Biglaw lateral associates
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Anonymous
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Purely curious..... I'm a partner in big law about 18 years out of law school, I work primarily with another partner in his 60s. Super busy (isn't everyone). We've hired two junior/mid laterals in the last 4 years. One was appalling and we let her go. The latest has been with us for over a year and showed moderate promise to start, but has not performed well in the long term. Some work product is fine/good-ish, but some of it has very serious problems.
Is this an "us" thing, that we are doing an absolutely terrible job training up associates? Or in this economy, is any 2nd or 4th year lateral at best a 50/50 toss up on whether they even know how to run a redline or send an attachment by email? Granted, we don't spend a ton of time training - but a lot of these challenges seem like things that shouldn't require training for people who are 30 years old and making $260-$350k before bonuses. Our firm culture is very good, i'm very nice to them, and i'm not overloading them with work (our current associate only does 10-6 during his RTO days, and is well below billable targets - i guess just because he doesn't want to work more than that?), when there is a novel assignment, i always take a long time to walk through it by phone -- and the current associate has thanked me for taking that time. I also work with associates who came to our firm right out of law school, and never seem to have these issues. I appreciate that the quality of biglaw associates is way down these days, but is being 0/2 on laterals (like, probably both leaving within 2 years) par for the course? |
Anonymous
| The examples you give used to be secretarial tasks. If you have people who don’t know how to redline a document or attach things to emails, have somebody show them how. |
Anonymous
| To clarify, are you paying them at the level you cited? And/or are you offering an overall compensation and benefits package that meets or beats the market (eg, lower pay but lower hours and wfh)? If you’re paying market, then yes, it sounds like you should be more selective. |
Anonymous
| Two people isn't a large enough sample size to draw any conclusions. |
Anonymous
Yes these are regular biglaw associates making cravath scale. So those numbers cited are their base comp if they don’t hit financial targets. They have the same deal as all associates across the country: need to be in office three days a week. But no one keeps tabs on associates anymore, so they can roll into the office when they want and leave whenever. Good associates put in the long hours, whether at home or at the office. But our current associate puts in really short days in the office and doesn’t log in much before or after. At some point, his hours are bad enough that the firm is going to fire them. Even I thought their work product was good. You can say we’re not being selective enough, but we’re a stellar firm. We just don’t get any good candidates. I think this is a problem universally at biglaw. But these two that we hired had pretty good resumes, so I’m surprised how weak they both are. I’m thinking that anyone in 2024 changing firms as a first year associate is by definition likely a flawed candidate. |
Anonymous
| You're doing a bad job screening and hiring. I'm at a medium sized firm and people stay with us. In the last four years we've let go of fewer than half a dozen associates. More than that have left of course, for various reasons, but we rarely have to fire people. |
Anonymous
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Are you using a good legal recruiter? I think some get paid if you retain a new hire for x period, so they have incentive to help with fit and screening.
You could try asking for work samples. |
Anonymous
No, those aren’t secretarial tasks. An associate who’s been at any firm for more than a week should know how to run a redline and attach a document. If you can’t handle those tasks for $300k/year, how can you be trusted to do more substantive work? |
Anonymous
Um they are secretarial tasks. The fact that no one has secretaries anymore doesn’t change that this isn’t evidence of their legal skills or lack thereof— it’s a basic tech tip that someone could explain in 5 minutes. |
Anonymous
It's a problem universally. With hiring. Everywhere. Not just in law. And has been since a bit before the pandemic. It's worse now. At any rate, if part of it is that they aren't working hard enough -- you mention "really short days in the office" -- then you aren't doing your job with regard to setting expectations and then holding them accountable when the expectations are not met. It's too bad that you have to babysit in this way with an %%$ing adult with a law license making a huge amount of money, but it sounds like you do. If you don't want to do that (I can imagine why you wouldn't, it is a lot of effort), you need to get rid of them. But does this person really not understand how to attach something to an email? What? |
Anonymous
Not inclined to give much grace to an associate making 300k a year who can't bother to figure this out on their own -- but PP here ^^ is correct. |
Anonymous
The standard practice when an associate turns a draft is for them to attach the doc and a redline. This is part of the associate’s job. Calling it secretarial makes an excuse for the associate’s incompetence. |
Anonymous
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You need to communicate with the associates or have someone else do it and say they need to be on the office more and have more billable hours. If they aren’t in the office more during the on office days what do you think they are doing when they are WFH. If they can’t meet targets or billable don’t let them WFH.
I don’t work in law (my husband was an associate at Cravath 20 years ago but isn’t in big law anymore) but in most other fields if people aren’t getting what needs to get done the WFH benefit gets stopped. Making $300k and working only 10-6 is ridiculous for an associate. My husband worked night and day and weekends when he was an associate at Cravath. |
Anonymous
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Hey op here. Just to clarify, because this thread has dialed in on a few points that aren’t really key to my question. Yes, these associates only come in the office on short days a few days a week. But their short days aren’t what’s bothering me; I was just citing those short days as examples of how we’re not treating them like crap. The associates work outside those hours too- just not a lot. We have spoken to this associate several times about their billable hours, mostly from a concern perspective (ie you won’t get bonus) but have recently gotten more specific about how many hours they should target daily and monthly. But if this associate only wants to work 1700 a year, I’m fine with that if it’s taking 1700 hours of work off my plate. So the hours aren’t a huge problem for me - so long as the work quality is good. Which it’s not.
The email attachment was a bit hyperbole (though the first associate we fired had trouble under even minor pressure with those tasks). Our current associate can handle those types of tasks, but this week dropped the ball majorly on two big things: the first, a client deadline that had been very clearly conveyed, months and months ago, and the second, a substantive research and writing assignment that was just not well done. To clarify, our firm has extremely high retention for “home grown” associates. Our group is just having this problem with laterals. I don’t know if other groups in our firm have the same problem with laterals. No one really talks about laterals much. To the comments above about screening, I guess I don’t know how one does that for biglaw laterals? Resume shows top law school and previous law firm. We’re hiring them as first and second years, so not sure what else can be screened? Theres not a standard work product that we can test them on, and in any event, that’s not a standard biglaw interview screening tool. How are other biglaw attorneys on here screening for lateral associates? Ultimately I’m pretty sure this is just because the quality of lateral applicants is horrendous these days, and that anyone looking to jump within a couple years of joining another firm is more likely than not a flawed candidate to start with. But again, just curious for experiences of others in big law. |
Anonymous
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I have a half baked theory that people are really only open to feedback on how to do their jobs the first 3 years or so they are doing it.
Hiring a lateral is basically a crapshoot because you have no idea how someone else trained them and the odds they trained them the way you would have are pretty low since organizational cultures vary more than you’d think. And getting them to switch to your culture/expectations is going to be pretty hard. |