The better it is to be a partner at firm X, the worse it is to be an associate

Titled Big Firm Blues, Bruce MacEwen has blogged on an interesting correlations exercise on last year's AmLaw associate satisfaction survey and PPP numbers. What he found (working on this together with Prof. William Henderson) is alarming in terms of prospects for the future of law firms. The bottom line is that the higher profits are per partner, the lower the following indices are likely to be:

• associate satisfaction
• interest level of work
• partner-associate relations
• openness of finances
• communication toward partnership status.

I would say that at least associate satisfaction and interest level of work can be dealt with by investing in knowledge management:

1. Most obviously, if all the menial tasks like drafting basic stuff over and over again are taken away from an associate because it can be found in a well maintained KM system, (ideally honed by constant feedback loops and therefore of high quality) more interesting work is likely to be in the pipeline. More interesting work of higher value that is...
   
2. Associate satisfaction I believe is connected point 1 as it is certainly more satisfying to do more interesting and higher value work, but this can also come out of a culture of collaboration, which KM can help to foster. It is not rocket science that collaborative people helping each other are highly likely to be more satsfied with their work environment.
   

The last three points, there is not much KM can do about and the danger is, as Bruce says in his posting, the law profession will "continue to be a profession that consistently over-indexes on alcohol abuse, divorce, mid-life crises, and other key indicators of social, emotional, and, dare I say, spiritual, health."

I believe KM can not only make law firms more profitable, but also raise associate satisfaction and the interest level of work, thereby helping law firms to be profitable AND good places to work.