Ashurst is piloting “blind allocation” of work in its corporate department after hiring a management consultant to lead on doling out mandates.
Under the new scheme resource management consultant Dave Cook has taken over the allocation of work to the firm’s corporate associates from the partners.
The pilot, which launched in July, sees Cook allocate work “blind”. The work is dished out based on an associate’s previous work at the firm rather than their prior work for and relationships with partners.
Ashurst global corporate co-head Simon Beddow said the aim was “to achieve complete blindness on who gets what work, and to ensure people get an equal share of the work.”
Beddow added he expected the initiative to improve gender and social equality in the corporate department and ensure equal allocation of work between the sexes.
The ‘30 per cent club’, which campaigns for gender equality at work, has focused on how non-blind allocation of work can result in women losing out on mandates.
Cook’s role is temporary until the end of the pilot, which concludes this month. Beddow said the trial had been “successful” and the firm will ”now look to recruit a permanent management consultant to the corporate team”.
Cook took on the same role at Clifford Chance in 2012 to deliver a similar system in the magic circle firm’s corporate and capital markets practice groups.
1. How do clients feel given the associate team will change on every deal? I thought getting a close understanding of the client’s business was part of the offering
2. How do the associates feel given they won’t get chance to build up relationships with clients?
What might work at the Magic Circle doesn’t necessarily work elsewhere.
This is an interesting approach but alone is unlikely to achieve the aims of the 30 per cent club. Our survey of the profession did not reveal access to mandates as a key limitation on female progression.
http://www.cogencesearch.com/blog/article/1219/the-leaky-pipeline—gender-and-progression-in-the-legal-profession
Issues could be:
– The consultant may not have a good idea why someone was given work in the past. They may have just been the only available associate and are now assumed to have an affinity with a certain type of work.
– The gender equality aim could backfire in the case of difficult clients. A partner may purposely not assign a job to an associate on flexible working if they know it is a particularly demanding client who wants documents turned in 24 hrs etc (which wouldn’t be good for the client or the associate on flexible working).
The article purely provides an overview of the approach to work allocation. There are many factors that must be considered when developing this type of structure for any business.
Client relationships are always critical when allocating work however, they should not limit the individual from working on other engagements and obtaining wider experience. Likewise, this should not preclude others from accessing clients, or indeed Partners, who historically may have defaulted to particular lawyers to deliver the work. Individuals (particularly at 0-4yrs PQE) should access a variety of relevant work, with different Partners, to allow them to develop. This should not be to the detriment of the team in which they are based, or the clients they work with but is absolutely achievable. Senior Associates will generally have deeper client relationships which are critical to their development and the firm. These must be maintained but there will be times where additional opportunities are available to them and by constantly discussing activity, you can identify where this works, without impacting the client relationships they have in place.
Clients views are also now changing. Rather than expecting their lawyers to work through the night to deliver their work (although there will inevitably be times when this needs to happen), they are now requesting information on how deals will be resourced by their law firms, to ensure they receive the best service and value. No longer do they want to receive consistent emails at 4am for weeks on end because a) As noted, they have a professional and often person relationships with the lawyer and care about their welfare, and b) they will not be receiving the best possible service from someone consistently working those hours. By constructing teams internally to support individual matters more effectively, this naturally reduces, enhancing the firms relationship with the client, rather than impacting it.
Whilst this approach does not completely answer the question around gender progression in law firms, it certainly offers some support. Having an impartial and objective individual allocating work, allows for individuals to discuss opportunities more freely and for there to be more visibility of wider opportunities which could enhance their career. Benevolent bias is often a key issue for many firms, which tends to impact females more regularly than males. Generally this is done with good intentions but can limit opportunities which are presented to those individuals. This approach to pretty much eradicates that issue, focussing on capability, capacity and development requirements to identify individuals that are interested in the type of work and giving them the choice of whether they take it on. It is then up to them to make a decision but they have the option and choice to do so, which is the key element that is usual missing.
With Partner driven models, individuals will be discounted immediately. It is not the Partners fault, far from it, as they are looking at the best interests of the individual but this can result in them not having the same access to career enhancing opportunities.
This seems to me to be a long overdue adoption of the “clerks’ room” approach for law firms, focusing on objectives of client service, lawyer engagement and career development, rather than prioritising, billing, utilisation and the hoarding of relationships. There is genuine competitive advantage to be gained with this approach. It’s a breath of fresh air and sure to be welcomed by corporate clients.
I don’t think this will be welcomed by clients at all. I firmly believe that work product is down to individual lawyers (rather than the ‘brand’ of a firm) and if you as a client know, trust and like certain individual associates why would you send work where you may not get them?!
Anonymous at 4.18pm – that assumes that clients (1) know or care which associates (particularly at the junior end) are doing the donkey work and (2) won’t find that the standard of work produced by the associates is homogenous. With proper supervision there is no reason why all work produced shouldn’t be of the same (high) standard, no matter who is doing it.
Clients don’t exercise any real choice over which juniors do their work in any event. Under the current system it is down to partner selection, which may reflect factors entirely unrelated to merit. If there are individuals within a team whose work quality is substandard such that clients would be unhappy, that’s a completely separate issue.
I agree. this will be not welcomed by clients who want consistency. In today’s world with having to deal with voice calls and elctronic media, work product is down to individual lawyers more than the ‘brand’ of a firm. If Clients know, trust and like certain individual associates they would send work where they get prompt response.