The Value of a Strong Alumni Program

By Julie Stauffer

A competing law firm is luring away your securities law star. Your top M&A performer is jumping to a corporate legal department. This is no time to hastily say goodbye and grudgingly wish them well. It’s a moment to recognize there’s tremendous value in staying connected with your departing colleagues.

While it’s hard to attach specific numbers to the benefits — “the return on investment may be more anecdotal than scientific,” says Despina Kartson, Chief Marketing Officer of AmLaw 100 firm Latham & Watkins LLP — it’s no coincidence that a growing number of firms are embracing the idea of alumni programs.

“We have a group of people who know us, we know them, and they’ve gone off and are doing interesting things at various corners of the business community,” explains Terry Burgoyne, a senior partner at Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP who chairs the firm’s alumni committee. “Maintaining that network is just a good thing to do.”

Recruiting “wins,” either from word-of-mouth recommendations or alumni returning to the fold, are among the most tangible rewards of staying connected. According to Gracechurch Consultants, a third of UK legal and accounting alumni surveyed in 2005 said they would consider returning to their former firm.

Former colleagues can provide advice and information on market trends, legal issues, and international developments. They’re influential from a firm reputation perspective, serving like goodwill ambassadors in their new positions – at rival firms, in-house, on the bench, or in academia. And, of course, alumni can be a significant source of new business. As lawyer coach Allison Wolf, who recently helped launch an alumni program for a Canadian firm, puts it: “It’s almost negligent to let those relationships drop.”

Getting Started

A successful program starts with goals. What do you want it to accomplish for the firm? What benefits do you want to create for alumni?

The scope of the program will depend largely on how you want to define “alumni.” Will the term refer to lawyers who worked at the firm for more than a certain number of years? Articling students? Support staff? While it may be tempting to leave some people off the list — alumni at competing firms, for example — doing so may dilute the value of your program.

“We made a decision very early on that our alumni were our alumni,” says Burgoyne. “The fact that their careers may take them in that direction doesn’t change the fact that they are friends and former colleagues, and we want to keep in touch with them.”

The components of the program should reflect the goals and needs that have been identified. Traditionally, law firms have relied on newsletters and social events to keep connected with alumni, while some also invite their former colleagues to seminars hosted by the firm.

Law firms have also begun exploring ways to connect to alumni through social networking. Browse BigLaw alumni extranets and you’ll find alumni directories, personal profiles and updates, upcoming events, job postings, and discussion forums on various legal issues and trends. LinkedIn groups and Facebook pages are also being used to facilitate alumni interactions. Either way, one of the keys to success is to create a critical mass of content that will keep alumni coming back and, in turn, adding their own updates and insights – no small feat to accomplish.

Legal technology expert Dominic Jaar, president of Ledgit Consulting and CEO of the Canadian Centre for Court Technology, says the coming years will see more sophisticated use of social networking to maintain these connections. “It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when most law firms are going to open their eyes to the huge benefits of using social networking sites to increase their business and their relationships with their alumni,” says Jaar.

Ensuring Success

The key to developing a successful program is providing value to your alumni community. Something that smacks too much of a business development agenda will turn off your former colleagues, rather than strengthening the ties that can lead to long-term rewards, experts caution.

It’s also important to match your efforts with the resources on hand. Combining an annual newsletter with an occasional social event creates a manageable workload even for most mid-sized law firms, says Wolf. If you increase the frequency or add an extranet, however, you’ll need to allocate a significant percentage of someone’s job to your program.

“Launch locally and expand globally,” advises Kartson of Latham & Watkins LLP. Local, casual networking and social events are a good way to lay the groundwork. From there, it’s a natural progression to creating a comprehensive contact database and more extensive offerings.

Buy-in from senior partners will help ensure the success of the program, but firms shouldn’t overlook the value of involving a mix of perspectives from marketing/communications staff and lawyers at different points in their career.

Finally, successful alumni programs benefit from surveys or measures such as on-line traffic in order to grow and achieve even more effective outreach.

Julie Stauffer is a freelance writer.