With recent JD’s eager for work, and with a cramped and sullen legal market wary to hire, something has to give. Greenberg Traurig has become the first to offer a sort of residency program as an alternative to full-out hiring of recent JD’s.
The new program would involve less billable work, and more time flat out training, using internet programs. The lawyers will receive less pay, but at the end of the year they will have gotten some work experience, some extra training, and have the possibility of being hired in.
“Obviously law firms have been traditionally very slow to change,” said Greenberg CEO Richard Rosenbaum, as reported by AM Law Daily. “As we’ve all seen and read, this is certainly a time where change is way overdue in the way we hire, pay, and charge for lawyers at various levels, frankly.
Though they are the first to implement such a project, of Am Law 200 firms, they have some inspiration from Kara MacCullough, who created a similar training program in which new hires were bestowed with the title of “fellow.”
This allows the firm to give work to “fellows” and charge less for it, considering they are not full-blown associates.
“This isn’t supposed to be some sort of second-class opportunity,” said Greenberg president and treasurer Bradford Kaufman. “What we’re trying to do is make sure we’re not losing the opportunity to bring in phenomenal legal talent because the marketplace is saying we don’t value recent grads any more.”