Law firms are hiring more business professionals, and the recruiters who help fill these roles are also staffing up. Both can have sharp insights into how well firms are preparing for the future. Welcome to this week's installment of the Law Firm Disrupted. Email me here or sign up to receive this newsletter here.

'Revenue Enablers' Know Best

I was speaking earlier this week to Jennifer Johnson Scalzi, CEO of management consulting and executive search firm Calibrate Legal, for an article I've got in the works on the growing presence of non-lawyer professionals in law firms.

At least, that's how I started the conversation. Scalzi, however, prefers to call them “revenue enablers.”

“It's become a pejorative term,” she says of “non-lawyers”—one that reinforces the historical hierarchy of haves and have-nots in the industry.

Of course, there are structural reasons that hierarchy persists. Regardless of how well these folks do their jobs, they will never have a shot at an ownership stake in the firm. (Let's keep an eye on what the State Bar of California is doing, however.)

Calibrate itself made some news this week by hiring one of these professionals, err, revenue enablers—Burr & Forman's former client relations director—as its new director of recruiting and consulting strategy. So did Lowenstein Sandler, which announced it had hired business professionals from three competing Am Law 200 firms.

Scalzi reminded me that folks in these roles have a particularly useful perspective about the direction a firm is headed. It's something they can feel every day when at work. A mid-level business development specialist called earlier in the week and said she was frustrated with her job. The practice leader with whom she works directly has a full book of business. That's good. What's bad is that she hasn't been able to meet with him since October. That's not helpful for her work on behalf of the other 75 global finance attorneys in the practice, and she's now working on finding a new job.

Here's a firm that is very successful in the moment. But, according to Scalzi, it's one lacking an orientation towards the future. Change is hard, she concedes, especially when the present-day revenue is rolling in. But law firm leadership needs to recognize that the old ways of bringing in business won't necessary be effective when the next generation of attorneys is at the helm.

“They have to be motivated by laying a foundation for the future, when they are long gone,” she says.

Scalzi furnishes job-seekers with a standard set of questions for interviews, which helps them assess whether a future employer is tuned into their long-range goals or not. The three professionals who joined Lowenstein were presumably assuaged by managing partner Gary Wingens, who acknowledged to my colleague David Gialanella that his firm was in a “much more sophisticated and in some ways complicated business” than just one decade ago.

If the person doing the hiring doesn't have a satisfactory answer to a question like “What are the current industry disruptors and will they affect the firm?” it's likely a place where revenue enablers will languish, rather than be allowed to make a difference.

That doesn't do anyone a favor. If you're bringing these folks on board simply to check a box, because your peers are doing it, maybe think again. Your firm won't benefit, and your new hire won't either.

In the News

➤➤Anyone who reads this briefing is undoubtedly familiar with Kirkland & Ellis' remarkable rise. This look by the Financial Times will fill those from the outside of the industry in on Kirkland's transformation from a shop where the vast majority of revenues came from disputes to one where three-quarters come from deals, and what might happen if the private equity boom dries up. (The comments are fun too!)

➤➤Private equity may have fueled Kirkland's ascent, but when it comes to the Fortune 500, more minority and women-owned firms are getting the call. That's the take away from my colleague Dylan Jackson, who reported that GCs are frustrated by the failure of Big Law to advance diversity goals. Plus, they find the quality of work equivalent to Big Law.

➤➤This week in Big Four developments: PwC is splitting up its audit practice, according to the FT. That's on the heels of KPMG's announcement last month that it was overhauling the governance structure of its audit division, in response to the same pressure by UK regulators. This will cost PwC $38 million a year. Might that have any impact on their investment in legal? Unlikely. As an attorney told me last year, $50 million is a “rounding error” to these guys.

Back again next Thursday! What do you want to hear about? Tell me at [email protected]. Sign up here to receive The Law Firm Disrupted as a weekly email.