Legal Conference Season Part 1: ALA Annual
Dustin Bolander and Eden Minucci each attended a different legal conference in back-to-back weeks. First up was Dustin at ILTA’s LegalSEC, and the next week Eden was at ALA’s Annual conference. In a short transcribed call, they discuss the variety of topics that came up at each. The conversations have been lightly edited.
ALA annual conference 2023: seattle
Eden: I think one of my big takeaways was that every time I go to these conferences, I get, I get so excited, I get energized, I get motivated to implement so many of the things I learn. There's a lot of things that I wanna do.
But, how is someone ever going to do all of that when they get back?
So, one of my ah-ha's was that there’s a great opportunity for outsourcing around these new ideas that we take away from conference and that you want to implement in your firms.
And one of those big ones, Michael Cohen from Duane Morris spoke and he was talking about five things that you can do to make your firm a destination employer. Number one was to conduct a pay equity assessment to determine if anyone in the firm has been disparately impacted by old or current policies, whether by earning too much money or less in comparison to their peers.
And the reason for that, it's good for absolutely everything. It's good for the people who are there, when you're talking about salaries, and you can say “we are conducting a pay equity assessment” it's good for when you're recruiting.
Dustin: Like “we're aware and cognizant of like this is a potential problem, so we're making sure.”?
Eden: Exactly! “We are aware”, and it was even one of the key notes, you can say we're planning to do it. We're doing it. We did it. All of it demonstrates your awareness, and that is a really valuable thing to do. I mean, there's so many insightful recommendations that came out of that presentation, but that was really one where we spent the most time and I think that it's one of the most important things.
But it's also something that people don't necessarily have the expertise to do, especially in small and medium sized firms.
Dustin: So how would that work? Is it like auditing against kind of like salary guides and stuff to make sure?
Eden: Well, so how it works is that you actually look at the people who are already in your firm. You look at their job, length of service, pay history, you look at their experience before joining the firm, and their demographic information. I've done pay equity assessments before and you can review experience and qualifications, then you can standardize along those lines and then you can see like, oh my goodness, this person is completely out of whack. It wasn't intentional, but you know, Sally came, and she had five years of industry experience and she's been with us for five years. This is what she's earning. And then we have Mary, who was similarly situated but at a very different salary.
And, then you can see where you may have disparities, and it is particularly good for identifying and actually looking for disparities that fall along protected classes and determine if we need to do something to adjust that. Sometimes you just have disparities because people started at a different pay rate, because maybe somebody was hired by this hiring manager.
Dustin: Or, like partners, favorite associates who they give the most work to.
Eden: Exactly.
Dustin: Yeah, that's the first place my mind went.
Eden: And, then also there are reasons for disparities that are based on performance. The favorite associate may get more work because they have a great work product. If we drill down deeper, we’d consider their performance evaluations. Did this person perform better or, you know, are our performance evaluations kind of out of whack? That could explain it.
There's a lot of things you can do, but this one really excited me because I think it's really important. Pay equity is important. It's important to people outside your firm. It's important to people inside your firm. We get audits, law firms get audits asking them about, especially for big clients, they want you to, they want you to report on your diversity, equity, inclusion (DEI).
Equity is a big piece of DEI. In 2019, 170 general counsels signed an open letter to law firms, saying they will prioritize working with firms that commit to diversity and inclusion. You don’t have the D and the I without the E, for equity.
Interested in a pay equity assessment? CGP offers a turnkey package at a cost of $250/employee.