Monthly Archives: June 2011

TRUTHINESS IN NUMBERS

Posted on by
Reply

Two recent developments here and across the pond share a common theme: ongoing confusion about young attorneys’ prospects. But the big picture seems clear to me.

Last month, I doubted predictions that the UK might be on the verge of a lawyer shortage. I expressed even greater skepticism that it presaged a similar shortfall in the United States. In particular, College of Law issued a report suggesting that an attorney shortage could exist as early as late 2011 and “may jump considerably in 2011-2012.”

This came as a surprise because the UK’s Law Society has warned repeatedly about the oversupply of lawyers in that country. Why such dramatically different views of the future?

Some commenters to an article about the College of Law report suggested that perhaps the study hadn’t taken into account the existing backlog of earlier graduates who, along with young solicitors laid off in 2008 and 2009, were still looking for work.

Another explanation may be that the College of Law and its private competitors, including Kaplan Education’s British arm, wants to recruit students to their legal training programs. Sound familiar?

The following is from the College of Law website:

“84% of our LPC graduates were in legal work just months after graduation.*”

But mind the asterisk: “*Based on known records of students successfully completing their studies in 2010.”

I wonder who among their students isn’t “known.” As for “legal work,” a recent former UK bar chairman observed that the oversupply of attorneys in that country has driven many recent LPC graduates into the ranks of the paralegals. Digging deeper into the College of Law’s 84 percent number yields the following: 62 percent lawyers; 22 percent paralegals “or other law related.” At least the College appears to be more straightforward than American law schools compiling employment stats for their U.S. News rankings.

That takes me to the recent ABA committee recommendation concerning employment data here. U.S. News rankings guru Robert Morse has joined the ABA in assuring us that help is on the way for those who never dreamed that law schools reporting employment after graduation might include working as a greeter at Wal-Mart. Morse insists that if the schools give him better data, he’ll use it.

It’s too little, too late. Employment rate deception is the tip of an ugly iceberg comprising the methodological flaws in the rankings. For example, employment at nine-months accounts for 14 percent of a school’s score; take a look at the absurd peer and lawyer/judges assessment criteria, which count for 40 percent. Res ipsa loquitur, as we lawyers say.

Frankly, I’m skeptical about the prospects for progress even on the employment data front. Until an independent third-party audits the numbers that law schools submit in the first place, their self-reporting remains suspect. No one in a position of real professional power is pushing that solution.

Meanwhile, back in the UK, Allen & Overy — a very large firm — announced its “second round of cuts on number of entry level lawyers hired” — from the current 105 London training contracts down to 90 for those applying this November.  The article concluded:

“The news comes after the latest statistical report from the Law Society highlighted the oversupply of legal education places compared with the number of training contracts in the UK legal market. The number of training contract places available fell by 16% last year to 4,874 and by 23% from a 2007-08 peak of 6,303.”

So much for the College of Law’s predictive powers. Prospective lawyers in the UK are probably as confused as their American counterparts when it comes to getting reliable information about their professional prospects. Most students everywhere assume that educational institutions have their best interests at heart.

If only wishing could make it so.

DESPERATELY SEEKING DOWNTIME

Posted on by
1

Couple Friday afternoon summer getaway days with a long weekend like the fourth of July and what do you get? Maybe not as much as you think.

A recent NY Times article pictures a family of four seated across their living room couch. Each has a laptop or handheld electronic device. They looked at the camera for the photo op, but the accompanying text demonstrates that they and many others are kidding themselves: physical proximity isn’t the same as spending time together.

Lawyers aren’t alone in pondering what quality time with others really means, but they confront special challenges in trying to find it. Once upon a time, work remained generally in the office; secretaries tracked down partners only for real emergencies; home was a refuge. Vacations meant that the entire family went someplace where everyone reconnected — and I don’t mean with WiFi.

Those good old days weren’t idyllic, but the lines separating work from everything else were clearer. The erosion began with voicemail. The ability to leave a message made it easier to do so while creating subtle pressure for recipients to check in periodically, even during vacations. E-mail made things worse. To the sender, it’s less intrusive than a phone call and, therefore, isn’t considered an interruption. BlackBerrys, text-messaging, and smart phones sped connection times and completed the melding of personal and professional existences.

Self-delusion about the consequences has become a special problem for attorneys who measure their lives in billable hours. They’ve convinced themselves that these technological innovations have come with no downside. Especially in big law, it’s all positive because everyone is just utilizing time more productively, i.e., it’s getting billed and the equity partners in particular are getting richer.

Associates supposedly benefit, too. Unlike earlier, “tougher” times, they can go home and continue billable activities in their virtual offices.

Clients? They get 24/7 access to their lawyers.

Everyone wins because the human mind can simultaneously do many things well, right? Not really.

The human brain processes information sequentially, that is, one thing at a time. When interrupted, the mind disengages from the original task, turns to the second one, and then disengages again before returning to what it was doing first. Not surprisingly, a recent scientific study found that young people (average age 24) switched tasks more quickly and easily than old ones (average age 69).

But another study reveals that people of all ages underestimate the extent to which they are, in fact, distracted in ways that burden the brain and diminish productivity. Using television and computer screens concurrently, the subjects multitasked between TV and internet content. On average, they switched between the two media four times per minute — or 120 times during the 27-minute experiment.

That’s stunning, but less shocking than the gap between reality and the subjects’ perceptions. Compared to the actual number of 120, they thought they’d switched between TV and computer screens only 15 times. The report concluded:

“That participants underreported their switching behavior so drastically echoes recent work in the applied multitasking field that illustrates how individuals tend to overestimate their multitasking ability and how heavy multitaskers are prone to distraction…[P]eople have little self-insight into multitasking behavior.”

If you’re checking for messages between innings at a ballgame or between shots on a golf course, you may not even know you’re doing it.

I’m not a technophobe. You’re reading this article because I sat at a computer, typed away, and then hit a button that propelled my musings into cyberspace. This very blog proves that technology has opened communication channels that facilitate intelligent interactions across continents and oceans. That won’t change and it shouldn’t.

But the next time you see couples or families at a restaurant, resort pool, or some other venue that’s supposed to bring them together, consider whether whatever each is doing independently proves that technology run amok may also be closing some important channels, too.

My recent family vacation reminded me that live conversations with all participants in the same place are still the best entertainment. Yes, even better than Skype and FaceTime. And no, I didn’t tweet while I was gone.

AGING GRACEFULLY — OR NOT

Posted on by
4

A recent NY Times article revealed the baby boomer’s dilemma: await marginalization or hog opportunities. It has profound implications for big law attorneys of all ages.

“[I]n my experience, it is much harder for older partners to maintain their position if their billable hours decline,” an employment lawyer told the Times.

So a law firm consultant suggested this strategy: “Very few people are so skilled that they can’t be replaced by a younger, more current practitioner. You’ve got to be so connected to important clients that the firm is going to fear your departure.”

That’s unfortunate advice, but not surprising. Most elders don’t mentor talented proteges to assume increasing responsibilities, persuade clients that others can do equally first-rate work, or institutionalize relationships so that the firm weathers senior partner departures and prospers over the long run. Instead, they create silos — self-contained practice groups of clients and attorneys who will give them leverage in the internal battles to retain money, power, and status. (See, e.g., The Partnership) Rather than waste time gaining fellow partners’ respect, the prevailing big law model prefers fear — or, more precisely, fear of a senior partner’s lost billings.

Over time, intergenerational antagonisms result. Older partners become blockage because the leveraged pyramid that pervades big law requires adherence to short-term metrics. Artificial constraints block the promotion of well-qualified candidates who’ve given years of personal sacrifice. If there’s not economic room at equity partner decision time, their efforts will have been for naught; they’re left behind.

Meanwhile, young attorneys learn by example. “Firm” clients cease to exist; they’re absorbed into jealously guarded fiefdoms that become transportable business units. Traditional partnership principles of mutual respect and support yield to unrestrained self-interest.

Eventually, everyone loses. Young attorneys resent elders; wealthy equity partners erect futile defenses against their own inevitable decline to an unhappy place; firms lose the stability that comes with loyal clients.

For some aging big law partners, greed never retires. But for many others, hanging on isn’t about the money. As mortality rears its head, their real quest is for continuing relevance — the belief that they still have something to offer and are making a difference.

Another Times article suggested a possible way out of big law’s conundrum: encouraging partners to redirect their skills. The New York Legal Aid Society program, Second Acts, taps into the growing army of retired lawyers:

“The point is not to have distinct phases of working life and after-working life, but to meld the two by having pro bono work be part of a lawyer’s career. Therefore, when lawyers retire, they can somewhat seamlessly slip into meaningful volunteer work, said Miriam Buhl, pro bono counsel at…Weil, Gotshal & Manges.”

The article described 68-year-old Steven B. Rosenfield, a former Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison partner who traded his commercial securities practice for work in juvenile rights.

Behavior follows embedded economic structures and the incentives they create. In big law, the myopic emphasis on a handful of short-term profit-maximizing metics — billings, billable hours, and leverage ratios — has produced blinding wealth for a few. But sometimes those metrics become less satisfying as organizing principles of life.

Firm demands have left all lawyers with little time to reflect on what their lives after big law might be. Someday, most successful big law partners will pay the price and need help finding a path that reshapes self-identity while preserving dignity. The challenge is to permit disengagement with honor.

Firms could do a great service — and improve their own long-term stability in the process — if they relieved the stigma of economic decline in ways that encouraged aging colleagues to do the right thing. But it requires thinking beyond today’s metrics that determine a partner’s current year compensation. It requires valuing what can’t be easily measured and embedding it in a firm’s culture so that reaching retirement age isn’t a shock, it’s a blessing. It requires empathy, compassion, and — most of all — leadership.

In short, it requires things that are, tragically, in very short supply throughout big law.