Many large law firms use networking events, alumni newsletters and other tools to stay connected to attorneys whose careers take them elsewhere. Kirkland & Ellis has taken the idea one step further by providing career counseling services to lawyers who plan to leave the firm—and to those who have already left.

“Thirty years ago, people didn't leave,” their law firms, said Kirkland's alumni engagement director, Chiara Wrocinski. Now, she said, “That's just not the way the world works, or work works.”

Wrocinski said the firm is embracing the reality that most of the lawyers it trains will take their skills elsewhere—and that it's in the firm's best interest to keep them on good terms.