Law firm business is booming and the frenzied tussle for associates — particularly transactional talent — already brought us a few rounds of special bonuses and a still raging raise cycle. But as much as firms can sway associates with money to pay down their lifetime debt load, at a certain point firms might need to think outside of the compensation box.
Again, there’s no substitute for salary when trying to pry someone away from their current employer, but keeping someone inside the tent is a little different. This is where some well-crafted perks — like an office policy that embraces the remote working model that we all saw succeed in 2020 — might make a difference.
But another weapon available to firms might not even be on their radar: ALSPs.
Speaking with Ed Sohn from Factor recently, he described what the “scale up” — it can hardly be a start up having grown out of Axiom — is doing with Legal Transaction Optimization and while its primary advantages come in the form of high-quality work product at reasonable cost, the implication for associate retention stood out as a powerful fringe benefit.
As the name suggests, Legal Transaction Optimization aims to make the transactional workflow more efficient. Specifically, Factor provides value through slicing off the perfunctory work currently performed by first- and second-year associates, reducing costs without reducing rates.
By unbundling transactional tasks from legal advice, law firm juniors billing at high rates are replaced with tech-enabled teams specialized in producing better output. Unbundling means law firms win more advisory work and clients get better value.
Handing this work to junior associates does little for the firm that’s writing it all down anyway or for the associate’s sense of career development and general quality of life. Move those tasks to cheaper options and allow junior associates to actually enjoy their work.
Because drudgery isn’t inevitable. Sohn shared an anecdote from a senior Biglaw partner he’d worked with who told him that back in his day, every deal was leanly staffed and juniors weren’t spending weeks doing administrative work. In a sense, slicing that work off isn’t a radical new direction for the industry, it’s returning the practice to normal.
All else equal, get associates good work and they’re not going to want to leave. Get associates good work by handing off the stuff that isn’t advancing their careers to a more efficient provider.
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.