TREATING SYMPTOMS; IGNORING THE DISEASE

Posted on June 1, 2017 by thebellyofthebeast

On May 22, 2017, The Wall Street Journal ran an article about the legal profession’s enduring problem: psychological distress. For decades, attorneys have led most occupations in the incidence of serious psychological afflictions — depression, substance abuse, even suicide. Now some law firms are “tackling a taboo,” namely, the mental health problems of their lawyers.

Some observers theorize that a special “lawyer personality” is the culprit. In other words, we have only ourselves to blame, so no one should feel sorry for us. Then again, no one ever feels sorry for lawyers anyway. But attorney psychological distress has become a sufficient problem that, as the Journal reports, some big law firms are now “offering on-site psychologists, training staff to spot problems, and incorporating mental health support alongside other wellness initiatives.”

Stated differently, law firms are following the unfortunate path that has become a dominant approach in the medical profession: treating symptoms rather than the disease. Perhaps that’s because law firm leaders know that curing it would cut into their personal annual incomes.

The Facts

Other workers have serious psychological challenges, too. But attorneys seem to suffer in disproportionately high numbers. The Journal article cites a 2016 study of US lawyers finding that 20.6 percent of those surveyed were heavy drinkers (compared to 15.4 percent for members of the American College of Surgeons). Likewise, 28 percent experienced symptoms of depression (compared with eight percent or less for the general population). According to a 2012 CDC study cited in the Journal, attorneys have the 11th-highest suicide rate.

Now add one more data point. According to an ABA survey in 2007, lawyers in big firms are the least satisfied with their jobs. Anyone familiar with the prevailing big firm environment knows that it has deteriorated dramatically since 1985.

The New World

What has changed? For starters, just getting a job at a big law firm is more difficult. Corporate clients have found cost-effective alternatives to young attorneys billing $300 an hour to review documents. At many firms, demand remains soft.

But the real psychological problems begin after a new associate enters the door. For most of them, promotion to equity partner has become a pipe dream. In 1985, 36 percent of all lawyers in The American Lawyer’s first survey of the nation’s fifty largest firms were equity partners. In 2016, the comparable number was under 22 percent. More than 40 percent of all AmLaw 100 partners are now non-equity partners. The leverage ratio of equity partners to all attorneys has doubled. Stated another way, it’s twice as difficult to become an equity partner today as it was in 1985. That’s what’s been happening at the financial pinnacle of the profession.

The Business Model

There is nothing inevitable about the underlying business model that produces these outcomes. It’s a choice. In 1985, average profits per partner for the Am Law 50 was $300,000 — or about $700,000 in 2017 dollars. Today’s it’s $1.7 million. And the gap within most equity partnerships reflects their eat-what-you-kill culture. Instead of 3-to-1 in 1985, the ratio of highest-to-lowest partner compensation within equity partnerships often exceeds 10-to-1. As the rich have become richer, annual equity partner earnings of many millions of dollars has become commonplace.

At what cost? The future. As law firm leaders rely upon short-term metrics — billings, billable hours, and leverage ratios — they’re pulling up the ladder on the next generation. Too many associates; too few equity slots. Let the contest begin!

But rather than revisit the wisdom of the model, some big firm leaders have made what the Journal characterizes as a daring move: bring in a psychologist. It’s better than nothing, but it’s a far cry from dealing with the core problem that starts with the billable hour, moves through metrics that managers use to maximize short-run partner profits, and ends in predictable psychological distress — even for the so-called winners. The Journal notes that a psychologist at one firm was offering this sad advice to its attorneys: Take a cellphone reprieve by turning off all electronic devices between 2:00 am and 6:00 am.

But even such input from mental health professionals seems anathema to some firm leaders. According to the Journal, Dentons’ chairman Joseph Andrew says that his fear of offering an on-site psychologist was that “competitors will say we have crazy lawyers.”

Former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates recently told the New Yorker about her father, an attorney who suffered from depression and committed suicide. “Tragically,” Yates said, “the fear of stigma then associated with depression prevented him from getting the treatment he needed.”

For some firm leaders, “then” is still “now.” And that’s truly crazy.

ASSOCIATE PAY AND PARTNER MALFEASANCE

Posted on July 13, 2016 by thebellyofthebeast

Cravath, Swaine & Moore raised first-year associate salaries from $160,000 to $180,000 — the first increase since January 2007. As most law firms followed suit, some clients pushed back.

“While we respect the firms’ judgment about what best serves their long-term competitive interests,” wrote a big bank’s global general counsel, “we are aware of no market-driven basis for such an increase and do not expect to bear the costs of the firms’ decisions.”

Corporate clients truly worried about the long-run might want to spend less time obsessing over young associates’ starting salaries and more time focusing on the behavior of older attorneys at their outside firms. In the end, clients will bear the costs of short-term thinking that pervades the ranks of big firm leaders. Some already are.

Historical Perspective

Well-paid lawyers never generate sympathy. Nor should they. All attorneys in big firms earn far more than most American workers. But justice in big law firms is a relative concept.

Back in 2007 when associate salaries first “jumped” to $160,000, average profits per equity partner for the Am Law 100 were $1.3 million. After a slight dip to $1.26 million in 2008, average partner profits rose every year thereafter — even during the Great Recession. In 2015, they were $1.6 million — a 27 percent increase from seven years earlier.

In 2007, only 19 firms had average partner profits exceeding $2 million; in 2015 that group had grown to 29. But the average doesn’t convey the real story. Throughout big law, senior partners have concentrated power and wealth at the top. As a result, the internal compensation spread within most equity partnerships has exploded.

Twenty years ago, the highest-paid equity partner earned four or five times more than those at the bottom. Today, some Am Law 200 partners are making more than 20 times their lowest paid fellow equity partners in the same firm.

It Gets Worse

Meanwhile, through the recent prolonged period of stagnant demand for sophisticated legal services, firm leaders fueled the revolution of partners’ rising profits expectations by boosting hourly rates and doubling leverage ratios. That’s another way of saying that they’ve adhered stubbornly to the billable hours model while making it twice as difficult for young attorneys to become equity partners compared to 25 years ago.

The class of victims becomes the entire next generation of attorneys. Short-term financial success is producing costly long-term casualties. But those injuries won’t land on the leaders making today’s decisions. By then, they’ll be long gone.

So What?

Why should clients concern themselves with the culture of the big firms they hire? For one answer, consider two young attorneys.

Associate A joins a big firm that pays well enough to make a dent in six-figure law school loans. But Associate A understands the billable hour regime and the concept of leverage ratios. Associate attrition after five years will exceed 80 percent. Fewer than ten percent of the starting class will survive to become equity partners. Employment at the firm is an arduous, short-term gig. In return for long-hours that overwhelm any effort to achieve a balanced life, Associate A gets decent money but no realistic opportunity for a career at the firm.

Associate B joins one of the few firms that have responded to clients demanding change away from a system that rewards inefficiency. Because billable hours aren’t the lifeblood of partner profits, the firm can afford to promote more associates to equity partner. Associate B joins with a reasonable expectation of a lengthy career at the same firm. Continuity is valued. Senior partners have a stake in mentoring. The prevailing culture encourages clients to develop confidence in younger lawyers. Intergenerational transitions become seamless.

Associate A tolerates the job as a short-term burden from which escape is the goal; Associate B is an enthusiastic participant for the long haul. If you’re a client, who would you want working on your matter?

The Same Old, Same Old

As clients have talked about refusing to pay for first-year associate time on their matters, big firms’ upward profit trends continue. But the real danger for firms and their clients is a big law business model that collapses under its own weight.

As it has for the past eight years, Altman-Weil’s recently released 2016 “Law Firms In Transition” survey confirms again the failure of leadership at the highest levels of the profession. Responses come from almost half of the largest 350 firms in the country. It’s a significant sample size that provides meaningful insight into the combination of incompetence and cognitive dissonance afflicting those at the top of many big firms.

When asked about the willingness of partners within ten years of retirement to “make long-term investments in the firm that will take five years or more to pay off,” fewer than six percent reported their partners’ “high” willingness to make such investments. But at most firms, partners within ten years of retirement are running the place, so the investments aren’t occurring.

Almost 60 percent of firm leaders reported moderate or high concern about their law firms’ “preparedness to deal with retirement and succession of Baby Boomers.” Meanwhile, they resolve to continue pulling up the ladder, observing that “fewer equity partners will be a permanent trend going forward” as “growth in lawyer headcount’ remains a “requirement for their firms’ success.”

Do law firm leaders think they are losing business to non-traditional sources and that the trend will continue? Survey says yes.

Do law firm leaders think clients will continue to demand fundamental change in the delivery of legal services? Survey says yes. (56 percent)

Do law firm leaders think firms “are serious about changing their legal service delivery model to provide greater value to clients (as opposed to simply reducing rates)”? Survey says no. (66 percent)

Do clients think law firms are responding to demands for change? Survey says most emphatically no! (86 percent)

But do law firm leaders have confidence that their firms are “fully prepared to keep pace with the challenges of the new legal marketplace”? Survey says yes! (77 percent)

If cognitive dissonance describes a person who tries to hold two contradictory thoughts simultaneously, what do you call someone who has three, four or five such irreconcilable notions?

At too many big law firms the answer is managing partner.

A DIRTY LITTLE SECRET

Posted on February 10, 2016 by thebellyofthebeast

The Wall Street Journal’s front page headline tells only part of story: “Legal Fees Cross New Mark: $1500.” The February 9 article lists the range of partner hourly rates at some big firms: Proskauer Rose from $925 to $1475; Ropes & Gray from $895 to $1450; Kirkland & Ellis from $875 to $1445; and so on and so on and so on.

That’s great if you can get it, but most firms can’t. The 2016 Georgetown/Thomson Reuters Peer Monitor “State of the Legal Profession” tells a second part of the story: realization and collection rates have plummeted. How much a firm bills doesn’t matter; what it actually brings in the door does. In 2005, collections totaled 93 percent of standard rates. By the end of 2015, it was down to 83 percent.

The Music Stopped, Almost

Annual standard hourly rate increases have blunted the profit impact of declining collections, but trees stopped growing to the sky about ten years ago. Except in bankruptcy courts. That’s the third element of the story and the profession’s dirty little secret: one of the most lucrative big law practice areas has no client accountability for its fees. Even worse, the process facilitates pricing behavior that spills over into other practice areas.

Take the recent Journal article. Where did the reporters get the detailed hourly rates for the firms it identified? A note at the bottom of the chart reveals the answer: “Source: Bankruptcy court filings.” If managing partners exchanged their firms’ hourly rates privately, it would raise serious antitrust issues. But in bankruptcy, publicly filed fee petitions do all of that work for them.

It gets worse. In bankruptcy, no one forces attorneys into the discounting that produces the current 83 percent overall average collections rate. Remember the infamous “Churn that bill, baby” email involving DLA Piper a few years ago? That was a bankruptcy case. Traditional mechanisms of accountability are ineffective. Unlike a solvent corporate client, a company in trouble has little leverage in dealing with its outside counsel. Until it emerges from a Chapter 11 reorganization, the days of minimizing legal expenses to maximize shareholder value are suspended. If it winds up in Chapter 7 liquidation, those days are gone forever.

At the same, time, the lawyers handling the bankruptcy have little risk. They get paid ahead of everyone else. Lawyers for creditor committees are a theoretical check only. They, too, get paid first and the members of the exclusive club of big law firm attorneys reappear. Their roles may change — debtor’s counsel in one bankruptcy may be creditors’ attorney in another and the liquidating trustee’s lawyer in yet another. In none of those capacities is there any incentive to rock the long-term, “paid-in-full hourly rate” boat.

More Theoretical Accountability

The U.S. Trustee receives all attorneys’ fees petitions before courts approve them. The Trustee can object, but it doesn’t have sufficient resources to analyze detailed line item time and expense entries on the thousands of pages that firms submit. The Trustee issued new guidelines that became effective for cases filed after November 1, 2013. Perhaps they will make a difference. But in the end, they are still guidelines and the final decision on attorneys fees resides with the bankruptcy judge.

As hourly rates have increased to the $1500 level that the Journal highlights, courts have given their rubber stamps of approval to the trend. Rather than challenge the high rates that all firms charge, bankruptcy judges determine merely that they are “reasonable and customary” because, after all, comparable firms are charging them for comparable work. The circularity is as obvious as the resulting payday for the lawyers. Someday, media attention and popular outrage may force meaningful change that has yet to occur.

Worse Than It Seems

Considering the 83 percent collection rate in the context of the nearly 100 percent rate for bankruptcy lawyers yields an insight relevant to the fourth and final part of the larger big law firm story. In particular, the current 83 percent collection rate is deceptively high. If a firm’s average is 83 percent and its bankruptcy lawyers collect close to 100 percent, then firms with large bankruptcy practices have non-bankruptcy clients pushing some practice areas into deep concessions off standard rates.

Likewise, combining this fact with two conclusions from the Georgetown/Thomson Reuters Peer Monitor Report produces ominous implications for such firms:

— “Demand for law firm services…was essentially flat in 2015,” and

— Bankruptcy experienced the largest negative growth rate in demand by practice area.

Unless the country heads into a recession that few economists expect, the continuing reduction in bankruptcies will drive overall average collections dramatically lower. That’s bad news for big law firms with significant bankruptcy practices.

Back in 2011, an icon of the bankruptcy bar, the late Harvey Miller of Weil, Gotshal and Manges, defended his firm’s approach to legal fees: “The underlying principle is, if you can get it, get it.”

Miller isn’t around anymore, but his unfortunate credo for a noble profession survives — for now.

[NOTE: The trade paperback edition of my book, The Lawyer Bubble – A Profession in Crisis (Basic Books) — complete with an extensive new AFTERWORD — will be released on March 8, 2016 and is now available for pre-order at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.]

LABOR DAY

Posted on September 2, 2015 by thebellyofthebeast

Labor Day marks the end of summer. It’s also a time to reflect on our relationship with work. Lawyers should do that more often. In that regard, some big law leaders will find false comfort in their 2015 Am Law Midlevel Associates Survey ranking.

In a recent New York Times Op-Ed, “Rethinking Work,” Swarthmore College Professor Barry Schwartz suggests that the long-held belief that people “work to live” dates to Adam Smith’s 1776 statement in “Wealth of Nations”: “It is in the interest of every man to live as much at his ease as he can.”

Schwartz notes that Smith’s idea helped to shape the scientific management movement that created systems to minimize the need for skill and judgment. As a result, workers found their jobs less meaningful. Over generations, Smith’s words became a self-fulfilling prophecy as worker disengagement became pervasive.

“Rather than exploiting a fact about human nature,” Schwartz writes, “[Smith and his descendants] were creating a fact about human nature.”

The result has been a world in which managers structure tasks so that most workers will never satisfy aspirations essential for job satisfaction. Widespread workplace disengagement — afflicting more than two-thirds of all workers, according to the most recent Gallup poll — has become an accepted fact of life.

Lawyers Take Note

Schwartz’s observations start with those performing menial tasks: “Maybe you’re a call center employee who wants to help customers solve their problems — but you find out that all that matters is how quickly you terminate each call.”

“Or you’re a teacher who wants to educate kids — but you discover that only their test scores matter,” he continues.

And then he takes us to the legal profession: “Or you’re a corporate lawyer who wants to serve his client with care and professionalism — but you learn that racking up billable hours is all that really counts.”

More than Money

Many Americans — especially lawyers who make decent incomes — have the luxury of thinking beyond how they’ll pay for their next meal. But relative affluence is no excuse to avoid the implications of short-term thinking that has taken the legal profession and other noble pursuits to an unfortunate place.

You might think that short-term profit-maximizing managers would heed the studies demonstrating that worker disengagement has a financial cost. But in most big law firms, that hasn’t happened. There’s a reason: Those at the top of the pyramid make a lot of money on eat-what-you-kill business models. They can’t see beyond their own short-term self-interest — which takes them only to their retirement age.

Maintaining their wealth has also been a straightforward proposition: Pull up the ladder while increasing the income gap within equity partnerships. The doubling of big firm leverage ratios since 1985 means that it’s now twice as difficult to become an equity partner in an Am Law 50 firm. Top-to-bottom compensation spreads within most equity partnerships have exploded from three- or four-to-one in 1990 to more than 10-to-1 today. At some firms, it’s 20-to-1.

What Problem?

Then again, maybe things aren’t so bad after all. The most recent Am Law Survey of mid-level associates reports that overall satisfaction among third- through fifth-level associates is its highest in a decade. But here’s the underlying and problematic truth: Big law associates have adjusted to the new normal.

Thirty-one percent of Am Law Survey respondents said they didn’t know what they’d be doing in five years. Only 14 percent expected to make non-equity partner by then. They see the future and have reconciled themselves to the harsh reality that their firms have no place for them in it.

No one feels sorry for big firm associates earning six-figure incomes, but perhaps someone should. As Professor Schwartz observes, work is about much more than the money. In that respect, he offers suggestions that few large firms will adopt: “giving employees more of a say in how they do their jobs… making sure we offer them opportunities to learn and grow… encouraging them to suggest improvements to the work process and listening to what they say.”

I’ll add one specially applicable to big law firms: Provide meaningful career paths that reward talent and don’t make advancement dependent upon the application of arbitrary short-term metrics, such as leverage ratios, billable hours, and client billings.

What’s the Mission?

Schwartz’s suggestions are a sharp contrast to the way most big law firm partners operate. They exclude their young attorneys from firm decision-making processes (other than recruiting new blood to the ranks of those who will leave within five years of their arrival). Compensation structures reward partners who hoard clients rather than mentor and develop talent for the eventual transition of firm business to the next generation. The behavior of partners and the processes of the firm discourage dissent.

“But most important,” Schwartz concludes, “we need to emphasize the ways in which an employee’s work makes other people’s lives at least a little bit better.”

Compare that to the dominant message that most big law firm leaders convey to their associates and fellow partners: We need to emphasize the ways in which an attorney’s work makes current equity partners wealthier.

Law firm leaders can develop solutions, or they can perpetuate the problem. It all starts from the top.

THE PERVASIVE AMAZON JUNGLE

Posted on August 19, 2015 by thebellyofthebeast

Amazon’s founder and CEO, Jeff Bezos, hates the recent New York Times article about his company. He says it “doesn’t describe the Amazon I know.” Rather, it depicts “a soulless, dystopian workplace where no fun is had and no laughter heard.” He doesn’t think any company adopting such an approach could survive, much less thrive. Anyone working in such a company, he continues, “would be crazy to stay” and he counts himself among those likely departures.

The day after the Times’ article appeared, the front page of the paper carried a seemingly unrelated article, “Work Policies May Be Kinder, But Brutal Competition Isn’t.” It’s not about Amazon; it’s about the top ranks of the legal profession and the corporate world. Both are places where the Times’ version of Amazon’s culture is pervasive — and where such institutions survive and thrive.

The articles have two unstated but common themes: the impact of short-termism on working environments, and how a leader’s view of his company’s culture can diverge from the experience of those outside the leadership circle.

Short-termism: “Rank and Yank”

Bezos is hard-driving and demanding. According to the Times, his 1997 letter to shareholders boasted, “You can work long, hard or smart, but at Amazon.com you can’t choose two out of three.”

The Times reports that Amazon weeds out employees on an annual basis: “[T]eam members are ranked, and those at the bottom eliminated every year.” Jack Welch pioneered such a “rank and yank” system at General Electric long ago and many companies followed his lead. Likewise, big law firms built associate attrition into their business models.

Theoretically, a “rank and yank” system produces a higher quality workforce. But in recent years, a new generation of business thinkers has challenged that premise. Even GE has abandoned Welch’s brainchild.

As currently applied, the system makes no sense to Stanford Graduate School of Business professor Bob Sutton, who observed, “When you look at the evidence about stack ranking…. The kind of stuff that they were doing [at GE], which was essentially creating a bigger distribution between the haves and the have nots in their workforce, then firing 10% of them, it just amazed me.”

If Amazon uses that system, which focuses on annual short-term evaluations, it’s behind the times, not ahead of the curve.

Haves and Have Nots

Professor Sutton’s comment about creating a bigger gap between the haves and the have nots describes pervasive law firm trends as well. The trend could also explain why Bezos and the Times may both be correct in their contradictory assessments of Amazon’s culture. That’s because any negative cultural consequences of Bezos’ management style probably don’t seem real to him. Bezos is at the top; the view from below is a lot different.

This phenomenon of dramatically divergent perspectives certainly applies to most big law firms. As firms moved from lock-step to eat-what-you-kill partner compensation systems, the gap between those at the top and everyone else exploded. Often, the result has been a small group — a partnership within the partnership — that actually controls the institution.

Those leaders have figured out an easy way to maximize short-term partner profits for themselves: make the road to equity partner twice as difficult than it was for them. As big firm attorney-partner leverage ratios have doubled since 1985, today’s managers are pulling up the ladder on the next generation. It’s no surprise that those leaders view their firms favorably.

Their associates have a decidedly different impression of the work environment. Regular attrition began as a method of quality control. At many firms, it has morphed into something insidious. Leadership’s prime directive now is preserving partner profits, not securing the long-run health of the institution. Short-term leverage calculations — not the quality of a young attorney’s lawyering — govern the determination of whether there is “room” for potential new entrants.

About the Long-Run

Such short-term thinking weakens the institutions that pursue it. As Professor Sutton observes: “We looked at every peer reviewed study we could find, and in every one when there was a bigger difference between the pay at of the people at the bottom and the top there was worse performance.”

That’s understandable. After all, workers behave according to signals that leadership sends down the food chain. Dissent is not a cherished value. Resulting self-censorship means the king and the members of his court hear only what they want to hear. People inside the organization who want to advance become cheerleaders who suppress bad news. Being a team player is the ultimate compliment and the likeliest path to promotion.

One More Thing

Bezos’ letter to his employees about the Times article encourages anyone who knows of any stories “like those reported…to escalate to HR.” He says that he doesn’t recognize the Amazon in the article and “very much hopes you don’t, either.”

One former employee frames Bezos’ unstated conundrum correctly: “How do you possibly convey to your manager the intolerable nature of your working conditions when your manager is the one telling you, point blank, that the impossible hours are simply what’s expected?”

Note to Jeff B: Escalating to HR won’t eliminate embedded cultural attitudes.

Then again, maybe I’m wrong about all of this. On the same day the Times published its piece on the increasingly harsh law firm business model, the Wall Street Journal ran Harvard Law School Professor Mark J. Roe’s op-ed: “The Imaginary Problem of Corporate Short-Termism.”

It’s all imaginary. That should come as a relief to those working inside law firms and businesses that focus myopically on near-term results without regard to the toll it is taking on the young people who comprise our collective future.

THINKING BEYOND THE AM LAW 100 RANKINGS

Posted on April 22, 2015 by thebellyofthebeast

It’s Am Law 100 time. Every year as May 1 approaches, all eyes turn to Big Law’s definitive rankings — The American Lawyer equivalent of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. But behind those numbers, what do law firm leaders think about their institutions and fellow partners?

The 2015 Citibank/Hildebrandt Client Advisory contains some interesting answers to that question. Media summaries of those annual survey results tend to focus on macro trends and numbers. Will demand for legal services increase in the coming months? Are billable hours up? Will equity partner profits continue to rise? Will clients accept hourly rate increases? Or will client discounts reduce realizations?

Those are important topics, but some of the survey’s best nuggets deserve more attention than they get. So as big law firm partners everywhere pore over the annual Am Law 100 numbers, here are five buried treasures from this year’s Citibank/Hildebrandt Client Advisory that will get lost in the obsession over Am Law’s short-term growth and profits metrics. They may reveal more about the state of Big Law than any ranking system can.

Chickens Come Home To Roost

1. “While excess capacity remains an issue, we are hearing from a good number of firms that mid-level associates are in short supply.”

My comment: After 2009, most firms reduced dramatically summer programs and new associate hiring to preserve short-term equity partner profits. That was a shortsighted failure to invest in the future, and it’s still pervasive. See #4 and #5 below.

The Growth Trap

2. “Many [law firm mergers] have tended to be mergers of strong firms with weaker firms, or mergers of firms that are pursuing growth for growth’s sake. On this latter trend, it is our view that these mergers are generally ill-conceived. In our experience, combining separate firm revenues does not necessarily translate into better profit results and long-term success.”

My comment: Regardless of who says it (or how often), many managing partners just don’t believe it.

The Lateral Hiring Ruse

3. “For all the popularity of growth through laterals, the success rate of a firm’s lateral strategy can be quite low. For the past few years, we have asked leaders of large firms to quantify the rate of success of the laterals they hired over the past five years. Each year, the proportion of laterals who they would describe as being above ‘break even’, by their own definition, has fallen. In 2014, the number was just 54 percent of laterals who had joined their firms during 2009-2013.” [Emphasis added]

My comment: Think about that one. The survey allows managing partners to use their own personal, subjective, and undisclosed definition of “success.” Even with that unrestricted discretion to make themselves look good, firm leaders still admit that almost half of their lateral hiring decisions over the past five years have been failures — and that they’re track record has been getting worse! That’s stunning.

Pulling Up The Ladder

4. “We are now seeing [permanent non-partner track associates and other lower cost lawyers] appear among some of the most elite firms. When we ask these firms whether they are concerned that expanding their lawyer base beyond partner-track associates will hurt their brand, their response is simply that this is what their clients, and the market in general demands.”

My comment: At best such managing partner responses are disingenuous; at worst they are lies. Clients aren’t demanding non-partner track attorneys; they’re demanding more value from their outside lawyers. Thoughtful clients understand the importance of motivating the next generation’s best and brightest lawyers with meaningful long-term career opportunities.

Permanent dead-end tracks undermine that objective. So does the continuing trend in many firms to increase overall attorney headcount while keeping the total number of equity partners flat or declining. But rather than accept responsibility for the underlying greed that continues to propel equity partner profits higher, law firm leaders try to blame clients and “the market.” For the truth, they should consult a mirror.

The Real Problem

5. “Leaders of successful firms also talk about getting their partners to adopt a more long-term, ‘investment’ mindset. In an industry where the profits are typically paid out in a short time to partners, rather than being retained for longer term investment, this can be a challenge.”

My comment: Thinking beyond current year profits is the challenge facing the leadership of every big firm. Succeeding at that mission is also the key assumption underlying the Client Advisory’s optimistic conclusion:

“It is clear to us that law firms have the capacity and the talent to adapt to the needs of their clients, and meet the challenges of the future — contrary to those who continually forecast their death.”

I’m not among those forecasting the death of all big firms. In fact, I don’t know anyone who is. That would be silly. But as in 2013 and 2014, some large firms will fail or disappear into “survival mergers.” As that happens, everyone will see that having what the Client Advisory describes as “the capacity and talent to adapt” to the profession’s dramatic transformation is not the same as actually adapting. The difference will separate the winners from the losers.

FEED YOUR BRAIN

Posted on August 13, 2014 by thebellyofthebeast

It’s August. Vacation time. But how many people — especially hard-driving attorneys — are taking real vacations? Distressingly few, I suspect.

Many people who think they’re taking time off are kidding themselves. They are simply moving their work venues to a sandy beach or resort swimming pool. In a recent New York Times article, “Hit the Reset Button in Your Brain,” research scientist Daniel J. Levitin observes that essential revitalization of the brain comes only when a person enjoys a complete break from the daily demands of a job.

Previously, I’ve written about the myth of multitasking — the fallacy that the human mind can perform several tasks simultaneously. I’ve also discussed scientific studies proving that we underestimate the extent to which distractions — moving back and forth between tasks — undermine our productivity. Today we add another insight into how brains work and the implications for everyday life.

Two Roads; Different Destinations

Levitin’s research shows that our minds switch between two dominant “modes of attention.” One is a task-positive network, which engages when we focus on a specific activity, undistracted by anything else. In contrast, the brain’s task-negative network is akin to daydreaming. The mind wanders but, in doing so, achieves its greatest moments of insight.

Importantly, when one network is working, the other is not. Likewise, constantly moving back and forth between networks — as multi-taskers mistakenly think they can — is inefficient. It wastes mental energy.

Lawyers and Vacations

The relationship of the two networks to most attorneys’ lives is obvious. The billable hour regime that dominates today’s delivery of legal services rewards task-positive behavior. More time spent on an activity means more revenue for the law firm. Devising ways to keep attorneys engaged so that the hourly meter is always running — day, night, weekends, and during so-called vacations — becomes a key institutional objective unto itself.

Meanwhile, every minute that the brain spends in the task-positive mode is a minute that can never be available to the task-negative network. Vacations are supposed to be a task-negative period. But engaging in task-positive behavior during such times makes that impossible. It also interferes with the brain’s ability to recharge itself.

Levitin concludes, “If we can train ourselves to take regular vacations — true vacations without work…we will be in a more powerful position to start solving some of the world’s big problems. And to be happier and well rested while we’re doing it.”

Another Reason to Make Vacations Real

When I was 14 years old, we took our first family vacation. With my three younger siblings and me in the back seat of the first new car my father ever owned — a 1968 Oldsmobile 98 sedan — we drove from our hometown of Minneapolis to the Black Hills of South Dakota.

In those days, the things that keep the brain’s task-positive network engaged outside the office didn’t exist. No cellphones, laptops, or internet. With our task-negative networks free to roam, a simple road trip to see Mt. Rushmore became an unforgettable experience that remains a cherished memory.

My dad wasn’t a lawyer. He was a trucker — an over-the-road driver who had an interesting run-in with Jimmy Hoffa in the early 1960s and eventually moved himself up to a desk job. Except for the South Dakota trip, we didn’t take two-week vacations because he’d convinced his employer to pay him double for staying on the job instead. It was an understandable decision. Even with my mother working full-time, making ends meet was a continuing challenge.

How to Measure Costs and Benefits

In the end, the financial boost from two weeks of “double-pay” each year made only a temporary difference to our family. Most of today’s lawyers are working for a more subtle form of “double pay”: more billable hours usually translate into higher compensation. But is the marginal return worth the sacrifice? What’s a person’s leisure time worth?

My father’s calculation was incomplete. He failed to consider his own need for time off and the benefits accruing to an entire family as it spent task-negative time together. Attorneys are especially prone to making the same mistake. Technology conspires with institutional incentives to make it easy. If you want to become a better thinker and a more productive lawyer, take a vacation — a real one.

My next post will be in September.

THE ILLUSION OF LEISURE TIME

Posted on April 30, 2014 by thebellyofthebeast

Back in January, newspaper headlines reported a dramatic development in investment banking. Bank of America Merrill Lynch and others announced a reprieve from 80-hour workweeks.

According to the New York Times, Goldman Sachs “instructed junior bankers to stay out of the office on Saturdays.” A Goldman task force recommended that analysts be able to take weekends off whenever possible. Likewise, JP Morgan Chase gave its analysts the option of taking one protected weekend — Saturday and Sunday — each month.

“It’s a generational shift,” a former analyst at Bank of America Merrill Lynch told the Times in January. “Does it really make sense for me to do something I really don’t love and don’t really care about, working 90 hours a week? It really doesn’t make sense. Banks are starting to realize that.”

The Fine Print

There was only one problem with the noble rhetoric that accompanied such trailblazing initiatives: At most of these places, individual employee workloads didn’t change. Recently, one analyst complained to the Times that taking advantage of the new JP Morgan Chase “protected weekend” policy requires an employee to schedule it four weeks in advance.

Likewise, a junior banker at Deutsche Bank commented on the net effect of taking Saturdays off: “If you have 80 hours of work to do in a week, you’re going to have 80 hours of work to do in a week, regardless of whether you’re working Saturdays or not. That work is going to be pushed to Sundays or Friday nights.”

How About Lawyers?

An online comment to the recent Times article observed:

“I work for a major NY law firm. I have worked every day since New Year’s Eve, and billed over 900 hours in 3 months. Setting aside one day a week as ‘sacred’ would be nice, but as these bankers point out, the workload just shifts to other days. The attrition and burnout rate is insane but as long as law school and MBAs cost $100K+, there will be people to fill these roles.”

As the legal profession morphed from a profession to a business, managing partners in many big law firms have become investment banker wannabes. In light of the financial sector’s contribution to the country’s most recent economic collapse, one might reasonably ask why that is still true. The answer is money.

To that end, law firms adopted investment banking-type metrics to maximize partner profits. For example, leverage is the numerical ratio of the firm’s non-owners (consisting of associates, counsel, and income partners) to its owners (equity partners). Goldman Sachs has always had relatively few partners and a stunning leverage ratio.

As most big law firms have played follow-the-investment-banking-leader, overall leverage for the Am Law 50 has doubled since 1985 — from 1.76 to 3.52. In other words, it’s twice as difficult to become an equity partner as it was for those who now run such places. Are their children that much less qualified than they were?

Billables

Likewise, law firms use another business-type metric — billable hours — as a measure of productivity. But billables aren’t an output; they’re an input to achieve client results. Adding time to complete a project without regard to its impact on the outcome is anathema to any consideration of true productivity. A firm’s billable hours might reveal something about utilization, but that’s about it.

Imposing mandatory minimum billables as a prerequisite for an associate’s bonus does accomplishes this feat: Early in his or her career, every young attorney begins to live with the enduring ethical conflict that Scott Turow wrote about seven years ago in “The Billable Hour Must Die.” Specifically, the billable hour fee system pits an attorney’s financial self-interest against the client’s.

The Unmeasured Costs

Using billables as a distorted gauge of productivity also eats away at lawyers’ lives. Economists analyzing the enormous gains in worker productivity since the 1990s cite technology as a key contributor. But they ignore an insidious aspect of that surge: Technology has facilitated a massive conversion of leisure time to working hours — after dinner, after the kids are in bed, weekends, and while on what some people still call a vacation, but isn’t.

Here’s one way to test that hypothesis: The next time you’re away from the office, see how long you can go without checking your smartphone. Now imagine a time when that technological marvel didn’t exist. Welcome to 1998.

When you return to 2014, read messages, and return missed calls, be sure to bill the time.

LESSONS FROM THE BUSINESS WORLD

Posted on February 19, 2014 by thebellyofthebeast

The current issue of the Harvard Business Review has an article that every big law leader should read, “Manage Your Work, Manage Your Life,” by Boris Groysberg and Robin Abrahams. Unfortunately, few law firm managing partners will bother.

It’s not that big law leaders are averse to thinking about their firms in business terms. To the contrary, the legal profession has imported business-type concepts to create the currently prevailing model. Running firms to maximize simple metrics — billables, leverage ratios, and hourly rates — has made many equity partners rich.

The downside is that the myopic focus on near-term revenue growth and current profits comes at a price that most leaders prefer to ignore. Values that can be difficult to quantify often get sacrificed. One example is the loss of balance between an individual’s professional and personal life.

Looking at the same things differently

The HBR article contradicts a popular narrative, namely, that balancing professional and personal demands requires constant juggling. Over a five-year period, the authors surveyed more than 4,000 executives on how they reconciled their personal and professional lives. The results produced a simple recommendation: Rather than juggling to achieve “work-life balance,” treat each — work and life — with the same level of focused determination.

The most successful and satisfied executives (they’re not mutually exclusive descriptors) make deliberate choices about what to pursue in each realm as opportunities present themselves. In other words, they think about life as it unfolds.

According to the authors, the executives’ stories “reflect five main themes: defining success for yourself, managing technology, building support networks at work and home, traveling or relocating selectively, and collaborating with your [home] partner.”

Professional success

Defining professional success is the key foundational step and not everyone agrees on its elements. That’s no surprise.

But some gender distinctions are fascinating. For example, 46 percent of women equated professional success with “individual achievement,” compared to only 24 percent of men. Likewise, more women than men (33 percent v. 21 percent) defined success as “making a difference.” The gender gap was even greater for those defining success as “respect from others” (25 percent of women v. 7 of percent men) and “passion for the work” (21 percent of women v. 5 percent of men). (Respondents could choose more than one element in defining success, so the totals exceed 100 percent.)

On the other hand, more men than women thought that success was “ongoing learning and development and challenges” (24 percent of men v. 13 percent of women), “organizational achievement” (22 percent v. 13 percent), “enjoying work on a daily basis” (14 percent v. 8 percent). More men also saw success in financial terms (16 percent) than did women (4 percent).

Personal success

For men and women, the most widely reported definition of personal success was “rewarding relationships” (59 percent of men; 46 percent of women). (Surprised that more men than women picked that one?) Most other definitions revealed few gender-based differences (“happiness/enjoyment,” “work/life balance,” “a life of meaning/feeling no regrets”).

But big gender gaps again emerged for those defining personal success as “learning and developing” and “financial success.” In fact, zero women equated “financial success” with personal success, but 12 percent of men did.

Putting it all together

After defining success, the next steps seem pretty obvious: master technology, develop support networks, move when necessary, and make life a joint venture with your partner if you have one. But few law firm leaders create a climate that encourages such behavior. Short-term profits flow more readily from environments that a recent Wall Street Journal headline captured: “When The Boss Works Long Hours, Do We All Have To?” In most big law firms, the short answer is yes, even if the boss doesn’t.

In general, the HBR strategy amounts to tackling life outside your career with the same dedication and focus that you apply to your day job.

A few examples:

Are you becoming a prisoner of technology that facilitates 24/7 access to you? Then occasionally turn it off and spend real time with the people around you.

Are you concerned that you’re missing too many family dinners? Then treat them with the same level of importance that you attach to a client meeting.

These and other ideas aren’t excuses to become a slacker. After all, the interview respondents are high-powered business executives. Rather, they comprise a way to anticipate and preempt problems. As one survey respondent said, people tend to ignore work/life balance until “something is wrong. But,” the authors continue, “that kind of disregard is a choice, and not a wise one. Since when do smart executives assume that everything will work out just fine? If that approach makes no sense in the boardroom or on the factory floor, it makes no sense in one’s personal life.”

That’s seems obvious. But try telling it to managing partners in big law firms who are urging younger colleagues to get their hours up.

Here’s a thought: maybe attorneys should record how they spend their hours at home, too.

WHY THE BILLABLE HOUR ENDURES

Posted on April 24, 2013 by thebellyofthebeast

Last month, I wrote a New York Times op-ed discussing the billable hour regime and its unfortunate consequences for the legal profession. The piece generated a lot of response, most of which supported my themes. Readers generally agreed that the system rewards unproductive behavior, invites abuse, and pits attorneys’ financial self-interest against their clients’ goals.

Defending the billable hour

Even so, the Times published a responsive letter to the editor from the general counsel of Veolia Transportation — “the largest private sector operator of multiple modes of transit in North America,” according to its website — who defended hourly billing. He noted that alternatives to the billable hour “have not caught on because they do not allow the client the same opportunity to see the work as it is being done, evaluate its worth, and challenge when appropriate the relationship of time, task and cost.”

Theoretically, he has a point. In fact, the billable hour system arose from a desire for greater transparency. Before it gained widespread use, clients typically received a bill that included a single line: “For services rendered.” When today’s senior partners entered the profession, firms kept track of their time but didn’t impose mandatory minimum billable hour requirements. In fact, a 1958 ABA pamphlet recommended that attorneys maintain better time records and strive to bill clients 1,300 hours a year.

Unfortunately, transparency gave way to short-term profit-maximizing behavior that distorted the billable hour into an internal law firm measure of “productivity.” Quantity of time billed became more important than the quality or effectiveness of effort expended. Today’s required annual minimum hours typically run close to 2,000 — and most associates understand that enhancing their prospects for advancement requires many more.

Transparency yields to abuse

In theory, Veolia’s general counsel is correct about the billable hour’s transparency. But in practice, few clients are well-positioned to challenge “the relationship of time, task and cost.” For a complex case, what motions should be filed and how much time should their preparation take? How many witness depositions are needed? And of what length? What’s the right level of staffing to maximize the chances for success?

Some in-house counsel possess the sophistication to provide meaningful answers to these and other questions that underlie any effort to assess the relationship of hourly fees to “time, task and cost.” But most don’t. They trust their lawyers to do the right thing under an incentive structure that pushes those lawyers in the opposite direction.

Bankruptcy as a poster child

Embarrassing reports of billing deceit are rare. But the real problem isn’t such well-publicized abuses. Rather, it’s the cultural impact of the incentive structure. In most large law firms, one practice area is particularly revealing: big bankruptcy cases.

Large numbers of bodies billed at enormous hourly rates get thrown into such matters. All of the activity shows up in detailed time records accompanying massive fee petitions that courts routinely approve. Like the U.S. Trustee’s office that also reviews such filings, courts lack the resources to provide meaningful scrutiny of “time, task and cost.”

Petitions seeking hourly rates of $700 for associates and $1,000 for partners routinely go unchallenged, as do the listed activities that consume these attorneys’ time. Last year, when the U.S. Trustee proposed that firms disclose whether they charge higher hourly rates for the same attorneys performing non-bankruptcy work, the profession united in opposition.

The moral

The billable hour regime endures because, like the general counsel of Veolia, clients think they have it under control. But that requires a leap of faith as outside lawyers resolve the ongoing dilemma of a system that pits fiduciary responsibility to a client against the attorneys’ financial self-interest. With law firms obsessing over current year profits and partners seeking to maximize personal books of business to preserve their own positions in an eat-what-you-kill world of frenetic lateral partner movement, that dilemma becomes profound.

As for the billable hour’s impact on other aspects of the profession’s culture, another Times letter to the editor offered this: “Appearing before St. Peter, a young law firm associate asked why he was being taken at age 29. Taken aback, St. Peter said the associate’s billable hours made the associate appear to be 95.”

THE LAWYER BUBBLE — Early Reviews and Upcoming Events

Posted on March 29, 2013 by thebellyofthebeast

The New York Times published my op-ed, “The Tyranny of the Billable Hour,” tackling the larger implications of the recent DLA Piper hourly billing controversy.

And there’s this from Bloomberg Business Week: “Big Law Firms Are in ‘Crisis.’ Retired Lawyer Says.”

In related news, with the release of my new book, The Lawyer Bubble – A Profession in Crisis, my weekly posts will give way (temporarily) to a growing calendar of events, including:

TUESDAY, APRIL 2, 2013, 10:00 am to 11:00 am (CDT)
Illinois Public Media
“Focus” with Jim Meadows
WILL-AM – 580 (listen online at http://will.illinois.edu/focus)

TUESDAY, APRIL 2, 2013, 1:00 pm to 2:00 pm (CDT)
“Think” with Krys Boyd
KERA – Public Media for North Texas – 90.1 FM (online at http://www.kera.org/think/)

THURSDAY, APRIL 4, 2013, 11:00 am to Noon (EDT)
Washington, DC
“The Diane Rehm Show”
WAMU (88.5 FM in DC area) and NPR

FRIDAY, APRIL 5, 2013, 10:45 am to 11:00 am (EDT)
New York City
“The Brian Lehrer Show”
WNYC/NPR (93.9 FM/820 AM in NYC area)
(http://www.wnyc.org/shows/bl/)

SATURDAY, APRIL 6, 2013, Noon (EDT)
New Hampshire Public Radio
“Word of Mouth” with Virginia Prescott
WEVO – 89.1 FM in Concord; available online at http://nhpr.org/post/lawyer-bubble)

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 10, 2013, 8:00 am to 9:00 am (CDT)
“The Joy Cardin Show”
Wisconsin Public Radio (available online at http://www.wpr.org/cardin/)

FRIDAY, APRIL 12, 2013
“The Shrinking Pyramid: Implications for Law Practice and the Legal Profession” — Panel discussion
Georgetown University Law Center
Center for the Study of the Legal Profession
600 New Jersey Avenue NW
Location: Gewirz – 12th floor
Washington, D.C.

TUESDAY, APRIL 23, 2013, 7:00 pm (CDT) (C-SPAN 2 is tentatively planning to cover this event)
The Book Stall at Chestnut Court
811 Elm Street
Winnetka, IL

Here are some early reviews:

“The Lawyer Bubble is an important book, carefully researched, cogently argued and compellingly written. It demonstrates how two honorable callings – legal education and the practice of law – have become, far too often, unscrupulous rackets.”
—Scott Turow, author of Presumed Innocent and other novel

“Harper is a seasoned insider unafraid to say what many other lawyers in his position might…written with keen insight and scathing accusations…. Harper brings his analytical and persuasive abilities to bear in a highly entertaining and riveting narrative…. The Lawyer Bubbleis recommended reading for anyone working in a law related field. And for law school students—especially prospective ones—it really should be required reading.”
—New York Journal of Books

“Anyone looking into a career in law would be well advised to read this thoroughly eye-opening warning.”
—Booklist, starred review

“[Harper] is perfectly positioned to reflect on alarming developments that have brought the legal profession to a most unfortunate place…. Essential reading for anyone contemplating a legal career.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“[Harper] burns his bridges in this scathing indictment of law schools and big law firms…. his insights and admonitions are consistently on point.”
—Publishers Weekly

“Imagine that the elite lawyers of BigLaw and the legal academy were put on trial for their alleged negligence and failed stewardship. Imagine further that the State had at its disposal one of the nation’s most tenacious trial lawyers to doggedly build a complete factual record and then argue the case. The result would be The Lawyer Bubble. If I were counsel to the elite lawyers of BigLaw and the legal academy, I would advise my clients to settle the case.”
—William D. Henderson, Director of the Center on the Global Legal Profession and Professor at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law

“With wit and insight,The Lawyer Bubble offers a compelling portrait of the growing crisis in legal education and the practice of law. This book is essential reading for anyone concerned about the profession or contemplating a legal career.”
—Deborah L. Rhode, Professor of Law and Director of the Center on the Legal Profession, Stanford University

“This is a fine and important book, thoughtful and beautifully written. It makes the case – in a responsible and sober tone – that we are producing far too many lawyers for far too small a segment of American society. It is a must-read for leaders of law firms, law schools, and the bar, as the legal profession continues its wrenching transition from a profession into just another business.”
—Daniel S. Bowling III, Senior Lecturing Fellow, Duke Law School

“In this superb book, Steven Harper documents, ties together and suggests remedies for the deceit that motivates expanding law school enrollment in the face of a shrinking job market, the gaming of law school rankings and the pernicious effect of greed on the leadership of many of our nation’s leading law firms. The lessons he draws are symptomatic, and go well beyond the documented particulars.”
—Robert Helman, Partner and former Chairman (1984-98), Mayer Brown LLP; Lecturer, University of Chicago Law School

“Every sentient lawyer realizes that the legal profession is in crisis, but nobody explains the extent of the problem as well as Steven Harper. Fortunately, he also proposes some solutions – so there is still room for hope. This is an essential book.”
—Steven Lubet, author of Fugitive Justice and Lawyers’ Poker

“Steven Harper’s The Lawyer Bubble is an expression of tough love for the law, law firms and the people who work in them. The clear message is take control of your destiny and your firm to avoid the serious jeopardy that confronts far too many firms today. Whether you are a partner, associate, or law student, you should read this compassionate and forceful work.”
—Edwin B. Reeser, Former managing partner, author, and consultant on law practice management

“Harper chronicles the disruption of his once-genteel profession with considerable sadness, and places the blame squarely at the wing-tipped feet of two breeds of scoundrel: law school deans, and executive committees that have run big law firms …” –“Bar Examined” – Book Review in The Washington Monthly (March/April 2013)

SOMEBODY’S CHILD

Posted on March 20, 2013 by thebellyofthebeast

Nine years ago, Senator Rob Portman (R-Ohio) supported a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. Now he wants Congress to repeal the provisions of the Defense of Marriage Act that deny federal recognition to such marriages. Apparently, his reversal on this issue began two years ago when his college freshman son told Portman and his wife that he was gay.

Plenty of prominent national figures have similarly changed their views. The tide of history seems overwhelming, even to conservative commentator George Will. Others can debate whether Portman and those who have announced newly acquired positions favoring gay rights are courageous, hypocrites, opportunists, or something else.

For me, the more important point is that his own child’s connection to the issue caused Portman to think differently about it. Applied to lawyers, the question become simple:

What if the profession’s influential players treated the young people pursuing a legal career as their own children?

Portman’s explanation

In 2011, Portman knew that his son was gay when 100 law graduates walked out of his commencement address at the University of Michigan.

“But you know,” he told CNN recently, “what happened to me is really personal. I mean, I hadn’t thought a lot about this issue. Again, my focus has been on other issues over my public policy career.”

His key phrases are pregnant with larger implications: “[W]hat happened to me is really personal….I hadn’t thought a lot about this issue.”

Start with law school deans

As the lawyer bubble grew over the past decade, some deans and university administrators might have behaved differently if a “really personal” dimension required them to think “a lot” about their approaches. Perhaps they would have jettisoned a myopic focus on maximizing their law school rankings and revenues.

At a minimum, most deans probably would have disclosed earlier than 2012 that fewer than half of recent graduates had long-term full-time jobs requiring a legal degree. It seems unlikely that, year after year, they would have told their own kids that those employment rates exceeded 90 percent. Perhaps, too, deans would have resisted rather than embraced skyrocketing tuition increases that have produced six-figure non-dischargeable educational debt for 85 percent of today’s youngest attorneys.

Then consider big firm senior partners

At the economic pinnacle of the profession, big firms have become a particular source of not only attorney wealth, but also career dissatisfaction. In substantial part, both phenomena happened — and continue to happen — because managing partners have obsessed over short-term metrics aimed at maximizing current year profits and mindless growth.

For example, the billable hour is the bane of every lawyer’s (and most clients’) existence, but it’s lucrative for equity partners. If senior partners found themselves pushing their own kids to increase their hours as a way to boost those partners’ already astonishing profits, maybe they’d rethink the worst consequences of a destructive regime.

Similarly, the average attorney-to-equity partner leverage ratio for the Am Law 100 has doubled since 1985 (from 1.75 to 3.5). Perhaps managing partners wouldn’t have been so quick to pull up the ladder on lawyers who sat at their Thanksgiving tables every year, alongside those managing partners’ grandchildren who accompanied them. Not every young associate in a big firm should advance to equity partner. But offering a 5 to 10 percent chance of success following 7 to 12 years of hard work isn’t a motivator. It invites new attorneys to prepare for failure.

Finally, compared to the stability of a functional family, the current big law firm lateral partner hiring frenzy adopts the equivalent of periodic divorce as a cultural norm. Pursued as a growth strategy, it destroys institutional continuity, cohesion, community, and morale. Ironically, according to Professor William Henderson’s recent American Lawyer article “Playing Not to Lose,” it offers little or no net economic value in return.

Adopting a family outlook or a parental perspective isn’t a foolproof cure for what ails the legal profession. Indeed, running law schools and big firms according to the Lannister family’s values (“The Game of Thrones”) — or those of Don Corleone’s (“The Godfather”) — might not change things very much at all.

It’s also worth remembering that Oedipus was somebody’s child, too.

THE CULTURE OF CONTRADICTIONS

Posted on January 16, 2013 by thebellyofthebeast

In an ironic twist, the latest Client Advisory from the Citi Private Bank Law Firm Group and Hildebrandt Consulting warns: “Law firms discount or ignore firm culture at their peril.” Really?

Law firm management consultants have played central roles in creating the pervasive big law firm culture. But that culture seldom includes “collegiality and a commitment to share profits in a fair and transparent manner,” which Citi and Hildebrandt now suggest are vital. For years, mostly non-lawyer consultants have encouraged managing partners to focus myopically on business school-type metrics that maximize short-term profits. The report reveals the results: the unpleasant culture of most big firms.

Determinants of culture

For example, the report notes, associate ranks have shrunk in an effort to increase their average billable hours. That’s how firms have enhanced what Hildebrandt and CIti continue to misname “productivity.” From the client’s perspective, rewarding total time spent to achieve an outcome is the opposite of true productivity.

Likewise, the report notes that along with the reduction in the percentage of associates, the percentage of income (non-equity) partners has almost doubled since 2001. Hildebrandt and Citi view this development as contributing to the squeeze on partner profits. But income partners have become profit centers for most firms. As a group, they command higher hourly rates, suffer fewer write-offs, and enjoy bigger realizations.

From the standpoint of a firm’s culture, a class of permanent income partners can be a morale buster. That’s especially true where the increase in income partners results from fewer internal promotions to equity partner. Comparing 2007 to 2011, the percentage of new equity partner promotions of home-grown talent dropped by 21 percent.

Lateral culture?

In contrast to the more daunting internal path to equity partnership, laterals have thrived and the income gap within most equity partnerships has grown dramatically. “Lateral hiring is more popular than ever,” the report observes. In contrast to the drop in internal promotions, new equity partner lateral additions increased by 10 percent from 2007 to 2011.

This intense lateral activity is stunning in light of its dubious benefits to the firms involved. The report cites Citi’s 2012 Law Firm Leaders Survey: 40 percent of respondents admitted that their lateral hires were “unsuccessful” or “break even.” The remaining 60 percent characterized the results as “successful” or “very successful,” but for two reasons, that number overstates reality.

First, it typically takes a year or more to determine the net financial impact of a lateral acquisition. Most managing partners have no idea whether the partners they’ve recruited over the past two years have produced positive or negative net economic contributions. For a tutorial on the subject, see Edwin Reeser’s thorough and thoughtful analysis, “Pricing Lateral Hires.”

Second, when is the last time you heard a managing partner of a big firm admit to a mistake of any kind, much less a big error, such as hiring someone whom he or she had previously sold to fellow partners as a superstar lateral hire? These leaders may be lying to themselves, too, but in the process, they’re creating a lateral partner bubble.

Stability?

The Hildebrandt/Citi advisory gives a nod to institutional stability, mostly by observing that it’s disappearing: “The 21-year period of 1987-2007 witnessed 18 significant law firm failures. In recent years, that rate has almost doubled, with eight significant law firms failing in the last five years.” If you count struggling firms that merged to stave off dissolution, the recent number is much higher.

In a Bloomberg interview last October, Citi’s Dan DiPietro, chairman of the bank’s law firm group, said that he maintained a “somewhat robust watch list” of firms in potential trouble, ranging from “very slight concern to oh my God!”

Cognitive dissonance

Here’s a summary:

Culture is important, but associates’ productivity is a function of the hours they bill.

Culture is important, but associates face diminishing chances that years of loyalty to a single firm will result in promotion to equity partnership.

Culture is important, but lateral hiring to achieve revenue growth has become a central business strategy for many, if not most, big firms. It has also exacerbated internal equity partner income gaps.

Culture is important and, if a firm loses it, the resulting instability may cause that firm to disappear.

As you try to reconcile these themes, you’ll understand why, as with other Hildebrandt/Citi client advisories, the report’s final line is my favorite: “As always, we stand ready to assist our clients in meeting the challenges of today’s market.”

BIG LAW FIRM MANAGEMENT PUZZLES

Posted on November 7, 2012 by thebellyofthebeast

Last month, ALM Legal Intelligence released “Thinking Like Your Client: Strategic Planning In Law Firms,” a curiously titled survey of Am Law 200 law firm leaders. The title is curious because the results demonstrate that most law firm managing partners are neither thinking like clients nor planning strategically for their firms’ futures.

Lateral self-delusion

The appendix of actual law firm responses from 79 out of all Am Law 200 partners is more interesting than the narrative explanations in the report. For example, one question asked them to identify their firms’ top three priorities. In order, the most frequent answers were:

Growing the firm’s revenues — 66 percent

Talent acquisition and retention — 59 percent

Improving firm profitability — 54 percent

Eighty percent said they had a strategic plan in place to address firm priorities. But other responses suggest that the plans are pretty simple: hire more lateral partners.

When asked how, as part of their strategic plans, firms were pursuing growth in the next two years, 96 percent said “acquiring laterals.” Seventy-six percent of the 75 respondents who listed this strategy said they would pursue laterals “aggressively.” More than 70 percent of respondents expect that, as a staffing category, lateral partner hires will increase over the next five years.

Yet they also acknowledge that laterals have been a mixed bag. Only 28 percent of managing partners said that their lateral strategies over the past five years have been “very effective — most laterals have been retained and contributed to business growth.” And those are just the dollar impacts. Ignored are the cultural consequences for a firm whose growth strategy depends on endless acquisition of outside talent. Nevertheless, most big firm leaders are doubling down on a dubious approach.

Is it really about the clients?

As for other half of the report’s title — “thinking like your client” — fewer than a third of respondents included “client performance management and client satisfaction measurement” as one of their top three priorities. Responses to other questions echoed that attitude. Forty-one percent admitted that they had no plan in place to build, track and measure client loyalty and satisfaction. When asked what aspect of their client relationships they would most like to change, only 21 percent said higher service levels — far behind the desire to take work from other firms and improve profitability.

When asked to identify the top three metrics they regarded as most important in managing firm performance, leaders listed a familiar trinity: firm revenue, firm profit, and profit per partner. Client retention metrics got a whopping 4 percent response, tied at the bottom of the list with “other.”

Only 18 percent use “client retention metrics” to reward partners, but more than 70 percent identified collections, firm profit, billings and client business development as the key criteria. (Apparently dollars from new clients are worth more than dollars from old ones.)

Look out for what’s next

How well is all of this working? Better for some than for others, and that will continue. When asked whether non-partner to partner leverage ratios had left their firms properly resourced to provide exceptional client service while also growing the firm business, 70 percent of law firm managers said they needed to make adjustments.

We all know which way those “adjustments” will go: in the direction of fewer equity partners. With respect to staffing categories that managing partners expect to experience the biggest decrease over the next five years, the largest plurality chose equity partners. Additionally, more than 90 percent of law firm managers said they had “unprofitable partners.” Seventy percent said that such subpar performers were at risk for de-equitization or removal.

Finally, if you’re wondering about the hourly rate regime and whether law firms can deal with any other system, consider this: When asked to compare alternative fee arrangements (AFAs) to hourly rate matters, 12 percent of firm leaders said AFAs were more profitable, 23 percent said they were less profitable, and 65 percent had no clue. How’s that for a leadership confidence builder?

Perhaps some of these managing partners have a subconscious awareness of their shortcomings. When asked to list the top three areas where their firms have a competitive advantage, only 14 percent chose “strong firm leadership.” Unfortunately, it seems clear that even that dismal number is too high.

FED TO DEATH

Posted on December 20, 2011 by thebellyofthebeast

Most of today’s big law leaders think they’ll be able to avoid traps that have destroyed great firms of the recent past. Are they that much smarter than their predecessors? Or are they oblivious to the lessons of history?

My article, “Fed to Death,” in the December issue of The American Lawyer, suggests that most respondents to the magazine’s annual survey of Am Law 200 firm leaders have have forgotten what true leadership is. Consider it my seasonal gift to those who need it most — and want it least.

Happy Holidays and thanks for your continuing attention to my musings. I’m especially grateful to the thousands who have kept my novel, The Partnership, on Amazon’s Kindle e-book Legal Thrillers Best-Seller list for the past six months.

OCCUPY BIG LAW

Posted on December 7, 2011 by thebellyofthebeast

The encampments are gone, but Occupy Wall Street leaves behind a slogan that should make any history student shudder and some big law leaders squirm:

“We’re the 99-percenters.”

It’s not a leftist fringe rant. During a recent Commonwealth Club of California appearance, presidential debate moderator Jim Lehrer said that, if becoming President turned on the answer to a single question, he’d pose this one to every candidate:

“What are you going to do about the growing disparity of wealth in the United States of America?”

Once-great civilizations collapsed under such weight. A similar internal phenomenon is quietly weakening some mighty law firms.

Destabilizing trends

“Don’t redistribute wealth — that’s class warfare” has become a popular rhetorical rallying cry. (See, for example, the Wall Street Journal‘s lead editorials on December 2 and 7.) But a stealth class war has already produced massive economic redistribution — from the 99-percenters to the one-percenters.

Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz writes in Vanity Fair that the top one percent control 40 percent of the nation’s wealth — up from 33 percent 25 years ago. In a recent interview, Jeffrey Winters of Northwestern University notes: “[In America], wealth is two times as concentrated as imperial Rome, which was a slave and farmer society. That’s how huge the gap is.”

Both Winters and Stiglitz suggest that today’s oligarchs use wealth to preserve power. One effective tactic is to encourage the pursuit of dreams that, for most 99-percenters, are largely illusory. My favorite New Yorker cartoon is a bar scene with a scruffy man in a T-shirt telling a well-dressed fellow patron: “As a potential lottery winner, I totally support tax cuts for the wealthy.”

For today’s young attorneys, one largely illusory dream has become the brass ring of a big firm equity partnership atop the leveraged pyramid.

Big law winners

So far, wealthy lawyers have avoided public outrage. But between 1979 and 2005, the top one percent of attorneys doubled their share of America’s income — from 0.61 to 1.22 percent. For the Am Law 50, average equity partner profits soared from $300,000 in 1985 ($630,000 in today’s dollars) to $1.5 million in 2010.

Even so, the really big gap — in society and within large law firms — is inside the ranks of the privileged, and it has been growing. By one estimate, the top one-tenth of one percent of Americans captured half of all gains going to the top one percent. Similarly, management consultant Kristin Stark of Hildebrandt Baker Robbins observes that before the recession, the top-to-bottom ratio within equity partnerships “was typically five-to-one in many firms. Very often today, we’re seeing that spread at 10-to-1, even 12-to-1.”

So what?

Meritocracies are vital and valuable, but for nations as well as for institutions, extreme income inequality reveals something about the culture that produces it. A recent study found that only three nations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development — Chile, Mexico and Turkey — have greater income inequality than America. Perhaps it’s coincidental, but all OECD countries with less inequality — including Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, Canada, Germany, Austria, and Britain — likewise surpass the U.S. in almost every quality of life measure.

In big law, exploding inequality is one symptom of a profound ailment: The myopic focus on short-term compensation metrics that reward bad behavior — hoarding clients, demanding more billables, raising leverage ratios. As the prevailing model creates stunning wealth for a few, it encourages attitudes that poison working environments and diminish the profession.

Unlike imperial Rome, today’s large firms won’t fall prey to Huns and Vandals. Rather, modern casualties include mentoring, training, collegiality, community, loyalty, and building institutional connections between clients and young lawyers. Those characteristics once defined the very concept of professional partnership. Today’s business of law makes precious little room for them. Clients who think that these relatively new trends aren’t compromising the quality and cost of their legal services are kidding themselves.

A meaningful Occupy Big Law movement would require that: 1) clients (and courts approving attorneys’ fees petitions) finally say, “Enough!” and 2) would-be protesters stop viewing themselves as future equity partner lottery winners. Meanwhile, senior partners need not worry about disaffected lawyers and staff taking to the streets.

After all, there’s no way to bill that time.

THE ARROGANCE OF OVERCONFIDENCE

Posted on November 8, 2011 by thebellyofthebeast

Most of us hate admitting our mistakes, especially errors in judgment. Lawyers make lots of judgments, which is why they should pay special attention to two recent and seemingly unrelated NY Times articles.

In the October 23 NYT Magazine, psychologist and economics Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman describes an early encounter with his own character flaw that led him to research its universality. Assigned to observe a team-buidling exercise, he was so sure of his predictions about the participants’ future prospects that he disregarded incontrovertible data proving him wrong — again, and again, and again.

In subsequent experiments, he discovered that he wasn’t alone. A similar arrogance of overconfidence explains why, for example, individual investors insist on picking their own stocks year after year, notwithstanding the overwhelming evidence that their portfolios are worse for it.

In the same Sunday edition of the Times, philosopher Robert P. Crease discusses the two different measurement systems. One relates to traditional notions: how much something weighs or how far a person runs. Representatives from 55 nations met recently to finalize state-of-the-art definitions for basic units of such measurements — the meter, the second, the kilogram, and so forth.

The second system is less susceptible to quantification. Crease notes: “Aristotle…called the truly moral person a ‘measure,’ because our encounters with such a person show us our shortcomings.” Ignoring this second type in favor of numerical assessments gets us into trouble, individually and as a society. Examples include equating intelligence to a single number, such as I.Q. or brain size, or evaluating students (and their teachers) solely by reference to standardized test scores.

Lessons for lawyers — and everyone else

Now consider the intersection of these two phenomena — the arrogance of overconfidence and the reliance on numbers alone to measure value. For example, in recent years, a single metric — partner profits — has come to dominate every internal law firm conversation about attorney worth. Billings, billable hours, and leverage ratios have become the criteria by which most big law leaders judge themselves, fellow partners, their associates, and competitors. They teach to the same test — the one that produces annual Am Law rankings.

The arrogance of overconfidence exacerbates these tendencies. It’s one thing to press onward, as Kahneman concludes most of us do, in the face data proving that we’re moving in the wrong direction. Imagine how bad things can get when a measurement technique appears to validate what are really errors.

I’m not an anarchist. (I offer my advanced degree in economics as modest support.) But the relatively recent notion that there is only one set of law firm measures for defining success — revenues, short-term profits, leverage — has become a plague on our profession. Of course, we’re not alone. According to the Times, during the academic year 2005-2006, one-quarter of the advanced degrees awarded in the United States were MBAs. Business school-type metrics are ubiquitous and, regrettably, often viewed as outcome determinative.

But lawyers know better than to get lost in them, or once upon a time they did. The metrics that most big firm leaders now worship were irrelevant to them as students two or three decades ago. Like today’s undergraduates, they were pursuing a noble calling. Few went to law school seeking a job where their principal missions would be maximizing client billings and this year’s partner profits.

Will the profession’s leaders in the next generation make room for the other kind of measure — the one Aristotle had in mind — that informs the quality of a person’s life, not merely it’s quantitative output? Might they consider the possibility that focusing on short-term metrics imposes long-run costs that aren’t easily measured numerically but are far more profound?

Reviewing the damage that their predecessors’ failures in that regard have inflicted — as measured imprecisely by unsettling levels of career dissatisfaction, substance abuse, depression, and worse — should motivate them to try.

Meanwhile, they’ll have to contend with wealthy senior partners telling them to keep their hours up — a directive that those partners themselves never heard. Good luck to all of us.

ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER LAW FIRM MERGER

Posted on October 26, 2011 by thebellyofthebeast

It’s now ancient history, but in 2002 Chicago-based Mayer, Brown & Platt (850 lawyers) joined with U.K-based Rowe & Maw (250 lawyers) in a law firm merger that seemed breathtaking. Today, combining firms has become a universal business strategy. Fourteen law firm mergers in the third quarter of 2011 alone brought this year’s total to 43.

Evaluating these ultimate lateral hiring events — wholesale combinations of independent enterprises — is a two-step process: first, defining success and, second, allowing sufficient time (measured in years) to observe results. Senior partners orchestrating such transactions have vested interests in making them look good. So do the management consultants cheering them on. Once they undertake a merger strategy, leaders take herculean steps to vindicate it. Their spin can distract from the downside, but it’s there.

Defining success

Management and its outside consultants often define success in deceptively simple terms: getting bigger and growing equity partner profits. That can be superficial and misleading.

Growth alone doesn’t create value. Recently, Minneapolis-based Faegre & Benson and Indianapolis-based Baker & Daniels announced the creation of Faegre Baker Daniels. Whatever economies of scale exist in the delivery of legal services, firms the size of Baker (320 lawyers) and Faegre (450 lawyers) seem large enough individually to have triggered them long ago. Will their 770-attorney firm operate more efficiently than two components half that size? Doubtful.

But this is certain: combined firms face more potential client conflicts than if they’d remained separate. That results from the interaction between the Rules of Professional Responsibility and arithmetic.

Some leaders promote a “bigger platform” as a way to entice prominent laterals. But bringing in seasoned outsiders makes preserving any firm’s culture even more challenging.

Culture shock

Then again, maybe there’s little culture to preserve after most significant combinations. Baker & Daniels is in the Am Law 200; so is Faegre. Together they’ll move into the Am Law 100. Is that a good thing?

Merger leaders always proclaim their determination to preserve each firm’s culture. But, those attending the first Faegre Baker Daniels partnership meeting won’t know half the people in the room. Likewise, being one of 100 equity partners is different from being one of more than 200 — and not in a way that enhances collegiality or a sense of community. Looking for a central identity or a geographic core from which senior partners working together can produce common principles? The new Faegre Baker Daniels firm won’t even have a national headquarters.

The winners

In the end, most merger proponents pander to the simplistic hope that synergy of the combined entity will produce value greater than the sum of its partner profits parts. If that happens, it’s a good deal economically for the survivors at the top. But many others may find themselves on the wrong side of a merger’s “restructuring opportunities” — a euphemism for shrinking the new equity partnership.

According to the latest Am Law listing, Baker & Daniels’ partnership has two tiers (equity and non-equity) and an equity partner leverage ratio of 1.71. Faegre has a single equity partner tier and a leverage ratio of 1.09. Something’s gotta give.

Faegre’s chairman Andrew Humphrey, a transactional attorney who will serve as the combined Faegre Baker Daniels chief executive partner, said the new firm would have a “unified compensation structure.” He plans to manage “partner expectations” and “incentivize people the right way.” I don’t know what he has in mind, but some current partners probably won’t like the results of that exercise.

Likewise, mergers put pressure on leaders to push everyone harder. They want to cite increases in billings, billable hours, and leverage as proof that the new institution is better. Never mind that no one will ever know what the base case — no merger — would have produced for either firm independently.

Even a short-term increase in partner profits doesn’t prove the long-term value of the transaction. For example, Howrey’s merger and lateral hiring binge began in 2001. Seven years later it had record profits, but by early 2011 the firm was gone.

I know, I know — Howrey was different. As I warned at the outset, beware of that spin-thing.

THE COST OF DISSATISFACTION

Posted on September 28, 2011 by thebellyofthebeast

This month began with the publication of The American Lawyer‘s annual Mid-Level Associate Satisfaction Survey results. The dismal descent to historic depths continues. Let’s end it with this question: Why should law firm leaders care?

Answer: Because dissatisfied lawyers are costing them money.

That’s the conclusion of Harvard Business School Professor Teresa Amabile and fellow researcher, Steven Kramer, in The Progress Principle. They reported their findings in the Labor Day edition of the New York Times. At a time when most workers feel fortunate to have jobs, Amabile and Kramer have a tough sell in convincing employers, including law firm leaders, to worry about the psychological state of their employees.

We all know the mantra: No one is required to accept any job. The market allocates resources. A labor market clears at the point where buyers and sellers agree on a price for services sought and rendered. Workers take into account the factors that matter to them and get paid appropriately for the jobs they’re willing to do. Case closed.

Not quite. Such an analysis makes dubious assumptions about the market. On the employee side, bad or incomplete information can distort outcomes. A prospective law student might hope to emulate popular media images that merge with law school promotional materials promising a secure, well-paying future. Once in school, individual financial imperatives — such as the need to repay staggering educational debt — can constrain post-degree options. Meanwhile, the anticipated job often turns out to be neither secure nor well-paying.

Likewise, employers take false comfort in the misconception that a new hire is simply exercising free will in a free market. A firm assumes that if young attorneys’ experiences diverge from rosier expectations, any resulting psychological distress isn’t its problem. Never mind that the firm’s underlying business model produces behavioral incentives and a culture that exacerbate the disconnect.

“We’re just trying to run a business,” most law firm leaders would say. “There’s no metric for assessing the impact of career dissatisfaction on performance. If I can’t measure it, how can I consider it when making decisions?”

As long as everyone keeps billing hours, the profits beast continues to be fed. As unhappy associates alone bear the burden of their discontent, leaders rationalize their indifference to growing dissatisfaction with a simplistic analysis: if it gets too bad, people can leave and find another job. In the current buyer’s market for associates, boatloads of replacements are waiting in the wings anyway.

The work of Amabile and Kramer offers an intriguing rebuttal to myopic managers who can’t see past next year’s profits. In a longitudinal study encompassing ten years and 238 professionals in seven different companies, they asked people to make daily diary entries about their emotional states. Negative inner work lives resulted in “a profound impact on workers’ creativity, productivity, commitment and collegiality.”

The findings challenge the conventional wisdom that pervades many big firm cultures, namely, that pressure enhances performance. According to Amabile and Kramer, the data suggest that the opposite is true: “[W]orkers perform better when they are happily engaged in what they do….[O]f all the events that engage people at work, the single most important — by far — is simply making progress in meaningful work.”

The authors note Gallup’s estimate that America’s “disengagement crisis” costs $300 billion annually in lost productivity. They also observe that the vast majority of 669 surveyed managers shared an important incompetence: the managers “failed to recognize that progress in meaningful work is the primary [employee] motivator, well ahead of traditional incentives like raises and bonuses.” The catalysts that enable such progress are worker autonomy, sufficient resources, and learning from problems.

Big firm leaders determine the extent to which their workers experience these three catalysts. The leveraged pyramid and its billable hour regime enslaves associates while inhibiting partners from becoming mentors. In other words, the prevailing big law model cuts the wrong way for everyone. The resulting work environment produces dissatisfaction that’s costing the equity partners money.

How much money? William Bruce Cameron’s observation (sometimes attributed to Einstein) was right: “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”

DO THEY COUNT AS BILLABLES?

Posted on September 14, 2011 by thebellyofthebeast

In “New Lawyers, New Classes,” the Wall Street Journal reports on firms sending their attorneys through business-education type programs. Describing one full-time four week example, it states the obvious: “[L]aw firms aren’t billing the 160 training hours to clients.”

But the article is silent on a more interesting question: If a lawyer has to devote 160 hours — or any other amount — to firm-required business education, will that time count toward minimum billable hour expectations?

A 1958 ABA pamphlet suggested that a reasonable full-time schedule produced 1,300 client hours a year. That’s right, 1,300. Today, senior partners who had no minimum billables requirements as associates run firms where some new attorney orientation sessions dictate monthly targets, as well as annual ones. Big law associates average more than 2,000 billables a year. Adding another 160 hours — a month’s worth of time — for firm-required education is no small matter.

During year-end reviews, associates typically receive spreadsheets detailing their hours by category: client billables, recruiting, training, pro bono, personal, and so forth. (Hat-tip to The American Lawyer‘s A-List, which prompts many firms to count pro bono hours as billable time.)

How about training? Back in January 2008 when law firms were more concerned about attracting and retaining good associates than they are now, the New York Times found firms attacking enormous associate attrition rates with initiatives aimed at keeping the keepers. But even that didn’t always extend to giving billable credit for training.

For example, the Times wrote, “Strasburger & Price, a national firm based in Dallas, announced last October [2007] that it was decreasing the hours new associates were expected to log, to 1,600 from 1,920 annually. (Lest you think those lawyers will be able to go home early, however, note that newcomers will now be asked to spend 550 hours a year in training sessions and shadowing senior lawyers.)”

According to the NALP directory, Strasberger’s policy is unchanged, but at least it’s transparent. Many big law counterparts have remained opaque.

Consider the public positions of the three firms in the WSJ article — Debevoise & Plimpton; Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCoy; and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. In their current NALP listings, none discloses its average associate billables for 2009 or 2010. But that doesn’t mean those in charge aren’t watching hours closely.

According to the Journal, “Debevoise said its associate billable hours rose by more than 10% in 2010 and are up by even more so far this year.” To what? The article doesn’t say — and neither does the firm.

Earlier this year, Milbank’s chairman, Mel Immergut, noted that billables were up, but “still low compared to what [they have] historically been.” Again, no hint of what those levels were or are.

Skadden’s culture is no secret. It became the subject of unwanted attention after one of its associates, Lisa Johnstone, died in June at age 32 — reportedly after weeks of extremely long hours.

All three firms state on their NALP forms that they have no minimum billable hours requirement. Debevoise’s website says that billable and pro bono hours “are monitored by partners to assure an associate’s full involvement in our practice and to attempt to spread workloads fairly.”

So perhaps there’s no need to worry about how those 160 business-education training hours get counted after all. Debevoise cares only about assuring full involvement and fairness for its associates, not whether they meet a minimum number of billables. Like many firms, Milbank actually uses its training programs as a sales tool: “Get paid to go to Harvard,” its website proudly proclaims. Skadden will always be Skadden.

But give credit where it’s deserved: Debevoise ranked an impressive 16th in overall mid-level associate satisfaction this year. Milbank and Skadden fared less well — placing 68th and 69th, respectively, out of 126. (The unfortunate backstory is that overall satisfaction for the survey group dropped to another record low.)

Interestingly, all three responded to this query on the NALP form:

“Billable hours credit for training time.”

Debevoise and Milbank answered “Y.” Skadden said “N.”

“Credit” toward what? Unless billables matter to evaluating or compensating associates, wouldn’t firms without a minimum requirement answer “N/A”?

Maybe their stated answers are typos.

IT’S THE MODEL

Posted on August 15, 2011 by thebellyofthebeast

[Thanks, readers. My big law novel — The Partnership — has been on the Amazon e-book “Legal Thrillers Best-Seller List” for more than a month. Last weekend, it was #7. Also available for iPad, Nook, and in paperback.]

Returning from vacation means tackling a pile of accumulated newspapers in a single sitting. That sounds like a chore, but it allows the mind to connect news items that otherwise might seem completely unrelated.

Consider these three from the Wall Street Journal on August 1, 2, and 3.

In “With Oracle and Dodgers Waiting, Boies Not Ready to Retire,” the Journal interviewed David Boies — 70-year-old former Cravath partner who started his own firm. He represented Al Gore in the 2000 election fight, plaintiffs challenging California’s law banning gay marriage, the NFL in its litigation with players, and a long string of high-profile litigants. Boies explains why more than half of his firm’s cases have a potential success fee:

“Hourly rate billing is bad for the client and I believe bad for the firm. It sets up a conflict between what’s good for the lawyer and what’s good for the client.”

Enter the client with the will to resist the hourly billing regime. On August 2, the WSJ‘s “Pricing Tactic Spooks Lawyers” describes clients countering high big law fees with on line reverse auctions that pit firms against each other in bidding for business. The result: cost reduction.

But economizing can be dangerous. An article in the next day’s WSJ should make every big firm attorney squirm. “Objection! Lawsuit Slams Temp Lawyers” reports that J-M Manufacturing is suing its former law firm, McDermott, Will & Emery LLP, claiming that the firm didn’t supervise adequately the work of contract attorneys from a third-party vendor. McDermott denies wrongdoing:

“J-M…keeps changing its story. Now [it]…claims that McDermott failed to supervise the contract lawyers that J-M retained….”

According to the article, J-M alleges that it paid McDermott attorneys rates as high as $925 an hour, compared to $61 an hour to the firm supplying the temps. In other words and regardless of who retained them, using contract lawyers helped shave J-M’s outside legal bills.

Here’s the common thread. In the first article, Boies just says what everyone knows: the billable hour regime is a nightmare. The second reflects ongoing client efforts to reduce resulting legal costs. The third identifies a potential peril for law firms that attempt to oblige: a malpractice suit — the ultimate conflict with a client.

I don’t know if McDermott did anything wrong, but clients should realize that putting the squeeze on outside lawyers is tricky. For example, cutting fees is one thing; expecting large firm equity partners to do the obvious — reduce their own stunning income levels to help the cause — is something else, and it isn’t happening.

Amid corporate belt-tightening that targeted outside legal costs, average equity partner profits for the Am Law 100 actually rose during the last two years. They’re now back to pre-Great Recession levels of $1.4 million a year and it’s a safe bet that next year’s profits will be even higher. If I were a client, I’d ask, “How did that happen?”

“It’s the successful model at work,” most firm leaders would say without reflection or hesitation. “Growing equity partner earnings are essential to retain and attract top talent. Firms have become more efficient, so it’s a win-win for clients and partners.”

Clients should consider the untoward implications of austerity measures that don’t dent equity partners’ pocketbooks. Increased efficiency? Operating with fewer secretaries and putting locks on supply room cabinets don’t account for the extraordinary profits wave that big law continues to ride.

Here’s another explanation. The prevailing model requires increases in billable hours — big law’s distorted definition of productivity — to offset fee reductions that clients demand. Concerned about attorney fatigue that compromises morale and work product? Too bad; the model ignores it.

Clients can and should seek lower big law fees, but they should be careful what they wish for, scrutinize what they get, and wonder why equity partners’ eye-popping profits keep growing along the way. The prevailing model rewards big law equity partners handsomely, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s working for their clients or anyone else.

DESPERATELY SEEKING DOWNTIME

Posted on June 20, 2011 by thebellyofthebeast

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 June 5, 2011 by thebellyofthebeast

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.

FAMILY FRIENDLY?

Posted on May 31, 2011 by thebellyofthebeast

Lawyers know that definitions dictate outcomes. That’s why the Yale Law Women’s latest list of the “Top Ten Family Friendly Firms” includes some surprising names. At least, some surprised me.

It turns out that the YLW’s definition of family friendly is more restrictive than the plain meaning of the words. According to the survey methodology, it’s mostly a function of firms’ attention to particular issues relating primarily to women. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it shouldn’t be confused with what really undermines the family-friendliness of any big firm — its devotion to billable hours and billings as metrics that determine success. That problem isn’t gender-specific.

To compile the annual list, YLW surveyed the Vault Top 100 Law Firms. What would happen if they included all of the NLJ 250 or an even larger group that included small firms? I don’t know, but I’ll bet the list would look a lot different.

Now consider the survey categories and YLW commentary:

— Percentage of female attorneys: “Although YLW found that, on average, 45% of associates at responding law firms are women, women make up only 17% of equity partners and 18% of firm executive management committees. Additionally, on average, women made up just 27% of newly promoted partners in 2010.”

— Access to and use of parental leave: Virtually all firms have them. Big deal.

— Emergency and on-site child care: I understand the advantages, but how much family friendly credit should a firm get for providing a place where young lawyers can leave their babies and pre-schoolers while they work all day?

— Part-time and flex-time work policies: “98% offer a flex-time option, in which attorneys bill full-time hours while regularly working outside the office.” So what? I know senior partners without families who’ve done that for years.

— Usage of part-time and flex-time policies: “On average, 7% of attorneys at these firms were working part-time in 2010.” Will they become equity partners? “Of the 7% of attorneys working part-time, only 11% were partners, a number that may also include partners approaching retirement. Only 5% of the partners promoted in 2010 had worked part-time in the past, on average, and only 4% were working part-time when they were promoted.”

— Billable hours and compensation practices: “[I]t remains to be seen whether it is truly possible to work part-time at all. Our statistics indicate that while part-time attorneys appear to be fairly compensated, many may work more hours than originally planned. Most firms (93%) provide additional compensation if part-time attorneys work more than the planned number of hours or make part-time attorneys eligible for bonuses (96%). However, part-time attorneys received bonuses at higher rates than full-time attorneys (25% compared to 23% on average), suggesting that many part-time schedules may ultimately morph into full-time hours over the course of a year.”

— Alternative career programs: What’s that? Outplacement support?

All of this gets weighted according to another survey of Yale Law School alumni who ranked the relative importance of the surveyed policies and practices.

Continuing efforts to achieve greater big law transparency are laudable. But one problem with lists and rankings is that they take on a life of their own, wholly apart from methodological limitations and the caveats accompanying the results. (See, e.g., U.S. News rankings). Here, the YLW cautioned that it “remains concerned about the low rates of retention for women, the dearth of women in leadership positions, the gender gap in those who take advantage of family friendly policies, and the possibility that part-time work can derail an otherwise successful career.”

The honored firms will gloss over that warning, issue press releases, and delude themselves into believing that they are something they’re not. Someone truly interested in whether a place is family friendly should find out where it ranks on the “Misery Index.” Partners won’t tell you, but that metric would reveal a firm’s true commitment to the long-term health and welfare of its attorneys and their families.

If you really love someone, you should set them free — even if it’s only every other weekend.

IMPROVING PROSPECTS — BUT FOR WHOM?

Posted on May 10, 2011 by thebellyofthebeast

Life is just a matter of perspective. For example, here’s some apparently good news:

— The legal sector added 1,500 jobs in April.

— Ashby Jones at the Wall Street Journal Law Blog cited a recent article in The Guardian for the proposition that the U.K. might actually have a shortage of lawyers next year. Could the U.S. be far behind?

— NALP’s Executive Director James Leipold noted that, along with an overall attorney employment rate of 88.3% for the class of 2009, “the most recent recruitment cycle showed signs of a small bounce in the recruiting activity of law firms, a sign that better economic times likely lie ahead.”

Now consider each headline a bit differently:

— “Legal sector” isn’t limited to attorneys; more than 44,000 new law school graduates hit the market every year.

— The Guardian article relies solely on a report from the College of Law that has an interest in encouraging applications to its program for prospective solicitors. More than one comment to the initial report expressed angry skepticism about the College’s short-term motives. Where have I heard that before?

Meanwhile, the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that, for the entire ten-year period from 2008 to 2018, net U.S. attorney employment will increase by only 100,000. Even if all aging attorneys retired as they turned 65, there aren’t enough of them to make room for all the newbies. In 1970, for example, law schools awarded only about one-third of the number of JDs conferred in 2010.

— To his credit, NALP’s Leipold went behind the 88% employment rate for the class of 2009. The resulting caveats are significant.

First, the percentage employed are graduates “for whom employment status was known.” Who’s excluded? Who knows?

Second, nearly 25 percent of all reported jobs were temporary; more than 10 percent were part-time.

Third, only 70 percent “held jobs for which a J.D. was required.” Unfortunately, law schools don’t offer tuition refunds (or relief from student loans) for education that was unnecessary for their graduates’ actual employment opportunities. That doesn’t surprise me. (See “Law School Deception.”)

Finally, more than 20 percent of employed graduates from the class of 2009 “were still looking for work.” Beneath the veneer of superficially good news — having a job — career dissatisfaction continues to eat away at too many of the profession’s best and brightest in yet another generation.

That doesn’t mean people shouldn’t go to law school. It means that they should think carefully about it first, starting with this question: why do I want to be a lawyer and will the reality of the job match my expectations?

Turning the employment subject toward big law leads to one more lesson on perspective.

A day after the Ashby Jones and James Leipold articles, the WSJ‘s Nathan Koppel summarized big law’s continuing job-shedding: the NLJ 250 lost another 3,000 in 2010, bringing their total decrease since 2008 to 9,500. They may be hiring some new associates, but they’re getting rid of many more.

NALP expects to release its 2010 employment data in May. But every big law leader knows that May’s true importance lies in a much more significant event: annual publication of the Am Law 100. For some partners, pre-release anxiety is palpable, if not paralyzing.

This year, average equity partner profits for the Am Law 100 went up by over 8% — to almost $1.4 million. For context, that surpasses 2007, which was the peak of an uninterrupted five-year PPP run-up. Pretty stunning for an economy that remains difficult for so many. Gross revenues increased as overall headcount dropped by almost 3%. More revenues from fewer attorneys meant more billables — mislabeled as higher “productivity” in big law terms — for the chosen. (See “The Misery Index.”) As jobs remained scarce and associate hours climbed, equity partner earnings continued their ascent.

How much is enough? For some people, the answer will always be more; short-term metrics that maximize current PPP guide their way. Life is easy when deceptively objective numbers make solutions simple, reflection unnecessary, and the long-term someone else’s problem. It’s just a matter of perspective.

BIG LAW INCIVILITY

Posted on April 14, 2011 by thebellyofthebeast

Attorney incivility is nothing new. Noting that the problem dated to the nineteenth century, Chief Justice Warren Burger addressed it in 1971 remarks to the American Law Institute. He criticized the lawyer who equated zealous advocacy with “how loud he can shout or how close he can come to insulting all those he encounters.” (“The Necessity for Civility,” 52 FRD 211, 213 (1971))

Here’s a more recent example from a deposition, cited in Judge Marvin E. Aspen’s oft-quoted 1998 article on the erosion of civility:

Mr. V: Please don’t throw it at me.

Mr. A: Take it.

Mr. V: Don’t throw it at me.

Mr. A: Don’t be a child, [Mr. V]. You look like a slob the way you’re dressed, but you don’t have to act like a slob….

Mr. V: Stop yelling at me. Let’s get on with it.

Mr. A: You deny I have given you a copy of every document?

Mr. V: You just refused to give it to me.

Mr. A: Do you deny it?

Mr. V: Eventually you threw it at me.

Mr. A: Oh, [Mr. V], you’re about as childish as you can get. You look like a slob, you act like a slob.

Mr. V: Keep it up.

Mr. A: Your mind belongs in the gutter.

Evidence of incivility among adversaries is largely anecdotal; the best examples don’t lend themselves to statistical analysis. A recent Above the Law post led me to ponder this question: does the prevailing big law business model contribute to incivility?

Mark Herrmann, a former big law partner, writes “Inside Straight” from his relatively new vantage point as in-house counsel. “How to Be a Crappy Partner” isn’t about civility, but some of his readers’ comments led me to this observation: when lawyers inside a law firm treat each other poorly, no one should expect their behavior to improve for outside opponents.

Unpleasant personalities are everywhere. Big firm lawyers as a group may be no worse than those in other practice settings; jerks exist across the spectrum. Likewise, drawing conclusions from any potpourri of Above the Law comments is dangerous. Even so, the most coherent “Crappy Partner” reactions fall into the following categories, each of which has a counterpart in external incivility:

— Disrespect for People’s Time

“Give me 10 minutes as an associate in a world without Blackberrys–please.” Other examples: delaying assignments until they conflict with an associate’s long-planned (and widely known) vacation; imposing tight deadlines only to let the completed work sit undisturbed on the assigning partner’s desk for two weeks; Friday night forwarding of a client’s earlier request for answers by the following Monday with a message revealing that the partner sat on the client’s request for five days.

Incivility counterpart: Fighting over inconsequential scheduling matters; taking actions, such as so-called emergency motions, solely to disrupt opponents’ personal lives.

— Flagrant Misbehavior

“Believe it or not, I’m on your side.” Examples: partners who yell, scream, and act in ways that most parents wouldn’t tolerate from a two-year-old; verbal abuse; sexist comments; narcissism.

Incivility counterpart: Ad hominem attacks.

— Lack of Candor About the Big Law Model

“I’m smart; that’s why you hired me. I can do the math.” Examples: pretending that associates don’t notice as fewer than ten percent of earlier new hires advance to equity partner after years of 2,000+ billables; bragging about the firm’s tenth year of increasing partner profits while laying off associates and staff; giving lip-service to mentoring and professional development when short-term profits drive decisions based on metrics that exclude such considerations.

Incivility counterpart: Lawyers believing their own press releases–and acting the role.

Send the purveyors (and victims) of such hubris into the world and what do you expect? More than most occupations, lawyers learn from role models and mentors. The culture that undermines morale at many large firms isn’t self-limiting. The prevailing business model often rewards “crappy partner” behavior and rarely penalizes it. External incivility is one byproduct of that internal ethos.

Large firms aren’t solely to blame for incivility; far from it. But for good and ill, they exert vastly disproportionate influence over the profession. Among other failings, the prevailing big law business model isn’t helping the cause of civility. Tellingly, here’s one commenter’s sad advice on how to avoid becoming a crappy partner:

“Please say please and thank you.”

I wonder what their mothers would say.

A NEW METRIC: THE MISERY INDEX

Posted on April 6, 2011 by thebellyofthebeast

Let’s call it what it is.

Large law firms and their management consultants have redefined a word — productivity — to contradict its true meaning. Recent reports from Hildebrandt and Citi measure it as everyone does: average billable hours per attorney.

No one questions this perversion because the prevailing business model’s primary goal is maximizing partner profits. Billables times hourly rates produce gross revenues. More is better and the misnomer — productivity — persists.

The Business Dictionary defines productivity as the “relative measure of the efficiency of a person [or] system…in converting inputs into useful outputs.” But the relevant output for an attorney shouldn’t be total hours spent on tasks; it’s useful work product that meets client needs. Total elapsed time without regard to the quality of the result reveals nothing about a worker’s value. More hours often mean the opposite of true productivity.

Common sense says that effort on the fourteenth hour of a day can’t be as valuable as that exerted during hour six. Fatigue compromises effectiveness. That’s why the Department of Transportation imposes rest periods after interstate truckers’ prolonged stints behind the wheel. Logically, absurdly high billables should result in compensation penalties, but prevailing big law economics dictate otherwise.

Here’s a partial cure. Rather than mislabel attorney billables as measures of productivity, an index should permit excessive hours to convey their true meaning: attorney misery. The Misery Index would be a natural corollary to NALP’s survey of minimum billable hour requirements. Attorneys now accept as given the 2,000 hour threshold that most firms maintain, even though current big law leaders faced no mandatory minimum levels when they were associates. As Yale Law School describes in a useful memo, 2,000 is a lot. But even if the 2,000-hour bell can’t be unrung, the Misery Index could reveal a firm’s culture.

To construct this metric for a given firm, start with attorneys billing fewer than 2,000 hours annually (including pro bono and genuine firm-related activities such as recruiting, training, mentoring, client development, and management); those lawyers wouldn’t count toward their firm’s Misery Index. However, at each 100-hour increment above 2,000, the percentage of attorneys reaching each higher numerical category would be added. To reflect the increasing lifestyle costs of marginal billables, attorneys with the most hours would count at every 100-hour interval preceding their own. Separate indices should exist for associates (AMI) and partners (PMI).

The Misery Index would reveal distinctions that firmwide averages blur. For example, Firm A has an Associate Misery Index of 125, calculated as follows:

50% of associates bill fewer than 2,000 hours = 0 AMI points

50% > 2,000 = 50 AMI points

40% > 2,100 = 40

25% > 2,200 = 25

10% > 2,300 = 10

None > 2,400

AMI: 125

Firm B’s AMI of 315 describes a much different place:

10% of associates bill fewer than 2,000 hours = 0 AMI points

90% > 2,000 = 90 points

75% > 2,100 = 75

60% > 2,200 = 60

45% > 2,300 = 45

30% > 2,400 = 30

15% > 2,500 = 15

None > 2,600

AMI: 315

A Misery Index would aid decision-making, especially for new graduates. Some would prefer firms with a high one; most wouldn’t. A Misery Index above 300 might prompt questions about the physical health of a firm’s attorneys; a Misery Index of zero — no one working more than 2,000 hours — might prompt questions about the health of the firm itself. Big disparities between partners (PMI) and associates (AMI) would be revealing, too.

Data collection is problematic. NALP won’t ask for the information and most firms won’t supply it — unless clients demand it. (In an earlier article, I explained why they should.) Alternatively, individual attorneys could provide the information anonymously, similar to The American Lawyer’s annual mid-level associate surveys.

Complementing the Misery Index would be firm-specific Attrition Rates by class year from starting associate to first year equity partner. NALP’s last report — before the 2008 financial crisis — showed big law’s five-year associate attrition rates skyrocketing to more than eighty percent, but significant differences existed among firms.

The Misery Index and Attrition Rates would be interesting additions to Am Law‘s “A-List” criteria that many big firms heed. Imagine an equity partner meeting that included this agenda item: “Reducing Our Misery Index and Attrition Rates.” It would certainly be a departure from scenes and themes in my best-selling legal thriller, The Partnership.

Big law is filled with free market disciples who urge better information as a panacea, as well as metrics to communicate it. Here’s their chance.

LAW SCHOOL DECEPTION — PART II

Posted on March 3, 2011 by thebellyofthebeast

The National Law Journal just published its annual list of “go-to” schools — those that supply the most new associates to large law firms. Clearly, lower tier students aren’t alone in struggling to find jobs. One top school’s ride on the NLJ 250 rankings roller coaster is particularly interesting and instructive.

Northwestern jumped from eleventh to second place on the list in 2007. Then-Dean David Van Zandt credited the “tremendous effort to reach out to employers,” along with the emphasis on enrolling students with significant postgraduate work experience, as attracting big firm recruiters. Last year, Northwestern took the number one spot.

But in 2010, the school dropped to eighth — a relative decline that overall market trends don’t explain, but growing class size does. Northwestern awarded 234 JDs in 2007; the 2010 class had 50 more — 284. One reason: misguided short-term metrics became guiding principles.

Two years ago, the ABA Journal reported that Northwestern had become one of the most aggressive recruiters of transfer students (adding 43 to the first-year class). Such students were a win-win for short-term metrics-lovers: Their undisclosed LSATs didn’t count in the U.S. News rankings and their added tuition boosted the financial bottom line.

Meanwhile, Northwestern’s “go-to” position could continue dropping next year because the class of 2011 will include another new contingent — the first group of accelerated JDs. That program emerged from focus groups of large law firm leaders — part of the dean’s outreach program — who helped to shape Northwestern’s long-range strategic document, Plan 2008, Building Great Leaders for the Changing World.

That leads to another point: leadership. Defining a law school’s proper mission is critically important. There’s nothing wrong with getting input from all relevant constituencies, including large law firms. But retooling curriculum to fulfill big law’s stated desires for associate skills is a dubious undertaking.

In February 2010, Van Zandt explained his contrary rationale during a PLI presentation to large firm leaders. Simply put, he saw starting salaries as setting the upper limit that a school can charge for tuition. Accordingly, attending law school makes economic sense only if it leads to a job that offers a reasonable return on the degree’s required financial investment. However valid that perspective may be, the slipperiness of the resulting slope became apparent when Northwestern’s laudable goal — updating curriculum — focused on satisfying big firms that paid new graduates the most.

Tellingly, in the ABA’s Litigation quarterly, Van Zandt explained that high hourly rates made clients “unwilling to pay for the time a young lawyer spends learning on the job…As a result, the traditional training method of associate-partner mentoring gets sacrificed.” Law schools, he urged, should pick up that slack.

But the traditional training method gets sacrificed only because the firms’ prevailing business model doesn’t reward such uses of otherwise billable time. Rather than challenge leaders to reconsider their own organizations that produce staggering associate attrition rates and many dissatisfied attorneys, the dean embraced their short-term focus — maximizing current year profits per partner.

Relatively, Northwestern still fares well in the “go-to” rankings, but the data depict a dynamic exercise in magical thinking. Among the top 20 schools, it led the way in increasing class size as the school’s absolute big law placement numbers steadily declined: 172 in 2007; 154 in 2008; 142 in 2009; 126 in 2010.

Most law schools feel the continuing crunch. Overall, the top 50 law schools graduated 14,000 new lawyers in 2010; only 27% went to NLJ 250 firms — a drop of three percentage points (400 lawyers) from 2009. But that only highlights an obvious question: Why should that shrinking tail wag any dog? A diversified portfolio of career outcomes less dependent on large firms is a more prudent plan for schools and their students.

Even if jobs reappear, there’s another reason to combine balance with candor: Recent surveys indicate that a majority of large firm attorneys become dissatisfied with their careers anyway. Those metrics never appear on law school websites. Deans are uniquely positioned to help prospective students make informed decisions. They could serve the profession by focusing less on marketing and more on giving prospective students the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. If only there were a metric for it.

HOURLY RATES: PLEASE DON’T READ

Posted on February 24, 2011 by thebellyofthebeast

For a long time, big law’s high-flying hourly rates remained under popular radar screens. Not anymore. On the heels of Jamie Wareham’s $5 million move to DLA Piper, The Wall Street Journal recently added “Big Law’s $1,000-Plus an Hour Club.”

Will big law leaders react with shame and embarrassment to such disclosures? Doubtful. Most partners will defend their rates as market-driven. As Weil, Gotshal & Manges’s bankruptcy partner Harvey Miller told the Journal bluntly: “The underlying principle is if you can get it, get it.”

He’s not alone. According to the article, “the average law-firm partner now asks $635 an hour and bills $575.” Ashby Jones’s companion online report quoted a law firm management consultant’s prediction that $2,000/hour for top partners could be only five years away.

“Get it if you can” is unworthy of a noble profession and a dangerous business plan. Some clients pay enormous rates to those who, as one in-house lawyer put it, are worth it. But rising resistance to $500+/hour associates creates problems for big law’s leveraged pyramid. At $1,000/hour, 2,000 partner hours generate $2 million in gross revenues, which is a lot less than these marquee players pocket annually. When younger attorneys’ hourly rates multiplied by their billables (less salary and bonus) no longer make up the difference, clients squeezing the bottom will dramatically reduce profits at the top. Along the way, the effort to preserve equity partner earnings will exacerbate the most unpleasant aspects of big law culture.

Another fault line runs through today’s high rates: Taxpayers are bearing some of those fees directly, not just through price elasticity curves that push some legal cost increases into the consumer price of a client’s goods or services. For example, last May, Harvey Miller’s firm had received $16 million in legal fees for work on the GM bankruptcy that taxpayers funded. With hubris that ignored the public’s financial contribution, Miller defended his resistance to discounts from Weil Gotshal’s reported rates of $500+/hour for associates to more than $1,000/hour for some senior partners: “If you had cancer and you were going into an operation, while you were lying on the table, would you look at the surgeon and say, ‘I’d like a 10 percent discount’? This is not a public, charitable event.” He was only half-right.

Similarly, Congress is now investigating legal fees that the federal government has paid to firms representing Fannie Mae and its former executives. When shareholders sued the company in 2004, each defendant retained separate counsel. That’s typical because a single attorney’s simultaneous representation of multiple defendants can create conflicts that inhibit zealously advocacy on behalf of any particular client. In such circumstances, indemnification agreements usually obligate the company to pay its former executives’ separate lawyers, as well as its own.

Normally, none of this would be controversial, but Fannie Mae isn’t normal. When it collapsed in 2008, the government assumed control. Taxpayers are now footing the legal bills — really big ones — for defending the company and its former executives in the pending lawsuits. The Times reported:

“The amount advanced by the government to pay legal bills for Fannie Mae and its former executives was a well-kept secret for more than two years. But the bills add up quickly. In the main lawsuit [overseen by Ohio attorney general Mike DeWine on behalf of two state pension funds that owned Fannie Mae shares], 35 to 40 lawyers representing Fannie defendants attend monthly conferences by the judge.”

It’s a tragic irony. In Ohio, state and local workers have taken to the streets in protesting budget reductions that would reduce their wages and end collective bargaining. Meanwhile, the attorney general leads a lawsuit against Fannie Mae and its former executives while federal taxpayers — some of whom are Ohioans — finance the defense that creates big paydays for a relatively few lawyers.

I don’t know these attorneys or their hourly rates. But generating national bipartisan outrage isn’t a good development for them or big law generally.

Sunlight can be a disinfectant, unless you’re a vampire.

Are You Worth $5 Million?

Posted on February 10, 2011 by thebellyofthebeast

The Wall Street Journal’s front page reported that litigator Jamie Wareham “will make about $5 million a year, a significant raise from his pay at Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker LLP, where he has been one of the highest paid partners.”

This phenomenon – superstar lateral hiring – is nothing new, but in recent years it has become more common. For those who remember the 1980s, it’s vaguely reminiscent of the period when ill-fated Finley Kumble turned that strategy into a losing business model.

Of course, Finley failed for many reasons that may distinguish it from current trends. Still, those running that firm into extinction as they signed up marquee players who couldn’t carry their own economic weight probably wished they’d asked this question:

How can you determine whether a lawyer is worth $5 million?

Reserved for another day are the broader implications, including the challenges that significant lateral desertions and insertions at the top present to the very concept of firm partnership. This article focuses solely on underlying financial considerations associated with the superstar lateral hire.

Presumably, bringing in a big-name player makes economic sense for a firm operating under the prevailing business model, which means that at least one of the following conditions are met:

First, the proposed lateral has an independent book of business suitable for delivery to the new firm. That would be simple, but for the clients themselves. Even if they hired and regularly use a particular partner, they probably also like his or her package of assembled talent. Consequently, the lateral must bring along a team of capable junior lawyers. Alternatively, the new firm may have excess attorney inventory that it can deploy, but that requires the lateral to persuade clients to use new lawyers who can quickly and efficiently climb their learning curves.

Second, even absent a short-term economic justification, a firm could rationally conclude that anticipated events make the talent investment worthwhile for its future strategic positioning. Recent examples include firms that loaded up on bankruptcy attorneys when the economy was still strong. The crash of 2008 made them look like geniuses. More speculative are the “if you hire them, clients will come” bets that managers sometimes make. Former government employees, along with high-profile attorneys who lack a portable client following but are on everyone’s short-list of best lawyers, fall into this category.

For the first category, short-term value is simple arithmetic. According to the latest Am Law 100 report, Wareham’s old firm, Paul Hastings, had a 41% profit margin in 2009. If the “substantially less” than $5 million he’ll make at DLA Piper was — say, $4 million – he would have needed revenues of $10 million to earn his keep there, assuming no other equity partners claimed any part of that gross. At a total blended attorney rate for all attorneys on his client matters of $500/hour, that translates into 20,000 billable hours.

But at DLA Piper and its reportedly lower profit margin (26%), Wareham will have to produce almost $20 million to support a $5 million share of firm profits. At a blended hourly rate of $500, that means more than 40,000 hours. (If he is selling clients on a move with him on the promise of lower hourly rates, the billables requirement at DLA Piper would become even higher.)

If one of the 20 or so attorneys on Wareham’s team is another equity partner earning, say, $1 million, then the minimum break-even billables bogey moves proportionately higher. (Assuming a 26% profit ratio, it takes about $4 million gross — 8,000 hours at a blended rate of $500/hour — to net $1 million.)

Insofar as the lateral acquisition’s value relates to the second category – future payoff — big name players get a grace period. But at some point, the economic imperatives of the first category will surface. When that happens, they’ll feel the revenue and related billable hours heat even more than everyone else — except, of course, the attorneys working for them.

Such is the economically successful lateral hire outcome. Failure on a sufficiently large scale produces Finley Kumble.

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The Belly of the Beast

Steven J. Harper, Esq.

Tag Archives: Billable Hours

TREATING SYMPTOMS; IGNORING THE DISEASE

ASSOCIATE PAY AND PARTNER MALFEASANCE

A DIRTY LITTLE SECRET

LABOR DAY

THE PERVASIVE AMAZON JUNGLE

THINKING BEYOND THE AM LAW 100 RANKINGS

FEED YOUR BRAIN

THE ILLUSION OF LEISURE TIME

LESSONS FROM THE BUSINESS WORLD

WHY THE BILLABLE HOUR ENDURES

THE LAWYER BUBBLE — Early Reviews and Upcoming Events

SOMEBODY’S CHILD

THE CULTURE OF CONTRADICTIONS

BIG LAW FIRM MANAGEMENT PUZZLES

FED TO DEATH

OCCUPY BIG LAW

THE ARROGANCE OF OVERCONFIDENCE

ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER LAW FIRM MERGER

THE COST OF DISSATISFACTION

DO THEY COUNT AS BILLABLES?

IT’S THE MODEL

DESPERATELY SEEKING DOWNTIME

AGING GRACEFULLY — OR NOT

FAMILY FRIENDLY?

IMPROVING PROSPECTS — BUT FOR WHOM?

BIG LAW INCIVILITY

A NEW METRIC: THE MISERY INDEX

LAW SCHOOL DECEPTION — PART II

HOURLY RATES: PLEASE DON’T READ

Are You Worth $5 Million?

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