You probably didn’t choose to go to law school because you love risk; most likely you don’t spend your free time surfing 40-foot waves or snowboarding. However, you have the fortune to be beginning your career during a period of unprecedented change in the legal industry. Whatever your prior relationship with change, be prepared to befriend it because it is likely to be your constant companion.
Law firms are changing the way they recruit, hire, develop, evaluate and compensate their associates. Prior associate classes may not necessarily have been able to count on advancing to partner, but they did take for granted several years of annual lockstep promotions and salary increases. Today there is little a new associate can afford to take for granted. The legal industry has undergone dramatic changes during the past 18 months. What law firm economics expert Bruce MacEwen of the Adam Smith Esq. blog calls “The Great Reset”1 is far from over, and outcomes are still unclear and being hotly debated.2
