[blindlaw] Law-firm life doesn't suit some young associates

[ANTONIO GUIMARAES]

Law-Firm Life Doesn't Suit
Some Young Associates

By Ashby Jones

From
The Wall Street Journal Online

At most big law firms, the partner-associate compact goes something like
this: The partners give the associates big salaries, meals on the client,
cars
home at night, fancy offices, secretaries and a prestigious name on their
resumes. The associates give their complete professional devotion and
availability
-- every hour of the day, every day of the year.

That compact has gone unspoken, and largely unquestioned, until recently.

More and more associates at law firms across the U.S. are second guessing
whether they want to sign over their lives to their jobs. Some are working
fewer
hours. Some are losing interest in making partner. And they are leaving big
law firms in droves: "The rate of associate attrition we're seeing today at
big firms is the highest level we've ever seen," says Paula A. Patton, chief
executive of the NALP Foundation, a nonprofit group in Overland Park, Kan.,
that examines law-firm hiring trends and practices.

For partners, it's a quizzical and unwelcome development. Last fall, Cesar
L. Alvarez, president of Greenberg Traurig, was interviewing a student at an
Ivy League law school. The interview was just beginning when the student
asked Mr. Alvarez to tell him what the "lifestyle would be like" at the
firm.

The student didn't get a "call-back" interview. "I told him that if he's
going to work at a large law firm, that mind-set isn't going to get you very
far,"
recalls Mr. Alvarez, who is based in the firm's Miami office. In his
opinion, the question reflected the attitude of more and more young lawyers.
"A generation
ago, nobody would have asked that question, even if they'd thought of it.
But there is a difference in people coming out of law school now."

Two decades ago, few segments of the work force routinely put in longer
hours than young law-firm associates, who toiled day and night to please
partner-masters
and climb the firms' ranks. But many today "are more interested in going to
their children's soccer games" than they are in staying in the office late
in the hopes of getting extra work done or making a good impression, says
Joseph Altonji, a consultant with Hildebrandt International, a law-firm
consultancy
in Chicago.

Ellie Schilling, a former bankruptcy associate at New York's Kaye Scholer,
left the firm in March as a third-year associate after deciding that the
pathway
to partnership "is so long and arduous, that it just didn't seem worth it."
She and her husband, also a young lawyer, plan to depart for Europe this
month
to pursue a business plan they began dreaming up after they realized life at
a big law firm wasn't for them. "We figured there had to be another way to
go, a way with less pressure, less stress, fewer hours," says Ms. Schilling.
"We feel like we had to give something else a shot."

Why the change in attitude? It's partly due to the explosive growth
experienced by the largest firms over the past two decades. That growth has
increased
demand for more worker bees at the bottom of the law-firm pyramid, without
an equivalent spike in demand for new partners, experts say. The result:
It's
harder than ever to make partner at the biggest firms, leaving associates
less incentive to churn the grindstone early on.

Partners are working harder than ever as well, taking a little of the luster
off partnership's holy-grail mystique. Claude Millman, a litigation partner
at Proskauer Rose in New York, says he gets questions from associates about
his lifestyle fairly frequently. And what he tells them isn't always what
they
want to hear: "I try to be honest with them," he says. "The pressure to be
available to your clients only increases as your career moves along."

Generational factors are also at work. More than in any previous generation,
say experts, today's associates were raised in the lap of affluence. Many
have
safety nets to fall back on. And many are jaded about what big law firms
have to offer. Michael Boone, a co-founder of Haynes & Boone, a large
general-practice
firm based in Dallas, says that the current crop of associates often aren't
satisfied with working hard and making money. "They want to feel like
they're
contributing to the greater good," he says.

According to an NALP Foundation study unveiled last year that looked at law
firms for the three years from 2002 through 2004, nearly 60% of all
entry-level
associates at firms with more than 500 lawyers had left their firms by the
end of their fourth years. For firms of all sizes, it was 62%, a record
since
NALP began tracking it nearly 10 years ago.

Some law-firm executives fear that uncommitted associates are failing to put
out the top-quality work that's expected of them. "There's a perception
among
managing partners that the short-termers are less focused on crossing T's
and dotting I's," says Dan DiPietro, head of client sales for the law firm
group
at Citigroup Private Bank, a unit of Citigroup Inc., in New York. "They're
perceived as putting a burden on quality control."

Associate productivity and billing are additional issues. Greenberg
Traurig's Mr. Alvarez, for instance, says he is hearing about a decline in
hours worked
at big firms, a drop attributable not only to the youngest associates, but
also to baby boomers, many of whom are nearing retirement age and winding
down
their practices. "It's a double whammy effect," says Mr. Alvarez. "People in
my generation don't need to work 2,500 hours [a year] anymore, and at the
same time, the new generation is concerned with its lifestyle. It's creating
a downward trend at firms."

Some associates appreciate the benefits of big law-firm life. Moe
Keshavarzi, a second-year associate at Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton
in Los Angeles,
says associates are "very concerned with lifestyle," but he thinks the hours
matter less than the amount of responsibility associates have. "The more
responsibility
you're given, the more you're going to want to work hard."

Several years ago, Greenberg Traurig changed its recruiting strategy to
focus on finding associates who were better geared for law-firm life, ones
with
leadership qualities and work experience prior to law school.

Washington firm Dickstein Shapiro Morin & Oshinsky, which in 2005 finished
first in the American Lawyer magazine's associate satisfaction survey, has
for
several years had a well-publicized part-time policy that lets its lawyers
work four days a week. And it has put a renewed emphasis on training its
lawyers,
says Michael Nannes, the firm's managing partner.

Proskauer's Mr. Millman agrees with that philosophy. "We have to recognize
that not everyone is going to want to spend his or her life at a law firm,"
he
says. "But that doesn't mean you can't be wonderful associate and get a lot
out of your time while you're here."

Email your comments to
cjeditor at dowjones.com.

-- May 04, 2006

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