Sometimes it doesn’t hurt to be reminded of the obvious. Permit
me to remind you:
- Ours is a talent-driven profession.
- Professionals—"elevator assets"—are highly
mobile. - The best people are always in limited supply.
- Turnover is expensive, disruptive, and to the extent clients
identify with the individual attorney rather than the firm, truly
threatening.
So the question is: What have you done about this lately?
Deloitte has a primer which
I commend to you. Among its key recommendations:
- Focus on the long run. Where will your needs (by practice
group, by geography, by client/industry cohort) be in a few years? This
involves everything from whether you’re recruiting at the right
law schools to whether your associate development and partner
coaching initiatives are in alignment with where you think your
firm should be heading strategically. - Realize that your firm has an image, a perception, dare I
say a "brand" in the marketplace for recruits—distinct
from the market for clients. Think of your firm’s brand image to clients as its "demand side" brand and its brand image to recruits as its "supply side" brand. - Consider unconventional ways of assessing and recruiting associates—your
cheapest source of new talent. For example, IDEO, the multi-award-winning
San Francisco based design firm, sends senior staff members to
teach in the engineering master’s program at Stanford, creating
what amounts to a three-year interview of promising designers. Imagine
some of your corporate partners (the right ones, please!) guest-lecturing
at Harvard, Stanford, Columbia (etc.) in the corporate
law and securities courses. Think the top-notch students
you might otherwise be unaware of would be receptive to a personal
invitation to interview with the firm?
Once you’ve got the right people, you’ve got to keep them. The
good news and the bad news here is that money alone won’t do it.
To be sure, the overall compensation package must be competitive
in the marketplace and, more crucially, perceived as fair. But
once you’ve achieved that baseline, "softer" factors take precedence: How
strong are your professional development efforts? Are associates
free to move between departments in search of the right fit? Do
you focus on outcomes, not bureaucracy, eliminating constraints
and permitting creativity?
Let’s face it: With the first-year associate package apparently
frozen at $125,000 plus bonus, with every firm claiming to be "friendly
and collegial," and with the reality of 2,000+ hours/year requirements
across the board, how is your firm really going to distinguish
itself?
McKinsey chimes
in that it really does get back to "branding." If
you limit yourself to the traditional toolkit (salary, benefits,
blah blah blah), you will limit yourself to run of the mill recruits. But
if you can persuasively demonstrate intangible and emotional ties
linking your best professionals to the firm with passion and commitment,
trust me, you will well and truly stand out—and have the standout
recruits to show for it.
