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&lt;p&gt;How accountable should BigLaw partners be for associate happiness? Stephen Harper, Northwestern law professor and former Kirkland partner, says &amp;ldquo;more.&amp;rdquo; &lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The American Lawyer&#39;s most recent midlevel associates survey reports the lowest overall level of associate satisfaction since 2004.  (Vault historical data on associate satisfaction supports this conclusion.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Harper observes that, for too many of the low-ranked firms, there is an inverse correlation between sources of associate satisfaction (relations with partners, level of the work, training and guidance, management&#39;s openness) and the &amp;ldquo;metrics that dominate today&#39;s large law firm business models&amp;rdquo; (billables, leverage ratios, profits):&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;The absence of a metric by which firms hold partners accountable for associate satisfaction means that it gets ignored. From there, it&#39;s a short step to the unhappiness that this year&#39;s survey results capture.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;He offers this prescription for unhappy firms:&lt;/p&gt;&lt;i&gt;[P]retend that there&#39;s a cost associated with young attorney dissatisfaction that their short-term profit-maximizing metrics aren&#39;t capturing. Then they should look at the categories by which associates measure their satisfaction. Finally, they should develop a mechanism for evaluating partner behavior that takes those categories into account--and rewards or penalizes partners accordingly. At the end of this process, thoughtful leaders might find that they&#39;ve improved their own lives along the way, too.&lt;/i&gt;&amp;nbsp; &lt;br&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: right;&quot;&gt;-posted by brian&lt;br&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

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