Jeff Gearhart
Executive Vice President & General Counsel

I am excited to share a number of developments that we hope will enhance our working relationships with our law firm partners and help make significant changes in the lives of attorneys striving to balance their professional and family lives.

Balanced work schedules for attorneys are part of the business case for diversity at Walmart and we believe they will come to matter more and more to other large consumers of legal services for a number of reasons. First, attrition rates in large law firms, even in good economic times, are upwards of 20% - more than double those in most industries. The loss of a talented associate or partner due to the absence of balanced work arrangements results in lost institutional knowledge from both a firm and client perspective. This is not only disruptive to the continuity of work, it is also expensive – both to the law firm losing the attorneys and to the clients to whom the firm passes on those costs.

Moreover, the absence of fl ex-time arrangements has been shown to have a seriously detrimental effect on the careers of women and minorities. In fact, minority female lawyers have the highest attrition rate of any group of lawyers and we are beginning to understand that a lack of work/life balance may play a major role for many of these
attorneys.

I want to personally thank my friends and colleagues who have participated in the Project for Attorney Retention’s Diversity and Flexibility Connection for helping me better understand and appreciate these issues. Because of their keen insight, I now realize that flex-time is an important and necessary component to maintaining a topnotch diversity program.

Flex-time requirements will be part of an overall revision to our outside counsel guidelines, which we expect to complete early next year. The changes will include requirements for the adoption of meaningful flex-time policies, as well as the development and tracking of metrics which will allow us to better measure and score for cost effectiveness, performance, and diversity.

Finally, we are soliciting ideas for workable alternative fee arrangements that are designed to be cost effective while rewarding attorneys who do excellent work and attain superior results and, not just for the time they spend on matters. We appreciate your partnership in these endeavors.