Lawyer Hunting Season
Posted: September 14th, 2007
By: Zach Heller
Category: Career Corner, Law Firms

For big law firms, recruiting new associates has been a by-the-book process for years. It's simple -- go find the best students at the best schools and offer them huge salary packages to start immediately. And it works. But recently, some areas of the law are calling for more specialized expertise and training than you can expect a law school student to have.

The answer -- look for the best and brightest lawyers in the field that are already practicing at smaller firms in the area. According to an article in this week's edition of Crain's, elite law firms are luring second and third year associates away from smaller firms more than ever before. The reason is that they can save time and money training these lawyers, who are ready to jump into their own cases immediately after arriving. Therefore, instead of recruiting recent graduates and training them to a certain areas of expertise, these larger firms are simply stealing lawyers who are already experts in fields such as Real Estate, Securities, etc.

This has the potential to cause problems for smaller firms who are trying to stay ahead of the competition and continue to grow. Losing attorneys to higher salaries and better compensation packages means more time spent recruiting new lawyers. The repercussions are obvious in the loss of time spent with clients.

Although there is no sure fire way to protect your lawyers from being "snatched up", there are some things you can do to try and sweeten the deal. Of course, salaries will be lower at smaller firms, but other things can help keep lawyers in place. Such things as a more welcoming work environment complete with office luxuries, performance bonuses, and career building opportunities can add some incentive to remain at the smaller firm. In the end, it is obvious that larger firms may win this tug-of-war game over attorneys, but smaller firms can still find ways to succeed.

Post a Comment   |   (0) Comments  |   Permanent Link  Go Back

Comments
There are no comments for this post.