One Way To Get Senior Associates To Lateral Biglaw Firms? Offer Them Partnership
Partnership ahead!
We already know that Biglaw is super busy and there really aren’t enough qualified lawyers out there to handle all of the work. That has led to intense competition for qualified associates and begat a scorching hot lateral market with all manner of repercussions, like special bonuses, signing bonuses, retention bonuses, raises, offers without interviews — basically a lot of money is being thrown around.
The newest hotness for the battle for senior associates is lateral job offers bumping their title from associate to partner.
As Adam Oliver, CEO and co-founder of Firm Prospects, says, “Firms used this as a way to lure those senior associates away from one firm to another. They needed bodies. The only way they could get people to jump ship was to offer partnership on day one.”
The prevalence of the practice has skyrocketed. Law360 reports it’s up 35 percent from 2019 to 2021 amongst the largest 100 Biglaw firms.
And the firms that are positioned to take advantage of the trend are those with two tiers of partnership:
Perhaps unsurprisingly, this hiring practice was the most common by far among law firms with a two-tiered partnership structure, such as Kirkland & Ellis LLP, Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith LLP and Polsinelli PC, which topped the list of firms making the most hires. Of the just under 400 associate-to-partner hires at the 200 largest firms by revenue over the last three years, only 14 were made by firms with one-tier partnerships. And of those, 12 went to FisherBroyles, which only has partners, one to Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison LLP and one to Taft Stettinius & Hollister LLP.
When there are winners there are losers, and reportedly the firms losing the most of these associates to become partners elsewhere include DLA Piper, Lewis Brisbois, Morgan Lewis & Bockius, Skadden, and Norton Rose Fulbright.
Another motivating factor for the trend is also that clients want partners, not associates (even senior ones) on their matters. As Gary Miles, founder of Miles Partner Placement said, “There has been a dynamic in the legal industry going on for the past several years where clients are more reluctant to use associates on matters versus more senior folks … and they’re questioning billing rates for associate.” And even though the work’s of the same, “There may be no difference in the quality of the attorney between a nonequity partner and a superstar associate, but at the end of the day the outward representation is important.”
Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).
