legal sanity

We all know people who address a problem by researching it from a hundred different angles. They learn about its origins, offshoots and all known and potential solutions.

But, once they’re armed with this arsenal of information, they freeze up; they can’t move from their place of intellectual understanding into action. Instead, they retreat under the guise of needing more input or a better strategy.

For several years, I’ve been following surveys and other reports on associate contentment and attrition. The wants and needs of associates have been scrutinized along gender, generational, economic and other lines.

Here’s a core sampling of some recent coverage on the subject:

The ABA Journal’s What Associates Want offers a synopsis of a Hildebrandt executive summary on associate satisfaction and morale (pdf).

The Legal Times, via Law.com, outlines Why Associates Bail Out of Law Firm Life and what firms can do to anticipate attrition and prepare for its impact

A bit of the bigger picture comes through this overview of a survey on work/life balance and this take on an employee engagement study.

Given the wealth of information available to law firm management and HR teams, the question remains: Are firms stuck in the information-mining process or are they acting on the data to benefit their current and future associates?