Banking Law, Biglaw, In-House Counsel, JPMorgan Chase

Biglaw Firm Figures Out A Way For Clients Not To Pay For First-Year Associates

Would you want to be a part of a program like this if you could?

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In the not-so-new normal, clients continue to refuse to pay full freight for inexperienced first-year attorneys to work on their legal matters — or, as one law firm recently mused, “client demand for first year associates has declined.”

What’s a Biglaw firm to do?

It seems that one firm has found a pretty good solution to this problem: make someone else hire those lawyers to work as junior in-house lawyers, and then bring them into the fold as associates after they’ve gained some real-world experience.

Which Biglaw firm has teamed up with a big bank — the biggest bank in the U.S. — for this program?

Morgan Lewis & Bockius has been working with J.P. Morgan Chase since 2012 to create a legion of lawyers with corporate experience. The Wall Street Journal (sub. req.) has the details on the program:

“At a time when many clients say they don’t want to pay for first-year lawyers, this is a fantastic program,” said Morgan Lewis’s incoming chair, Jami Wintz McKeon. …

The junior in-house lawyers get the same orientation and other training programs as Morgan Lewis associates, including assigned mentors, though they don’t earn as much. At the bank, attorneys sit in on meetings with senior lawyers, and perform legal research, draft memos and help analyze new regulations that could affect its operations, Ms. [Julie] Lepri, [the program’s supervisor,] said.

After two years inside J.P. Morgan, they join the law firm as third-year associates.

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We’re willing to bet that the graduates selected to participate in the Morgan Lewis/J.P. Morgan training tie-up don’t really care that they’re earning less than your typical Biglaw first-year associate — after all, the experience they’re gaining from being a part of this unique program is simply priceless.

In October, the first class of attorneys to participate in this program will transfer over to Morgan Lewis.

As noted by Jami Wintz McKeon, the incoming chair of Morgan Lewis, “There are partners in law firms who don’t have as much contact with clients as these folks do.” Surely you’d be willing to shave a few dollars off the $160K contract price of being a first-year Biglaw attorney for words like that to be said about you.

Considering the fact that this program offers new attorneys many of the skills they so desperately need — the skills that clients would actually want to pay for — we wonder how many other Biglaw firms will decide to hop on the bandwagon and offer similar working arrangements with other respected companies.

Would you want to be a part of a program like this if you could? Tell us what you think.

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Law Firm, Chase Bank Join Forces on Trainee Program [Wall Street Journal (sub. req.)]

Earlier: The ATL Interrogatories: 10 Questions with Jami Wintz McKeon from Morgan Lewis

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