Articles Posted in Talent

Here is an informative paragraph from the 2010 In-House Global Salary & Benefits Survey conducted by Laurence Simons (pg. 9). “Over a third (37%) of respondents found their current role through recruitment consultancies like Laurence Simons. The second most common route was through personal contacts (15%), nearly 12% had been approached by their employer and just over 10% had found the role through an online job-board. Less than 1% of the sample had used social media to find their job, although the increasing popularity of such tools leads us to expect much higher numbers in our next survey.”

Print advertising accounted for a bit more than nine percent as did internal promotions. The final category, “professional network,” had seven percent. As did Laurence Simons, it surprised me that the social media, especially LinkedIn and its professional counterparts, did so poorly. Job hunting stands out on those sites and accounts for much of their presumed allure. It may be that current employers found lawyers through the sites and then approached them.

Laurence Simons gathered 1,900 responses, which is enormous. Given that it is a leading global recruitment consultancy, the responses might be tipped a bit toward that method of locating a job, but still the empirical data is most welcome (See my post of March 23, 2009: counterpart data from AsiaPacific; and March 1, 2010: Microsoft runs attorney-wanted ads.). To request a copy of the full survey, write Naveen Tuli.

In 2010, the bonuses that were slashed in dismal 2009 have started to return. Many more in-house lawyers may have something extra to look forward to at the end of this fiscal year.

Likewise with my posts on bonuses. After an initial metapost, my items tailed off but recently more have appeared. Some have to do with absolute amounts of bonuses (See my post of Jan. 30, 2008: often a benefits load of 30% of salary plus cash bonus; March 13, 2008: bonuses for top lawyers equal 30-40% of total compensation; Aug. 12, 2008: bonus data from Fortune 500 GCs; Jan. 7, 2009: UK bonus data; Feb. 14, 2009: data for small departments on the mix between salaries, bonuses and incentive compensation; April 24, 2009: relation to CEO pay; Oct. 20, 2009: salaries, bonuses and overhead account for 75%+ of internal budget; March 30, 2010: data on US GC salaries and bonuses; Oct. 25, 2010: head IP lawyers and total compensation; and Nov. 2, 2010: sign-on bonuses.).

Other posts took up topics about the management and characteristics of bonus arrangements (See my post of July 28, 2008: hard to draw clear lines for when someone in a law department should get a spot bonus; April 13, 2009: sixty percent of every HCA lawyer’s bonus is tied to reductions of legal fees; April 28, 2009: Boards should not set GC bonus; June 18, 2010: tiered bonus arrangements; and July 19, 2010: full transparency of bonus awards.).

Some general counsel encounter a business unit executive who would like to give a bonus to a particular lawyer who has done excellent work for that unit. Such clear-cut client praise, of course, is wonderful, but if the general counsel manages a consolidated law department that has one compensation scheme, any individualized treatment contravenes that arrangement.

It is not good if lawyers who all report to the same chief legal officer get different bonuses depending upon the performance of various business or staff units. Poorly performing units, those most in need of legal talent, can’t offer bonuses. Then too specialty lawyers who spread their expertise across units won’t as often earn individual recognition than commercial lawyers who labor for a business unit (See my post of May 23, 2007: specialists can’t get bonuses based on business unit performance.). Those awards also shake the pedestal of lawyer objectivity (See my post of June 30, 2007: bonuses with 8 references.). The best practice is to pass on as much of the recognition and praise as possible but pool the funds for the entire department.

My consulting projects rarely address the heterogeneity of law firm lawyers. Other people passionately, tirelessly, and creatively push for diversity. So, I will merely note here five steps new to me but probably commonly known to some readers.

Set your primary firms a goal of more hours worked by diverse attorneys as a percentage of total hours during the coming 12 months. Perhaps 10 percent would be a starting expectation. More aggressively, set goals by level of partner, associate and paralegal.

Consider a “diversity deduction” from fees of a firm that fails to improve its diversity showing. This would certainly put teeth in the message and could fund other efforts, including bonuses for successful firms.

An interviewer for strategy+business, Winter 2010 at 118, spoke with Vineet Nayar, the CEO of HCL Technologies, a $2.6 Indian billion business and information technology services company based. Nayar started a blog and encouraged employees to ask him questions. “The only rule I made was that when you ask the question, it must have your name attached.”

If a general counsel of a large or dispersed law department did the same, the openness could be healthy. It feels to me that the general counsel should commit to publishing and answering all questions, even if only to say “I can’t comment on that” or “The answer, applying to only one person, must be kept confidential.” In other words, members of the law department should trust the when they ask, they will hear something.

Second, and more important, a general counsel who commits to this level of open exchange needs to reply promptly and with all due candor. Explanation delayed is explanation denied.

I have long had in my mind a metaphor to describe specialist in-house lawyers. It hearkens back to my law school years: courses on anti-trust, corporations, environmental law, intellectual property, labor and employment, litigation, and tax. Larger law departments have one or more lawyers who concentrate on issues that arise under – and are mostly circumscribed by – those scholarly areas of law. Specialists serve sometimes as lawyers to lawyers, in that when business unit generalists need arcane advice they stand ready. Other problems they take on independently (See my post of May 5, 2008: specialty lawyers with 30 references.).

Business oriented lawyers devote themselves mostly to contracts and agreements and don’t dive deeply into specialty areas. They spot issues. It is true that a course on contracts awaits all 1Ls, so the distinction based on the law school curriculum has some blur. But my metaphor for specialists remains the matching law school course.

In a creative twist on the standby of having a law firm come to the legal department and train, consider turning that inside out. The general counsel of Hitachi Data Systems, Chris Leslie, brought nearly 20 lawyers from the department to Baker & McKenzie’s offices for in-depth training on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and other anti-corruption laws.

This useful suggestion comes from Legal Tech. News, Oct. 2010 at 30. That articles says nothing more, including about the economics of the session, but the law firm might well have contributed its time as a marketing initiative. After all, this is a perfect situation for retainer billing (See my post of Oct. 12, 2010: call-whenever retainer arrangements.).

A question on a LinkedIn group asked about the commonness of signing bonuses for law department lawyers below very senior levels.

I answered that I think these are infrequent. A general counsel might approve a bonus if the salary structure does not permit a sufficient base offer, so the bonus makes up for some of the shortfall. Or the bonus might absorb costs of relocation not otherwise covered. In general, however, I have not heard about signing bonuses at any level.

I recently took part in an all-lawyer conference for a very large legal department. The general counsel laid out clearly a set of beliefs of what characterizes a classy law department. At the end, for more than 30 minutes, the general counsel fielded questions from the 200-plus lawyers. Nearly all of their questions raised fundamental points and the general counsel carefully, creatively, and candidly spoke extemporaneously to each question.

I commend completely such a forum. In this situation, particularly, where the general counsel had not been in the position for a full year, it gave the assembled lawyers an opportunity to form their own conclusions about their leaders. Even for a longer-serving general counsel, the open give-and-take makes much sense. Fundamental messages can be underscored, worries among the staff confronted, and insight into operations and changes highlighed.

General counsel need to become accustomed to repeating key messages when they speak with members of their department. The repetition of fundamental points, such as the value of teamwork, partnership with internal clients, respect for each other, and communication – may sometimes grow wearying. They may assume there’s nothing more to say and the message had better resonate. But they would be wrong.

All leaders need to lay out clearly and pound home fundamental messages. Ad nauseum, perhaps. Ears open and close at different times, so the words have to be out there all the time. Ideally, of course, the legal leader should believe in and model actions they extol (See my post of March 21, 2006: Mike Dillon without an office as a role model; April 30, 2006: mentor is more than role model; May 2, 2007: listen more, as role model; June 10, 2007: a solid leadership practice under Human Capital Management; Sept. 7, 2008: general counsel as role models; Oct. 8, 2007: 180 degree assessments; and May 4, 2009: walk the talk.).