Legal roundtable.

• Author: Malan, Mekenna
• Position: DENTONS: DURHAM JONES PINEGAR

This month, Utah Business partnered with Dentons Durham Jones Pinegar to host a roundtable event featuring Utah's legal industry leaders. Moderated by N. Todd Leishman, president and chairman of Dentons Durham Jones Pinegar, they discussed pressures in the industry, DE&I initiatives, the hot Utah market, and more. Here are a few highlights from the event.

What has changed at your firm since COVID?

Rebecca Hill | Attorney | Christensen & Jensen

The last two years have been a constant evolution. I think we are better for being able to have our attorneys and staff work remotely--it's something they find beneficial in their life. The legal market has been changing, and we have had a lot of movement of associates and staff. Those challenges of hiring and dealing with those kinds of changes have been a huge change in our firm. It feels like I, and our firm administrator, have constantly been hiring for the last nine months.

Robert Walker | Attorney | Kirton McConkie

[We've seen] a bit of an erosion of our firm culture. We've found that people are accountable to projects rather than relationships. As a result, it's made mentoring more challenging, particularly at our associate level. I've found that it's relationships that tend to keep people here. When you're interested and know what's going on in one another's lives, that establishes an environment that people want to be a part of. When you strip that away, it simply becomes going to work just to get projects done.

Brian Tarbet | Chief Civil Deputy | Office of the Utah Attorney General

We're hemorrhaging because we're sort of at the bottom of the legal food chain. We're having a problem bringing [employees] in the front door and a problem keeping our senior people. Obviously, our compensation's driven by the legislature. It's a multi-session process, and they've been helping us, but not fast enough. Certainly, we don't try to compete with you folks in the private sector, but we're not really competitive right now with many of the other counties and other municipalities. It's a real struggle for public sector lawyers, period, and for our office in particular.

What arc you doing in your firm to preserve culture and retain people?

Ryan Bell | Partner | Kunzler Bean & Adamson

One of the things we decided to institute was a weekly team meeting, every Tuesday morning, everybody is in the office. We talk about all our projects and everything we have going on, and it's a time to just have some touchpoints. Associates seem happier when they have a little more flexibility, and that's great, but I agree with Rob that relationships tend [to suffer]. Mentoring just has to be a priority.

Jonathan Hafen | Shareholder | Parr Brown Gee & Loveless

One of the things that's important to us is to make every single lawyer feel like...