By
Amanda Robert
As growing numbers of law students graduate and struggle to find their first jobs, many in the legal profession wonder whether changes are needed in legal education or even in law firms.
In Chicago Lawyer 's third consecutive large law firm roundtable discussion, Linda Myers, a member of the 15-member global management committee of Kirkland & Ellis; Bert Krueger, chairman of the management committee of Mayer Brown; and Michael Morkin, managing partner of the Chicago office of Baker & McKenzie, joined the debate, sharing their approaches to hiring and recruiting during a tough economy.
According to the 2011 survey of the largest law firms in Illinois, Kirkland & Ellis hired 47 first-year associates in Illinois in 2011, down from 51 in 2010; Mayer Brown hired 26 first-year associates in Illinois in 2011, up from 23 in 2010; and Baker & McKenzie hired seven first-year associates in 2011, up from three in 2010.
The 2011 survey of the largest law firms in Illinois also shows that Kirkland & Ellis, Mayer Brown and Baker & McKenzie paid first-year Illinois associates $160,000 in 2011, the same as in 2010.
The three law firm leaders not only provided their plans for finding and grooming young lawyers, but they also offered their thoughts on how law schools could better prepare these lawyers for successful careers. Here is a portion of their discussion:
Chicago Lawyer: Does it matter where your future associates or young lawyers go to law school?
Myers, from Kirkland: Absolutely, it matters to some extent. You have to go to an accredited law school. That's just a given. But I think first-tier, second-tier, third-tier, there is certainly some differentiation done by the big firms. You have a limited amount of resources to spend on recruiting, a limited amount of time. You want to try to go to the best schools.
That said, I think what matters more is what sort of academic performance you've had at the law schools. If you're really an exceptional performer or top in your class in a less prestigious law school, you may do just as well as someone who is in the middle of the class at a more prestigious one.
Krueger, from Mayer Brown: I think I'd echo that. Generally, the majority of our new associates come from a limited number of law schools. Particularly local law schools in an area where we have an office, we are always interested in them.
I think that once you are an attorney, and once you are at Mayer Brown, where you went to law school is ancient history. If you look at our top partners in the law firm, you would see no particular concentration as to where they went to law school. It's a wide variety of law schools. …
Morkin, from Baker & McKenzie: I think it matters more now than it ever has, only because I think firms are recruiting fewer students than they ever have. When you're recruiting fewer students, you're going to go to fewer schools.
But it matters most not in getting the job, but in positioning yourself to get a job. As Linda said, if you do really well at any decent school, you're going to have some opportunities. But you're going to have to go find them. …
Myers: The other trend that we're seeing, and I think a lot of law school deans are focused on, is work experience before you go to law school.
For example, I think at Northwestern, if it's not a full part of their admissions policy, it's certainly a priority for most law students to have had work experience between college and law school. That aspect could be relevant in a hiring decision.
Maybe someone's at a local law school that's not a top-tier law school, but they've been an accountant for two years. That's pretty relevant in whether or not you might pursue that student for your firm. …
Morkin: The general rule, certainly back when I was applying, always was you go to the best school you can get into. I think there's still a lot of validity to that. …
I think quality is always going to be the initial driver of hiring and top-tier schools are a great barometer for that. But equally important anymore it seems are things like judgment, maturity.
When there's an explanation for why you went to a particular law school, why you traveled somewhere to go, why you stayed close to home and passed on better opportunities or better schools, can say an awful lot about your maturity, your judgment and what you want to do with your career.
C.L.: How has your approach to summer associate programs changed as the job market and economy changed?
Myers: I'd guess I'd say that you recruit a bit in the arrears, if you will, where you're basically recruiting to anticipate starting a couple years out. It makes it a little tricky to be super nimble in adjusting the size of your program.
We anticipated that we would potentially have a bit of downturn in activity so that last year's summer class was smaller than we've done historically. We were cost-conscious. I think some of the more extravagant summer programs that we've done historically, we've cut back a bit. We really beefed up training, even more so than we had done historically. We tried to increase one-on-one partner and associate activity. …
That said, our program this year is back as big as it ever was. I think we've nicely sailed through the downturn. We have a pretty good balanced set of practices that kind of offset each other. We haven't been too negatively impacted by contraction in any one practice. …
Krueger: I don't think we've made any fundamental changes. Our class was smaller because we had deferred some of our beginning associates and it was working its way through the system. That's over now. But while that was going through the system, we were recruiting a smaller number of summer associates. My own view is that as the legal market changes, we won't be having tons of first-year associates.
Clients don't want a lot of associates, who then leave the system in a few years. It's much more important to have a smaller number and devote a lot more attention to the training and the experience of those people and the retention of those people, so that there's less turnover and less of the need to find things to do for lots of first-years. …
Morkin: Our summer hiring has decreased significantly. We've always had conservative summer programs in the world of large firms. At its height, our summer program was maybe 30, at least here in Chicago. We'll have less than that in all 10 offices in North America this year. I think we have 27 this summer, five in Chicago.
It's a combination of several things. The number of incredibly strong third-, fourth-year associates in the market who have been trained, who have a better idea of what they want to do and, quite frankly, are less risky and clients are far more willing to accept, are out there.
It's smaller in part by design, and in part because we're no longer shooting for a target number. It's just that we've gotten very selective. …
Myers: The one thing I would add for the law student who's reading this and worrying about has big law changed their hiring approach and now they're going to over-hire for the summer and not look to extend offers to all of those people who come and intern, I don't think any of the big firms that I'm aware of are taking that approach. We're certainly not and it didn't sound like either of you are either.
We are really trying to hire what we need, to the best that we can. It's definitely an art, not a science, to determine who you need for your incoming first-year, junior lawyer class and hire accordingly and try to work into the right number that way.
Morkin: I think Bert alluded to it earlier that when the economy tanked, firms reacted in a lot of different ways to the commitments they had made to law students. Whether they rescinded, deferred or did something else with them for kind of a two-year period.
… Look at the firms and look at how they handled that situation. We were all in the same situation. We all hired two years in advance when the market looked great. There are a lot of firms that did everything they could to stand by those commitments and there are other firms that made difficult financial decisions and turned some of them away. Certainly, some would say the latter is far more fiscally responsible, others would say that the value of the commitment in the offer was more important. …
C.L.: Where do you typically go to find your summer and first-year associates?
Myers: We do national recruiting, so we recruit at all of the big law schools and a lot of schools that are local to the offices we have. We are located in 10 different spots, so we tend to see local students as well as national. I think there are 25 total law schools that we go to.
We do the vast majority of our recruiting through our summer program, but occasionally, there are different practice areas where we didn't get enough of a yield or we need more people than we anticipated. We'll go talk to 3Ls in those instances as well.
Krueger: We also look at some of the diversity programs where we're particularly trying to recruit from. Sometimes we'll target a particular need or specialty and do some looking for that kind of person.
It's the well-known national law schools and the schools where we have offices where people are likely to want to stay in that area. As Mike said, people who have good reason for why they went there and show the kind of maturity that we want.
Morkin: We certainly do the majority of our recruiting the same way. … When you look at historical summer program recruiting, you go out, you spend 20 minutes with them on campus and decide whether to bring them back based on that interview and a resume. They then meet five or six people and maybe have lunch. You're making a decision on that.
We're trying to find more ways to be more targeted in our hiring, to get better information sooner in the process. We have closer relationships with a lot of the law schools than we ever did. We have people teaching who get to see the students in class, how they write and their approach to what is at that time, their job.
We have partnering programs with various law schools on pro bono projects. Things like that expose us to the students, build relationships with the administration to the law schools, who will at times tell us, you really should look at this person. In a world of highly qualified candidates, to have that kind of a push from someone you know and work with can go a long way. …
Myers: Bert reminded me of something. There are two other avenues that have become more prevalent for us and for most of the other big law firms.
These job fairs are much more popular than they used to be. Lambda Law, [Black American Law Students Association] do one. That's been a great source of recruiting for us and for the other large firms.
The other thing is that we've found that some of our clients are wanting to partner with us in this area and share interns. We're doing one with Fox in Los Angeles where we are going to have the student for five weeks and they're going to have the student for five weeks. The idea is hopefully that person comes to Kirkland & Ellis and they have a ready-made client relationship that will be terrific for them and for us. …
Morkin: We've done something like that with our first-years. We go back two years when we were all in the position of hiring more students than most of us needed and we were all looking at what to do with them. …
There was always sort of a payment or stipend in whatever was done to treat the students as fairly as possible, and we thought, what if we took that and invested it with a client. The clients had the same issues. They had budget cuts in their legal departments and they had needs that they couldn't fill. We took half of our incoming class, partnered with some key clients and put them all with the clients. We paid two-thirds, and the client paid a third, and they spent a year with the client.
And, exactly what Linda said, they come out of that experience as part of the in-house team. They come out of it with a better understanding of our clients and clients generally, and how they think, how they hire, what's important to them when working with outside firms. We had ones who first-chaired arbitration, who second-chaired a major deal, who participated in high-profile internal investigations. It was fantastic experience, and it worked well. …
C.L.: Linda, you touched on the idea earlier of law schools telling their students to get work experience between college and law school or between law school and working for a firm. If students take that route, what skills do you expect them to bring to the table?
Myers: In most cases, they're probably going to know how to conduct themselves in a professional environment, which is obviously a terrific benefit. If you go straight through, you may have never had a job where you're actually working in an office. So if someone's had professional experience, they probably know how to master that.
In my view, the first-year lawyers are all smart, they've done well at their schools, they've been high achievers, but that sort of drive and commitment and initiative that someone who has worked before often develops is a pretty key indicator about how they're going to do at a big law firm. …
Krueger: I don't think it's at all a necessity, but I think in a lot of cases there is a plus for someone who has been out in the business world. Practicing law is really a team sport, so people who have been out working with companies and understand how that works gain a level of maturity, gain a level of self-confidence. Maybe if you just went straight through, you don't initially have that when you take your first real job. …
We're looking for the smart, talented, ambitious people, which is almost by definition, everyone who interviews. But then it's a question of the maturity, how they relate to clients and, in some cases, you can see that out of their job experience. Again, it's very individualized, but it can oftentimes be a plus.
Morkin: It's less about any concrete skills they develop as much as it's about who they become. It goes to maturity, to judgment. Usually if they've worked before they go to law school or worked before they go to a law firm, the decision to go to law school or the decision to go to the law firm is more thought out. They have a better idea of what they want to do.
The more law firms can find incoming lawyers who are committed to the profession, who have a better idea of what they want, the less turnover you have. The more you can focus on developing the talent you have and worry less about losing them.
C.L.: Law schools have been criticized for being less than candid with students about what job opportunities are out there for them. How can law schools prepare their students for what comes next?
Myers: I don't have the impression that they aren't being candid with them about what's out there. In fact, what we've seen is that the law school placement offices are doing a really terrific job of working with students to make sure they are pursuing all possible paths.
A year or so ago, two years ago, the job market was clearly tighter. Firms were not going as frequently on campus or to as many schools as they used to. But I think the law schools are really sort of recognizing that and opening up paths for students to figure out how to apply for jobs in other areas. They are really encouraging them to be open-minded. …
With respect to the preparation part, this is a dicey topic in that there does seem to be more of a movement afoot that law schools should train people how to be lawyers in big law firms or big government or what have you.
My own view on it is that you really do need a balance. I think the most important thing that law schools can do is to teach students to think critically, to learn how to analyze and to dig into a problem and really try to see all sides, to figure out a solution. …
Krueger: Certainly, sometimes I think that law schools can do more on writing skills. That is such a critical aspect of being a lawyer, being able to communicate with the client and not in a bunch of legalese, but clear, simple statements.
I think the criticism of law schools isn't so much in the placement department when they're there. It's the intake. I'm very confident that for the top law schools, the need in this country will always keep the demand there. I think the issue is much more as you go down the ranks and people are finding it harder to get jobs. …
Law school is so incredibly expensive. There is such a dichotomy in terms of what people can earn when they come out of law school based upon if they are going to big law or something similar to big law. … Certainly, the worst situation was the people who got caught by the recession and had this enormous amount of debt and no job prospects equivalent to what they were anticipating when they went to law school. …
Morkin: I think the jury's still out on whether this is going to be from the law school standpoint a permanent change or a temporary swing of the pendulum.
I've seen in the last 20-plus years that I've been watching it, the pendulum swings back and forth at times, where the law schools and the law students have their way. The market's great and law schools' main job is to continue to produce great students who think critically. Then it swings back the other way, where the market tightens and they have the responsibility to their students to create opportunities for them. That's where we're at right now. …
I think if we all had our way, we'd make sure they were great critical thinkers and great writers. But that alone doesn't distinguish anyone anymore. We're seeing some law schools do more creative things. They are partnering more with potential employers. They're getting closer to the law firms. They're getting closer to the corporations.
I think we're going to see law schools have their own internship programs, where they put a student in an in-house legal department for a period of time for credit or something that makes that student when they graduate far more attractive. …
I think we're seeing law schools teach more current classes like corporate compliance topics, foreign corrupt practices act and they're having adjunct professors from firms like ours either teach those or play a role in teaching those.
I think that's the step they're taking now to present their students with more opportunities in a tougher market. In a way, it's not as much about what they need to be better lawyers. It's what they need to have better chances of getting a job.
Myers: … There's lots of lots of work to be done in this country and elsewhere by good lawyers. No question about it. But whether or not the pay you can earn in doing that job will help you satisfy the debt you might've taken on to go to law school is the real question. I think that's where the issue lies.