For staff in big law, supporting too many lawyers can be ‘quickest path to burnout’

By Andrew Maloney

In an era marked by large group moves in Big Law and widespread mobility, integrating laterals has become a larger responsibility for law firms, and firms are leaning more on professional staff to help laterals adjust to their new offices.

But how well law firms integrate their laterals still varies widely, consultants and recruiters say, and as firms continue to grow, so does the challenge of onboarding, getting new lawyers acclimated and supporting business professionals in the task.

Changes in leadership and law firms’ frenetic hiring can complicate things. when exiting, employees say consolidated decisions and the faster pace of additions often tax operations teams.

“Given the cost of laterals in terms of time invested, fees and guaranteed remuneration, it is strange that more firms do not give this serious attention and investment,” said Tony Williams, a London-based principal at Jomati Consultants, speaking on lateral integration in an email. 

Williams said there is a “wide range” of performance on lateral integration among law firms. He said some firms have slick and effective processes, with good professional support, and specific employees matched to specific partners to make it seamless.

Others, however, “seem to focus on getting the partner signed up and once the chase is over lose interest,” he said. “On the basis that you never get a second chance to make a first impression, it is inevitable that if a lateral does not ‘feel the love,’ they are likely to remain semi-detached.”

The challenge has arguably been exacerbated over the last few years. Whether it was the start of the pandemic, the layoffs tied to the economic downturn, or mass reorganization efforts at firms looking toward the future of work, multiple firms have gotten leaner on the operations side.

At the same time, firms have gone out of their way to continue adding lawyers—tacking on big teams or even entire boutiques to their roster all at once.

Lisa Smith, a principal at Fairfax Associates, said she has seen additional burden placed on business professionals as lateral mobility has increased.

“And it touches a lot of different functions,” she said, pointing to human resource functions, marketing and business development and, specifically, staffers tasked with things such as checking for conflicts or transferring files.

“And with more and more groups moving as opposed to just individual lawyers, that also increases the complexity,” she said.

In addition to broadly having more laterals, business development and marketing teams have become more integral to recruiting them over the last decade or so. Some firms now have entire teams devoted specifically to lateral integration, or if they’re particularly active on the lateral market, they’re in the process of creating such teams, Smith said.

Often law firm professionals are tasked with transitioning new partners’ books of business to their new firm, as well as bringing the firm to the new partner—by being a central point of contact and introducing them to other departments and practice areas.

“That is also enabling the business development people to become the trusted adviser to the partner or attorney, where they become so integral, sometimes they leave and take their business development people with” them, said Benjamin Field, managing director of business development and client relationships at Maverick, a business professional recruiting firm.

Field said fostering that kind of closeness between partners and business professionals can be a valuable hiring and retention tool, and firms that don’t do it may be missing an opportunity. But it can also be difficult to keep up that kind of symbiosis if there are just too many.

“Those people need support and the quickest route to burnout is to have too many attorneys to support,” he said. “You can’t keep everyone happy, but I’ve seen firms be selective and discerning as to which attorneys get which support.”

Fairfax’s Smith said artificial intelligence could potentially help. Some firms are already using it in a limited way to, for instance, write bios of new lawyers for their websites. But for the most part, she said, she hasn’t seen firms thinking about that yet.

“It certainly could facilitate part of the process, but I’m not sure at this point [if] it’s a game changer,” Smith said. “Because a lot of it is a people business. Lateral integration is integrating with people. So it’s hard to turn AI on all of that.” (Law.com)