Human Capital Management Update

Weil, Gotshal & Manges is one of the largest legal firms in the world, with over 1,000 attorneys handling everything from corporate law and intellectual property to tax cases, trusts, and estates. Despite this diversity, the firm's lawyers all share one characteristic that distinguishes them from other barristers—their ability to exercise legal judgment. "We are not the type of law firm that tells clients 'On one hand you could do this, and on the other hand you could do that—you decide,'" says Cal Link, head of human capital management systems.

Instead, clients see their various options laid out before them and then hear which is preferable based on the firm's legal insights. "Clients pay us for our expertise," Link says.

If expertise is a differentiator in the business, how can the firm make sure it's successfully developing that talent? "I'm often asked, 'How do you teach judgment?' and the answer is: you don't," Link says. "But you can teach people the skills and competencies they need to survive the life experiences necessary to develop judgment," he explains. To do this, Weil, Gotshal & Manges created what it calls competency models, which are a vital part of its new talent management strategy.

SUBHED: Skills Guidelines
Competency models encompass all the skills necessary to perform specific roles within the firm, whether for attorneys in all the various legal domains or the support staff that keeps the business systems running. Models also vary according to each person's personal profile. "We are working on developing competency models for each practice area, where we expect attorneys to have certain competencies in their first year of practice, their second year, and so on," Link says. "The models provide a roadmap for advancing people through the firm and helping them grow."

The elements of the competency models become topics for discussion in performance reviews. The models also provide guidelines for how individuals can direct their own development by choosing new training that allows them to eventually step into larger roles to advance their careers.

A cornerstone for the competency-model efforts at Weil, Gotshal & Manges is the HR applications within Oracle's PeopleSoft Enterprise Human Capital Management suite. Important modules for the firm include Benefits Administration and ePerformance, the latter providing a foundation for the firm's recently launched talent management activities. "Surrounding the whole issue of talent management, we started with the performance evaluation process because we needed to know where we were and to get people used to the idea that we need to start managing this in a more holistic fashion by tying it into development," Link says.

Link values having all the various modules integrated within a single package. "One of the big advantages is that we have all the functionality in one suite as opposed to buying multiple best-of-breeds that we have to chain together," he says. "They were meant to work together out of the box. The performance management module can be tied into competencies. I can set up one competency model, and it works across all the modules."

The cross-module integration also means the firm can evaluate the effectiveness of its talent management efforts. For example, Link can analyze employee training costs for ROI or to make training/ hiring decisions. "If we were thinking about entering a new practice area of law, we might ask ourselves if we're going to retrain our current attorneys, which would be pretty expensive, or look to recruit that talent. [The software] helps us make decisions about where we are going to put our resources."

The decisions could affect both short- and long-term strategies by guiding new recruiting efforts initially and then by providing new competency profiles as a foundation for evaluations of people in the new practice areas.

Link says he has one prime measurement for the success of his firm's ongoing talent management efforts. "The only way you can tell if you're successful or not is how you look from the eyes of the clients, which is a reflection of the business we win," Link says. "Everything in professional services has to tie into success in the business; there's no fluff about it. We know that our talent management strategies are working as we win more and gain market share."

Alan Joch is an independent writer focusing on business and technology.

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