Posted by on Wednesday, April 20, 2011
The fifth Roundtable on the Future of Lawyer Hiring, Development, and Advancement was held on the campus of UCLA’s law school last week. The April 11 discussion, hosted by NALP and the NALP Foundation, with educational support provided by West LegalEdcenter, focused on “Adjusting to the New Normal.” So are we there yet? The answer is that we are part way there, and it is clear that law firms and law schools really are changing. Law schools are doing much more with experiential learning, and law firms are working to try to fairly evaluate experiential learning in the recruiting and hiring process. (Panelists had a good discussion about the new 2010 Survey of Law School Experiential Learning Opportunities.) Law firms have embraced competency frameworks, and law schools wish they knew more about the competencies that law firms want their lawyers to master. The conversation also suggested that as the lateral market assumes increased importance in law firm growth strategy, the hegemony of the US News rankings may be eroded as law firms look much less to the school lateral candidates graduated from than the work they have done since graduation. In the public interest world, the model for the delivery of legal services has forever changed, and relies much more on volunteer and pro bono labor than staff lawyers. Finally, the cuts in legal department budgets at client corporations have also led to lasting changes, and the client demands for greater value, greater efficiency, and more predictability and control in legal costs are here to stay, and law firms continue to compete to adapt to this new normal. A list of panel participants, as well as a complete transcript of the conversation, is available here.
