A Law Firm Ditches the Lockstep System and Retains More Women
A law firm that replaced lockstep promotions with a system based on competency has seen the percentage of women lawyers leaving the firm drop below that of men.
Husch Blackwell Sanders had an average annual attrition of about 30 percent when it had the old lockstep system. Under the new program, attrition dropped to about 14 percent overall and to about 10 percent for women in 2005 and 2006, a diversity consultant says in an article for the New York Law Journal.
The consultant, Melissa McClenaghan Martin, writes that law firms have adopted programs addressing work-life issues to keep women, but they are failing to address these lawyers’ primary source of dissatisfaction. Work-life issues are important, she writes, but the major reason women leave is different.
“As numerous studies have shown,” Martin writes, “women leave firms because they are dissatisfied with stalled advancement and career opportunities, unsatisfying work and ‘unsupportive’ work environments.”
She points to Husch Blackwell’s competency-based level system used to evaluate associates as a promising program. The system designates three levels for associate development, with 17 skills and performance competencies for each level. Associates are evaluated twice a year. They don’t advance to the next level—and they don’t get a raise and they don’t increase their billing rates—until partners decide they are ready.
Associates know where they stand under the competency system, while under a lockstep system they may get little feedback until they are evaluated for partnership. Partners have an incentive to promote associates’ development so billing rates can be increased.
Husch Blackwell partner Peter Sloan, who wrote an article (PDF) on the program, said the mutual incentive to promote is important. Training, mentoring and coaching are viewed as an “investment in developing our associate talent, not an expense,” he said. “Increased associate competency is directly tied to increased firm revenue.”
