How do law departments hire and train their new lawyers? We’d never really examined this issue, but conversations with top managers at several companies in recent years had piqued our interest. It seemed clear that some very successful departments had adopted very different approaches—yet each seemed to be yielding the desired results.
So we asked the general counsel at International Business Machines Corporation, Google Inc. and Microsoft Corporation if we could interview some of the people involved in the process. We found one law department that focuses on developing global lawyers; another that hires lawyers for jobs that can change radically in just a few months; and a third that seems intent on preparing theirs for the long haul.
