By Karen Dybis
What started as a small group of committed law students has blossomed into a national effort — and a soon-to-be published book — that hopes to change the way law firms work.
Building a Better Legal Profession will release its “Guide to Law Firms: A Ranking of the Nation’s Leading Law Firms” in January 2009. The book is a resource guide for students in the midst of the hiring process, said the book’s lead student editor Irene Hahn.
“The BBLP guidebook gives you the information you need to navigate the hiring process knowledgeably, rather than throwing your hands up and declaring that all law firms are alike except for, say, their relative prestige. They aren’t,” Hahn said. “We want to help students distinguish between firms, and to get them started thinking about those distinctions well before the hiring process begins.”
Hahn said the book attempts to give students a more holistic picture of law firms that asks them to consider factors such as geography, work-life balance, diversity and pro bono commitment.
“We really believe that thoughtful decision-making is good for students and also good for law firms,” Hahn said. “It leads students to choose firms that they are likely to stay with longer, but it also rewards law firms who have done the most to improve, for instance, the diversity of their attorneys or the flexibility of their parental leave policies. Hopefully, this will encourage other firms to re-examine their policies as well.”
BBLP was created in January 2007 by Stanford Law School students. Co-presidents Andrew Bruck and Andrew Canter headed the group, which wrote a well-received white paper about the negative effects of the billable hour requirements at private law firms. Their work was reported widely, including in The Wall Street Journal.
The group’s next move would be even more controversial. Using publicly available data, the BBLP studied law firms on various “quality of life” criteria. The result was a set of rankings for six primary law markets. The group released the data in October 2007 and word spread across media and online outlets nationwide. Law firms either loved or hated the resulting list.
Those that received top rankings liked the attention so much they published it on their Web sites; others made efforts to improve their scores for the next go-around.
These days, the BBLP is working on a campus lecture tour in hopes of starting more chapters, said President Davida Brook. The group recently expanded their rankings to 11 major markets. It also is launching a new effort that will study the partnership path at the nation’s law firms.
So where are “The Andrews” now? Bruck moved home to New Jersey, where he will be clerking for Stuart Rabner, the Chief Justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court. And Canter is in Biloxi, Ms., where he is an Equal Justice Works Fellow with the Mississippi Center for Justice, representing residents of the Mississippi Gulf Coast in a variety of housing matters.
