TM - January 2008 - (Page 51)

instance, I lecture at Harvard, Yale, Stanford. I teach the entertainment law class at USC and seminars at UCLA. We travel all over and lecture at bar associations, trade groups, etc. People come to us rather than us having to go out and seek them. because great people from all those areas are coming out. You’d have to do the opposite — try to prevent people from making it into your law firm and making it to partnership — in order not to have diversity. We were diverse before it became popular. All we did was open our arms to anyone who was a quality lawyer. TM: Stein: You’ve done quite a bit around diversity improvement. Tell us about that. We’re very entrepreneurial. We take a lot of contingency cases, and we look for new emerging markets where we can take advantage of our expertise. For instance, we have an Asia practice, which is very unusual for a firm our size. A number of our lawyers speak Korean fluently and know the Korean market. I recently lectured to the Entertainment Law Society of Korea because they’re going to institute a Talent Agencies Act, and I’m an expert on the California Talent Agencies Act. We also have a very strong Chinese practice, and we’re developing various other areas, as well. We were given an award for being the most diverse firm because we have a great number of AfricanAmerican, Hispanic and Asian lawyers, and a tremendous number of women lawyers, including our partner level, not just young associates. A couple of years ago, we had a group of young partners, and of the seven, I think two were AfricanAmerican, two were Asian, one was Hispanic, and four of the seven were women. The Daily Journal called me and said, ‘Tell me about your diversity program.’ I said, ‘What diversity program?’ They said, ‘Wait a second, you must have an incredible diversity program. Look at your young partners.’ And I said, ‘No. We don’t actually have a formal program. We interview people, and we hire them based on their qualifications.’ If you look at the number of people coming out of law schools nowadays, it’s not hard to have more women than men partners. And it’s not hard to have candidates of any racial, ethnic or religious background, TM: Stein: What challenges impact talent management in your organization? The biggest challenge is that people know of much larger firms, the international firms that are thousands of lawyers, and people have to recognize we do the same caliber of law. They can deal with as many important and exciting cases at a firm of our size as they can at a larger firm. Do you think having a different model from the average law firm has impacted your talent management strategy positively? TM: Stein: No question. Many of our associates and partners are refugees from larger firms where they found the style of practice there unsuitable to their lifestyle and/or their moral codes. We don’t take certain types of cases where we feel we’re on the wrong side of the issue. [At] most of the larger firms, the issue seems to be totally irrelevant. The ability of the client to pay seems to be the only serious consideration. How do you measure workforce performance? TM: Stein: We measure by client satisfaction, by reputation in the community, by results on successful litigations or deals. At a lot of the larger firms’ profitability is based on hours the same way a manufacturer would base profitability on the number of widgets they can turn out. We’re talent management magazine www.TalentMgt.com 51 January 2008 http://www.TalentMgt.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of TM - January 2008

TM - January 2008 Editor's Letter Contents Learning Connections: Working With Those People Leading Edge: Hub Caps for a Buggy Human Performance: Hawthorne Effect Revisited Beyond Affirmative Action: The Changing Face of Recruitment Assessment Centers in Talent Management: Strategies, Use and Value Nontraditional Benefits- How to Hook the Best Talent Intersection of Web 2.0 and Talent Management Cross-Training for Workforce Agility Mapping Talent Among Younger Workers Dashboard: Using Personality Data to Identify and Develop High-Potential Leaders Application: Shaffer Title Uses Myers-Briggs to Develop Common Corporate Language, Jump-Start Growth Insight: Dreier, Stein & Kahan LLP: Using Strategy to Bring Back the Law Profession Advertisers' Index Editorial Resources Full Potential: Stop in the Name of Leadership

TM - January 2008

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