As we welcome in the new year, we all find ourselves reflecting upon the previous year—upon our successes, failures and overall progress enjoyed both personally and by our organizations. We then resolve to make improvements in the areas where there is room for change and to continue with what was “right” during the past year. You, as employers, should be going through this exercise in all areas of your business and, in particular, as you evaluate your recruitment, staffing and retention programs.

In the coming year, we, at Special Counsel, resolve to keep you informed on the latest trends in staffing and recruitment and offer our insight into how your organizations can stay competitive in the staffing game. Both our editorial staff and our recruitment and staffing professionals prepare the materials for The Column by drawing from their own professional experiences that they daily encounter.

In this first issue of The Column in 2006, we outline some current trends in the legal marketplace, strategies for marketing to top performers and information on diversity initiatives. As always, we welcome any suggestions, comments or questions you would like to share with us so that we may incorporate your thoughts into future editions of the newsletter. Please email us at the following address: column@specialcounsel.com. We look forward to hearing from you soon.

Best wishes for a happy and prosperous 2006!

Jodi L. Nadler
Vice President, Special Counsel

Special Counsel to Fund Law School Scholarships for Minority Law Students

In May of 2005, Special Counsel announced the development of two annual scholarships for incoming minority law students. Recipients are eligible to apply for and receive the annual scholarship during each year of their three-year legal education program at the law school of their choice. The two scholarships were established with the Hispanic National Bar Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit entity associated with the Hispanic National Bar Association. Since the time of the original announcement in May, two recipients were selected, and each was awarded the $2,500 scholarship for the 2005-2006 school year.

David Maldonado, regional vice president of Special Counsel and leader of its national diversity efforts said, “Special Counsel is committed to supporting minority education and promoting diversity as a positive principle. To date, law school scholarships for minority law students have been in short supply, preventing many motivated and academically qualified minority students from attending law school.”

Available U.S. Census numbers reflect approximately 52,000 Hispanic lawyers in the United States, which is less than one percent of the total number of lawyers in the U.S. population.

David Maldonado is chairman of the Special Counsel Diversity Initiatives Task Force, an internal committee whose mission is to develop and implement initiatives which create a truly diverse culture and atmosphere for Special Counsel employees, clients and contractors. For more in-depth information about the Diversity Task Force and all of its programs, be sure to read the article entitled, DIVERSITY, What it Means to Us, featured in this issue.

1. Join a new business or networking group.
   
   
2. Maintain a better work-life balance.
   
   
3. Learn how to delegate and prioritize
   
   
4. Get to know your co-workers.
   
   
5. Learn something new that will enhance your job performance.
   
   
6. Volunteer for a committee or focus group within your firm.
   
   
7. Make your organization’s recruitment and retention programs a priority.
   
   
8. Mentor a young professional in your field.
   
   
9. Form at least one strategic partnership with a professional in a related field.
   
   
10. Set 3 personal goals for 2006 and stick to them!

How Do Candidates View Your Firm in the Employment Marketplace?

In the war for key talent, employers must develop a comprehensive marketing strategy to target and attract top performers. You will be easily matched by your competition if you simply utilize strong compensation and benefits plans to entice stellar candidates. You must do much more to win the recruitment game. Your firm must focus on selling the intangible reasons why candidates would want to work for your firm and, consequently, stick with you for the long haul. You must endeavor to create a reputation as a progressive employer who is not only able to recruit top talent but retain gifted employees through challenging and rewarding opportunities. This is not an easy task.

Your “talent” marketing initiative must first be embraced by top management and then be followed through down the organizational ladder. The commitment from executive management, human resources and marketing professionals to work together as a team to create an employer “brand” is imperative. These professionals will be tasked with attracting critical talent in the marketplace through implementing a multi-dimensional program. The goal is to create a reputation for your firm as an exceptional employer.

The framework for your marketing plan should include communications in all forms — brochures, press releases, media coverage, recruitment and other print and internet advertisements, comprehensive recruitment pages on your website and blogs on your site as well.

Top Management

From a recruitment standpoint, being able to describe what it is like to work in your organization is much more powerful than describing the type of work to be performed. Keep in mind that key professionals want to work for a great employer. Company culture and the overall employment experience are essential components to an “A” performer’s decision to join a new firm. Therefore, in all facets of your marketing program, management must answer a critical question: “What makes your firm great?” Top management should begin by developing an outline of recruitment “selling points.” Creating a mission statement of sorts for hiring and retaining staff is a good idea. Your mission statement should strive to ensure that your employees are challenged, promoted and rewarded before others recruit them. The next obvious step is to follow through with your recruitment and retention mission statement. The objective is to send the right message to both your current employees and the employment marketplace.

Focus Groups

Simply asking your firm’s top executives why your organization is great is not enough. Create focus groups among your employees. Interview them as to what they feel are the strongest attributes of working for your firm. Employee testimonials are powerful tools that help to shape your reputation in the marketplace. Use a diversity of experience level, talent and specialty testimonials in all of your print and electronic marketing materials.

Blogs

Within your focus groups, identify several significant performers to participate in a company blog on your website. A blog is short for weblog, or journal (or newsletter) that is frequently updated and intended for general public consumption. A suggested blog would be “A Day in the Life” series written by some of your employees outlining their personal experiences in working for your firm. The purpose of the blog is to demonstrate the “positive intangibles” of working for your organization. Through personal anecdotes, your employees themselves can discuss the opportunities, challenges and unique qualities of their employment. Honest accounts shared by your staff will serve as great sales pitches for your firm.

Recruitment Professionals and Career Placement Counselors

Implement your marketing strategy by communicating your new “brand” through recruitment materials, website and other communication vehicles. However, do not forget to maintain strong ties with local schools and trusted recruitment professionals. These folks can be great ambassadors for your firm. Keep them apprised of new program and employee initiatives so that they can share this information with prospective candidates. Recruitment professionals are also great sources of information. They work “in the trenches” on a daily basis and listen to the opinions and assessments that candidates offer when discussing your organization. If you are open to honest feedback, the recruitment professionals can provide you with information on the perception of your firm in the marketplace. It is also with the recruitment and placement professionals that you can first evaluate how your marketing plan is working.

Overall, company culture, growth opportunities, rewards, and challenges will be critical components in your marketing strategy to attract the most talented professionals in the industry. Therefore, your approach to winning the talent game should be simple: make it irresistible to work for your firm and make sure that everyone in your market knows it!

Overview

Once again, we are at the dawn of another calendar year, replete with fresh opportunities for growth and change. This is also an excellent time to reflect upon the events of the past year and to form predictions for the coming year.

On a very positive note, the legal community continues to experience growth, hiring is healthy and on the rise for both direct hires and temporary workers. This is terrific news in what otherwise could be categorized as an uncertain economy.¹ Additionally, more of you are looking to hire contract attorneys and paralegals to staff specific projects, particularly those related to discovery, to assist in managing your workload and reducing your litigation costs.

Benefits and Bonus Cuts: A Double-Edged Sword

Two recent monetary trends to watch in the coming year that will likely affect employee retention encompass benefit costs and bonus payouts. In 2005, most employers saw an increase in healthcare costs. These escalating healthcare expenses have forced some employers to pass on a greater portion of insurance premiums to their employees. Even though in many instances the contribution percentages between the employer and the employees will remain the same, the reality is that employees may feel quite different when they are annually paying more out-of-pocket in terms of dollars. In addition, we are also finding that this year, many associates and paralegals have raised concerns that the bonuses they received for the number of hours they worked were less than they had anticipated.

Why are these critical trends to watch in 2006? For employees, these concerns often translate into a need for change. From an employer’s standpoint, you must be strategic in combating these concerns with the goal of retaining your key performers. However, from a recruitment standpoint, you may be able to attract some top candidates who are for the first time willing to consider a move to a new employer. Being knowledgeable about your competition’s benefits, compensation and bonus structures, career offerings and opportunities will be critical to your success in recruiting these candidates. In addition, having an organized recruitment process with quick turn-around times for hiring decisions will enable you to capitalize on the dissatisfaction that some of these candidates may be experiencing in their current positions.

Efforts to Minimize Costs Are Raising Temporary Hiring

Temporary staffing continues to be one of the most valuable options in combating escalating employee-related costs. In addition to the economic strain of higher health insurance premiums for full time employees, corporate legal departments are ever diligent about controlling litigation expenses. This is particularly true in the wake of a series of court rulings that have imposed substantial penalties for failing to produce documents stored electronically.²

Last year saw a dramatic spike in the use of contract attorneys, primarily in electronic document review projects. For example, in the Chicago legal market, the number of contract attorneys on such projects ranged, on average, from 20-100, compared to only 15-20 contract attorneys on each project for most projects in 2003 and 2004. Seventy-one percent of organizations that have outsourced work to contract attorneys and similar third-party legal service providers reported having a successful experience.³ As such, the trend of using contingent labor to save on costs will continue throughout the New Year.

Real Estate and Litigation Will Continue to Dominate the Staffing Market

Commercial real estate and commercial/ corporate litigation were at the top of the list of hot practice areas for permanent placement in most major markets in the final quarter of 2005. This is expected to continue in 2006. Other hot practice areas to watch include white-collar criminal defense, intellectual property litigation, securities litigation as well as work in the securities-related regulatory and compliance arenas. Bankruptcy and financing law also appear to be thriving. If you plan to expand these practice areas in your organization in the coming year, know that your competition for them will continue to be strong.

In the temporary staffing market, complex litigation discovery projects continue to be the primary basis for contract attorney staffing throughout the country. Temporary staffing for mid-to-senior level attorneys as well as paralegals and support staff is more varied with regard to practice areas, and these hires are also on the rise.

The Bottom Line: Overall Optimism

To support your continued growth, implement a strategic staffing plan by utilizing multiple options in the direct hire and contingent workforce arenas. Direct hire candidates looking for greener pastures are going to become more available than in the past. Capitalize upon this talent in the marketplace by strengthening your recruitment process. The contract legal professionals market continues to be a strong option when your needs are finite. Partner with a staffing company you trust to assist you with contract staffing requirements. In sum, the overall outlook for 2006 is bright, holding abundant opportunities for job growth.

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Jowita Wysocka is a Placement Director with the Tampa office of Special Counsel, Inc.

1 Yahoo! News. “Real Estate Job Engine Finally Slows Down.” 2005. 14 Dec. 2005. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/2005/20051214/ap_on_bi_ge/ye_job_growth_ye5a (“Employers, faced with spiraling health costs, have been conservative about hiring”).

2 Law.com. “Piecing Together EDD’s In-House vs. Outsource Puzzle.” 15 Nov. 2005. http://www.law.com/jsp/ltn/pubArticleLTN.jsp?id=1131542410056. See also Hopson v. Mayor of Baltimore, 2005 WL 3157949 (D. Md. Nov. 22, 2005).

3 Altman Weil, Inc. “Results of Altman Weil 2005 Survey of Major Law Firm Management Techniques.” July 2005. See also Jones, Leigh. “More Firms Using Temp Attorneys.” The National Law Journal 10 Oct. 2005:1+.

“ We have become not a melting pot, but a beautiful mosaic. Different people, different beliefs, different yearnings, different hopes, different dreams.”

— former President, Jimmy Carter

A term that has found its way into the news and, more importantly, into inquiries from our clients, is “diversity.” But what does it mean? And what does it mean to our work and to the staffing industry in particular?

Various dictionaries and sources define the word diversity, as follows: the presence of a wide range of variation in the qualities or attributes under discussion; noticeable heterogeneity; the relative uniqueness of each individual in the population. In the staffing arena, diversity has come to mean the recruitment and inclusivity of candidates who are different as to gender, race, age, educational background, language, military experience, sexual orientation, and physical and mental ability. In other words, the recruiting of candidates from as wide a universe as feasible helps assure that one’s candidate pool represents a broad spectrum of individual characteristics, attributes and abilities.

Special Counsel prides itself on ensuring diversity not only in its internal staffing, but also in the recruiting it does on behalf of its clients. Were one to look historically at the candidates that Special Counsel has placed, we would probably find candidates who embody every one of the differences listed above, and many more. This is a credit to our recruiting staff and speaks highly of the broadly inclusive methods that have been used in our recruiting.

So, is anything changing? The answer is that, increasingly, corporate legal department clients and law firm clients are not only looking to us to recruit as broadly as before, but also to identify the steps we actively take to ensure that the breadth of our recruiting remains intact and, to ensure that the processes are in place to further expand the available candidate pool. Indeed, many corporations now require reports from their outside law firms (and some staffing companies directly) on what steps they are taking to accomplish the same goals, and what kind of success they have in that endeavor. Some of that duty falls to the recruiting firms with which they partner. Fortunately, our role is the same in both instances — to ensure that we present all of our clients with a candidate pool that is as diverse as can be.

Recently, Special Counsel created a Diversity Initiatives Task Force that has formulated a plan which will study the company’s efforts in achieving diversity and implement new programs and actions to maintain and extend our efforts. We will continue to recruit in ways that have been successful, but also with a mind to investigate ways in which to broaden our recruiting efforts. We will continue to ask ourselves what actions we might undertake to tap into an increasingly diverse universe of candidates. Below are some examples of our efforts. Naturally, we are also eager to hear additional suggestions from our clients.

1. Continue to identify what groups exist with diverse memberships (there are over 100 minority bar associations, for example).
   
   
2. Remain involved with local minority bar associations or affinity groups, attend their meetings and support them in whatever way feasible.
   
   
3. Maintain our level of recruitment for the most qualified candidates available from an ever-expanding diverse populace.
   
   
4. Examine continually the various groups which provide potential recruiting sources.
   
   
5. Maintain our technological expertise in identifying the best candidates through the internet and the best ways in which to apprise the broadest group of people of placement opportunities.
   
   
6. Designate time each day to think about and focus on initiatives that are designed to enhance the diversity of our candidate base.

Most importantly, we will continue to remind ourselves that diversity values differences — and that a beautiful mosaic is impossible with identical tiles.

David J. Maldonado, Esq.
Regional Vice President