The Value Movement? Last night, a friend of mine I’ve know since law school, and a member of a large U.S. firm on the east coast, raised the above question at dinner. “Jack”‘s verbatim query was actually this: “If associates get all the benefits of training at my law firm in the first three years, and can’t really add much value anyway, why don’t they pay us?”
Admittedly, I may have planted this heresy in his head years ago, when we had talked about associate training. We discussed the difficulty (i.e., perhaps impossibility) of making even the most talented law school graduates productive and client-oriented as
inside of two years. Back then, “Jack” and I had joked on the phone a lot about the “Value Movement”.
In the Value Movement, associates do not draw much in the way of a salary in order to learn how to be lawyers; rather, they (1) are paid very minimal or paralegal-level salaries (don’t laugh, most paralegals are more cost-efficient than a first-year associate) with some benefits, or (2) depending on their credentials and demonstrated commitment toward learning how to be a lawyer, must pay the law firm a nominal stipend in an apprenticeship arrangement (the law firm pays nothing). The apprenticeship details would vary with the needs of the firm, and the abilities and energies of the “trainee”. But they point is to ensure that both the firm and the trainee “get something” of value in the first few years.
Draconian? Preposterous? Anti-something? Well, associates, not his firm, Jack argued, benefit incrementally the most (and by a long shot) in those first 2 or 3 years. Currently, the argument runs–and I completely agree–law firm associates, especially in larger or higher-end boutique firms, are paid very well to contribute very little. They don’t know anything. Firms continue to invest big in big talent with no guarantee that the associate will even remain at the firm, choosing instead to bide time, plan options and pay off school debts. That’s only human given the current partner-associate regime and the important talent-retention sweepstakes. But firms in the first few years net, in almost most cases, zilch. Yet if an associate leaves the firm–for whatever reason–she or he will always retain that benefit, especially if they have worked hard to “learn the profession” or at least some aspect of it. Final score: Associates 10; Law Firms 0, or less-than-zero.
Why should Jack’s white shoe firm pay young people to be “in school”–especially if many of them can be expected to drop out. And drop out “enriched”?