One would think that the current global economic crisis would be taking a toll on women’s issues. Work-life balance? Please, any associate not on track with their hours is a candidate for a layoff. Retention of women? Whatever, welcome to the world of forced attrition.

But is the prevailing view accurate? Patricia Gillette, an Orrick partner and founder of The Opt In Project, doesn’t think so. Today on AmLaw Daily, Gillette makes the argument that now is the perfect time for firms to address issues traditionally important to women:

There is another school of thought, the one that I subscribe to. It is this–the economic crisis provides law firms with opportunities they never before had. Those include: to step away from the salary and bonus programs that destroyed collegiality and prevented flexibility; to make structural and organizational changes long overdue; to kill the billable hour once and for all; to get ahead of the sea change that is coming to the legal profession.

Now is the time to take advantage of the immobility of partners and associates and the weakening bargaining position of law students, to make changes that may not be popular with everyone, but are long overdue. And these changes, in the long run, will benefit women and will answer the cries of all Gen Y lawyers for a kinder and gentler law firm life.

It seems to me that moving away from lockstep compensation necessarily leads to more subjective forms of salary advancement. The billable hour might be the bane of a lawyer’s existence, but it is at least based on objective criteria. Will putting salary decisions in the hands of intra-firm politics and relationship building really lead to a “kinder and gentler” law firm? Or will it lead to an “eat-what-you-kill” approach that many partners complain about when it comes to their compensation structure?

After the jump, Gillette outlines three big moves that could help women in law firms.

First, Gillette adds her voice to the clamor to kill the billable hour:

The demise of the billable hour. For women, many of whom have worked efficiently for years and been punished by the billable hour system, it means being evaluated on quality and efficiency, rather than time. And that can only help.

The common view seems to be that if the billable hour dies, quality of work and efficient use of time will be more highly valued. But at the junior level, is it really so easy to make qualitative distinctions between one person’s low level work over another?

And most senior associates know that you can bill all the hours in the world, but if you are not putting in face time, with partners and clients and hopefully a mentor/champion, you’re not making partner anyway. The billable hour, alive or dead, has little impact on the relationship building it takes to become an owner.

Gillette, and I’d imagine most lawyers and clients, wants to see competency become more important for advancement:

Competency-based progression. Big law firms like Howrey and Orrick, where I am a partner, are promoting progression based on competencies rather lockstep movement determined by the year you graduated law school and started working. This allows women–and men–to adjust their careers to accommodate what is happening in their lives. Deloitte calls this a career lattice rather than a career ladder; that’s how I like to put it.

That is all well and good, so long as management doesn’t use competency-based reasons as a weak excuse to hold associates back (and pay them less). Given how some firms have reacted to the current crisis by instituting stealth “performance-based” layoffs — when everybody knows that “it’s the economy, stupid” — you have to wonder if firms will adopt objective measures of competency.

There’s also the problem of a firm punishing associates for its own inability to train people properly. If you stick somebody on doc review for two years and then ask them to draft a brief by the third year, that person is probably going to look pretty incompetent. Especially if that person is judged against an associate who skillfully avoided grunt, manpower work with a series of interesting, short-staffed, pro bono assignments (since we’re operating in a world where billable hours are no longer important).

Finally, Gillette hopes that this current spate of forced attrition will lead to firms rethinking the Biglaw model that relies on such significant turnover in the first place:

Rethinking the first two years. Firms are rethinking how they hire lawyers out of law school and how they treat new lawyers. New associates, women included, will no longer be fungible commodities. They will be investments in the firm’s future, as law firms choose associates more carefully, nurture them through the first years, and rebuild the trust partner-associate trust. This will, in turn, create a bond that encourages longevity and incents flexibility.

This sounds positively Utopian. But won’t new associates be fungible so long as they are easily replaceable in a cost efficient manner? Gillette is essentially asking firms to invest more time and more money in associate development. Enough time and money so that the firm would truly lose something if a person washes out after a year or two.

But will firms really commit more resources to junior attorneys in a market where A) law schools are a volume business that churns out new associates like a puppy mill? Or B) there are so many attorneys out there on the street right now that already have some skills and are desperate for work?

One hopes that Gillette is right. One hopes that firms will really be able to take all of these economic lemons and turn them into the best lemonade ever tasted.

But it is a little hard to see that future while law firms continue to squirt citric acid in everybody’s eyes.

Cracks in the Ceiling [AmLaw Daily]

Earlier: Twelve Crises for Corporate Women