Will The Rise To $190K Foster More Secondments With Potential Clients?
Time will tell if the shifting legal market will push firms to establish more intercompany secondments.
Ed. note: This is the latest installment in a series of posts from Lateral Link’s team of expert contributors. Michael Allen is the CEO of Lateral Link. He is based in the Los Angeles office and focuses exclusively on Partner and General Counsel placements for top firms and companies. Prior to founding Lateral Link in 2006, he worked as an attorney at both Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP and Irell & Manella LLP. Michael graduated summa cum laude from the University of California, San Diego before earning his JD, cum laude, from Harvard Law School.
As salaries continue to rise across the country, and junior attorneys reap the benefits, we are seeing some skepticism about bill rates from corporate clients, who are sophisticated buyers of legal services and are sensitive to costs passing through to them. Firms are becoming ever more crafty with their bottom line and coming up with creative solutions to allay these concerns.
In 2014, JP Morgan Chase and Morgan Lewis announced a joint secondment program, through which junior attorneys would join Chase’s in-house team for two years before joining Morgan Lewis as seasoned third-year associates. The program is a resounding win for all parties involved. Chase gets Morgan Lewis talent at a discounted rate, working exclusively on their matters. When the associate rejoins the firm later, they will continue to work on Chase matters under the auspices of Morgan Lewis, though now intimately versed and trained in the company’s affairs. The firm invests fewer resources in training and still retains the attorneys after two years, mitigating some of the pushback from client’s billing concerns. The attorney does sacrifice several thousand a year, but in return, they gain substantial experience usually limited to more seasoned attorneys.
In the current legal landscape, the real winners are the attorneys. With the logjam at partnership not relenting anytime soon, the race for these scarce partnership spots has become fierce. The extra experience afforded these junior attorneys can be substantial, potentially setting them on a path for partnership that would have otherwise been closed off. Additionally, with attorneys being more cognizant of their exit plan from Biglaw than ever, this arrangement provides them with the opportunity to test the in-house waters and cultivate contacts, should they find themselves looking down the barrel of a non-partner track come their eighth year.
The experience also does not lock an attorney into any one firm. Chase’s matters are diffuse across many firms throughout the Am Law 200 — like most other large corporations — making a lateral move potentially even easier, as your expertise in one company’s matters allows your firm to potentially service even more work for them (or at the very least, seamlessly slot you in).
While secondments are unlikely to become the new standard for the legal industry, it is likely that firms will get more creative with similar programs or other alternative fee arrangements as they look to both cultivate their crop of junior attorneys and keep their clients happy. Such an arrangement is one of the few times where every party involved benefits. While secondments are a familiar intracompany program, especially internationally, time will tell if the shifting legal market will push firms to establish more intercompany secondments.
In 2009, we launched our Bridge Year program during the height of the recession. The program was essentially a stop-gap secondment program. The attorneys who completed the program gained invaluable experience and many of them are now partners. If you have any questions about constructing a secondment program, feel free to contact us for help.
Lateral Link is one of the top-rated international legal recruiting firms. With over 14 offices world-wide, Lateral Link specializes in placing attorneys at the most prestigious law firms and companies in the world. Managed by former practicing attorneys from top law schools, Lateral Link has a tradition of hiring lawyers to execute the lateral leaps of practicing attorneys. Click ::here:: to find out more about us.