Sloan and Harrison Case Solution And Analysis, HBR Case Study Solution & Analysis of Harvard Case Studies

Sloan and Harrison

Background and Introduction:

The US legal industry was comprised of approximately 165,000 law firms in which around 1 million lawyers were employed. Out of these 165,000 law firms, Sloan and Harrison is a law firm that was founded by two attorneys in Washington DC in 1959. The company is comprised of nearly 1100 attorneys and about 1500 support staff. The company has been involved in several high profile cases for larger clients. The main services of the company include the provision of: high quality legal services, government contracts and intellectual property cases. Moreover, the company is engaged in providing guidance for all aspects of company contract group. The company is headquartered in Washington D.C and has its offices in Paris, Madrid, Beijing, San Diego, Atlanta and Houston.

Problem identification:

Primary challenges faced by the company include increasing employee turnover as employees were not satisfied with the management of the company; thus they were quitting their job. In addition to that, the company was facing low morale within its associates. The primary reason behind employee turnover and low morale was that the associates did not have any share in the equity of the company as partners. Moreover, a survey has been done to identify the issues within the associates and revealed that dissatisfaction among the employee associates was continuously increasing. The main cause behind dissatisfaction was lack of communication with the partner, lack of mentorship provided from the partner’s side and work-life balance.

General Analysis:

The case identifies the major problem faced by the associates of the company; Amy Finch who was a 27 year old girl was having issue related to lack of communication from the management side. According to her, management never gave her specific directions or instructions. Chris Darrow, who was a 33 year old man, was facing difficulty in maintaining work-life balance. He completely failed to differentiate between his family and business life. Further, Mary McDeere was having issue about the lack of guidance from the mentor’s side. Terry Hagen, on the other hand, found his work boring and uninteresting.

In order to find out the solutions of the issues mentioned above, the company needs to find out ways to solve these issues. In order to reduce the complaints and the dissatisfaction level of associates, the company has implemented a program to reduce the complaints and applied it in the Washington office for pilot testing. If the plan helps the company to reduce the level of complaints from its associates then, it will be applied to other offices as well. The company has done a survey in its Washington and Atlanta office to find out the difference between an associate’s responses.

With the help of this program, the office partners of the company took measures to communicate well from the associates of the company. Moreover, training and leadership programs were provided to the associates to increase their morale along with their managerial skills. With the intention to decrease the conflicts between personal and professional life, the company has made an attempt to shift its procedure from process oriented to outcome oriented that means one can do his work from home as well. In addition, flexible working hours facility has been given to the associates according to their priorities. The company has implemented these programs to reduce the level of complaints from the associates and it is a part of the company’s overall encouragement of diversity and tolerance. Further, the company has tried to formalize the process to provide proper mentorship to the associates of the firm.

Statistical Analysis:

One thing noticed by the HR staff in the Washington office is an increased number of applications for new associates. Traditionally, the selection process for the firm averages a validity (R) of .46. However, the selection ratio for the Washington office of the firm has dropped from 20% to 10% raising the average standardized selection score from 1.2 to 1.6. In addition to that, the rate of voluntary turnover in the Washington office has decreased from 13% to 8% out of a total of 185 associates. In the previous year, the rate of turnover in the Atlanta office; was 14% out of a total of 152 associates. Further, the number of billable hours at the Washington office remained steady over the last year, even during the U.S. recessionary period. However, the Washington office was forced to hire an extra five associates to cover a slight decrease in average billable hours across associates in the firm.

The company has done a study in Washington and Atlanta offices and compares the variables with each other. For the survey, the management of the company has chosen six variables to study the effectiveness of the program in Washington office and find out the difference between an associate’s responses of the Atlanta and Washington office. The variables used in the study include: workload, intention to quit, commitment........................

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