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The process of matching young lawyers to practice groups at law firms is more or less standard across the industry—and deeply flawed.

Law students heading into their third year of law school, many of whom have never held a full-time job, are exposed to a whirlwind experience meant to approximate the practice of law at a prospective employer. In between social events, training and other summer associate program elements, they are encouraged to undertake assignments from different practice groups with the firm.

After a two- to three-month experience, they are asked to indicate their preference for a practice group that, if they're fortunate enough to receive an offer, will be their focus for years to come—perhaps even their entire careers.

At the end of my own summer associate experience, I was asked to fill out a form listing three practice groups in order of my preference. I listed corporate, then litigation, and finally bankruptcy, the latter only because I'm a natural rule follower and didn't want to leave a line blank. As luck would have it, I was slotted into the bankruptcy group, an eventuality I never anticipated, as evidenced by the fact that I never took a single class on the subject in law school.

This is no way to help a young lawyer—or a more experienced one, for that matter—work at the peak of her potential. Why? Because a young lawyer's experience is too limited to accurately predict what practice group will be the right fit based on a summer spent at a law firm. And, perhaps most important, the negative consequences of a mismatch between an individual's abilities and interests and the work they do are too great to not design more effective processes.

'Match Quality' Leads to More Satisfied Lawyers

In his new book "Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World," David Epstein extols the importance, for both employers and employees, of "match quality" in employment. Put simply, match quality, which correlates strongly with job satisfaction and performance, is high when there is a solid fit between one's work and one's interest in the work. Epstein argues that most who specialize early in their careers have a hard time finding the right fit because they haven't been exposed to enough different experiences. Those who achieve better match quality, on the other hand, spend more time experimenting.

This is easier said than done, however, as pursuing match quality is a long-term strategy, not a short-term one. Someone who experiments to find the right match is likely to fall behind her more specialized counterparts in the short term. In a law firm environment, in which time is money, neither young associates, who are optimizing for billable hour-based bonuses, nor law firms, which are similarly focused on near-term revenue, believe they can afford periods of exploration that may ding the bottom line.

As a result, we're largely stuck with the choose-and-hope-for-the-best model, foisted upon young professionals who often lack the breadth of life and work experience necessary to make an informed choice, which leads to a poor practice group fit for many associates.

Instead, a model that empowers young lawyers to explore the many options that law firm life affords would lead to better long-term outcomes, not only because match quality correlates strongly to job satisfaction, but also because it would help lawyers be happier.

Greater Autonomy Equals Greater Happiness

Surveys suggest that career dissatisfaction among lawyers, and even rates of depression, are on the rise. According to 2016 research from the American Bar Association, 28% of lawyers experience mild or higher levels of depression, 19% experience anxiety, 23% experience chronic levels of stress, and 21% struggle with problematic drinking.

Many theories have been posited about the root causes of the unhappiness epidemic in the profession, including overwork, stress and the adversarial nature of the law, to name a few. Undoubtedly, all of those things are contributing factors. Less clear, at least on the surface, is what the fix is.

Money, which is often presumed to be the magic elixir, doesn't seem to be the answer. Data compiled by the American Bar Association shows that average lawyer pay has nearly doubled since 1997, yet at the same time we know that unhappiness, depression and anxiety rates continue to spike. So what gives?

In my experience coaching lawyers over the last decade, I've come to believe that the factor that leads to most lawyer discontent is a lack of career control. The demands of the job are overwhelming. Clients expect 24/7 responsiveness. Lawyers without their own books of business are at the beck and call of their colleagues who do. An unwelcome email, phone call or pleading from an adversary on a Friday afternoon can turn one's weekend upside down.

In short, most lawyers lack autonomy over their time and circumstances. And research cited by the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology shows that autonomy, defined as "the feeling that your life—its activities and habits—are self-chosen and self-endorsed," is the No. 1 predictor of happiness in people across the general population.

More important for our purposes is that autonomy is what brings lawyers the most happiness, too. That's a key finding of a study conducted by Florida State University College of Law professor Lawrence Krieger and University of Missouri (Columbia) psychology professor Kennon Sheldon. The study found that while factors typically associated with success, such as money and status, "showed nil to small associations with lawyer well-being," autonomy was integral to lawyer happiness.

Experiment and Explore to Find the Right Fit

Over the long-term, it's important for lawyers to specialize in order to develop the deep expertise necessary to appeal to clients who are increasingly desirous of specialized expertise. However, a more generalist approach early in one's career, which allows a lawyer to gain broad exposure to different areas of the law, is necessary to allow a lawyer to match abilities with interests and effectively specialize down the road.

Not only will more options make young lawyers feel more autonomous, and therefore happier, but it's likely to benefit law firms—again, over the long term—by fostering a more productive, engaged and stable workforce.

Unfortunately, because of sky-high associate salaries, many law firms likely believe that implementing a rotation system for young lawyers is not financially feasible. Nonetheless, some firms at the top of the legal market, such as Cravath, Swaine & Moore and Milbank, maintain varying degrees of rotation programs for associates, allowing their lawyers to gain experience with different partners and practice groups during their first years of practice.

Whether firms succeed due, in part, to their rotation programs, or they merely can afford rotation programs due to their success, is a "chicken or egg" question with no obvious answer. Nonetheless, it's worth considering whether well-structured rotation programs—often seen as a vestige of the past—might be integral to the success of more firms, and their lawyers, in the future.

One thing we know for sure is that, in other domains, empowering young professionals with more choice early in their careers leads to greater satisfaction and retention. For example, as Epstein explains in "Range," the U.S. Army struggled for years to retain its best-trained, best-qualified officers—in particular, those who attended West Point—beyond their five-year service commitment following graduation. A $500 million retention bonus program didn't work. Those already inclined to stay claimed the bonus while those who planned to leave for the private sector still bolted.

Money didn't make an impact, but what the Army tried next—greater choice and autonomy—did. The Army's officer Career Satisfaction Program allowed young officers to choose the branch or geographic post they desired in return for an additional three-year commitment. According to the Army, the Career Satisfaction Program, through which officers have more choices about their future after having gained real-world experiences that inform those choices, has allowed it to retain "a large number of talented officers beyond their fifth year of service."

There's no way to say with certainty what a perfect program for young lawyers looks like. There is too little variation in the way most firms currently allocate lawyers to practice groups to draw conclusions rooted in data. However, research suggests that empowerment, for the purpose of fostering greater autonomy, should be at the core of any program. A hybrid approach, which empowers, but does not force, young lawyers to explore and experiment may strike the perfect balance.

Jay Harrington is an executive coach and trainer for lawyers and law firms and is the author of the new book, "The Essential Associate: Step Up, Stand Out, and Rise to the Top as a Young Lawyer." He is the owner of Harrington Communications and is associated with Simier Partners. Contact him at [email protected].