Top firms urged to respect non-legal workers
From the Financial Times, September 13, 2004
Top firms urged to respect non-legal workers
By Bob Sherwood
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/f8a6544a-0523-11d9-8f8e-00000e2511c8.html
Top [London] City lawyers treat their support, IT, finance and human resources staff as second-class citizens and give them pejorative labels, according to the main association of law firm chiefs.
Instead of encouraging the non-lawyers who are critical to the smooth running of firms, most practices are rooted in the past, with staff labeled "non-fee earners" and treated as inferiors, the Managing Partners Forum [a sister organization of the PM Forum] will say this week.
To tackle the cultural divide, the forum is launching an "unsung heroes" campaign to urge lawyers to treat their employees better.
As firms have evolved into complex, often international, organizations, they have increasingly recruited human resources, IT, finance, management, marketing and research professionals to help run their businesses. But many are not given the respect they deserve, the forum says.
Nigel Knowles, managing partner of DLA, a corporate law firm and chairman of the forum, said many partners were "highly competitive" and determined status and rewards by how much clients were billed. In that environment, he said, "it is hardly surprising that those who neither directly bring in fees nor deliver services to clients are referred to in pejorative terms, for example 'non-fee earner'".
In an article in Legal Week, the trade magazine, Mr. Knowles says: "Differentiation between fee earners and non-fee earners, talk about support staff, lawyers and non-lawyers, all reflect a culture of the past. Even in a firm where this terminology has been changed, it persists."
To kick-start the campaign, the forum has conducted the first analysis of non-legal staff, revealing that the top 100 firms employ about 32,500 "practice management professionals", compared with 36,700 client-serving lawyers. Of the total, more than 15,500 are secretaries, 3,248 work in finance and accounts, 3,147 in IT, 1,528 in HR and training, and 1,300 in marketing and public relations.
Mr Knowles adds: "As firms grew rapidly over the past decade ...hiring a cadre of specialists in marketing, finance, HR etc ceased being a luxury and has become a necessity . . . Whilst there is also a changing attitude towards such staff, the second-class citizen syndrome still exists in pockets, and some large pockets at that."
The forum says firms need to change their attitude if they are to recruit and retain the caliber of non-legal professionals they need.
