1. Why Your Firm Should Do Psych Profiles On New Hires - Law360
http://www.law360.com/articles/642272/print?section=legalindustry[4/14/2015 10:02:06 AM]
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Why Your Firm Should Do Psych Profiles On New
Hires
By Gavin Broady
Law360, New York (April 13, 2015, 6:34 PM ET) -- Fewer than an estimated 5 percent of law firms
use the sort of psychological and personality testing relied on by their corporate clients in the
hiring process, but experts say BigLaw should rethink the benefits of pre-employment screening
given how much risk firms take on when bringing in talent.
While there’s no silver bullet for finding lawyers who will bring in big business while seamlessly
integrating into culture, many experts say law firms are shooting themselves in the foot by shying
away from the use of testing regimes they say can offer deeper insights and greater accuracy than
the traditional interview process.
The reluctance of law firms to embrace psychological or personality profiling puts them at odds
with corporate America, according to John Remsen of The Remsen Group, who says an estimated
95 percent of corporate America uses some form of testing, compared with less than 5 percent of
law firms.
“Fortune 500 companies and corporate America have for decades used psychological profiles in
hiring people and placing them at top levels within their organizations,” Remsen says. “These
companies have decided the benefits of profiling far outweigh any lawsuits or liability that may be
incurred.”
Remsen says profiling can give firms important data points — like sorting out introverts from
extroverts or determining which candidates are detail-oriented versus big-picture thinkers — that
can in turn help identify potential rainmakers or firm leaders.
And while the question of liability is obviously a pressing concern to law firms, the risks can be
minimized by drawing a clear line between clinical or cognitive testing and personality-based
profiling metrics, according to psychologist and lawyer Dr. Larry Richard, founder of LawyerBrain
LLC.
Where clinical evaluations are typically geared toward spotting mental illnesses or personality
disorders, which may give rise to discrimination claims, Richard says appropriate methods of
attorney profiling can offer a scientifically validated means of measuring the positive traits that
make for successful lawyers, such as interpersonal communication, emotional intelligence, synthesis
skills and the ability to read people.
“If you’re running a nuke plant or Germanwings airlines, you’re going to need to use clinical tests
to screen out potential problems,” Richard says. “Otherwise, good use of psychological testing
doesn’t concern itself with problems but with competencies.”
Richard says that while the traditional interview process may determine whether an attorney will fit
in at a firm, testing for these competencies is far more likely to determine who will not only mesh
well at the firm, but who will excel.
With legal talent at a premium, that distinction is more important now than ever, he says.

2. Why Your Firm Should Do Psych Profiles On New Hires - Law360
http://www.law360.com/articles/642272/print?section=legalindustry[4/14/2015 10:02:06 AM]
“The name of the game today is getting the best talent, and every other competitive advantage is
easily replicable by competing law firms because knowledge is so available,” Richard says. “You
can’t come up with a strategic advantage that another firm couldn’t duplicate within a few months.
The only competitive advantage that’s hard to duplicate is the quality of your people.”
The test can also help cut down on the corrosive effect of law firm turnover, according to Jack
Zaremski of Hanover Legal Personnel Services Inc.
“Hiring an attorney is an expensive proposition for a law firm, and life at a major law firm for a
young attorney who doesn’t have a lot of practice at law can be difficult,” Zaremski says. “Even if
an associate has an excellent academic record and expresses a passion for law, it’s really a
crapshoot whether or not they’ll have the psychological wherewithal to withstand the tremendous
stress that is part and parcel with the job.”
So why the widespread reluctance to adopt testing at law firms? Part of the problem may be
innate to the personality of attorneys, who experts say tend to be risk-averse and often reluctant
to accept the perceived loss of autonomy a test may represent.
Law firms may also recognize that while the risk of failure-to-hire liability can perhaps be
controlled with a carefully calibrated, nonclinical test, it cannot be removed entirely, according to
Dove A.E. Burns, a partner in the employment and professional liability practices at Goldberg
Segalla.
“Failure-to-hire claims are one of most difficult to defend because you have a lot less information
on someone than, say, an employee who comes to work late and has substandard writing,” Burns
says. “With an applicant you only have the resume, and — uh-oh — also a psychological test. You
also know race, age and gender. Out of all that information, how do you prove it’s just about
what’s on the resume?”
She notes that firms that stray over the line into clinical or cognitive testing can face liability under
the Americans with Disabilities Act, given that almost any psychological disorder constitutes a
disability. Such testing can cause problems if it has a disparate impact on one specific group,
regardless of whether that impact was intentional, she says.
“Cognitive testing is much more likely to trigger this than just personality testing, because if you’re
going to talk about cognitive capabilities, that’s going to have disparate impact on people from
different socioeconomic backgrounds, which also correlates racially,” Berns says. “It does not
require intent. Why you’d want to throw it into the mix when it’s not necessary, I don’t know.”
Richard argues that the problem is not testing per se, however, but rather poor execution. He
notes that firms face similar risks of liability even where they rely exclusively on traditional
interviews and use no testing.
“Anything can lead to liability, and there have been plenty of cases where organizations have been
sued because they asked biased questions in interviews about marriage status or sexual orientation
or other things that courts have deemed inappropriate,” Richard says. “The main risk isn’t use of a
test; it's the stupid or inappropriate use of tests."
Testing can even help law firms avoid some of the more pervasive and inevitable biases inherent
to the one-on-one interview process, Richard says.
“Studies show when that kind of informal, seat-of-the-pants hiring process occurs, who gets
recommended?” Richard asks. “It turns out it’s almost always someone who’s similar in certain
ways to the interviewer. People will deny this and swear they’re not biased, but we have built-in
biases that make us pick people like us. Testing doesn’t do that.”
Finally, experts say many firms appear reluctant to introduce testing regimes for fear it will put a
damper on their recruiting by scaring away potential hires who find the idea of sitting for a
psychological evaluation off-putting.

3. Why Your Firm Should Do Psych Profiles On New Hires - Law360
http://www.law360.com/articles/642272/print?section=legalindustry[4/14/2015 10:02:06 AM]
Richard calls this concern a “red herring,” noting that his experience has shown that applicants are
acutely aware of the cost to their own careers a bad firm fit could create and as a result appreciate
any additional effort to make sure all bases are covered.
That opinion lines up with at least one real-world testing success story at Becker & Poliakoff, a
170-plus attorney firm that has employed a proprietary personality test for more than a decade.
“In over 10 years I can safely say it’s had virtually zero chilling effect,” says Gary C. Rosen, the
firm’s managing shareholder. “In my experience, when a lawyer really wants a job at firm, asking
them to take a one-hour personality test is not so great a burden that it’s going to stand in way of
taking job that’s going to be a significant step in their career.”
Rosen says the online multiple-choice test used by his firm has proven to be an accurate predictor
of the key personality traits Becker & Poliakoff looks for in laterals and young lawyers — traits like
verbal reasoning, manageability, sociability, energy levels and assertiveness.
“What we did to establish a baseline was we asked some of the most successful, long-standing
lawyers in the firm to take the test in order to establish a criteria against which candidates would
be weighed,” Rosen says. “The results of the test aren’t against a theoretical objective test score,
as though one were taking an SAT, but rather we want to use the test to assess whether
candidates would be a good culture fit for our firm.”
Richard says this method of pegging test performance to proven success is the best approach to
evaluating new hires — and might also prove an eye-opening experience for the test makers
themselves.
“When you test your own people you get baseline of the personality of your firm, but it can also
help you learn a lot about yourself,” Richard says. “Lawyers are famous for thinking they know a
lot about themselves, but when someone takes a test, I tell them: You are going to learn what
everybody already knows. Because trust me, the people who work with you already know what’s in
your envelope.”
--Editing by Kat Laskowski and Mark Lebetkin.
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