Articles Posted in Talent

GE collects diversity statistics twice a year from the 50 law firms that do the most work for it. According to Cecelia Lofters, Lead Member of GE’s Legal Diversity Council, in an interview by Met. Corp. Counsel, March 2006 at 46, GE collects two sets of information. One set asks for the numbersof women and minority lawyers at the partnership and associate levels; the other set asks more specifically for the same data for the lawyers who work on GE matters.

The Diversity Council identifies the five most diverse firms – out of the 50 – and the five least diverse firms (See my post of March 28, 2006 about difficulties defining “diversity.”). The Council meets with the five laggards “to see whether we can help them improve their diversity performance. If they are not making an effort, we want them to know that this is not acceptable and will affect their relationship with GE.” A bit mild, that “affect their relationship.”

Inside lawyers want as much transparency about bonus distributions as possible. They want to know how decisions are made on the award of bonuses. They want to know that bonuses are awarded based on merit, not personal friendship or other non-objective criteria. When bonus allocations seem arbitrary or based on factors other than merit, dissatisfaction spreads like kudzu.

They also want some satisfaction that there is rough peer-to-peer equity, assuming performance contributions are relatively the same. Fair compensation, the burr under many saddles, means whether or not a lawyer is being paid what the lawyer’s peers make.

The executive search firm BCG summarizes the sunshine inside: “more interesting work, shorter hours, potentially lucrative stock options and the opportunity to be on the ‘business side’ in a corporate environment.” To these rays of light I would add that you can believe in what your client is doing more than in a law firm and you neither have to market – in the same way that law firm partners have to bring in business – nor do you have to track time.

What law firm lawyers do not as fully appreciate, according to BCG are the in-house clouds: (1) “It is extremely difficult to get another law firm job once you have gone in house;” (2) “The overwhelming majority of attorneys do not reap an economic windfall when they go in house;” (3) “It is very difficult to move to another in-house job once you have gone in house;” (4) “Your legal skills are likely to deteriorate once you go in house (See my post of March 26, 2006 disagreeing with this point.); and (5) “You may have to work as hard as you did in a law firm.” To these dark sides I might add that often there is little or no career path, in terms of promotions – but then again, when is a law firm partner promoted? It also seems to me that there is more job security in a law firm, assuming you keep yourself busy, than in a company where mergers, spin-offs and downsizings flare up.

As to point 2, unless you work for a publicly-traded company, are awarded stock options, the options vest, and the stock rises, most employee lawyers simply earn what they earn. But my reaction most of all is that BCG is comparing journeymen corporate lawyers to high-profit partners at big firms. The majority of private practice lawyers toil in the vineyards of obscurity and modest earnings. As to point 3, I have not seen data about mobility between law departments (See my post of Oct. 26, 2005 spoofing on sources of hires.)

In 2002, Dickinson College (Carlisle, PA) and Gettysburg College (Gettysburg, PA) decided to share a general counsel and the two liberal arts schools, nearby and with similar legal issues, hired Dana Stevens Scaduto.

According to GC Mid-Atlantic, March 2006 at 29, Scadutto endured the double duty, and nearly killed herself with overwork, for two years before deciding to become Dickinson’s full-time general counsel. Quite an interesting experiment, but hard to imagine many situations where one person could straddle to law departments.

An interview in GC Mid-Atlantic, March 2006 at 22, of Sarah Lee’s general counsel, Roderick Palmore, gives background on his 2004 letter urging law departments to take action on law-firm diversity. As noted (See my post of March 17, 2006 on diversity efforts.), more than 100 companies have co-signed Palmore’s letter. With that kind of support, what kind of answer would you think Palmore gave to the reporter’s questions, “How do you gauge diversity? How can you tell if a firm isn’t measuring up?”

Oddly, he answered: “I think that’s a next-step question. It’s a little early in the process to talk about how [diversity] gets implemented and how it gets measured.”

After more than a year, and considerable publicity, the advocates of diversity in law firms don’t know how to measure it? Yet Palmore continued, saying “the next true step, in my judgment is to talk about best practices…” How can anyone identify a best practice if they cannot measure and define it or know how diversity gets implemented?

A previous post explained the generally-observed seniority of the title Associate over Assistant (See my post of Nov. 8, 2005.) Can we carry that analysis of titles down a level or two?

Among Counsel, Attorney, and Legal Counsel, the higher rank typically is accorded to Counsel or Legal Counsel – which is a less-common title. Above that, a promotion brings with it “Senior” at the start, viz. Senior Attorney, Senior Counsel, Senior Legal Counsel.

In my experience, Chief Counsel indicates a rung above any other lawyer, and denotes primary responsibility for a business unit or function, but not the full panoply of responsibilities of a General Counsel (See my post of March 22, 2006 on the difference between CLO and GC.)

The title “General Counsel” has a longer lineage than the modern “Chief Legal Officer.” It would be interesting to find the earliest internet reference to CLO.

Where a company has groups of lawyers reporting to a business unit, such as Nokia and its eight legal departments each headed by a “Vice President, Legal,” then the company often distinguishes the top lawyer with the sobriquet “Chief Legal Officer.” (I have never run into a Chief General Counsel.)

CLO also elevates the legal leader to the so-called C-Suite, the titular peer of the Chief Financial Officer (and why not the “General Bookkeeper”?), Chief Marketing Officer, and Chief Technology Officer (so where is the Chief Human Officer?) and others in the executive teepee.

Are you sure your lawyers have the degrees and bar admissions they told you they have? InfoLink Screening Services, which has screened tens of thousands of job applicants, reports that 14 percent of the applicants lied about their education, according to the New York Times, March 12, 2006 at B2.

Lawyers, or perhaps more accurately, those who claim they are lawyers, have had more schooling, and thus more opportunities to embellish their CVs. Obviously, the time to check and challenge the veracity of degrees is during the pre-nuptials.

According to the 2005 Hildebrandt International Law Department Survey, there are three categories of legal assistants (See my post of Aug. 21, 2005 on the differences, if any, between paralegal and legal assistant.): “Senior Legal Assistant,” “Certified Legal Assistant,” and “Legal Assistant.”

Among the 130 reporting companies, 66 had certified paralegals (475 individuals) while 73 had legal assistants (467 individuals). There was thus a one-to-one ratio between certified and non-certified paralegals between those two categories. In the category of senior paralegals, some – it is even likely much more than one half – were certified.

Median pay was about 4-6 percent more for certified paralegals (See my post of March 17, 2006 about compensation for in-house lawyers with degrees other than law degrees.).

Data from Abbott, Langer’s survey of 111 organizations, published December 2005, highlights the dollars paid corporate in-house lawyers compared to the cents paid government, non-profit, and university lawyers. The big bucks go to the likes of certain manufacturers and “providers of business services” (median total cash compensation in the $240,000s) and several other industries (medians around $175,000).

The lowest median incomes were in state and local governments ($64,350), nonprofits ($69,112) and educational institutions ($88,855). Such benefits as quality of life, public service, pensions, do-goodness, and free tuition must be impressive to make up for incomes less than half of corporate brethren.

Obviously, if your law department wants comparable compensation data to benchmark against, you need to be sure that your industry has adequate representation in a survey and that the survey breaks out the metrics along industry lines.