Given that assistant solicitors so often complain of being downtrodden, at least in terms of job satisfaction, they may be surprised to discover quite how central a role they play in law firm thinking. Rarely will a firm make a decision – or a public utterance for that matter – without an anxious assessment of how this constituency will react. It is an approach born of necessity. Law firms live or die by the quality of their recruits and their ability to retain, nurture and replenish them in sufficient numbers.
Hence – in the face of the current revival in the wider fortunes of the City – the splurge of initiatives by firms to explore alternative career paths for their assistants as a means of keeping them. It is easy to be cynical about such efforts. The large sums of money being handed out to inexperienced young lawyers speak volumes about the success of such projects up to this point. And the constraints within which law firms operate – both internal and external – make a radical overhaul of career structures highly unlikely any time soon. But this is not just window dressing, given the financial benefits that would flow from even a small reduction in current attrition rates.
