Editor's Comment: Opportunity flops

Should the deferred do something useful?

It's one of the most well-worn cliches to assert that what happens in the US soon finds its way over here, but there is one legal development stateside having little success crossing the ocean. So while US and UK law firms were both engaged in substantial job cuts in Q1, American firms have led the way in offering deferred lawyers enhanced compensation to take on pro bono or community services work. Among those to have made the most impressive commitment is Latham & Watkins, which in February announced it was offering deferring US lawyers $75,000 (£53,000) a year for taking on community service. Not all US law firms have been so generous, though quite a few have put in place some kind of scheme to channel or encourage deferred lawyers towards non-profit work. It seems like a no-brainer, a classic win-win in that it gives incoming lawyers something worthwhile to do and broadens their skills, and gives law firms a chance to head off bad publicity and support the community. And while it costs hard-pressed law firms money, the expenditure is relatively minor given that it has become standard practice to offer compensation to the deferred regardless.

And yet such creative thinking has been largely absent in the UK, with only the honourable exceptions of Clifford Chance and Denton Wilde Sapte, which are both offering an additional £3,000 for community service activity on top of a no-strings compensation package. It seems a strange omission, coming after a period in which UK law firms have been increasingly eager to stress their pro bono credentials. For the cynics this will be more evidence that such commitments were purely made for marketing and recruitment purposes, though a realist would argue that enlightened self-interest is an entirely valid way of harnessing private sector energy for the public good.

To be fair, the lack of pro bono infrastructure in the UK compared to the US would make it more of a challenge for UK law firms to push deferrals towards worthy causes and UK firms respond that they have informally helped interested trainees gain pro bono positions. And even in the US there has been some concern about how the not-for-profit sector will provide resources and training for an army of deferred attorneys.

Still, these are surmountable obstacles and it seems like a missed opportunity not to get deferrals doing something useful, either commercially or socially. Why haven't more firms gone down the route of Hammonds, paying deferrals £1,000 a month to work on secondments with clients, which looks an even more unambiguous winner than backing community service? And they wonder why junior lawyers all look and sound the same.

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