BigLaw Moneyball
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Littler Mendelson is the second Am Law 100 firm (after Drinker Biddle & Reath) to follow in the Oakland A’s footsteps by hiring a dedicated head of data analytics. It’s only a matter of time before Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill are playing Big Law partners.
In job interviews with half a dozen law firms last year, Zev Eigen quizzed firm leaders as much as they probed him. They wondered what a data scientist with a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology could do for them.
He was curious what they would let him do.
Eigen, a Cornell-educated lawyer who was on the faculty at Northwestern University School of Law at the time, developed a test for what he calls “status quo bias” at law firms. He told managing partners that their firms should be teaching and training their own would-be first-year associates in jurisdictions such as California and New York that allow apprentices to sit for the bar exam. The plan would save firms $880,000 in salary per associate over a 10-year timeframe.
The idea was almost always tossed aside. Firms can’t hire associates without a top-flight law degree, Eigen was told. Big Law is a prestige game, after all.
“That’s an incorrect answer, and it means someone is not facile in their thinking,” Eigen said.
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