Excellent Client Service

Results in Excellent Support for Staff

Business & Legal Reports

September 15, 2007

A merger of three law firms and a new role as Chief People Officer for the United States led Clarissa Peterson to begin her tenure by creating an HR vision with input from all her managers at DLA Piper. The company (www.dlapiper.com), the new international law firm that encompassed all three of the firms, has 23 U.S. offices.

Peterson and her staff worked to ensure that they created an HR strategy and tactics that flow from the organization’s strategic plan. “Understanding what our leadership wants to do as a firm and then structuring the HR plans and processes to support that was imperative,” she says.

Here is the ambitious vision that Peterson and her staff have committed to memory and try to live each day as they administer the HR function for DLA Piper:

To be a world-class, strategic, and innovative organization of excellence that serves all People of the Firm by enabling their recruitment, supporting their retention, respecting their work/life balance, and enhancing their development through the delivery of value-added HR services in accordance with the values of DLA Piper.

“We [HR] are committed to metrics because we want to be able to measure the success of our HR programs,” Peterson explains. “Our group produces a comprehensive metrics report for senior leadership (month-to-month, year-to-year). If you don’t do that, you run the risk of HR being out of alignment with the bigger strategy of the whole organization.”

Peterson explains that DLA Piper provides innovative, supportive employee benefits and work/life services and programs for their employees so that they can focus their efforts on providing excellent service to clients. Each year, the firm reassesses its benefits program with AON Consulting. “We want to be a top provider of legal services and a top provider of benefits to our people,” notes Peterson.

AON brings new benefits ideas to the firm, and DLA Piper HR staff scrutinize professional literature for new benefits and programs, she explains. In addition, every 2 years the firm administers an internal employee satisfaction survey to partners, associates, paralegals, and staff to understand their satisfaction with the benefits program, assess their current needs, and forecast employees’ changing needs over the next 5 years, says Peterson.

Open enrollment for benefits occurs in January. Once that is completed, Peterson explains that AON and HR begin planning for the following benefit year, reviewing what other law firms and companies of similar size are offering to their employees.

Work/Life Services

DLA Piper offers a few somewhat unique services. Praising the firm’s outside employee assistance program (EAP) from ComPysch, Peterson notes that it is the most robust EAP she’s ever seen.

In addition to traditional EAP services, the EAP offers concierge services. An employee can order flowers or gifts for a friend or family member, find a painting or electrical contractor, or contact eldercare services.

Another new benefit to assist employees with work/life balance is help in steering their children through the college application process. College Coach will help with questions about application completion, essays, financial aid—you name it—through a website and through on-on-one telephone appointments, as well as brown bag lunch sessions at large DLA Piper locations.

As a support to employees and DLA Piper’s employee benefits staff, Peterson, with input from AON, also brought in Health Advocate, an outside vendor, to help employees with such challenges as health insurance questions, billing issues with insurance providers, and choosing new healthcare providers.

Communication Is Key to Success

For the benefits program and other HR services and programs in any organization, Peterson stresses that two-way, ongoing communication using a wide variety of channels is critical to its success.

DLA Piper, for example, uses the employee website, e-mail, in-person employee meetings at the firm’s 23 locations, and continual, informal feedback to make certain that employee needs are met. In turn, employees can effectively meet client needs.

Back to College Coach in the News