Wanted: Book-Smarts Plus

By: THOMAS ADCOCK 
Staff reporter


Law firm recruiters, well rested now after winter campus interviews in search of first-year and summer associate hires, are coming closer to acknowledging what one innovative dean declares about the future of young corporate attorneys — as he was himself early in his career.

"Being just a very good technical lawyer doesn't necessarily get you far," said David E. Van Zandt, dean of Northwestern University School of Law in Chicago and a former associate at Davis, Polk & Wardwell.

"Students who go through seven years of post-high school education are not mature enough," Mr. Van Zandt added during an interview this week in New York. "Now, this is the challenge law firms are facing today: They're paying [junior associates] an awful lot of money, and their clients won't tolerate kids who don't know what they're doing — who are sort of naοve and who never worked."

Perhaps no firm is as devoted to this view, in terms of hiring straight from campus or picking off associates from other shops than Greenberg Traurig, which has grown during the past eight years from a few hundred lawyers in Florida to an international roster of some 1,500 attorneys in 32 offices — seven in Europe and Asia and 25 domestic, with the 300-lawyer New York office being the largest. All with no mergers.

"When we decided to expand, we made an important strategic decision," said Carol Allen, a non-attorney who serves as Greenberg Traurig's chief recruitment officer. The associate profile accordingly established, she said, was "a first-rate lawyer, but just as importantly someone with a real level of business savvy and an understanding of business generally in order to guide our clients — not just legally."

She added, "The days of big teams of [corporate] associates squirreled away in offices looking at tiny issues is not as common as it used to be. There's a real importance placed on also grasping the bigger business objectives of the client based on experience they've had."

Substantive experience prior to law school is "almost an absolute requirement" at Northwestern Law, said Mr. Van Zandt, whose goal is to accept no student without such a background. Of students now enrolled, he said, 75 percent have had two or more years of work experience.

Although that standard is not in force at Pace Law School in White Plains, Dean Stephen J. Friedman, a former senior partner at Debevoise & Plimpton where he was co-chairman of the corporate department, strongly agrees with Mr. Van Zandt's emphasis on hard-nosed experience as a significant, if not co-equal, part of a lawyer's education.

"Large law firms have tended to place too much emphasis on grades and not enough on the other range of skill sets that it takes to be an effective lawyer — for example, the ability to make decisions," said Mr. Friedman, who has also served as executive vice president and general counsel for The Equitable Companies and executive vice president of the E.F. Hutton Group.

"When you're a young lawyer, all you do is analyze stuff basically," Mr. Friedman said. "But when it really comes to advising a client, you need to integrate that analysis and understanding of the law with broader judgments about how you think a court or a regulator or an opposing party would react to a complex of facts and law in a messy situation."

He added, "You weave all that together into a considered judgment that has to do with assessing risk in a particular course of action. That's a synthesizing function. Which takes both intellectual skills and other skills that are very different than what you learn in law school."

No Automatic Rejections

David B. Hennes, a litigation partner at Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson and co-chair of the firm's legal recruitment committee, said a candidate with a strong background in areas such as investment banking and financial services is certainly appealing. But a young lawyer who went straight through undergraduate school and on to law school — as Mr. Hennes did — is just as surely not to be automatically rejected for consideration.

"That doesn't seem fair or rational to me," said Mr. Hennes. "We do welcome experience, though. We have associates who come to us with 15 years' experience [in business] because they know the firm has a sophisticated financial practice."

As a consequence, Mr. Hennes noted, the ages of incoming junior corporate associates at Fried Frank seems to have risen.

"Lots of folks elect to go to law school late in life — much more so in the past five years," he said. "We have first-year associates starting here who are often in their 30s and 40s."

Many of these later students choose campuses where they might acquire both JD and MBA degrees, such as offered by the University at Buffalo Law School.

"It makes a lot of sense for lawyers aiming at corporate practice to have an MBA so they can understand the language of the law as well as the language of business," said David W. Frasier, assistant dean and administrative director of the university's MBA program, which along with the law school operates a four-year joint degree curriculum.

He noted, "Major corporations and even the small-to-medium enterprises are dealing with differing business practices in the China market, for instance. And just look at the big cases moving through the courts now — Enron and so forth, where it's all about corporate accounting and financing. If you don't have attorneys with that background, you're at a significant disadvantage."

But Julie M. Allen, a corporate partner at Proskauer Rose and chair of the firm's hiring committee, believes quick learners should not to be discounted.

"Like many others, I started out in the transactional legal world with relatively little relevant experience," she said. "I've never found that to be a handicap. I don't think you necessarily have to have an MBA or to have worked in an investment bank. I advise associates to read The New York Times business section and The Wall Street Journal, and to be familiar enough with your client's concerns to bring more than pure legal advice to bear."

In hiring transactional associates, she added, "Their business experience is something we take into account in the total mix of information for evaluation. But if what someone really wants to be is a business person or an entrepreneur, they may not have the temperament or patience, frankly, to be a junior lawyer."

Although Kelley A. Cornish, hiring partner at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, said she has no "formulaic" approach in hiring transactional associates, candidates with relevant experience are awarded a "big plus" in evaluation.

With reference to Mr. Van Zandt's experience standard at Northwestern Law, Ms. Cornish said, "I can tell you that when I go to Northwestern to recruit, the quality of students is much better. They are substantially more interesting, much more well-rounded and mature."

Richard A. Rosenbaum, national operating shareholder at Greenberg Traurig, offered his own background in concurring.

"The guys running the firm now are the exactly the kinds of people we're looking for," said Mr. Rosenbaum, who worked his way through college and ran a title insurance business while attending St. John's University School of Law at night. "It's not only about being book-smart."