What BigLaw Wants in New Recruits

By Katy Montgomery and Neda Khatamee
New York Law Journal
New York Lawyer
May 28, 2009

As law firms struggle to survive the economic downturn, most are rethinking the way they do business. After all, as Plato put it so many years ago, necessity is the mother of invention. One of the things managers are discovering as they restructure and prioritize is that new attorneys are missing some fairly basic skills, limiting what they can contribute to their firms.

"The current economic conditions don't change what we want to see from recent law graduates, but they do make it more imperative that new associates hit the ground running, and operate efficiently and effectively from day one," explained the hiring partner of an AmLaw 100 firm.

What exactly do law firms want in their new hires? What would enable them to be more productive from day one? To find out, we surveyed practice chairs, hiring partners and recruiters about the things law schools could do to better prepare students for law firm life.

Business 101

One of the questions we asked was: "Do you think courses, workshops or seminars should be offered in the following areas?" We then provided 12 options. Not surprisingly, the only option that received a "yes" from every single respondent was "Business 101."

"Students need to understand that they are entering a business that will require them to have business development skills for their professional success," offered Wanda Woods, senior attorney recruitment administrator in Nixon Peabody's New York office. She says law schools should consider adding the following to the curriculum: "The economics of running a law business, how to develop new business, networking, how to interact with opposing counsel, how to conduct client meetings, the need for efficiency, and the importance of time and project management."

In fact, says Marc S. Friedman, a partner in the New York office of Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal, "I would offer non-credit courses in the above topics to prepare law students to become legal professionals."

Our respondents point out that they aren't expecting new attorneys to understand profit and loss statements or to get involved in the billing and collections arm of the business, but to realize that a law firm is a business: that it lives and dies on fees; that expenses have to be monitored; that their time has to be carefully tracked; that the latter is not some torture system devised for them alone, but part of the necessary running of a law firm.

They want new hires to recognize and respect the business realities, and realize that in addition to serving clients, their job is to help contribute to the bottom line. As one respondent explained:

"Every law firm is a business, solo practitioners run a business, even government and public interest law have business aspects to them. So it makes sense to teach business skills, including marketing, management, basic accounting and finance, and how to create a business plan."

While a handful of law schools offer joint degree programs combining the J.D. and M.B.A., few, if any, are really addressing the law firms' desire to have new attorneys think like lawyers and business people. One that is trying is the University of Virginia School of Law, which allows students to declare an outside concentration in business organization and finance.

One of the courses offered is "Accounting: Understanding and Analyzing Financial Statements." This makes a lot of sense to one of our survey participants, who said that law schools should make "accounting or some finance courses required for all lawyers, since numbers are part of every issue."

The emphasis, according to our respondents, should be on understanding basic law firm economics. Emily Busse, manager of recruiting and professional development in the Washington, D.C., office of Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton, suggests that new attorneys should be familiar with "realization, utilization, the concept of leverage, and law firm terminology like WIP (work in progress), origination, RPL (revenue per lawyer), and NIPP (net income per partner)."

She adds that lawyers who understand the business aspects of the industry will become the leaders; those who don't will always be followers. To put it simply, she says,

"Students who graduate from law school able to think like a lawyer, but also like a business person, are likely to be more successful."

And of course it is no shock that respondents want new associates to be aware of business development opportunities early in their careers.

"Entry-level attorneys are surprised how soon they need to start thinking about strategies for business development," notes Woods. "Careers can get off to a positive start the sooner attorneys learn the basics of business development, starting with keeping in touch with college and law school classmates. New business opportunities can arise at any time and they should be prepared."

Going Global

Another topic on the minds of our respondents is the increasingly global aspect of the legal industry. More than 70 percent of those surveyed think law schools should focus more on transnational studies and offer study-abroad programs.

"The opportunity to study abroad would be a plus in this global economy," agreed Woods. "It would be a great enhancement to classroom learning." Another respondent added:

"Transnational and study-abroad programs help law schools expand their international profile and help students develop professional connections and leads abroad."

The Center for Transnational Studies was launched in October 2008 to help address these concerns. Spearheaded by Georgetown Law, the center, which is physically housed in London and draws students and faculty from around the world, is a collaborative effort by 10 premier law schools from five continents to offer a transnational legal education.

"We now live in a time when nations are increasingly interdependent, people more interconnected, humanity less divided by narrow domestic walls," explains Georgetown University President John J. DeGioia. With these changes, he notes, come challenges, among them "the need to adequately prepare students for this unparalleled new world."

As stated on the Georgetown Web site:

"Just as American law schools shifted from state-specific to national legal training in the mid-1900s, they now must take the next step and educate students for practice in the global legal environment."

International law is no longer just about treaties. Lawyers are increasingly called upon to advise businesses, individuals, non-governmental entities and governments in matters that involve parties, laws and decision-makers in two or more countries. Course offerings include transnational issues in art, culture and law; globalization, governance and justice; national security and human rights in transnational and comparative perspective; and international legal institutions.

Recognizing that lawyers must practice law in a global context, the Program in International Law at Stanford Law School focuses students on the interrelationship between international law, business and policy and key areas of change in the global political economy, transnational business environment, and developing international legal structure.

"Where only a tiny number of graduates used to practice law across national borders, today only a tiny number do not," notes Stanford Law Dean Larry Kramer. "International law, particularly the law governing private actors in the international arena, has gone from the periphery to the center, and law schools have been scrambling to adapt."

Management Skills

Seventy percent of our respondents believe a course or workshop on law firm management would be useful. A litigation partner in an AmLaw 100 firm had this to say:

"I think management skills are key. They are necessary from day one, and become more so as you grow more senior."

Another partner and national practice leader added: "Most law schools teach nothing in the field of firm management."

True. However, as part of its accelerated two-year J.D. program, Northwestern University School of Law requires that all applicants "have at least two years of substantive post-undergraduate work experience, preferably in a non-legal setting, and ideally have demonstrated managerial and leadership experience." The program places a premium on candidates who have supervised people in a professional environment.

Translating this into the law firm world seems to be the challenge. One interesting attempt is the "Law of Law Firms" seminar offered by the University of Pennsylvania Law School. It covers the statutory and regulatory laws that underlie and are embedded in the organization and operation of a law firm. It addresses how law firms behave, politically, socially and financially, and how the culture and organization drive and shape one another. According to Vice Dean Jo-Ann Verrier:

"This seminar along with our Center on Professionalism help students develop the additional skills needed to be successful in the real world: communications, strategic planning, problem-solving and organizational management."

Topics include the formation of the organization, including ownership, liability and tax considerations; managing the tension between profits and politics, on the one hand, and ethics and professionalism, on the other; admission, promotion and termination of partners, including the existence of equity and non-equity tiers; and multi-disciplinary and multi-jurisdictional issues arising from substantive and geographic diversity.

Law firms also want attorneys to have well-developed soft skills. Chris White, chief learning/diversity/recruitment officer for Nixon Peabody, explains:

"Attorneys need relationship-building skills from day one. They need to gain the confidence of and build relationships with their internal clients (i.e., partners). They also need these skills for external clients."

A firmwide director of recruiting agrees, indicating that law schools could better prepare students for law firm life by teaching "professionalism and staff management skills, and how to interact with people in person, not just via email and instant message." As Wanda Woods puts it:

"Some new attorneys could use instruction in the areas of emotional intelligence and general people skills. Their interpersonal communication with clients, colleagues and supervisors would be greatly enhanced."

I Write ... Therefore I Am

Another common refrain from our respondents is the need for law students to be taught how to write.

"Very few associates can write well," says one; "Young lawyers need better writing skills," notes another. A bankruptcy chair of an AmLaw 100 firm adds:

"Over the years, I've heard a pretty consistent refrain of ‘writing needs to improve' or ‘I had to rewrite the entire document.' Constructing grammatically correct sentences is not the problem. Rather, the ability to organize facts and principles in a crisp, logical way is what's lacking in many newcomers to the firm."

The frustration is understandable given that "the pen is the tongue of the mind," as novelist Miguel de Cervantes noted. William Zinsser, author of "On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction" (HarperCollins, 2006) and adjunct faculty member at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, puts it this way:

"Writing is thinking on paper." If a lawyer's writing is muddled, clients may assume his/her thinking is, too.

Duke Law School is to be applauded for going beyond the typical first-year legal writing class by offering a variety of courses, including "Writing for Federal Litigation," "Writing/Drafting Legislation" and "Writing for Publication" as well as several workshops, e.g., "Writing from the Reader's Perspective" and "Legal Writing: Craft & Style."

One of our survey participants suggests that law schools implement a much broader revision: Instead of requiring one big memo project in legal research class, they should require lots of little memos. "This would provide more practical experience for students, since that is what they'll be expected to produce in the real world."

This idea was given considerable attention in a 2005 article, "English as a Second Language -- or Why Lawyers Can't Write," by Harold P. Southerland, Professor Emeritus at Florida State University College of Law (St. Thomas Law Review, Vol. 18, p. 53, 2005-2006). His primary recommendation was for law schools to require that briefs be written on a daily basis.

"There is no better way to learn than forcing oneself to distill, in one's own words, what a court did in a particular situation. Writing about these things steadily improves facility in using and manipulating language.

"Instructors could pick one case from each day's assignment, and ask students to produce written briefs. The instructor could critique a handful, for both accuracy and writing technique, and return them to the students. Then choose another handful the next day. I envision this practice taking place in all courses throughout law school. In their later years, students might be asked to write précis of material in their casebooks or synthesize a line of cases, or support or attack a particular approach. This would make it easy to spot students with writing problems and refer them for remedial work."

Southerland believes law schools need to do more:

"Law is a house of words, utterly dependent on language. Other than integrity, it is hard to think ?of any quality more vital to a lawyer than literacy."

More Practical Experience

Despite an increasingly loud chorus of people calling for the elimination of the third year of law school, most of our respondents think it should be maintained. As Emily Busse explains:

"The third year provides a valuable opportunity for students to become acquainted with substantive areas of law. Without it, students will have less opportunity to identify their interest in and aptitude for specific disciplines."

Our respondents believe that the third year's emphasis should change, though, to more clinical and practical work. That seems to have been part of the motivation behind Stanford's "3D" JD, which allows second- and third-year students to take courses in other disciplines, engage in more team-oriented problem-solving exercises, and pursue expanded clinical opportunities (including litigating cases and representing clients).

To make it easier for students to take outside courses, the law school changed its academic calendar, which had been on the traditional semester system, to the quarter system to match the rest of the university. As stated on the Stanford Web site:

"Although lawyers were historically called upon and trained mainly to identify problems, they are increasingly being called upon to help solve them. To do this, especially in a world where the problems have grown more intricate, lawyers need to understand what their clients do at a much more sophisticated level than can be taught through the existing law school curriculum or in the traditional law school classroom."

In addition to cross-disciplinary studies, the hiring partner of a major D.C. firm believes law students should have more real-world experiences before graduation: "I'm beginning to think that most or all of the third year should be spent working as an apprentice to a practicing attorney."

Not surprisingly, no one we surveyed thinks that a fourth year should be added. As one litigation partner observes, "There's only so much you can learn in the classroom. At some point, you just have to start doing.

Katy Montgomery is a managing director in the Washington, D.C., office of Major, Lindsey & Africa, and Neda Khatamee is a managing director in MLA's New York City office.