Survey: Associates Plan on Staying, for Now, But Partnership Less Alluring
Most midlevel associates surveyed by the American Lawyer plan to be on the job for the short-term, but few plan to stay for the long-term.
The finding is one of the ironies of the survey, the Am Law Daily reports. Asked to rate the likelihood of being at their firm in two years on a 1-to-5 scale, the average was a 3.79, the highest score in six years. Seventy percent said they were on the partnership track, and only 10.6 percent said they were concerned about layoffs.
The survey, based on responses from 7,259 midlevel associates, was taken after Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft laid off 35 associates in January, but before its announcement of 96 more lawyer layoffs this week.
Those who indicated they were likely to stay with their law firms for two years also tended to be the respondents who were most interested in their work, the American Lawyer reports in a separate story. Among those who gave their work a score of 1 for interest rated their likelihood of staying for two years an average of 1.6. Those who gave their work scores of 2, 3, 4 and 5, had tenure scores of 2.1, 2.9, 3.8 and 4.4, respectively.
Associates who expressed reservations about becoming partners cite the continuing pressure to work long hours and to build business, the second story says. One third-year associate at Arnold & Porter explained it this way in an interview with the publication: “This is not the sort of place where once you become a partner, you sit back and ride the gravy train.”
The law firms that had the best job satisfaction ratings tended to be smaller, the publication says in a chart (reg. req.) that ranked firms based on size and satisfaction ratings. A different chart of the overall rankings (reg. req.) listed these firms as the top five for midlevel associate satisfaction:
- Nutter McClennen & Fish in Boston
- Miles & Stockbridge in Baltimore
- Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner in Washington, D.C.
- Faegre & Benson in Minneapolis
- Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler in New York
The publication also made satisfaction ratings available for all law firms participating in the survey (reg. req.).
