Law profs as free agents part deux

Awhile ago I wrote about Clay Gillette's concern that law profs had become like free agents.

To which Bill Henderson responds that the answer is building firm-specific capital. He predictably uses the law firm analogy, and recommends contracts.  And, yes, I've written about the importance of enforcing non-competes (i.e. financial penalties) to encourage lawyers to stick around.

But Jeff Lipshaw points out that there's a chicken and egg problem – you need the culture, or the contract will quickly unravel in a prisoners' dilemma. Of course how to create the culture has bedeviled organizational theorists. When you move to non-profits, and the problem of finding a pie to split, it gets a lot harder, and the contractual solution less realistic.

(BTW, though Bill is writing on the Empirical Legal Studies blog, he defers the real "empirical" question here – is there really an increase in lateral departures?).

Gordon Smith responds that maybe joy is the answer. Oy, isn't it hard enough to create a culture without having to worry about joy, too?

So what's my solution? At the most simplistic level, there are things you can do. Incentives matter, and they don't have to be mutually exclusive. How about building into the general compensation and promotion system incentives to mentor, comment on colleagues' papers and constructive attend workshops? Note that none of these things interferes significantly with individual achievement. Also, schools should (like Illinois) hire with a view to creating synergies – groups of colleagues forming centers of excellence. The group then provides some of the glue for its members.

But I want to emphasize that these aren't magic bullets, and that they operate within the much larger universe of organizational science I referred to above.

Comments

[Bill Henderson]

Larry, has Gillette's essay prompted a line of inquiry that could produce meaningful institutional change, perhaps because the economics of legal higher education are shifting?

Or, in your experience, is this meditation a recurring theme -- i.e., soon human beings will return to behaving like human beings, with all the good and no-so-good that that entail?

BTW, I agree that incentives should not be seen as distinct from culture. Incentives reflect organizational decisions and culture. thx. bh.

[Steve Bainbridge]

If you don't want law professors acting as free agents, offer them a defined benefit retirement plan structured to reward staying put. When I get depressed about California's budget woes, I remind myself that I'm only about 15 years away from sinking my teeth into an incredibly generous defined benefit retirement system.