In my post of May 14, 2005 I exceedingly roughly estimated the loss when a lawyer leaves a law department – a hair over $100,000. I based the SWAG on ABA data about law firm turnover costs. Now, new data suggests the law firm costs are twice as high, so I suspect my law department estimates were too low.
Law Practice, in its June 2005 issue at 7, cited data from Catalyst, a nonprofit research organization [http://cba.org/CBA/EPIIgram/April 2005]. Among Canadian law firms of 25 lawyers or more, the turnover loss comes to twice the cost of the average associate’s annual salary.