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my name is ganesh natarajan I am the CEO and co-founder of mine crest we are a legal services company and we have four practice areas litigation support compliance contracts management and legal analytics you know we heard earlier about delivering work of high quality and delivering high quality work is sort of the reason we are in business and we do it by bringing strong technology strong process management and project management and of course great talent which is what we've been talking about today Bloomberg has been a very good partner for us for almost ten years now and we have helped develop some of the bee law products and help and support maintain some of the bee law products and the BNA products they are a fantastic company they are nimble agile and at the forefront of some of the disruption that's happening in the legal world so we are certainly honored to be a sponsor today when Vasily Leon TF the Nobel Prize winning economist was asked is technology going to replace workers his answer was it replaced horses did it not so what is the future of our profession what will happen to our people how do we take care of them nurture them and what is the effect to our bottom line to revenues where is our legal profession going where is the practice of law going where is the business of law going to answer all these questions and more and to figure out what is the state of the legal industry let me introduce you to David Levine who is the general counsel of Bloomberg to kick off this session thank you again leave it thank you good morning the title of this panel on the state of the legal industry is a bit ambitious for a 45-minute session and we're not going to focus for too long on issues that will be addressed by other panels today or which have received so much attention that there is a little which could be additionally contributed in such a short discussion we are going to focus most deeply on an issue that is very seldom discussed but in my view is critical to any discussion on the state of the industry our people and the challenges we face in attracting the best talent to the profession how to train and develop that talent and how to keep that talent engaged I'd like to introduce our spectacular panel of three true leaders in the profession whose breadth of knowledge in our profession is beyond impressive we're truly privileged to have each of them here with us today Steve Gartner who seated in the middle is chair of Willkie Farr and Gallagher my former law firm and is a long-standing member of the firm's executive committee steve is one of the leading corporate attorneys in the country with particular expertise in private equity and mergers and acquisitions steve has been with Wilkie for more than 30 years seated immediately to my left is kimberly harris who is executive vice president and general counsel then bc Universal role she's held since 2013 prior to joining NBC Kim was a litigation partner at Davis pulk with a particular focus on governmental and congressional investigations from 2010 to 2012 Kim served in the White House counsel's office most recently as deputy counsel and deputy assistant to the president seated all the way to the left is Bill perlstein to my left your right who has been the senior deputy general counsel at BNY Mellon since June of 2015 prior to joining the why Bill was at wilmerhale for approximately 40 years give or take I couldn't get another job and was managing partner of the firm from 1998 through 2011 from 2004 through 2011 after Wilmer Cutler's merger with hale and dorr really one of the more successful law firm mergers that we've seen in the last two decades during his tenure at wilmer Bill led the firm's bankruptcy practice so it's an interesting panel and said I am at a risk of offending at least one of you during the course of the panel today and I apologize bill and he reminded me after he made the move has gone from being a firm that viewed us as a as a client to being a client of our company and he certainly reminded me of that when I first saw him after our move you know Steve is chair of wilkie firm that I spent 12 and a half years at and really are our principal counsel in the United States and of course anytime you deal with the media organization as we know you always run the risk before we start the panel discussion I'm going to make a series of personal observations about the industry and where it stands today some of these subjects will be directly or indirectly covered during the panel many will not but I did want to tie it back to the title of the panel and these are observations not in any particular order of importance the first is and this is something that will be covered a little bit later today there has been a dramatic rise of in-house counsel over the past five or ten years which shows no signs of abating the quality and sophistication of in-house legal functions especially at large companies are at an all-time high and there's a lot of work the company's previously used outside counsel for that is now done entirely or mostly internally or at the very least which is actively managed internally we are smarter how to manage outside counsel today we've taken work from outside counsel and it's a trend that will continue ashley is more big law partners make the jump in house three of the panelists on today's panel are former big law partners who are currently in house and don't worry for Steve he can defend himself in the middle perfectly well second there's a greater in-house demand for senior firm lawyers vs junior firm lawyers we're going to talk a little bit about the preference of in-house counsel to use more senior or experienced attorneys who are generally considered to be a better value than more junior lawyers and the decreased reliance on junior big law attorneys given enhanced technology solutions outsourcing and more cost-effective alternatives for discovery due diligence and other types of work that have historically supported big law firms having a five or six associate to partner ratio or the pyramid that so often referred to as we in-house General Counsel's demand less use of very junior attorneys and require more affordable outsource solutions for some of the more wrote or routine work there will be less for junior law firm attorneys to do one of the big questions is will there be fewer of them will they need to specialize earlier in their careers in order to demonstrate that they add more value those are great unanswered questions something ultimately is going to give on biglaw profitability as the pyramid structure is under fire and less firms are able to charge more for partner time to offset the push not to use junior lawyers as much on matters or find some other way to monetize their expertise just to be clear in this comment because I know there are a number of firms that we use in the room today I am not endorsing higher rates for partners by that comment they are high enough on just merely making the observation that that could be one way of maintaining profitability I do see firm expenses going up at a higher clip than revenue and there will be a panel later today on cyber security that's largely a sunk cost for firms because they're not going to be able to pass that along the clients very easily on the issue of associate pay everyone will see in cravats recent announcement my gut reaction was almost identical to the reaction of Craig silliman who's a general counsel of Verizon who was quoted in a story written by bas KC Sullivan who spoke earlier and Craig I'm going to read his quote because it was exactly my reaction to the degree that law firms are reallocating their profits by giving first-year associates higher salaries then this is about their internal business model and it doesn't affect me we don't pay for the first-year associate work but to the degree that the firms are raising salaries across the board and they try to push through these pay increases in higher billing rates that it simply encourages me to look for alternatives weather moving the work in-house or moving work to lower price firms very succinctly put in now these are my words we won't pay for it in-house budgets for outside counsel spender going up in some cases aren't going up in some cases they're going down so the notion of annual increases in the rate card which is typically been accepted is very much in jeopardy so the big question that we're not going to spend a ton of time talking about today because it's going to a lot of publicity we'll talk about it a little is does this mean the billable hour will eventually die of course this is something that's been forecasted probably for two decades it won't completely died of course because there will be matters where it makes sense but we do expect a major shift in how legal services are sold and for the first time really i think legal expenses are being scrutinized like the law is a business and given the trends we've discussed this is only going to intensify third observation is that as a profession we have a terrible record on diversity and it's a big problem many of you will have seen the statistics certainly there are no shortage of women entering the profession yet for the past decades few strides have been made at big law firms in promoting women to the equity partner role and pay for women continues to lag in the profession further on diversity according to the bureau of labor statistics law is one of the least racially diverse professions in the nation eighty-eight percent of lawyers are white if you compare that with a medical field the number is around seventy two percent of physicians and surgeons the numbers are not great just as they're not great for women in terms of promotion of minorities to the part equity partnership ranks at big law firms may be in-house counsel will be able to do something to push firms and Bill and Kim are going to talk a little bit about this but our profession overall has a big problem including the pipeline issue and I believe we need to do something a lot bigger than individual DNI programs and in-house counsel putting pressure on law firms to deal with the issue forth and I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this and Brad touched on this big law partnership isn't what it used to be certainly it's still pretty good and I think the four of us can talk to that but it's changed a lot we don't see as many people who stay partners at firms for as long I think there's a bit more economic free agency both by the firm's and by the partners fifth work-life balance matters to everyone not just women and the legal industry has to and is adjusting but we've done nowhere near enough and last and this is the first topic we're going to discuss as a panel the legal profession is not hot with college grads and this is a point that I believe Matt touched on in his questions with Brad we are seeing what at the very least can be characterized as a correction in the level of interest in joining the profession during the past decade whereas many other professions including engineering medicine and even business seemed to be gaining an interest applications are down even if the nation's top law schools the bar passage rates are down and other professions are doing something when they see issues in terms of interest we've seen banks we're concerned about losing grads to technology firms trying to address the issue in terms of reputation and the way they promote their organizations we're seeing very little in the practice of law I don't know how big the issue is maybe it's a trend that will die shortly but irrespective certainly it's my view that we need to do more so with that said I think the first question and where we want to start with as a macro point is we are seeing a significant decline in interest among young people in the profession and I guess my first question for the panel is do you see this as a problem and we'll start with Bill I've been around this long enough to have seen the the cycles up and down David in terms of the popularity of law certainly when I left Union College I'll put a plug in for you in college bread carp David and I are all Union grads that's basically what we're all here in 1970 I law wasn't that big a deal and there are lots of different things people could do i think it is related to some degree to a lot of what Brad was talking about which is the demands particularly on the private side are twenty-four seven there are good and bad things about the technology as my wife blow we can't we cancelled two-thirds of our vacations when I was coming up through the ranks because if you weren't in the office you couldn't practice law so now we all go with our blackberries in computers and people complain about it but at least you're going and you're able to be there so I think part of it is it is a cycle on the diversity issue which I know we're going to talk about more in detail that is a massive issue that is beyond the ability of the law profit/loss firms and in-house counsel to deal with themselves but I do agree very much with what Brad said which is we really do need to take a leadership role frankly look around this room and it's got to be ninety-five percent white and this is 2016 and there really is a continuing massive issue that that really goes back to my former partner John bleep John Payton's of you which is a really source in the local schools and so on Brad's point about partnering every one of us can partner with the local school and bring the kids they talk to them about what it what it is tell them to have a shot of in fact be able to succeed in profession we can really make a difference but it really takes a real concentrated effort to do it Steve well on the question of the decline in law students I think the law schools are really feeling the pressure today perhaps not the cream of the crop law schools yet but the second and third tier schools are really under strain and it's a financial strain and they're challenged with whether this is a short-term blip or a trend that they have to worry about in a longer-term basis I don't know the answer to that I think from big loss perspective we really haven't seen the impact of that yet we still have a pool of talent that we can tap at the top law schools and at the second and third-tier law schools where we've recruited at willkie for years we probably have 50 law schools represented among our population we can get the top people at those law schools and for us if there was an impact and we haven't seen it yet the first thing we probably do is broaden the number of schools that were approaching and then the other alternative is to dip down lower into the classes at the various law schools so I think for us it's going to be it would have to be a long-term and sustained trend before it had an impact on our hiring yeah I look I think that decline and law school students is a problem if we're not getting the best and the brightest into the profession and if that decline has a disproportionate impact on diversity I don't know what the statistics are but I think that's going to be a serious issue for the profession if fewer people are choosing to go to law school entering the profession and that means that we're getting even fewer diverse lawyers into the profession and we're going to really have to keep an eye on that I agree it's going to be a critical issue we too haven't seen a problem recruiting really high quality talent yet but if it is a long-term trend there's going to be tremendous competition for the best and the brightest so i think that the industry is going to have to come to grips with how to make the profession sexy and interesting again so a question for all of our panelists again and we'll start with with you can what do you say to college students or recent college grads who asked you and I'm sure many do about the practice of law and whether they should go to law school um well look I think illegal education is a great thing you can do a lot with it you don't need to go into big law that's only one possible professional choice so I think it's a great thing to do however i do counsel people not to do it at all costs because i think that there is a real challenge for people who come out of law school with a tremen ous amount of debt and can't find a job and can't pay it off and are starting their professional life really challenged in terms of the financial aspects of a legal career so I I think people have to really be careful that they don't go to law school incur a hundred thousand dollars of debt and with no way to pay it off and what what skills do you think I'm my sense is it has evolved over the last 20 or 25 years what skills do you think somebody needs to have to be a successful attorney today certainly from the in-house perspective adaptability I think that is one of the biggest skills that young lawyers need to develop we in the media industry are are challenged by the rapidly changing landscape and of the digital revolution or evolution and I think it's critical that we have lawyers who can adapt can can really keep pace with changes in the business changes in the law creative thinking I think is something particularly in our industry that is really important for our legal staff to have so that would be the one skill that I think is important to develop and Steve both questions for you as well well as to the second question I think today the skill set has really changed from where it was when when i joined the profession in the words that you would use today probably weren't even on the horizon back then today I think you have to be a good problem solver I think you have to be able to work collaboratively you know whether it's in in-house or at a law firm there's team projects I think you have to have a passion about immersing yourself in the business of your client and really understanding your clients business and I think you have to be adept technologically and those are completely different or new skills that probably weren't on the horizon when I started practicing law in terms of what you tell the young people today I have four kids none of them's a lawyer I think that's probably more reflection of my advocacy skills I love being a lawyer and I and I tell people that I really like what I'm doing you have to have some passion for what you're doing if you're doing this because you're attracted to the money that's a terrible reason if you're doing it because you're going to law school because you have nothing better to do for the next three years that's a terrible reason you really have to have a genuine interest in what we do as counselors and as advocates and as problem solvers for our clients and if those skill sets don't interest you this is not a stopping-off point until you find something better to do I think you know given the debt burdens that the students come out the the challenges they have in finding jobs that can either satisfy their debt or satisfy them intellectually that's a bad strategy if you're if that's the reason you're going to law school today and bill yeah and just to echo a couple points that both my colleagues have made and reinforce what Brad said his daughter if you are not enthusiastic about doing this don't do it that seems to me to be the it used to be as Kim said you'd he went to law school to you it was a good ticket to something else at 150 thousand dollars worth of debt and the selectivity that we all have in hiring that doesn't work anymore the reason and I'll put a plug in for Brad carp Brad carp is the single best client service person I've ever met in my entire life and he did that with the enthusiasm and the cents for every single client that they mattered more than anybody else and that made a difference when I was at warmer he was my lawyer still my lawyer and it is you know the quality is terrific but if it's that dedication that makes a difference you can't fake that and you certainly can't do it for 30 or 40 years so if somebody doesn't have that level of enthusiasm nobody's gonna have brad's but close to it yeah then go on and do something else the other point Steve made a team work at law school teamwork is considered to be the Moot Court partner you're competing with and that is teamwork when you go to business school you go to my son's a good as masters in computer science at Stanford it's all team projects you come to a law firm and you're putting a team you have no idea what to do that's a reason that at warmer we hired a lot of people who did intercollegiate sports because if he did that you understood what your role was you understood 48 who started off as a freshman that you aren't necessarily running the place your first year it's really critical to look for the people who you think are going to be good team players it's not enough anymore just to be smart that used to be enough that that's a necessary quality to be analytical but to be able to work in a team be able to take orders and ultimately give orders is really critical that's a very good segue to the next topic which is discussing the millennial generation which is increasingly coming into our ranks and at least my experience is it's a generation with tends to move more from job to job relatively quickly and seemingly with little concern about how that might impact their resume and I guess from an in-house perspective a like Kim's view on how that looks when you've seen somebody who's been in you know three jobs in in six years and it's sort of a second question there is what can be done to actually hold on to the younger talent for longer in house I know we don't tend to hire as many people who are fresh out of law school we still get people who are three four five years out yeah I I think it depends I always do pause when I see a resume where people have jumped around a lot because you got to wonder why if but if the reason is that somebody has a good explanation and it's the reason is because they wanted a new challenge they wanted to learn a new skill they wanted to advance their development in a very smart and strategic way I actually don't have a problem with that and I and I like that I like people who are really thinking about wanting to make themselves better professionals by developing experience and skills and sometimes you need to have different roles to do that of course if it reflects a wanderlust that somebody isn't really committed that's going to be a problem for me in terms of bringing somebody in house but we do not hire younger lawyers we tend to mean I think the youngest we tend to hire is sort of five or six years out and we work really hard right now on how to keep them engaged the ability to have people move into new roles is harder to do in-house because there's just less upward mobility people tend to stay in roles for a lot longer and there isn't the automatic progression and seniority that you get in a law firm environment but we've done a lot of programs to try to help people what we call develop in place that even if they aren't getting that next title or that next role that we're working on finding them discrete projects where they can take leadership learn management skills we're doing a lot of internal training with people so that they continue to feel engaged and we're trying to draw from our Millennials some creative thinking that some of the lawyers who've been at the company for 10 15 20 years aren't as adept at and really get them to challenge some of our original assumptions of why do we need to have a 30-page contract perhaps it could be five or ten pages and trying to get them to feel ownership over those kinds of things raise those questions and feel like they're really contributing to our common endeavor if you could talk for a minute if you've experienced it on so what is particularly important to some of the younger lawyers that you've seen in house flexibility the desire to feel like they're constantly moving forward and a little bit about your experience in terms of the things that you're hearing from the younger generation about what matters most to them I think the thing I hear the most is that they want to have the work that they're doing be meaningful and they want to have meaningful responsibilities and so we're trying to figure out ways you know everybody needs more junior people who just help the cogs continue to move but we are trying to figure out ways that we can help people understand why what they're doing is meaningful and how it connects to the broader purpose of the company why it's important part of the success that the company has had because I think that's something that this generation seems to really want to feel that they are meaningful I like to draw a little bit of a distinction here you know in house and what we'll talk about retention in a minute we when we lose attorneys feel a great deal of pain particularly when they've learned a lot about our business and have developed very strong working relationships with the business and the cost of replacement is very high and so when we set targets for the year one of our targets in our business plan is to achieve a certain level of retention particularly among the attorneys in our department the law firm model is is a bit different for younger people and so Steve maybe talk a little bit about the law firm you know mentality and what law firms are trying to do we're not trying to do to try and keep some of the younger people around for longer well it is a different model because it's a pyramid structure with historically and up and out model that assumes that a large percent to the people who start are not going to be here in at some point in the future and the kind of you know the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question is what's that point in the future and the longer the better for the law firm and also I think for the law students so we are now much more focused on trying to retain people longer in the system whereas I think earlier you're certainly in my career there was a relative in difference to how many people left early in the in the cycle today it's a failure for us I think if someone's leaving before their fourth year in part because we've made a huge investment in them and in part because I don't think they got the full value of what we had to offer to them and when we have a much more open dialogue with our associates about that that they ought to walk away from a law firm with strong mentoring relationships with strong relationships with partners that are going to continue for the extent of their career if they if they're not walking away with those relationships because they've only been there for one or two years they didn't get the benefit of the bargain from their perspective so what are we doing about it you know when I started working at willkie the bargain for the lawyer was will make you a great lawyer will give you interesting work put your head down and look up six years from now and you'll be a great lawyer who's done a lot of good work that doesn't work anymore so the associates are looking for a lot more communication a lot more dialogue about where the career is going what their options are you know we now have programs with third party providers that provide career counseling so our associates can go speak to a career counselor because they don't want to walk into a partner's office and say hey I'm thinking about doing something else can you can we compare some notes on that we have an open dialogue with the executives in the firm I regularly have open forums with the junior associates the mid-level associates and the senior associates to hear what's on their mind trying I'm talking about what's going on both in the profession and at the firm there's a much more open dialogue with the associates because they are looking for information they're looking for feedback they're looking for direction on where their careers going and where it can go so I want to pivot to more senior lawyers here Steve and stay with you given the relatively small percentage associates who were promoted particularly to the equity partner ranks how do you keep talented individuals around for four long enough those those who truly possess in your mind the ability as much as this can be judged after three or four years or five years to to make it to that look for that stage well the models under attack in some ways because you know from the junior associate perspective as I was just saying about not wanting to lose them to earlier the discussion we want to have with our associates is let's get you to a point in your career where we can have a meaningful dialogue about whether you're going to become a partner at this firm or client of this firm and I can't do that in your second year maybe I can do in your fifth year if I can't get to that point where we can have a meaningful dialogue we've both failed from my perspective but what are we doing for the senior associates first we make a lot of partners Wilkie is committed to providing opportunities for organic growth and we've told our associates we're going to put our money where our mouth is we've made 23 partners internally in the last three years that's a lot and I think if you lined us up on a percentage basis for our peer firms it's probably at the top of the charts and we do that in part because we want to be able to say to our associates if you want to be a partner here and not everybody does but if you want to be a partner here and you're committed and you have the talent there is a real opportunity for partnership growth here we've all seen the the growth of other titled positions whether it's council or non equity partnership tracks we've got we have a lot more Council and we did 10 years ago part of that is to your earlier point David clients want more senior attention they don't want to see the junior lawyers they want more seniors and they want more specialized lawyers so you have to have those skill sets and if you don't have those skill sets you're not going to be able to provide the service to the clients it's not all of those skill sets are necessarily amenable to equity partnership but you have to have those skill sets so that we have to be more flexible in the models going to require more flexibility if this is going to meet the needs of the clients as the clients become more demanding and request more specialization and as the associates look from opportunities to do work in the law firms recognizing that not everybody can necessarily be an equity partner I think to some extent there there are parallels with the in-house environment as well because although there isn't a concept of equity partnership in house there are relatively limited number of what it perceives it's very senior positions within a legal department and since we have a tremendous amount of retention those spots don't become available for too long and for people who are looking for more managerial responsibilities we have similar challenges and Bill I was wondering given your experience both at wilmer and now it be and why if you could talk a little bit about what you've observed in the last year plus it at bny and compare that a little bit with your experience at wilmer in terms of the efforts to retain people who now have significant experience and have options available and i think that there's more of a parallel between the two ah David and I certainly would have imagined before I went in house and it partly goes back to what Steve was saying a few minutes ago one of the skill sets that you have to start developing when you're certainly in a council level with it when you're at a law firm and then when you go in house is the Personnel Management and a lot of the retention issues whether it's at this mid-level associate level at the law firm more senior levels of law firm or in the house is that the more senior people paying attention to the individuals people leave because they feel that they're stagnating they think that they're stagnating because nobody's worrying about their career and somebody comes one of the headhunters many of whom are here today what will come and say to them we've you know we've been identified by a potential client as a real star they just take a meeting with them and all of a sudden somebody's paying attention to them and they get lured by it our job whether it's at a law firm or in-house is to be paying that attention to our people today so that when somebody makes a phone call they don't the meeting so a lot of it is it's really retail it is as Brad was say ng earlier needs to be his management at Paul Weiss it is understanding the individuals figuring out whether their in-house are at a law firm what do they need to do to move up a level in house one of the issues is can you place in the businesses because a lot of the lawyers in-house are as interested in moving over to the business side or at least a quazy business side so you know there is a matter of meeting with your business leaders and saying so-and-so who is your lawyer you know is an opportunity for him or her do you have more business responsibilities and that way you can you keep them in and they see a way of moving up and getting onto the revenue side rather than the business partner side and being on the revenue side is a good place so the but I really do think it is very retail and I think that most lawyers don't view that as their job they view their job solving legal problems well solving the personnel problem today is just as important as solving the legal problem so a bit of a Segway there to managerial skills and an observation that I had being at a firm for twelve and a half years and now being in house for four and a half years which is in back to some of the earlier comments which is law school is a very individual effort which isn't to say that there aren't team study groups or team efforts but it's a very individual effort I'd like Steve's view a little bit on what if anything law firms do once a fresh associate comes in to teach them as they grow and ultimately are working in teams how to work and help manage essentially a more junior lawyers career or is it very much the firm's responsibility so I think if the if the clients were hiring our lawyers and measuring whether we did a good job in teaching those lawyers to be good managers we probably fail we get a failing grade if they if they're measuring us on whether we got those people to be good hopefully we get a good grade I think if we if I think about that certainly in their junior years they're being told focus on becoming a great lawyer as they progress from junior associate the senior associate we're more concerned about the transition because they're then in a position to be delegating and so our focal point then becomes continue to become a good lawyer but learning how to delegate learn how to work with junior associates learn when something should be off your plate not a junior associates plates and how to work with those teams but that's not the full skill set that you need David when you come in and become a general counsel because one of the things that we're not doing is teaching those people okay well when your team comes to you and says well where's my career going where's my career path that's not a skill set we're promoting we are promoting that more at the partner level that becomes much more important at the partner level and we're spending more time and resources on getting the partners trained and improving that skill set because that is a conversation that sad with the associates and with the partners but if the clients were measuring us on the basis of hiring a fifth year associate and seeing whether that associate had managerial skill my guess is most law firms get a D and some of that I think comes back to the issue of retention which is at the junior ranks at the firm there is an expectation of a certain level of turnover and it's very much on the person to figure out if this is something that they want to stick at for a period of time where as in-house as I alluded to earlier when you have high levels of attrition it doesn't work so what we find is people who spent large chunks of their career at a firm and who come in house don't necessarily have the mindset of oh I need to work hard to try and keep my teammates engaged and help them with their career progression and can maybe you can talk a little bit about your experience what you've observed and and what you're trying to do to help develop those managerial skills at NBC yeah I agree a hundred percent that law firms don't train people to be managers and probably shouldn't but we absolutely have to do it when they become in-house lawyers one of my observations over the course of the last reveres has been that I have fantastic lawyers but some of them didn't have the basic skills and how to manage a team because nobody had ever taught them it was no fault of their own but they've never been put in a situation where managerial skills were actually something that they were being evaluated on so what we've done is we've actually created a new management training program for all of our lawyers in the legal department so anybody with more than one report now has to go through a program that we call lead which is a three-day somewhat intensive program where they learn sort of the basics about management and then sort of a higher level class on management all in one course and we're getting everybody through that and then it'll become mandatory as you get to a level within the department that you need to have more than one report and its basic things from how you have the tough conversations in terms of a performance review so that you actually are helping people develop that people most often appreciate an honest straightforward conversation about where their professional development needs are but you need to teach people how to have that conversation and also how to really keep your team engaged going back to some of our earlier themes about people who are moving more frequently in the Millennial Generation part of that and part of the strategy to prevent that is for people to understand how you keep your team engaged how you figure out what their highest skills are how you play to their highest skills how do you figure out what their development needs are provided them with meaningful opportunities to work on those development needs and overall feel connected to the company and excited about the prospect of the work that they're doing I guess one thing that I would add to that really for lawyers who have decided a few years into their legal career to firm that they want to go in-house look for leadership opportunities outside of the firm there are many that are there and I thought at least for me what I learned about leadership most of it was not at the firm it's at the things that I did before I was at the firm or outside of the firm and those opportunities are there and that will make you that much more effective when you actually go in-house and those responsibilities are called upon but I played a senior level agree completely and one of the things that we for people who are looking for leadership or management opportunities in our legal department but don't have that opportunity because of our structure we have a number of department-wide committees we have a diversity committee a professional development committee Communications Committee and we encourage people to take part in those committees as an opportunity to take on a project to show some leadership to have the ability to have good ideas be implemented and it's another way of keeping people developed and learn some of those skills outside of their regular work yeah it can be I think even beyond the those sort of legal committees I think it's important that those of us at the senior levels look to see where we have lawyers on operating committees and other committees like that and make sure that we're the tendency is to put the same people on the other the committee's and to forget about some of the younger people and those are great opportunities for them to get exposure to the business people and also to see how the senior management operations yep so one final question that I'm going to ask the panel and a lot of this you know derives from my earlier comments around technology and lower cost solutions we do we do we think ultimately that the the billable hour and I'd like each of the panelists thoughts on this at the billable hour is is going to be degraded substantially as a means for valuing services that law firms provide or at least charging and Bill we'll start with you um look I don't think it's going away we are all looking for ways to get more discipline so whether it's fixed fee matters whether it is collars whether it is more budgeting at different stages you know the time where you could work we're just simply doing good quality work of the costume matter is is well past but it is still the measure for the vast percentage of the work I think it's you know fifteen or twenty percent is now alternative you know it could go to a third I don't think it's going away but it still ends up being that the baseline that people are using to then come up with whatever the the fixed fee is look let me put on two other quick plugs since I know running out of time one this is just my year being on the inside the law firms assume that we know way too much about what you do you think you're bothering us when you're giving us phone calls or quick emails you're not bothering us don't assume that we know what's going on the quick one page note about have you seen this is invaluable we really do care about it so keep that stuff up to so as long as they don't get charged for that I'm talking we're not going to succumb nents I do not understand why law firm managers resists economist it is the best way to embed a relationship we need help we've got people out on leaves we have projects that come in when we ask you for a sermon and you say no you're doing massive damage to the relationship the vice versa is you put somebody with us for three or six months they they develop invaluable relationships they may end up coming in house that the best thing you can do is place somebody with us for that then they are a client free for the next 20 years but the reluctance that I see and I saw when I was at wilmer with other law firms because we did a lot of it and I still see it at the bank I frankly don't understand what you doing it's much more common in Europe than it is in the United States and and on this point the final comment for Steve on the billable hour look I think we've we've read in the paper for years at the billable hour is dying I think there's less actual evidence of that we're still it's still a small percentage of our revenue that's done in the alternative fee arrangements it's it's probably under ten percent today what i would i would say maybe to brads point about value is that the clients are getting much more disciplined and sophisticated including with their own algorithms about what something should cost and so regardless of what the billable hour is or how many hours are on the matter we're having many more conversations with our clients at the end of the matter or during the matter at the beginning of the matter as to what should this cost and if the client says well we think this should cost about a half a million dollars for this and it comes in at seven hundred fifty thousand dollars the clients don't care about how many hours your work they don't care about what your actual rate was was at 1300 or 1200 what they care about is look we had a view and it's based on some pretty sophisticated data that you guys are fifty percent over cost and I think that discussion is going to drive us more away from the billable hour than anything else because the clients and we are both getting much more sophisticated about the total value proposition for particular matters and certainty really matters particularly when you're on a budget we are well I'd like to thank the panel and conscious that we're over time so probably don't have time for questions from the audience but thanks very much to Bill Steve and Kim