“Contrast this with what the experience is like for an associate who doesn’t get tapped,” she says. “They don’t pop to mind, for whatever reason, and it means they don’t get those initial high-quality opportunities. They don’t get on the radar of key partners. They’re unable to develop the competencies, visibility, or networks they need to progress.”
The less experienced associates are more expensive for clients, so it becomes more challenging to staff them on files.
The associate flounders; their performance reviews are not great, and they read the signals that they are not rising at the firm, so they leave.
The traditional, free-market work allocation system can be arbitrary and have nothing to do with ability or interest. Kari Abrams is the director of legal personnel and professional development at Blake, Cassels & Graydon LLP. She says a certain associate may “pop to mind” because of a past relationship with the partner or even because they happened to have crossed paths in the office kitchen when the partner was thinking about the file.
“It can be something as innocuous as office location,” says Shlomi Feiner, a partner at Blakes whose practice involves M&A, securities, and corporate law. “The easiest place to find someone to do your work is to look right next door. We don’t want something as random as office location to determine whether or not an associate had access to opportunities.”