Summer greetings from Special Counsel. This is the latest issue of the Special Counsel newsletter, The Column, a quarterly publication designed as a resource in the navigation of the legal staffing world. As you may know, Jodi Nadler, Esq. has for several years served as the editor of The Column, but, sadly for us, she has decided to retire to spend more time with her family. Jodi has a marvelous reputation as a permanent placement expert and bestowed on us her expertise and wisdom, not to mention her tireless drive for success. We wish her well for the future and that she is as successful as she was in the legal staffing world.

This newsletter focuses on the important topic of diversity recruiting, and provides tips on retaining your valued staff, whether contract professionals or full time personnel. Our “retention” authors are two stars at Special Counsel who have a combined experience in legal staffing of over twenty years, Elizabeth Parks, the director of our New Orleans office, and Stephanie Newman, the director of our New Jersey office. Stephanie has also provided us a more in-depth piece on Jodi. 

As always, we welcome any suggestions, comments or questions you would like to share with us so that we may incorporate your thoughts into future editions of the newsletter. Please email us at the following address: column@specialcounsel.com.

Hope you enjoy this issue and have a good summer!

David J. Maldonado, Esq., Editor
Senior Vice President, Special Counsel

This edition of The Column is bittersweet for us at Special Counsel. It’s the first edition to go to print without the leadership of our friend and colleague, Jodi L. Nadler, Esq. Jodi retired in May and plans to spend time at home with her five-year old daughter and three-year old son. Jodi was one of the original owners of Law Pros, New Jersey’s premier legal placement firm. In 2003, Law Pros was acquired by Special Counsel. Jodi and her partner were considered pioneers in the New Jersey legal staffing business and were one of the few agencies to enjoy long-term success in that market. After the acquisition, Jodi continued with Special Counsel in New Jersey where she successfully assisted countless law firms and corporate legal departments in their recruiting efforts. At that time she also helped launch The Column and worked tirelessly as its editor. Jodi also served as a trainer and mentor to many of Special Counsel’s most successful search consultants nationwide.

Over the years many of Jodi’s clients and candidates have commented on how much they admired her honest approach to this business and respected her unyielding commitment to integrity. She was regarded as a true pleasure to work with by clients, candidates and her colleagues. Exchanges with Jodi always came with a much appreciated dose of light-hearted humor! 

As a company, we have benefited incredibly from Jodi’s experience, knowledge and passion for this business and we will miss her greatly. We wish her the best of luck and happiness for the future.

In the current climate of employers vying for the best-qualified candidates in the limited pool of those available, it is of utmost importance for hiring parties not only to gain access to those candidates, but also to engage in the interview and subsequent offer process in a manner that ensures that the individual will remain in the position, once hired. Following are some best practices for increasing new hire retention for your firm or company.

• Offer a clear and detailed description of the overall and everyday duties and responsibilities of the position. Include the long- and short-term goals sought by the company from the person in the position, and ask candidates during the interview to compare these against the goals of their current position and how close they came to meeting them.

• If you are replacing someone in an existing position, look at the evolution of the position’s daily and longer-term duties and compare them to the duties of that position when the departing person was first hired. The longer the vacating person was in the position, the more likely it is that the job description has changed and needs updating before being sent to your recruiter. Also, ask the departing employee not only why they are leaving, but also what the single most important change is that could realistically be made to improve the circumstances for the next person in that position.

• When reviewing resumes, don’t think of them in terms of “yes” and “no.” Think instead in terms of “possibility” and “not a possibility.” Doing so will make it easier to eliminate those who are truly not right for the job, and will make you look more carefully at all aspects of those who could potentially be a good fit, even if their resume is not one you would normally think of as an absolute “yes.” Make this a standard practice and over time, you will be surprised at how many of your best hires would have often gone into a “no” stack, as these will often be the people who work hardest for you and your company because they have to justify your hiring them into a “better” position than the one they previously held.

• During the interview, take care to limit discussions of “potential” and “possible” aspects of the position, instead confining the discussion as much as possible to current facts relative to it. Many new employees have been disappointed when they begin a new job and these possibilities don’t materialize. Additionally, future trust in the hiring party can be damaged, if the candidate wonders what else might not come about.

• Ask candidates about pre-planned vacations or other necessary time off that would occur after the start date of employment. Granted, the burden for bringing this up should fall on the candidate. However, candidates are often either concerned about this costing them a job offer, and don’t volunteer it; or, being a bit nervous in the interview, sometimes simply fail to think about this, even with every intention of mentioning it. Better to proactively ask and be able to factor the answer into a decision before making it.

• Don’t make the mistake of bypassing a terrific candidate because of a short time period they would not be available per the above. Unless the time period in which the candidate would be unavailable is absolutely critical relative to the duties needing to be performed in the position for which they are being hired, hire them anyway. No hiring party ever regretted hiring a great person under these circumstances, but plenty have regretted not having done so once that time period had passed.

• Clarify your offer in writing – not just the financial points of it, but a general overview of duties, hours, and benefits. It can be as formal as on letterhead or as informal as an email. Having it in writing and on file eliminates any future disputes regarding any aspect of it.

• Be actively involved with their work and responsibilities for the first few days to ensure their understanding and correct comprehension of work being given and what is being asked of them.
New employees may have been hired predominantly for prior experience and knowledge of the work they were hired to do. Nonetheless, company practices and procedures vary from firm to firm. Don’t equate a question about how your company does something to a question about how a job function is performed.

• At first, ask the new employee every few days, then in increasing intervals for the first few months, how they feel things are going. Ask questions that are both general and specific, and that do not command yes or no answers – you want more clarified responses than that. Listen, not just to what is being said, but also to what is not being said. Are you hearing anything proactively positive from the candidate, or just variations on the equivalent of “fine?” A new employee who is enjoying and understanding the job will happily say so when asked. One who isn’t will not, but will often also not be voluntarily forthcoming about the fact that they aren’t. A good HR manager will preempt a new employee’s decision to cut and run by proactively flushing out and working to resolve a new employee’s concerns before those concerns turn into reasons to leave.

• Establish pre-set, informal sit-down meetings with all new employees to discuss the responsibilities and goals of the position and the employee’s progress toward them. The employee’s advance knowledge of these meetings will not only provide an incentive to proactively meet those goals prior to the meetings, but also will provide you, the hiring party, with the benefit of the neutrality of these pre-set meetings. This helps avoid the impression that you are harping on a candidate when production is not quite where it should be when the meetings take place. It also provides a neutral and standard built-in timeline for probationary purposes, if necessary.

Finally, keep in mind that those leading from above a group do not have the same view or see the same things as those leading from within a group. For every position that falls to you to fill, look at the job, the co-workers and the environment from the perspective of one working in the position. If you worked in that role for a living, would you want that particular position? If not, why? Difficult boss? Unreasonable workload? Catty co-workers? Insufficient resources?  Change what you can and work on the rest. Keep this lateral perspective in place not just for hiring purposes, but on an ongoing basis to try to preempt issues that, were you in the position, would potentially give you cause to leave. You will increase new hire retention, and bring yourself closer to potential employees in the process.

Elizabeth Parks is the Executive Director of Special Counsel’s New Orleans office.

Recently, there has been a nationwide effort to identify and hire diverse legal talent. The impetus for this is manifold. Many businesses, especially law firms and corporate legal departments have undertaken this endeavor to broaden their legal personnel rosters, with the goal of enhancing their abilities to provide well-informed legal services by drawing on the combined experiences of legal professionals from multiple backgrounds. Equally, there has been a drive by major corporations and other business entities to ensure that outside counsel handling the company’s business matches the composition of either the corporation’s legal departments or its customer base or both. These and other motivations have led to the reaching out for diverse legal talent in a scope likely not ever seen in the legal world.

The goal of hiring more minority lawyers and women lawyers has proven a bit daunting. Why?

For various historical reasons, the population of diverse lawyers in the United States is a relatively small one. Racial discrimination has played a part in this. Attempts to right the discrimination in law school admissions have had a mixed effect, with some court decisions facilitating minority enrollment on the one hand and other rulings hampering it. The resulting effect has been to keep the numbers of applying minority students, other than women, at a flat and low rate. The consequence of that, among other factors, is that there are few or fewer law school graduates who are minorities. Naturally, the consequence of that is that as law firm recruiting decision-makers begin to try to recruit diverse attorneys, the pool itself is a smaller one than they may have believed at the outset of their search.

One typical scenario is where a recruiting coordinator has been given the task of recruiting lateral hires who are minority lawyers. In that case, the coordinator takes one or more of the standard paths: recruiting by internal referral; recruiting by external means (seeking external referrals, for example, or by posting on job boards or in classified ads); or availing themselves of third-party attorney search consultants.

All of these are necessary components to a search where the searching party hopes to recruit a minority lawyer. Essentially, however, other than undertaking a search in hand with an attorney search consultant, the pool of attorneys who are available tends to be smaller than anticipated by the recruiting coordinator. And, as with all other candidates in the pool, when the law firms limit their search to certain law school tier and gpa requirements, that number shrinks further. Add to this the factor that there are multiple employers seeking diverse lateral hires, and it inevitably leads to the frustration that a firm, although well meaning, simply cannot find the talent it needs.

What to do?

The best approach is the broadest approach. That is, the typical search listed above, using internal, external and recruiting firms, must broaden in breadth and time. A firm must have a multi-pronged tactic not only to identify the available talent, but also to make it known that it actively seeks to make diverse attorneys a meaningful part of its program and that it is willing to forego previous parameters in recruiting among the broadest pool of candidates possible. Below is a guide to enhancing the search for qualified diverse personnel:

1. Make the law firm/legal department populace aware that the firm is actively recruiting attorneys of all backgrounds.
   
2. Be sure that the local, regional and national audience that comprises the pool of recruits is aware that the firm has that as a goal.
   
3. Be aware of local, regional and national affinity groups, particularly those that count significant numbers of minority attorneys among their membership.
   
4. Also be cognizant of law school, college and high school groups that count as
   a part of their membership significant numbers of minority attorneys-to-be.
   
5. Utilize the services of third-party search firms such as Special Counsel to identify passive minority candidates and to take advantage of their relationships with the groups listed in 3 and 4 above.
   
6. Engage contract personnel as often as possible, with a significant number of diverse candidates, and expose them to the benefits of working with your firm, and simultaneously give yourself the opportunity to experience their work.
   
7. Provide contract personnel with work that they may be expected to do on behalf of clients that seek involvement from a broader group in its representation.

Recruiting attorneys can be a frustrating process, but a conscious effort to broaden the search across untapped resources can assist in the discovery of previously unrecruited attorneys.

David Maldonado is Senior Vice President of Special Counsel.

Whether you are part of a law firm or a corporate legal department, you’ve probably used or seriously considered using contract legal professionals for project work and to fill specialized positions. The cost savings and increased productivity that contract legal professionals offer simply make good business sense. The question is no longer whether a firm should or should not use contract legal professionals, but rather how they will attract and retain top talent in the competitive world of contract legal professionals.

After the decision has been made to hire contract legal professionals, it’s critical to invest a small amount of time in developing a retention plan for the contractors you so carefully selected.  

Retention of a contract employee starts well before that person has been selected for the project. Your plan for retaining contractors should begin at the hiring stage and cover the basic components needed to successfully manage any team or individual. The following list provides a brief summary of the priority points to address when constructing your retention plan:

Legal Staffing Agency

In selecting an agency that you will partner with, there are a few things to consider:

Benefits Package: Inquire as to the benefits package the agency offers to their contract employees. In today’s world of flexible schedules and alternative employment arrangements, medical benefits should no longer be an option reserved only for traditional employees. You should have the satisfaction of knowing that the agency of your choice is treating their employees exceptionally well.

Agency References: Ask for references from clients and candidates who can speak to the agency’s ability to successfully staff contractors on long-term assignments.

Communication: Expectations should be clearly communicated to contractors at the onset of a project. These include performance expectations, office hours, deadlines, agency contact/point person and office conduct. Your agency should have a designated point person who is available and accessible to you and to the contractors. Each person on the team should have the point person’s direct dial and after hours contact information. Ask your agency to prepare a Policy Guide for contract employee conduct on assignment that is specific to your current project, so that the communication of basic conduct expectations is consistent.

As the project progresses, provide feedback on individual performance and status updates for the case on which the team is working. You may want to consider having a regular monthly meeting with the team and include the agency’s point person in this meeting.

Contractor Selection

Determine who, at the firm, will interview candidates or if the firm will only be reviewing resumes. Once contractors have been selected for the project, determine how they will be notified and what information they will receive upon notification. Also, determine how orientation on the first day will be handled. Partner with your agency on these two points and be sure they are clearly communicating the particulars of this assignment to the selected contractors.

Retention Bonuses

Consider offering a retention bonus to contractors who successfully remain on the project until the completion date. You can also offer a retention bonus for every three or six months they remain on assignment. Determine what the bonus will be, what the requirements are in order to be eligible for the bonus and when the bonus will be paid. Communicate the bonus potential and schedule of bonus payout at the onset of the project. This can be a key element in retaining contract employees, so don’t be afraid to over-communicate the potential bonus. Your staffing firm should be able to track each employee’s time on assignment and be able to process these bonuses for the employees in a timely manner.

Contractor Appreciation

The treatment and respect that contractors receive while on assignment are critical. Time and time again our contractors have said that the treatment they receive at a firm while on a temporary project is one of the primary factors in successfully fulfilling their commitment to the project. Communicating your basic expectations to the contractors is the first step in making them feel respected and connected to the firm. 

Simply put, an investment in a smart retention plan will allow your firm to successfully utilize the contract employees you’ve chosen, maximize productivity and reap the cost-savings benefits associated with hiring contract employees.

Stephanie Newman is the Executive Director of Special Counsel’s Florham Park office.