Signing, keeping best, brightest lawyers is ongoing challenge

Columbia-based Collins & Lacy aims to be a growing firm.

Handling everything from construction to criminal defense, the organization now has 17 lawyers, plans to be at 30 in the next few years and hit 50 by 2030. But that growth has meant finding — and keeping — good people. Attorneys want professional development, valuable feedback and — most importantly — to not be regarded as interchangeable cogs.

“The firms that are successfully responding to that are really winning,” firm President and CEO Christian Stegmaier said. “I’d like to count us as part of that. We don’t treat our associates as fungible. We treat them as future partners.”

That is a common refrain for firms across the Carolinas and the country as they search for the most effective means to recruit and retain the best and brightest while facing down a historically tight labor market and a sometimes-restive class of increasingly mobile professionals who have greater personal demands for time and flexibility and know they can change to a different organization — or even create their own — if those requirements aren’t met.

Retention is a science all its own — one Stegmaier hopes his firm has mastered.

“Our biggest challenge is getting them in the door,” he said. “But once we get them in the door, they stay with us.”

Right question from the right person

At least some of the issue stems from the COVID-19 pandemic and the unprecedented flexibility of a work-from-home lifestyle that a significant number of attorneys — and even support staff — aren’t especially eager to give up.

As Troy Shelton, an appellate lawyer at The Dowling Firm in Raleigh, points out, unlike industries where noncompete agreements are common, the nature of the legal field makes it easy for a professional to depart for greener pastures.

“The relationships are not necessarily between the client and a law firm. The relationship is usually between the client and a particular lawyer,” the 35-year-old said. “It is not like leaving some other kind of business.”

That means that firms often must give associates and partners a reason to stay. Shelton recommends that the process be a proactive one of information gathering so management isn’t blindsided by the sudden departure of someone whose needs aren’t being met. Attorneys might not always ask for what they want, and the first sign that a rising star is looking for greater flexibility could come when he or she inks a deal with another firm willing to provide it.

In any event, Shelton said, the best feedback isn’t a boilerplate survey from the human resources department asking what can be done better. A mentor or department head is the more appropriate choice.

“The question has to come from someone who personally knows the attorney,” he said.

Joseph Seiner, the Oliver Ellsworth professor of federal practice and a professor of law at the University of South Carolina, noted that the desire for flexibility cuts across many industries amid extreme lows of unemployment that have given workers startling amounts of leverage, particularly in professional fields.

“I think there was a recent study that showed employees would be willing to make about a third less if they could work more from home,” said Seiner, whose research focuses on the intersection between workplace and procedural law.

Allen Clardy, of Greenville’s Clardy Law Firm, said his small personal injury enterprise has done well in putting “the right people in the right seats.”

Still, he’s noticed changes in what new hires want, particularly for support positions, where virtual assistants have become more common.

“It’s not been an issue for me in retaining staff, but it has been an issue for me in hiring staff,” he said of the change. “I’ve met with people who I would have loved to have join the firm that had a requirement of at least partial, if not total, opportunity to be virtual.”

The sticking point is no longer what amount a candidate is willing to work for but rather where they are willing to work from.

“It’s become a part of their life,” he said of working from home, “and they don’t want to leave it.”

A matter of culture

Even if people do go to the office, they want to find the experience a pleasant one when they get there. People want a work life imbued with meaning and filled with folks who are all rowing in the same direction.

“You really need to have culture as a benefit,” Clardy said. “That starts with making sure everyone has the same core values.”

Those values also can impact the kind of work being done, and attorneys pay attention to that impact.

“Firms should be careful not to chase profitability so hard that they lose their culture because there is more to being a lawyer than just making money,” said Ken Young of Young Mayden, a Charlotte-based attorney recruitment firm.

After defending discrimination cases and representing companies in union-related matters for three decades in his native South Carolina, Young decided to go into the recruitment field in North Carolina where he eschews cold calls and favors the personal touch in making connections through relationships and contacts to place the right attorney with the correct firm in organizations nationwide.

He said that sometimes mutual decisions might need to be made by the firm and practitioner alike when an attorney wants to practice in an area that a large firm no longer sees as part of its strategic plan. In fact, “large group lift outs,” where several attorneys might transfer from one organization to another that has more compatible goals and culture, are not entirely uncommon.

“In the old days, you recruited from the bottom and tried to grow your lawyers and hope that they developed business,” said Young, who is regularly called upon to help firms with mergers and new office openings. “But nowadays if there is a lawyer at a competing firm that commands a huge book of business, and they are not happy for whatever reason, then that’s the way you grow your firm.”

Attorneys want to feel that they, their area of practice and their clients are part of the overall mission.

“If a lawyer feels that their firm is more interested in money than in helping people solve problems and move forward with their business, they may go to a firm that does value those things,” he said.

Work-life balance

Likewise, personal career goals also are in the mix. Even if a firm has the right practice area to make an attorney feel welcome, lawyers also like to feel that they are more than a name on a timecard. The firm needs to invest in their future.

“They want to understand that they are not just there to bill hours, that they are going to have mentorship, that they are going to have a collaborative environment and they are going to be able to grow in their role as an attorney,” said Seiner at the University of South Carolina. “They aren’t just there to make the partner’s life easier.”

Professional development also can overlap with personal development. The old approach of senior attorneys dumping unnecessary — and often unrealistic — demands on young go-getters so that the latter can “prove” themselves as eventual partner material doesn’t fly as well in an age increasingly defined by work-life balance.

“To be honest, it is one of the reasons people come to South Carolina versus going to one of the bigger markets like Atlanta because culturally that already exists here,” he said. “We’re seen as a very family-friendly labor market.”

In fact, Stegmaier at Collins & Lacy said the luster of firm leadership tracks and being on the nameplate may be fading altogether for some. People are simply more guarded with their time — especially if they are married to a fellow professional and living comfortably without a ton of income pressure.

“I don’t think as many people now have necessarily the ambition to become partners, especially at larger law firms, because it is very labor-intensive,” he noted.

Moreover, young lawyers might not always realize just how much time is required to succeed in an area of law. Stegmaier, who runs a defense firm, said that plaintiff’s attorneys often get a lot of attention for high-profile, multimillion-dollar verdicts which could seem far more attractive and profitable than the unglamorous universe of billable hours. But the unromantic reality behind the scenes of those seven- or eight-figure resolutions usually involves a great deal of labor put in by a small group of talented attorneys with much of the rest of the field defined by long hours and low-value car accidents. Work-life balance isn’t always easy to see from the outside.

“Some of the hardest working lawyers I know are plaintiff’s lawyers. They’ve got to make it happen in order to eat,” he said. “But the reality is that the guys that are really making it happen are probably working harder than anybody else.”

James Vann of Charlotte-based Vann Attorneys, a business litigation firm, said that getting opportunities to interact can make an attorney feel appreciated.

“I’ve noticed with people we’ve hired recently, they were a little surprised that they got to talk with clients out of the gate,” Vann said. “I think it is being able to have that relationship versus sitting in an office somewhere just drafting stuff and never really feeling like you are having a positive impact for your client.”

Regardless, whether you deal with staffers or attorneys, the key is to maintain an atmosphere of respect that makes the person want to come to work.

“No matter what job they do, it is important,” Vann noted.

Of course, sometimes in the game of retention, much like the game of life, all the right moves don’t necessarily equal a win. Even when management gathers proper feedback, gives appropriate career development opportunities, shows respect and provides enough flexibility, someone may simply leave because they want to work in a different-size organization, or they want to operate in a practice area that isn’t available where they work.

Such splits sometimes just have to happen.

“Once they’ve decided that they don’t want to be where they are right now and they like some opportunity better, there’s really nothing the law firm can do,” Shelton said.