Hogan Lovells is set to be the next firm to look at how it allocates work to associates, with its real estate department to become the first team to trial the scheme.
Over the next six weeks, partners and associates in London will meet with a management consultant to discuss their career development and potential opportunities within the firm.
A consultant will provide partners with recommendations for allocating work based on issues such as capacity, skill set and career development needs, although partners will retain overall responsibility for handing out work.
The trial will be run in a similar way to schemes launched by Clifford Chance and Ashurst, with the latter recently revealing it would look to recruit a permanent resource planning manager for its management team.
Hogan Lovells London real estate head Michael Gallimore said: “We are working with an independent consultant, our people and our clients to look at different ways of allocating work for certain projects. This might be by using a project manager, for example, who can recommend the right solution for each matter to partners – based on client needs, our capacity, lawyer skill set and our people’s career development requirements.
“The project will enhance the many things we are already doing around developing our talent and providing the most efficient and innovative solutions to our clients.”
Management consultant Dave Cook, who is overseeing the schemes, said they are still “in their infancy in the legal sector”.
He told The Lawyer: “The scheme is being trialled in the Hogan Lovells real estate team because it is one the firm’s busiest areas.”
Cook added that if the scheme was successful then “it should be able to work in other areas of the firm too.”
One of the main drivers behind the initiative is to promote diversity within the legal sector, with claims that the non-blind allocation of work can result in women losing out on mandates.
This should be the case in all law firms – globally – to avoid brown-nosing + after-work-politics creeping into the workplace to prevent talent from working on instructions that are then given to the less-able who make up for their lack of ability with cunning rather than actually having any horsepower in the brain.
Does anyone know if this approach actually works? Has any academic study found that it does? Do similar approaches operate successfully in other industries? How do you know if it has worked? What metric is being used to assess the impact?
I can’t see how this benefits clients. Clients often like consistency of team and have preferred associates themselves – it is not always partner-driven. It is much more efficient (time and cost wise) to have the same associate work on a deal knowing the client’s approach.
This also prevents associates from developing relationships with clients.
This also means associates get pigeonholed on the basis of previous work, rather than gaining exposure to new areas.
This is a complete and utter joke. It’s a people business, people!
How about posting jobs internally, and allowing associates to ‘bid’ for them? People are generally happier when they get to do work they are interested in, which helps with job satisfaction, and it’s empowering…
this is a sure fire way to lose the best people to firms which value and reward talent.