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Thursday, December 10, 2009

Law - "Legal Heavies Tackle the First-Year Associate Dilemma"

Well worth reading, this WSJ Law Blog entry today. A sample:

For our money, the most interesting exchange focused on first and second-year associates. Specifically: who should foot the bill for them?

Let us paraphrase the dilemma. Associates arrive at law firms knowing a lot of stuff, like the Mailbox Rule, the Rule Against Perpetuities and the definition of res ipsa loquitor. Good stuff, but not the least bit instructive on how to answer a set of interrogatories or when (and whether) to request a 30(b)(6) deposition.

In other words, most recent law grads have no idea how to practice law. So they essentially spend their first two years in practice figuring that out. Only problem, of course, is that, while this “training” is going on, the big firms are shelling out big salaries to the newbies, salaries that they then desperately want to recoup in billable hours.

So they staff the youngsters on cases by the dozens, and ask them to do a lot of tasks that non-lawyers could do, like flip through documents in attempts to figure out which are responsive to an opponent’s overly-broad discovery request, and which aren’t.

Clients never liked paying hundreds of thousands on first and second years. But for years, they did it. That is, until they didn’t. Increasingly, over the course of the last decade or so, in-house counsel have built “no-first-or-second-year” provisions into their arrangements with law firms.

When this happens, the firms are happy to oblige. But, as K&L Gates’s Kalis pointed out, the first years still have to get paid. So firms raise their rates for their other lawyers — partners and more senior associates. This, of course, drives in-house counsel crazy and, throughout the years, has been the source of more than a fair share of unpleasant phone conversations. (Of course, the clients ultimately benefit from the law firms’ taking on the training duty when they fill their in-house ranks by hiring away the fifth and sixth year associates.)

The answer? None of the participants seemed to have an answer. “I’m indifferent about whether they learn that at a law firm or in school, as long as I don’t have to pay for it,” Citigroup’s Helfer said. Kalis sought a sort of middle ground, asking the in-housers simply to acknowledge the dilemma and help him share the costs of the training.

And that brings us back to the law schools. How can firms and companies get them to better participate in the training process? For his part, Henderson, the lone representative on the panel from the legal academy, said he’s trying. And others in the past few years have made changes to their upper-level curricula in order to better prepare their students for working life. Sabatino suggested that students undertake an internship program similar to doctors residency upon graduation from law school

Another option: simply to shorten the length of law school. After all, that extra third year, for many students, equates to an extra $50,000 or so in debt. Eliminate the third year, the theory goes, and you remove a bit of the rationale behind the lofty first-year salaries.

"Henderson" is Indiana Law Professor Bill Henderson.

Here are the comments to the entry.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on December 10, 2009 02:05 PM
Posted to General Law Related