What on earth are large US firms doing when it comes to hiring?
Missing in action: any semblance of best practices (not to mention neurodivergent friendly ones)
Dumb and Dumber
U.S. law firms are in the middle of an incredibly stupid change.
And no, I’m not talking about how they’re caving to the U.S. government.
And I’m not even talking about how they’re cancelling DEI.
I’m talking about another incredibly stupid change: how they hire law students.
OCIs were a terrible way to hire law students. They were inequitable, inefficient, and a massive waste of time.
Naturally, if you’re stuck with a broken system, it makes perfect sense to … break it even more!
And that’s what law firms are doing. Welcome to the pre-OCI world of recruiting for BigLaw jobs in the US, where quite frankly, nobody wins and everyone is confused.
Anyone stuck in that world is probably not going to come to my upcoming free session on Neuroinclusive Hiring & Onboarding on May 14 (12-1pm EST).
My upcoming workshop is on neuroinclusive hiring and onboarding, and it’s on May 14 at 12pm EST; you can register for free here.
This is meant for anyone who is involved in hiring or onboarding people (in any industry), so please help spread the word to anyone who might be interested!
In classic law firm fashion, when one big firm does something, the others tend to follow.
If you raise your salaries, we raise our salaries.
If you paid mid-year bonuses, then we pay mid-year bonuses.
If you start recruiting earlier, then we start recruiting earlier!
(I can’t wait until 6th graders start having national rankings, like they do in a lot of sports. Why stop at 1L hiring, when you can get started way earlier!)
What Law Firms Should Be Doing
If I ran a law firm (oh wait, I do), I’d be doing things a lot differently.
I’d be doing things like:
Actual assessments, not just ‘screeners’ where you try to figure out if they like skiing in Aspen or summering in wherever people summer
Real training, not just a summer of schmoozing to be followed by full-time work where people realize the actual job is not a ton of fun
Trying to figure out our values and then making sure the people we hire our actual values fits
Skipping the early hiring processes entirely, and instead aiming to find great candidates later (vs. assuming T14 students are make better lawyers)
Reading books and listening to podcasts about hiring, onboarding, and other best practices
Making sure that we weren’t overlooking candidates who may not be able to ‘mask’ as well or who may not have as much experience in certain social environments since… maybe they weren’t born into privilege
Basically anything other than what other firms are doing
Neurodivergent-Friendly Hiring and Onboarding
Perhaps the law firms are doing what they’re doing since DEI is banned these days.
It’s at least one plausible explanation, since the new process seems to be even more biased towards certain candidates than before.
But one thing I know is that any firm that understands neurodiversity (all 2 of them, I presume) can’t be thrilled with these changes.
I don’t think people quite understand how bad the existing system is for neurodivergent candidates, especially autistic ones.
And the new changes only make things worse.
It will be interesting to see what the future holds. Of course, most law firms have 0 data on how their expectations of a candidate line up vs. reality (and even fewer actually reflect on that).
If there’s one thing we did a ton of at our firm, it’s reflect on why certain hires were disasters and why others were so successful.
That’s been key to us ensuring we’re making good hiring decisions and not wasting time with people who are unlikely to end up working out for us.
For better or worse, I’ve had to become an expert in hiring and onboarding since… until the robots replace us all, it turns out that who you hire is one of the most important things in any organization (especially a start-up or scale-up).
My upcoming workshop is on neuroinclusive hiring and onboarding, and it’s on May 14 at 12pm EST; you can register for free here.
This is meant for anyone who is involved in hiring or onboarding people (in any industry), so please help spread the word to anyone who might be interested!