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Two Stanford Law School students are featured in a Lawyers Weekly story about how law firms' rankings measure up according to criteria established by Building a Better Legal Profession (BBLP), a group that was founded to improve lawyers' lives. Some of the students are quoted:
Andrew Bruck and Andrew Canter are third year law students at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California and the co-presidents of Building a Better Legal Profession (BBLP). They spoke about their group’s mission at the National Association of Legal Career Professionals’ annual conference in Toronto, before a packed audience including many recruiters from prominent American law firms.
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“Dozens of lawyers had written about why the billable hour needed to be changed, but there wasn’t a group devoted to reform,” Canter said.
His class examined the harmful effects of escalating billable hour targets. In 1958 the American Bar Association recommended billing 1,300 hours per year. Today, many large U.S. law firms expect associates to bill over 2,000 hours per year.
Appalled by this trend, Canter and a fellow classmatee, Craig Segall, drafted “Principles for a Renewed Legal Profession.” The manifesto called on firms to reduce billable hour targets, address work/life balance issues and implement alternative billing methods.
On April 2, 2007, Canter and Segall sent a letter to ask firms to commit to the group’s principles. The letter was mailed to the hiring partners and recruiting coordinators at the top 100 law firms in America. Only six firms responded.
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Bruck said that BBLP’s rankings, unlike other law firm rating services such as American Lawyer Magazine, Vault, U.S. News & World Report, Multi Cultural Law, includes both the top and bottom performers in each category.
“As much as we hate rankings” Bruck said, “we realized that if we wanted to influence students we had to rank firms.”
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Canter said that if he could get additional information from firms he would request the following: first, the annual attrition rate for associates at each firm; second, the median of billable hours worked per associate (currently the target is an average that may mix part-time attorneys’ hours with full-time); and the number of equity partners with a financial stake in the firm versus non-equity partners, who may be paid at a higher rate, but are not entitled to a share of annual profits. Currently both equity and non-equity partners are lumped together.
BBLP posted the rankings on its website for students to view and sent the rankings to the general counsels of the Fortune 500 companies — along with a letter recommending that rankings be used to influence the selection of outside legal counsel.
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While Canter acknowledged that the law firm business model relies on attrition, he maintains that the departures are mistimed.
“Law firms are losing people mid-level, years three to five, which are the most profitable for the firms, the time when they are most valuable,” Canter rebutted. “Our business case for change is: if you give people more sustainable careers, if you cut back on the hours marginally, then you recoup that on the increased billable rates of associates as they become more senior.”
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As for summer plans? Starting in August, Bruck and Canter will be on a speaking tour of 20 law schools across America.