CREATIVE LAWYER RETENTION IN A COMPETITIVE MARKET©

A new recruiting season is well underway as this goes to press and the Class of 1999 has arrived in large numbers to be assimilated in your practices. Many law students view their first job as a one year trial and their mental separation from your practice begins as early as the end of the first three months of employment.

Often, law firms ask us: "Now that we have these new lawyers here, how can you help us keep them?" PeopleWealth’s retention services, mentoring programs, networking programs, CareerDesign and CareerBuilding coaching plans are our answer. What are these programs and why do they work? Let’s first address the "why" and then we’ll explain the "what."

Large numbers of lawyers are making the career choice to leave their law firms in search of job satisfaction in a more hospitable environment. Lawyers are seeking life balance, trust in leadership, a stake in the outcome and challenging work. Business and other competitors provide lawyers with daily job opportunities that were unheard of even five years ago.

Now the "what." All of our programs focus on the concept of CareerDesign–the idea that through effective goal setting, every lawyer can plan a career that will be exciting, rewarding and provide life long satisfaction in their current environment. We recommend that practices offer CareerDesign training to all lawyers.

We recommend that practices begin their retention efforts by making a well publicized commitment to retention. Practices are often reluctant to make such a commitment because they are unwilling to correct mis-hires. But practices must accept that hiring is not an exact science. They should have a program in place for separating gracefully when such mis-hires occur. Having accepted the need to identify and deal with mis-hires quickly, practices can commit to retention.

Practices should then adopt both short term and longer term strategies to improve retention of all lawyers. We help firms implement short term strategies now with programs that will:

• Never allow more than ten days to pass without personal contact between mentors and associates.
• Take a personal interest in each new associate.
• Let every associate know how important they are and how much the firm wants to keep them.
• Treat lawyers as individuals not as classes.
• Analyze retention.
• Set retention goals.
• Have fun.

We assist firms to design longer term strategies for future success such as methods that:

• Provide CareerDesign and CareerBuilding training for all lawyers.
• Discover, publicize and promote what your practice is doing RIGHT.
• Commit to innovation.
• Implement a good mentoring program.
• Give every lawyer a stake in the outcome.
• Deliver what they think you’ve promised.
• Do a climate survey.
• ACT on what you learn.
• Conduct effective exit interviews.
• Enhance the alumni potential of every lawyer.

Best lawyers stay with jobs they like and leave jobs they don’t like. Share with junior lawyers the best attributes of your practice. Tell them why your senior lawyers like it here and why they should stay. The process of figuring out why your law firm is a good place to work will help you keep more lawyers, too.

Once they take their law firm jobs, lawyers look ahead of them in the practice to more senior lawyers and ask: Is this the life I want for myself? If senior lawyers are staying with the practice and seem to be well satisfied, younger lawyers conclude that the practice is one in which they, too, might find job satisfaction. Lawyers want job satisfaction now, not in some distant, uncertain future.

Not surprisingly, senior lawyers feel the same desire for a satisfying professional life. A well respected senior partner with a national firm recently left the practice of law because he said he was "just not happy doing this any more." Younger lawyers view these departures with alarm and a call to the recruiter.

©PeopleWealth October 1999