Legal experts agree law firms have adopted a de facto system of expectations, one that isn’t captured in a job description nor internal memo, where billable hours, hierarchy and culture define success. In the era of hybrid workplaces and AI domination, these conditions are conducive to some of the profession’s costliest outcomes: partisan performance evaluations, chronic burnout fatigue and climbing attrition rates. An article published in the National Association for Law Placement (NALP) journal described the driving forces of burnout in the legal profession — among them, role ambiguity.
Coupled with other interventions, legal administrators can engineer job descriptions to align expectations and define successful outcomes, providing young associates with the best chance at understanding what will be expected of them and what they can expect of a firm.
“Expectations that aren’t set are expectations that aren’t met,” University of Miami law professor Michele DeStefano says.
The Issue with Current Descriptions
Many job descriptions name the traits they want in a candidate but fail to specify how the employee can succeed, DeStefano says. Today’s descriptions may ask for an analytical and collaborative candidate, but they don’t define the outcomes by which that candidate will later be evaluated. Most stale descriptions are written under a tight deadline, when a position is vacant and an employee is urgently needed, relying on generic language that meets human resources’ standards but misses the realities of a litigator’s daily responsibilities.
Today’s descriptions may ask for an analytical and collaborative candidate, but they don’t define the outcomes by which that candidate will later be evaluated.
Job descriptions aren’t management tools — they’re used exclusively when hiring — but they should accurately reflect a practical routine.
“Oftentimes the job description can be too general [or] high level,” legal industry expert Lucy Bassli says. “It’s not actually descriptive of tasks; it’s definitely not descriptive of outcomes and expected deliverables.”
But there’s a reason descriptions are behind — they’re difficult to fix.
“It is a very complicated conversation with the partners of that practice group or hiring manager for that particular role,” Bassli says. “For them to be able to articulate what a successful candidate would have to do and make that perspective fit logically into a job description, the description almost needs a new section in it, besides ‘about us’ and ‘qualifications.’ There needs to be ‘quantifiable, measurable expectations and outcomes.’”
Best Practices for a Fair Description
Litigating is a hyper-personalized service that complicates traditional evaluation; as such, a systemized method of organizing job descriptions can begin to level a remarkably biased industry. Legal administrators should strive for descriptions that promote clarity, fairness, employee well-being, operational efficiency and modern competency.
An enhanced description will accurately describe what a successful candidate’s first year will look like, detailing their core responsibilities, who will assign their work, how they will receive feedback and what their priorities should be.
In doing so, administrators can reduce role ambiguity, which is a common precursor to burnout fatigue. High-pressure environments like law firms can struggle to retain high-quality talent, but predictable expectations can help preserve an employee’s psychological resources and well-being.
