Wednesday, September 03, 2003
The day after: The Am Law A-List
In the main, people choose law as a profession from one of two motives:
1. Law is a profession that can bring status, respect, and wealth.
2. Law is a calling – a means to serve people or a higher social purpose.
Those who are in law for the first reason may be satisfied with the method and results of the American Lawyer magazine’s ranking of the AM Law A-list at law.com: http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1061487953470
Those who have been called to law as a means to fulfill a personal mission or social purpose will question its measures of success and satisfaction.
Let’s look at the measures used to determine the profession’s elite:
· Successful law practices
The first thing done by a business or personal coach, a consultant or advisor is an evaluation of how a person or business defines success.
Am Law says that there are values which cannot be measured, so those are ignored. Billings per lawyer are the measure of success used in this survey.
In my view, no one in real life should accept that single measure. Figure out what motivate you to be in law, keep that in mind in all business decisions, and own your own brand of success.
· Pro bono performance
Well, of course, if your sole motive in law is to get rich and acquire status. To maintain your self-respect you’d better volunteer in the community or in pro bono work. But for lawyers whose definition of success is different, they may already be giving of themselves in many ways, including serving a clientele that doesn’t pay mega fees to begin with. If a lawyer works in a community practice or an area of poverty law, you can’t demand pro bono services as proof of worthiness.
· Decent treatment and development of new lawyers
This category should be expanded to include decent treatment and development of staff. Otherwise, the development of new lawyers can appear to be merely self-serving – to ensure the continuation of the firm and its profits. The measure used here, feedback from associates, is subjective. Better to measure salaries, CLE budgets, in-house training, availability of mentors or coaches, etc.
· Diversity of workforce
Diversity is a noble goal. I won't criticize the methods used by Am Law to determine this ranking, as I know nothing about them.
Tell me what you think about all this.
In the main, people choose law as a profession from one of two motives:
1. Law is a profession that can bring status, respect, and wealth.
2. Law is a calling – a means to serve people or a higher social purpose.
Those who are in law for the first reason may be satisfied with the method and results of the American Lawyer magazine’s ranking of the AM Law A-list at law.com: http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1061487953470
Those who have been called to law as a means to fulfill a personal mission or social purpose will question its measures of success and satisfaction.
Let’s look at the measures used to determine the profession’s elite:
· Successful law practices
The first thing done by a business or personal coach, a consultant or advisor is an evaluation of how a person or business defines success.
Am Law says that there are values which cannot be measured, so those are ignored. Billings per lawyer are the measure of success used in this survey.
In my view, no one in real life should accept that single measure. Figure out what motivate you to be in law, keep that in mind in all business decisions, and own your own brand of success.
· Pro bono performance
Well, of course, if your sole motive in law is to get rich and acquire status. To maintain your self-respect you’d better volunteer in the community or in pro bono work. But for lawyers whose definition of success is different, they may already be giving of themselves in many ways, including serving a clientele that doesn’t pay mega fees to begin with. If a lawyer works in a community practice or an area of poverty law, you can’t demand pro bono services as proof of worthiness.
· Decent treatment and development of new lawyers
This category should be expanded to include decent treatment and development of staff. Otherwise, the development of new lawyers can appear to be merely self-serving – to ensure the continuation of the firm and its profits. The measure used here, feedback from associates, is subjective. Better to measure salaries, CLE budgets, in-house training, availability of mentors or coaches, etc.
· Diversity of workforce
Diversity is a noble goal. I won't criticize the methods used by Am Law to determine this ranking, as I know nothing about them.
Tell me what you think about all this.
Tuesday, September 02, 2003
On my reading list today (09/02/03) was an article in the American Lawyer, The A-List, which is available online at law.com: http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1061487953470
The American Lawyer magazine has decided to create a new ranking of law firms on the A-List on a sounder, more all-rounded basis than the statistics that are used to rank their Am Law 100 and 200 reports which measure law firms as businesses, because that “can't be the only standard for a self-respecting profession.”
They say:
“The best firms are exemplars, and exemplars are important. They're entitled to praise, and, just as critical, they inspire not only envy but better performance from their competitors. This information should be important to recruits trying to decide where to spend their careers, to laterals looking for a new office to call home, and to the firms themselves… Only 20 firms make The A-List, the top 10 percent of The Am Law 200… The New Elite.”
The American Lawyer recognizes that virtues should be considered, but they could not find a way to grade those. Such values might include: “a firm's willingness to take on unpopular causes or fight fiercely for their clients or maintain a cohesive culture.”
These four categories were used to rank firms:
· successful law practices
· pro bono performance
· decent treatment and development of new lawyers
· diversity of workforce.
How were these measured?
· Revenue per lawyer
On the thinking that RPL is “a fair measure of the success of a firm's practice and an approximation of client quality and satisfaction.”
· Pro bono
Seeing this as a ”bedrock professional value” Am Law measured both per capita hours and the number of firm lawyers who performed at least 20 hours of service annually.
· Associate satisfaction
Considering training and developing “one of the key missions of any profession”, Am Law scored firms based on feedback from their associates.
· Diversity
Am Law used The National Law Journal census and The Minority Law Journal scorecard for this.
What do you think of this new ranking and its methodology?
I will have some comments tomorrow.
The American Lawyer magazine has decided to create a new ranking of law firms on the A-List on a sounder, more all-rounded basis than the statistics that are used to rank their Am Law 100 and 200 reports which measure law firms as businesses, because that “can't be the only standard for a self-respecting profession.”
They say:
“The best firms are exemplars, and exemplars are important. They're entitled to praise, and, just as critical, they inspire not only envy but better performance from their competitors. This information should be important to recruits trying to decide where to spend their careers, to laterals looking for a new office to call home, and to the firms themselves… Only 20 firms make The A-List, the top 10 percent of The Am Law 200… The New Elite.”
The American Lawyer recognizes that virtues should be considered, but they could not find a way to grade those. Such values might include: “a firm's willingness to take on unpopular causes or fight fiercely for their clients or maintain a cohesive culture.”
These four categories were used to rank firms:
· successful law practices
· pro bono performance
· decent treatment and development of new lawyers
· diversity of workforce.
How were these measured?
· Revenue per lawyer
On the thinking that RPL is “a fair measure of the success of a firm's practice and an approximation of client quality and satisfaction.”
· Pro bono
Seeing this as a ”bedrock professional value” Am Law measured both per capita hours and the number of firm lawyers who performed at least 20 hours of service annually.
· Associate satisfaction
Considering training and developing “one of the key missions of any profession”, Am Law scored firms based on feedback from their associates.
· Diversity
Am Law used The National Law Journal census and The Minority Law Journal scorecard for this.
What do you think of this new ranking and its methodology?
I will have some comments tomorrow.
