willing to sacrifice all for their careers. But excluding those that seek a balance is depriving the firms of potentially valuable capacity at a time when good corporate lawyers are in desperately short supply.
One thing is for sure: those firms that solve this conundrum will almost certainly achieve a state of competitive advantage that will be truly enviable.
Comments, as always, would be most welcome (especially in this case from law firm associates) and may be posted below.
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