Tag Archives: Above the Law

A NEW YORK TIMES COLUMN MISFIRES

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My unwelcome diagnosis and resulting detour into our dysfunctional medical system diverted my attention from scrutinizing commentators who make dubious assertions about the current state of the legal profession.

Well, I’m back for this one. At first, I thought that Professor Steven Davidoff Solomon’s article in the April 1 edition of the New York Times, “Despite Forecasts of Doom, Signs of Life in the Legal Industry,” was an April Fool’s joke. But the expected punch line at the end of his essay never appeared.

To keep this post a manageable length, here’s a list of points that Solomon got wrong in his enthusiastic account of why the legal industry is on the rise. As a professor of law at Berkeley, he should know better.

  1. “The top global law firms ranked in the annual AmLaw 100 survey experienced a 4.3 percent increase in revenue in 2013 and a 5.4 percent increase in profit.”

That’s true. But it doesn’t support his argument that new law graduates will face a rosy job market. Increased revenue and profits do not translate into increased hiring of new associates. In most big firms, profit increases are the result of headcount reductions at the equity partner level – which have been accelerating for years.

  1. “Bigger firms are hiring.”

Sure, but nowhere near the numbers prior to Great Recession levels. More importantly, big firms comprise only about 15 percent of the profession and hire almost exclusively from the very top law schools. Meanwhile, overall employment in the legal services sector is still tens of thousands of jobs below its 2007 high. Even as recently December 2014, the number of legal services jobs had fallen from the end of 2013.

  1. “Above the Law, a website for lawyers, recently reported a rising trend for lateral moves for lawyers in New York.”

Apples and oranges. The lateral partner hiring market — another big law firm phenomenon that has nothing to do with most lawyers — is completely irrelevant to job prospects for new entry-level law school graduates. Even during the depths of the Great Recession, the former was hot. The latter continues to languish.

  1. “Last year, 93.2 percent of the 645 students of the Georgetown Law class of 2013 were employed.”

That number includes: 83 law school-funded positions, 12 part-time and/or short-term jobs, and 51 jobs not requiring a JD. Georgetown’s full-time, long-term, non-law school-funded JD-required employment rate for 2013 graduates was 72.4 percent – and Georgetown is a top law school. The overall average for all law schools was 56 percent.

  1. “[Michael Simkovic and Frank McIntyre found that a JD degree] results in a premium of $1 million for lawyers over their lifetime compared with those who did not go to law school.”

Simkovic acknowledges that their calculated median after-tax, after-tuition lifetime JD premium is $330,000. More fundamentally, the flaws in this study are well known to anyone who has followed that debate over the past two years. See, e.g., Matt Leichter’s two-part post beginning at https://lawschooltuitionbubble.wordpress.com/2013/09/09/economic-value-paper-a-mistrial-at-best/, or the summary of my reservations about the study here: https://thelawyerbubble.com/2013/09/03/once-more-on-the-million-dollar-jd-degree/. Most significantly, it ignores the fact that the market for law school graduates is really two markets — not unitary. Graduates from top schools have far better prospects than others. But the study admittedly takes no account of such differences.

  1. “[The American Bar Foundation’s After the JD] study found that as of 2012, lawyers had high levels of job satisfaction and employment as well as high salaries.”

It also found that by 2012, 24 percent of the 3,000 graduates still responding to the study questionnaire are no longer practicing law. The study’s single class of 2013 originally included more than 5,000 — so no one knows what the non-respondents are doing.

“These are the golden age graduates,” said American Bar Foundation faculty fellow Ronit Dinovitzer [one of the study’s authors], “and even among the golden age graduates, 24 percent are not practicing law.”

7.  “Law schools have tremendous survival tendencies. I have a bet with Jordan Weissmann at Slate that not a single law school will close.”

Yes. Those “survival tendencies” are called unlimited federal student loans for which law schools have no accountability with respect to their students employment outcomes. If Solomon wins that bet, it will be because a dysfunctional market keeps alive schools that should have closed long ago.

Whatever happened to the News York Times fact-checker?

DEWEY: PROFILES IN SOMETHING

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Some key players in the Dewey & LeBoeuf debacle are also among the profession’s leaders; that makes them role models. Some teach at law schools; that means they’re shaping tomorrow’s attorneys, too. But how do they look and sound without the Dewey spin machine?

Some readers might worry that spotlighting them erodes civility. But civility goes to the nature of discourse; it can never mean turning a blind eye to terrible things that a few powerful people do to innocent victims. Sadly, the personalities and trends that unraveled Dewey aren’t unique to it.

As to former chairman Steven H. Davis, David Lat’s analysis at Above the Law and Peter Lattman’s report at the NY Times  are sufficient; there’s no reason to pile on. Rather, I’ll look at the “Gang of Four” plus one: the men comprising the four-man office of the chairman who replaced Davis as the firm came unglued, and Morton Pierce. Here’s a preview.

Morton Pierce was chairman of Dewey Ballantine when merger discussions with Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe failed and LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene & McRae entered the picture. After spearheading the deal with Davis, Pierce locked in a multi-year $6 million annual contract that he reportedly enhanced in the fall of 2011. In his May 3 resignation later, he reportedly claimed that the firm owed him $61 million.

As he spoke with The Wall Street Journal while packing boxes for White & Case, Pierce said that he hadn’t been actively involved in firm management since 2010. But the Dewey & LeBoeuf website said otherwise: “Morton Pierce is a Vice Chair of Dewey & LeBoeuf and co-chair of the Mergers and Acquisitions Practice Group. He is also a member of the firm’s global Executive Committee.” [UPDATE: Two days after this May 15 post, Pierce’s page on the Dewey & LeBoeuf website finally disappeared. Such are the perils of losing an IT department too early in the unraveling process.] My post on Pierce will be titled “Accepting Responsibility.”

Martin Bienenstock, one of the Gang of Four, was an early big name hire for the newly formed Dewey & LeBoeuf. In November 2007, he left Weil, Gotshal & Manges after 30 years there. He got a guaranteed compensation deal and sat on the Executive Committee as his new firm careened toward disaster. As Dewey & LeBoeuf’s end neared, he maintained a consistent position throughout: “There are no plans to file bankruptcy. And anyone who says differently doesn’t know what they’re talking about.”

No one asked if he had a realistic plan for the firm’s survival. Ten days later, he and members of his bankruptcy group were on the way to Proskauer Rose. The title of my upcoming post on Pierce could work for Bienenstock, too. But because he teaches at Harvard Law School, I’m going to call it “Partnership, Professionalism, and What To Tell the Kids.”

Jeffrey Kessler, another of the Gang of Four, was also a lateral hire from Weil, Gotshal & Manges. He joined Dewey Ballantine in 2003. As a member of Dewey & LeBoeuf’s Executive Committee, he became a vocal proponent of the firm’s star system that gave top producers multi-year, multimillion-dollar contracts — one of which was his.

A sports law expert, Kessler analogized big-name attorneys to top athletes: “The value for the stars has gone up, while the value of service partners has gone down.” The title of my post on Kessler will be “Stars In Their Eyes.”

Richard Shutran, the third of the Gang of Four, was a Dewey Ballantine partner before the 2007 merger. He became co-chair of Dewey & LeBoeuf’s Corporate Department and Chairman of its Global Finance Practice Group. At the time of the firm’s $125 million bond offering in 2010, he told Bloomberg News that the bonds’ interest rates were more favorable than those from the firm’s bank. In March 2012, he said Dewey was in routine negotiations with lenders over its credit line. He also dismissed The American Lawyer’s retroactive revision of Dewey’s 2010 and 2011 financial performance numbers as much ado about nothing. My post on Shutran will be “Running the Numbers.”

L. Charles Landgraf, the last of the four, began his career at LeBoeuf Lamb 34 years ago. I don’t know him (or any of  the others), but my hunch is that Charley (as people call him) is a decent guy. My post on him will be called “The Plight of the Loyal Company Man.”

In future installments, we’ll take a closer look at each of them. Sometimes it won’t be pretty, but neither is what some of them personify about the profession’s evolution.

SPINNING DEWEY’S HEROES

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Dewey & LeBoeuf’s latest designated savior is Martin J. Bienenstock. The NY Times says that he faces “perhaps the most challenging assignment of his career: the restructuring of his own law firm.”

According to the Times, his challenges include bank negotiations to restructure Dewey’s outstanding loans, consideration of reorganization options, and avoiding liquidation. Given the complex array of fiduciary duties accompanying such a job description — as a partner to his fellow partners while also acting as counsel to the partnership as a whole without favoring any individual partner or group of partners — it’s a daunting task.

Last month’s star was Steven H. Davis, whose assurances during an interview for Fortune magazine produced an article titled “Dewey & LeBoeuf: Partner exodus is no big deal.” Right — Dewey started the year with 300 partners; 30 were gone by the time of Davis’s interview; 40 more have left since then. Among his least prescient remarks: “If the direction we’re taking the firm in was somehow disapproved of, then the reality is that there ought to be a change in management. But I don’t sense that.”

The more things change…

Less than a week later, a five-man executive committee replaced Davis. One member of the new “office of the chairman” is Bienenstock. It’s ironic because he exemplifies Dewey’s business strategies that may have worked well in his case, but less so in others’, namely, lateral hiring and compensation guarantees. Prior to joining Dewey & Leboeuf in November 2007 (a month after the merger creating it), he’d spent 30 years at Weil, Gotshal & Manges. While he sat on Dewey’s management committee that Davis chaired, his new firm became one of the top-10 in 2011 lateral partner hiring.

According to The Lawyer, Bienenstock was reportedly among those who recently agreed to cap personal earnings at $2.5 million. That’s a start, but the article also said that some partners’ deferred income took the form of promissory notes due in 2014. It’s interesting that a firm already on a $125 million hook for something that law firms rarely do — offering bonds that begin to come due in April 2013 — would add even more short-term debt to its balance sheet. Add it to the list of unexpected complications that accompany partnership compensation guarantees.

The real Dewey heroes

This rotating focus on a handful of lawyers at the top obfuscates the importance of everyone else. Rainmakers come and go — and their seven-figure incomes survive. Bienenstock is an example. So are the many former Dewey management committee members who have already left, including John Altorelli, whose parting words showed little compassion for his former partners, associates, paralegals and staff. Even top partners who managed firms that went bust seem to land on their feet. After Howrey failed, its former vice chairman, Henry Bunsow, got a reported multi-million guaranteed compensation deal at Dewey in January 2011. Welcome to the lateral partner bubble.

Lost in the headlines about the stars are the worker bees with limited options and real fears. An Above the Law post from a seasoned Dewey paralegal captures the angst:

“I know these facts do not necessarily make for sexy headlines but I do ask that you report on the following. While some laugh and play their lyre as the city of Rome burns, it will be well over one thousand staff members who will also be gainfully unemployed.”

Add the nearly one thousand Dewey lawyers who have been watching quietly at the unfolding public relations nightmare since Davis’s bizarre interview. As Dewey’s publicity machine pumps out celebrity saviors of the moment, each has drawn more unwanted attention to the firm’s plight than the last. Martin Bienenstock’s appearance in the Times along with the proffered “pre-packaged bankruptcy” option is the latest example.

If Dewey survives the current crisis, Bienenstock’s suddenly magical touch won’t be the reason. Rather, it will survive because an entire law firm —  partners, associates and staff — kept noses to the grindstone. The real heroes didn’t go looking for more media coverage of a troubled situation.

Perhaps Dewey’s leaders thought that better press could solve the firm’s crisis. But that approach reverses the relationship between public relations and crisis management, which is simple: manage a crisis properly and the resulting story will write itself.

Here’s the obvious corollary: manage the firm properly and there is no crisis to manage.

BONUS TIME — AND ANOTHER UNFORTUNATE COMMENT AWARD

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Above the Law’s David Lat wins my Unfortunate Comment Award with this assessment of Cravath, Swaine & Moore’s recent 2011 bonus announcement:

“My own take: these amounts — which are the same as the 2010 and 2009 bonus scales at CSM, except for the most-senior associates — are fair. The past three years — 2009, 2010, and 2011 — have been fine for Biglaw, but not amazing. To the extent that firms are treading water a bit, it’s reasonable for them to keep associate compensation at the same levels.”

“Treading water a bit”?

Let’s start with the suggestion that “the past three years have been fine for Biglaw, but not amazing.” According to The American Lawyer, Cravath’s 2008 average equity partner profits were $2.5 million — admittedly a sharp decline from 2007. But it’s still pretty good and, since then, equity partner profit trees have resumed their growth to the sky.

As the economy struggled, Cravath’s average partner profits increased to $2.7 million in 2009 and to $3.17 million in 2010, according to the Am Law 100 surveys. That’s not “treading water.” It’s returning to 2007 profit levels — the height of “amazing” boom years that most observers had declared gone forever. Watch for 2011 profits to be even higher.

“It’s fair [and] reasonable to keep associate compensation at the same levels as 2009 and 2010″

If Lat’s comparative baseline is the American labor force generally, his view of fairness has superficial appeal. To most people, Cravath’s bonuses atop base salaries starting at $160,000 are impressive — ranging from $7,500 (first-year associates) to $37,500 (seventh-year associates). Couple those numbers with big firm partner complaints that law schools fail to train lawyers for tasks in the big law world and perhaps associates should consider themselves fortunate that they’re not being asked to rebate a portion of their pay for the privilege billing long hours.

(There are problems with current legal education in America, but the critique that graduates aren’t prepared for big law practice misses several key points, including: Eighty-five percent of lawyers will never have big firm jobs, the vast majority of those who do won’t keep them for more than a few years, and most of the remaining survivors will find their careers surprisingly unsatisfying. For more, take a look at “A New Law School Mission.”)

But I digress. For now, the question is fairness. In law firms, it’s a relative concept — a point that causes Lat’s analysis to miss the mark badly.

As Cravath’s 2010 average equity partner profits have been returning to their 2007 high-water mark, compare them to associate bonuses, which haven’t:

Associate bonus after first full year

2007: $35,000, special $10,000

2011: $7,500

Second-year

2007: $40,000, special $15,000

2011: $10,000

Third-year

2007: $45,000, special $20,000

2011: $15,000

Fourth-year

2007: $50,000, special $30,000

2011: $20,000

Fifth-year

2007: $55,000, special $40,000

2011: $25,000

Sixth-year

2007: $60,000, special $50,000

2011: $30,000

Seventh-year

2007: $60,000, special $50,000

2011: $37,500

Earlier this year, Sullivan & Cromwell offered spring associate bonuses for 2010 ranging from $2,500 (first-year) to $20,000 (seventh-year). Cravath and others then followed suit. Even if that happens again this year, recent classes will still be far worse off than their 2007-era predecessors.

Meanwhile, law school tuition has continued to rise, so the newest associates have the biggest educational loans to repay. In the current buyer’s market for young attorneys, that’s more good news for big firms. Their associates — whose average billables are back over 2,000 hours again — won’t be going anywhere. Unless, of course, the staggering attrition rates needed to sustain the leveraged big law pyramid push them out the door. Viewed as an integrated system, the prevailing model functions effectively to produce and exploit an oversupply of lawyers.

Most big firms will follow Cravath’s lead. But they can afford to do better — a lot better — and they should. As associate bonuses have stagnated, the overall average equity partner profits for the Am Law 100 have returned to pre-recession levels — reaching almost $1.4 million in 2010.

How much is enough? More, apparently. According to the latest survey of Am Law 200 firm leaders currently appearing in the The American Lawyer, managing partners expect the upward profits trend to continue. Keeping the lid on associate compensation is a key to that strategy. It hasn’t been a great ride for the non-lawyer support staff, either.

Now you know why my next post will be titled, “Occupy Big Law.” I’m not kidding.

CULTURE SHOCK

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On December 30, K&L Gates Chairman Peter Kalis sent an email that recently reached the legal blogosphere. Bluntly, he reminded fellow partners to get their outstanding client bills paid before the firm’s fiscal year-end. Above the Law reproduced it [complete with typos purportedly from the original]:

“Let me be clear about a couple of things. First, partners and administrators at this law firm are expected to run through the tape at midnight on December 31. Many of you came from different cultures. I don’t care about your prior acculturation. We didn’t conscript you into service at this law firm. You came volunatrily [sic]. What we are you are as well.

“And that brings me to my second point. We are a US-based global law firm. US law firms operate on a cash basis of accounting. Our fees must be collected by midnight within the fiscal year in which they are due. You don’t get to opt out of this feasture [sic] because it doesn’t appeal to you. Again, I couldn’t care less whether it appeals to you. It is who we are and therefore it is who you are. Get us paid by tomrrow [sic].” (http://abovethelaw.com/2011/01/the-two-faces-of-kl-gates/)

The message demonstrates three things — from the predictably banal to the inadvertently profound.

First, although the tone is a bit harsh, the substantive content doesn’t surprise any big law partner. Most lawyers aren’t particularly good businessmen. Reminding them that aging invoices require follow-up isn’t evil or wrong; it’s necessary. No attorney enjoys nagging clients about an overdue receivable. Presumably, the December 30 message was just the final step in a sustained year-end drive asking partners to complete a task that they’d otherwise avoid (as I did).

Second, email is perilous. Speedy communication can be great, but it’s fraught with danger. In less than a minute, you can address, type, and send a message to an entire group (and eventually reach many more blog readers). If you don’t take the time to proofread for typos, much less reflect on how others might later analyze your statements, no one will stop you from hitting the send button. Once released, the words assume a life of their own and context disappears. Every trial lawyer who has sought to explain away a client’s unflattering email message understands the problem. Surprisingly, some of those same lawyers fail to apply the lesson to their own writings. Next time, Kalis will probably prepare a script and deliver his thoughts via voicemail.

The third point has nothing to do with substance — that is, chiding partners to get client bills paid. Rather, the message acknowledges an unintended consequence of the prevailing big law business model: It has produced unprecedented lateral partner mobility that, in turn, erodes distinctive firm cultures. Two sentences make the point:

“Many of you came from different cultures. I don’t care about your prior acculturation.”

Six months ago, I praised Kalis for encouraging prospective associates to put interviewing partners on the spot when he urged: “[Recruits] should ask searching questions. How practice has changed over the years and how you deal with the changing demands. And how hard it is to reconcile your life at work with the rest of your life…I don’t believe lawyers should bow to icons. I want them to look me in the eye and ask tough questions.”  (http://thecareerist.typepad.com/thecareerist/2010/06/kl-gates-likes-them-sassy.html; https://thebellyofthebeast.wordpress.com/2010/07/09/summer-associates-take-note-inadvertent-revelations/)

Although they probably won’t pose them, recruits now have more tough questions for him and other big law attorneys: As partners lateral into equity partnerships, what does the culture of the receiving firms become? Does it coalesce around the common denominator of maximizing current-year profits? Or is there room for other, non-monetary values that have traditionally defined the profession? If it’s the latter, how does the firm encourage them?

The answers matter because Kalis’s email emphasizes (twice): “What we are you are as well.”

I don’t know about K&L Gates, but what passes for culture in too many big firms is his message’s final exhortation: “Get us paid by tomrrow [sic].”

NUMBERS TELL A STORY

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When challenged to tell a story in as few words as possible, Ernest Hemingway replied with six: “For sale: Baby shoes — never worn.”

I’m not Hemingway, but in his spirit of brevity, I offer five phrases — totaling eight words — distilling a recent Wall Street Journal article, “Law Firms Hold Line In Setting Bonuses,” by Vanessa O’Connell and Nathan Koppel. It appeared on the Monday after Christmas, so you might have missed it.

***
HOURS UP: “Average hours billed by associates at the nation’s top 50 law firms by revenue rose by 7% in 2010.”
***
BONUSES FLAT: “At New York-based Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCoy LLP, where bonuses were only slightly above last year’s payouts, hours billed by associates were up about 6%.” [According to Above the Law, the firm’s 2010 bonuses ranged from $7,500 for first-year associates to $35,000 for those in the class of 2003. That’s a big drop from 2006, when first-year associates received “special year-end bonuses” of $30,000. Student-loan repayment requirements have not experienced a similar decline.]
***
MANAGERS RATIONALIZE: “‘The actual number of [billed] hours is still low compared to what it has historically been,’ [says Milbank’s Chairman Mel M. Immergut].”
***
PARTNERS WIN: “Revenue at Milbank Tweed will be up by about 3% on flat expenses, Mr. Immergut says, adding that profit per partner will be up by 8% to 10%, depending on year-end collections.” According to The American Lawyer, Milbank Tweed’s average profits per partner in 2009 were $2.230 million. How much is enough? The answer appears to be “More.”

EXPLAINING BAD BEHAVIOR

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I’ve never met Steven Pesner, who lit up the legal blogosphere with his now infamous e-mail to Akin Gump’s New York office litigation billers and their secretaries. (http://abovethelaw.com/2010/11/akin-gump-partner-pens-email-fantasy-about-firing-delinquent-time-keepers/) Some say he’s typical of big law partners; others argue hopefully that he is an exception. Someone else can tackle that survey. I’m interested in what the episode reveals about the prevailing large firm business model that put him in a position to disseminate the words that now define him.

First, his fundamental point applies to almost all large firms: Get your time in because the billable hour remains big law’s cornerstone. People working for Pesner undoubtedly log lots of them; they lead to revenue — an essential prerequisite to his internal power. That’s not unique.

Second, the model has many problems, only one of which he targets: Tardy time submission. Some attorneys wait a week — or even a month — before trying to “reconstruct” their billable activities. That allows them to believe that doing their best to remember earlier tasks isn’t lying. Insofar as Pesner sought to deter creative writing at week’s or month’s end, he was protecting clients and his firm. Of course, that doesn’t justify his rhetoric. Nothing can. But his topic reveals one of many flaws infecting the billable hour regime.

Third, economic self-interest looms large. His message went exclusively to all New York litigation personnel — a point commentators have ignored. Pesner’s departmental billings may well frame a larger internal debate: His NY litigation group’s near-term economic standing. He might have been preparing to defend his memo’s recipients against annual intra- and interoffice warfare with corporate, restructuring, and transactional group leaders. Most large firm equity partners eat what they kill, along with what they successfully claim to have killed. In many firms, allocating profits often starts geographically by office practice group before proceeding to rainmakers who then decide the fate of individuals within each group.

Fourth, Pesner’s valid points morphed into a tirade that reveals pervasive equity partner hubris, especially among big law managers: He believes his own press releases.

“9. For those of you who think you are exempt from doing time sheets on a daily basis, I’d suggest that you reevaluate your importance and get ready to prove that (a) you are busier than I am on legal work, (b) you are busier than I am on client development work, (c) you are busier than I am on firm work and (d) [Redacted] and I do not have better things to do with our time than beg you to be responsible.”

The word “I” appears five times. That’s how some senior partners orient their world — around themselves. Few, if any, others compare favorably to their own idealized self-images. Their constant refrain is “today’s young people just don’t want to work as hard as I did.” But as associates, none had the challenge of a BlackBerry keeping them on-call 24/7. In fact, they didn’t even have annual minimum billable hours requirements. Their hypocrisy is stunning.

Finally, he acknowledges the life-or-death power that all senior partners wield over subordinates’ careers:

“10. Candidly, I’d put every future material violator’s name in a hat, randomly pick out a name, and publicly fire the person on the spot—to demonstrate that time sheet compliance is serious business. And incidentally, it is my understanding that the job market is not so good right now in case you did not know.”

The immediate issue was time submissions, but the underlying attitude infects working relationships throughout big law. Pesner was unique in his candor, but not in his views. Few dare to challenge such a partner in a position to make or break careers. Pesner’s threatening finale leaves no doubt in that respect:

“11. Also, please remember that I have a long and excellent memory.

If you have any questions, think long and hard before asking them—this simply is not very complicated.”

Sometimes a few words from one man are worth a thousand pictures of what too many others in his profession have become.

PUZZLE PIECES – Part 10

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[Continuing the imaginary cross-examination of a real senior partner profiled in the April 2010 issue of the ABA Journal(http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/not_done_yet)]

Q: “All right. Let’s look at 2009. In February, your firm cut 19 attorneys from its U.S offices and, a few weeks later, another 10 staffers?”

Partner: “We weren’t alone. Surely, you remember Black Thursday of that month — 800 biglaw attorneys and staff fired in a single day; over 1100 attorneys for the week.”

Q: “In March 2009, you said good-bye to 125 people — 63 attorneys and other time keepers and 62 adminsitrative staff?”

Partner: “With markets crashing, the firm couldn’t keep unproductive people on the payroll.”

Q: “And firms like yours couldn’t let their billable hours drop below 2,000 a  year, could they?”

Partner: “I don’t agree with that.”

Q: “Your firm’s responses for the NALP Directory said its minimum billable hours expectation for associates in 2008 was 1,950 in Philadelphia and 2,000 in New York, right?”

Partner: “So what? That’s not unique. Our press release explained that we’ve tried to match our resources with our projected needs.”

Q: “That press release came in July 2009, when your firm reportedly terminated another 25 associates along with staff and paralegal positions, right?”

Partner: “You’re citing Law.com and Above The Law.” 

Q: “And you’ve been shrinking your summer associate programs — in your Philadelphia headquarters, for example, from 37 in 2008 to 23 in 2009 to 13 in 2010, according to your NALP report?”

Partner: “If you say so.”

Q: “And in New York from 25 in 2009 to 12 this year?”

Partner: “Whatever the report says.”

Q: “Did your firm ever worry that it might be throwing its furniture into the fireplace in an effort to keep the house warm?”

Partner: “We’re keeping the best people. I’m not concerned.”

Q: “And you’re trying to keep the billable time of those survivors above 2,000 hours annually, aren’t you?

Partner: “That’s your characterization and conclusion, not mine.”

Q: “When you joined the firm in the early 1970’s, there’s wasn’t as much discussion about billable hours, which for most big firms in those days averaged around 1,700 a year, right?”

Partner: “It was a less important metric then. Times have changed.”

Q: “And another metric — leverage — now dictates that associates work eight years at your firm before receiving even non-equity partner consideration, right?”

Partner: “That’s what our NALP submission states.”

Q: “And the only thing your NALP submission says about the prospects for advancement to equity partnership thereafter is ‘CBC’ — case-by-case, right?”

Partner: “I don’t think we’re unusual in that respect. There are exceptions, but the pyramid is the prevailing large firm business model today. It endures because it works.”

THE US NEWS RANKINGS ARE OUT!

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[UPDATE: This post first appeared on April 16, 2010. On January 1, 2011, Northwestern’s former dean, David Van Zandt, became president of The New School in New York.]

Earlier this week, I spoke with one of my former Northwestern undergraduate students. Headed for a top law school this fall, he surprised me with this remark:

“A lot of my classmates are waiting to send in their law school deposits until the latest US News rankings come out this week.”

Seriously?

Virtually every law school dean has condemned US News’ annual effort to do for law schools what the Am Law 100 has been doing for big firms. Those of you reading my “PUZZLE PIECES” installments know that annual profits-per-partner rankings haven’t brought out the best in us. It’s all part of a larger contemporary phenomenon: the MBA mentality of misguided metrics.

Unfortunately, students aren’t listening to the unanimous chorus of skeptical law school deans. It’s easier to follow the simplistic approach of a lonely outlier, Northwestern’s David Van Zandt: however wrongheaded, metrics matter.

For a decade, he has refused to join colleagues criticizing US News’ fatally flawed methodology. (See, e.g., Brian Leiter’s analysis) A self-styled maverick, Van Zandt insists that ratings are relevant consumer information.

His position proves too much. Not all misinformation should be allowed to pollute decision-makers’ minds. That’s why fraud and misrepresentation causes of action exist. There’s another problem: pandering to the US News criteria distorts law school administrators’ decisions. Once misguided metrics become governing principles, thoughtful reflection disappears. Teaching to the test is easier than creating imaginative lesson plans.

Lately, metrics seem to be foresaking the maverick. In 2009, Northwestern dropped from 9 to 10 in the US News overall standings; this year, it fell to 11.

Rationalizing the decline, Van Zandt says that his innovative programs haven’t gained traction because of “resistance within a conservative profession.” He argues from aneccdotal evidence that the future will vindicate him. Apart from his inconsistency in crediting a positive rating that suits his purposes but discounting it when things breaks badly, some might accuse him of magical thinking.

Is it time for Van Zandt to back away from his isolated defense of the US News listings? Sure, but it won’t happen. In an April 13 Above the Law post, he urges even more rankings, however dubious their value.

In the end, he’s a misguided metrics kind of guy — at least until Northwestern drops again next year. [UPDATE: It did — to 12th, but by the time the news hit, Van Zandt had already left to become president of The New School in New York.]