Monthly Archives: November 2013

THE NEWEST BIG LAW PARTNERS SPEAK

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A recent survey of associates who became partners in their Am Law 200 firms between 2010 and 2013 produced some startling results. The headline in The American Lawyer proclaims that new partners “feel well-prepped and well-paid.” But other conclusions are troubling.

More than half (59 percent) of the 469 attorneys responding to the survey were non-equity partners. That’s significant because for them the real hurdle has yet to come. Most won’t advance to equity partnership in their firms. But even the combined results paint an unattractive portrait of the prevailing big law firm business model.

Lateral progress

It should surprise no one that institutional loyalty continues to suffer as the leveraged big law pyramid continues to depend on staggering associate attrition rates. According to the survey, almost half of new partners said that “making partner is nearly impossible.”

It’s toughest for home grown talent. Forty-seven percent of new partners switched firms before their promotions, most within the previous four years. An earlier survey of 50 Am Law 200 firms made the point even more dramatically: 59 percent of those who made partner in 2013 began their careers elsewhere. Long ago, a lot of older partners became wise to this gambit. They learned to hoard opportunities and preserve client silos as the way to move up and/or acquire tickets into the lucrative lateral partner market.

Somewhat paradoxically in light of their lateral paths into the partnership, 90 percent of new partners thought that commitment to their firms was of great or some importance as a factor in their promotion to partner. Yet almost 60 percent said that, since making partner, their commitment to the firm had decreased or only stayed the same.

Why don’t they feel like winners?

More than 80 percent of respondents thought that the “ability to develop and cultivate new clients” was “of great or some importance” in their promotion to partner. Yet more than half of new partners said that they received no formal training in business development.

Other results also suggest that a big law partnership has become an increasingly mixed bag. Almost eight out of ten said their business development efforts had increased since making partner. How did they make room for those activities in their already full workdays as “on-track-for-partner associates”? Eighty-three percent reported that time with their family “had decreased or stayed the same.” More than half said that control of their schedules had decreased or stayed the same. Making partner doesn’t seem to help attorneys achieve the kind of autonomy that contributes to career satisfaction and overall happiness.

The meaning of it all

More than 60 percent of new partners were satisfied or very satisfied with their compensation. Maybe money alone will continue to draw the best law graduates into big firms. A more important question is whether they will stay.

Most partners running today’s big firms assume that every associate has the same ambition that they had: to become an equity partner. Meanwhile, they’ve been pulling up the ladder on the next generation. Leverage ratios in big firms have doubled since 1985; making equity partner is now twice as difficult as it was then. Does anyone really believe that the current generation of young attorneys contains only half the talent of its predecessors?

The law is a service business. People are its only stock in trade. For today’s leaders who fail to retain and nurture young lawyers, the future of their institutions will become grim indeed. As that unfortunate story unfolds, they will have only themselves to blame. Then again, if these aging senior partners’ temporal scopes extend only to the day they retire, perhaps they don’t care.

“I AM A DICTATOR.”

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Some people think that law professors are boring. A dean in Cleveland is proving them wrong.

A year ago, Case Western Reserve Law School Dean Lawrence Mitchell burst onto the national scene with a New York Times op-ed selling a law degree as a great deal. Shortly thereafter, he gave a Bloomberg Law interview in which he continued to press his case. For his efforts, Mitchell took center stage in my article, “The Law School Story of the Year – Deans in Denial.”

Well, he-e-e-e-e’s b-a-a-a-a-c-k! Mitchell is now the leading man in what is becoming a tragedy for his school.

The principal antagonists

Raymond S.R. KU, became a tenured professor at Case in 2003, co-director of the Center for Law, Technology & the Arts in 2006, and associate dean for academic affairs in 2010. On Halloween 2013, Ku filed an amended complaint against Lawrence Mitchell and Case Western Reserve University for alleged retaliation because he opposed “Dean Mitchell’s unlawful discriminatory practice of sexually harassing females in the law school community.”

Lawrence Mitchell became dean in 2011. The complaint alleges that he arrived from George Washington University Law School with some personal baggage, including several marriages culminating in divorces, one of which involved a student. If the allegations about his conduct after becoming dean at Case are true, his behavior was both stupid and reprehensible. (Spoiler alert: the details are less titillating than most voyeurs might like — and the juiciest stuff is hearsay. UPDATE: Dean Mitchell has moved to strike many of the allegations as “immaterial, impertinent, and scandalous.)

Hubris revealed?

Buried in the salacious allegations that have generated media attention is paragraph 86 of the amended complaint: “In relation to the performance of his duties as dean of the Case Law School, Dean Mitchell stated vehemently, ‘I am a dictator.'”

Allegations aren’t evidence. Maybe he never said it. But what if he did? Maybe he was joking. Or maybe he believed it. Or, worst of all, maybe it was true.

In many respects — from framing a school’s mission to creating annual budgets to doling out office assignments — deans wield enormous power. But the best deans aren’t dictators; they’re consensus builders. They have line accountability to university provosts, presidents and trustees; however, they also have to deal effectively with students, alumni, and faculty. Any dean who likens his role to that of a dictator eventually becomes a problem for his institution.

Dollars behind the drama?

As the controversy swirls around Mitchell, a very good law school suffers. Case graduated 223 new attorneys in 2010. The entering first-year class of 2013 includes fewer than half that number — 100. Apparently, Mitchell’s year-end sales pitch landed on deaf ears.

In his Bloomberg Law interview last January, Dean Mitchell said, “Of course, we’re running a business at the end of the day.” From that perspective, perhaps Case University’s central administration doesn’t view things as badly as Case’s 1L numbers might suggest.

Specifically, there’s gold in law school LLM students, and Case has 85 of them entering its program this year. For a school with only 100 first-year JD students, that’s a lot. (The University of Chicago has 196 entering JD-students and 70 LLM-students.) In contrast to more extensive financial aid available for JD students, those seeking an LLM at Case are eligible only for “a limited number of merit scholarships…in the form of a partial reduction for tuition.”

What lies ahead?

Perhaps Mitchell’s business plan has been to follow the money, focusing on the lucrative LLM recruits. Maybe that’s his vision for the school as a profit-maximizing venture. Maybe that’s precisely the direction that his bosses want him to take. Maybe Case’s central administration has given Mitchell such latitude to wield power that he feels comfortable boasting about it. Or, as I suggested at the beginning, perhaps there’s no substance to any of the claims against him.

If it turns out that Mitchell’s superiors are rewarding what they regard as “business success” by allowing him to run the school as a dictator, they have forgotten an important truth. Sometimes dictators get deposed — especially if they’re defendants in lawsuits.