Lawyers know an incredible amount about their chosen speciality. And they are usually hungry to know more. This knowledge is both their biggest strength and their biggest weakness.
The strength of knowledge is evident when the lawyer is engaged on a client matter - the knowledge combined with experience enables the lawyer to get the client from A to B in the best way possible.
The weakness of the knowledge base is that it is impossible for anyone to forget what they already know, so far too often the lawyer assumes a base level of knowledge in the client which he or she doesn’t have.
Meanwhile, at the same time, the client doesn’t know what he or she doesn’t know, and can hence not offer up relevant information, or understand the background to the lawyers’ enquiries. This imbalance has become more prevalent in the internet age, with the rise of the “instant expert” - clients who have read 2 internet articles and think that they have mastered the topic. These people genuinely believe that all they need is a light steer to accomplish the legal task themsleves. A dangerous precedent.
The challenge, therefore, is to treat your client as a well-educated yet ill-informed individual. This means that you explain why what you do matters to him/her, the costs of getting it wrong, and what to do to ensure she/he gets it right. The trick is to do this without appearing patronising or overly technical.
You can often see a very stark illustration of getting it wrong when you read an article penned by a lawyer for a trade magazine. The article often builds from a non-existent client knowledge base, adds information which no reader is asking for, and finishes without explaining what the potential client should do next.
Remember that a lawyer’s knowledge is rare, and what you consider common knowledge isn’t.
First question: Who do you want to keep?
Partners find it easy to divide their team into categories - racehorses, workhorses and mules.
Where should the effort be made to motivate staff? Not the mules, who can absorb a disproportionate degree of time as they are the squeaky wheels for whom nothing is too much trouble!
Racehorses normally get firm-wide recognition. They are those few tipped for the top. Most are genuinely talented. A few are serially lucky, but as Somerset Maughn said, it's better to be born lucky than rich.
It's the workhorses you need to think about. It's them who your career is built upon - the people who deliver predictably good work in season and out of season. It's they who will, if treated well, be working with you for the next 20 years, and who must not be taken for granted.
Camerons are in the press for outsourcing their support services to Integreon. The exact scope has yet to be finalised - or at least made public.
Various people on the Lawyers's blog have voiced their concerns, but for most partners there is some double-mindedness that needs to be worked through. All law firms claim to put their clients centre stage. All firms are grappling with how to manage costs without affecting the client experience. All firms see support functions as an overhead. Oh yes they do. Look at your balance sheet. So all firms are looking at ways of minimizing support costs.
If Camerons believe that the services that will be run form a third party supplier are sufficiently generic to not compromise their strategic advantage, they will make savings by outsourcing. Recent common examples are cloud computing and servers, secretarial services from abroad or group catering facilities.
If they think that they can outsource Marketing & HR, does it not say something about the way that these people are seen by their partner colleagues? It seems to say that partners believe that their added value is less than the cost. And who's to say that they're wrong? But perhaps they are throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Perhaps different people with a different structure could provide better value and at less cost than outsourcing?
Training departments in law firms spend a great deal of time and effort getting their training "right". We gather feedback from delegates, and constantly revisit the programme to get it as near perfect as possible.
Yet perhaps we shouldn't bother.
Over the past dozen years or so I've seen, delivered, read-the-course-notes-from and taken part in a huge quantity of training. Most of it was well designed and delivered, with a few exceptions. The subsequent impact, however, did not seem to be linked to the design or delivery of the training. Success depends on the willingness of the delegates to become participants.
In former days, when we had days rather than hours for training, a large part of the initial phase was spent "digging for pain" - drawing-out from the delegates the necessity for the training, their own personal journey, and how they would apply it. This phase prepared the ground for the seeds to be planted. Nowadays we move swiftly into the planting phase, throwing the seed out hoping that some will bed in.
This is not necessarily a bad strategy. The Darwinian process of the tough surviving means that those who are motivated and willing to really listen will succeed, and those who are just chair-fodder will fail. Capitalism at its finest. Yet we should not, in these circumstances, take the feedback from the non-participants too seriously. If delegates don't want to participate, modifying the training in line with their thoughts may be a big mistake.
There is a lag between what's happening in "the real world", and the effect it has on law firms.
So have a look at the short video on the landing page of Right Brain Media http://www.rightbrainmedia.com/, and ponder how long do we have to adapt, and what will adaption look like?
Jamie Pennington
Jamie@penningtonhennessy.com
It may be an inevitable condition of life that it takes so long to learn so little. When I was catapulted from senior litigator at a major City firm to partnership with Pinsents in 1994, building a practice would have been easier if I had known:-
- That all high performers receive coaching, not because they are poor performers, but to become the best, because they are restless to improve
- That selling was an art, needing tuition, then constant practice – just like the piano, learning a language
- That there were people outside the law who had the skills and experience to give me a head start – that sales skills were not something that would just happen by magic
- The elements of Key Account Management – that the intensity of approach needed to achieve success was the same as the most complex areas of litigation
- What was really needed to win a pitch – what was going on in the mind of the buyer
- That networking was much more than being affable with as many people as possible
- That I would differentiate myself from most other lawyers by actually doing it - putting sales and other learned skills into practice
Patrick Raggett
Patrick@penningtonhennessy.com
Most partners are not good at giving feedback. If they were, this
is what an upfront partner would tell you that he or she is looking for in a junior lawyer:
- Honesty.
If you've screwed up, I need to be the first to know. If you say
something is true, it must be true. We all make mistakes - I did when I
was your age and I am not immune today. The problem is not making a
mistake, it is failing to acknowledge and learn from it.
- Time recording.
It's not your job to decide if someone should pay for what you've spent
your time on. I need to know how long things take, or else I can't work
out profitability.
- Curiosity. If you don't ask,
you won't know. So ask me how the work assigned fits into the wider
client brief. Ask me why things are structured the way they are. And
keep current with world and business affairs so you can ask good
questions, not just legal ones.
- Attitude. I need you
to learn how to do new things. You need to be pro-active. What area do
you need to develop in most? Find work that stretches you in these
areas, and get feedback on your efforts. I may also ask you do boring
mundane stuff - that's life when you're junior (and even when you're
not so junior). Do it cheerfully. Then the next time some interesting
work comes through, you will be top of the list.
- Attention to detail.
You can get a First Class Honours with 70% right. I expect 100%. It's
what you're supposed to be good at, so if it's not your natural
preference, you need to spend more time on it.
- Ability to listen to instructions.
When I give you a piece of work, and tell you what to do, I expect it
to be done the way I said. Ask if you don't understand something. But
make sure you are asking the right questions. Take the time to think it
through for yourself as far as you can, then ask about the bits you
really don't get.
- Tenacity. When I'm busy I can appear
distracted, off-hand or even rude. Sorry. But that's life. Get over it,
smile, and get back to work.
By the way, apart from
time recording, these are the same qualities that the client looks for
in a partner. So it's worth developing them now.
Alan Hodgart recently spoke to a group of Law Firm Learning & Development Professionals about the challenges facing law firms - particularly leadership. His analysis was sound but he offered few practical ways for addressing them.
I can think of 7 reasons why developing leaders in law firms is more difficult than in many other fields.
- A typical partner’s psychometric profile is very different to that of a senior corporate executive.
- Lawyers are atypical leaders, for whom traditional models require adaption.
- Lawyers rarely want to lead. Most law firm leaders would be happy if they reverted to client-facing work.
- There are few role models, and leadership is “caught” as much as “taught”.
- Leadership development is left late (30 years +) compared to the corporate model.
- The rewards for leadership in a law firm are not always obvious.
- Few lawyers have corporate experience outside the legal function, so they haven't experienced people who just want to lead.
The solutions are harder to find, but possible. Key aspects are:
- Developing leaders, not training them.
- Leaders are grown, not made, so it requires a joined-up, firm-wide effort to develop leaders.
- Ne
w leaders learn by leading.
As John Wimber used to say "Leading is a doing word."
P.S. If you want some very practical summer reading on the subject, you can try these 2 excellent books. I've got about 70 books on leadership, and these are the best on leadership development. They're not aimed at lawyers, so you'll have to translate into a law firm environment.
Developing the leaders around you - John Maxwell
How to Grow Leaders - John Adair
It is a common mantra within law firms that lawyers need to be "more commercial". Many programs have been established to address this issue, including:
*MBA-style programmes,
*client focus groups,
*industry lectures,
*case studies and
*specific training modules
Training departments also offer training to in-house legal teams on both legal and managerial issues to enable a stronger bond to be fostered.
But I've yet to find a firm who sends chosen associates on a specific client's own middle-management leadership development programme.
So, for example, you would send an Associate on IBM's 5-day "The Leadership Challenge" programme (assuming IBM was a client), where s/he would mix with the future senior line managers within IBM.
In this way:
The lawyer would meet people who will REALLY matter within the client in 10 years time, and get a true understanding of the client's business outside the legal function.
- Associates would understand that the legal function within most client companies is not the well-regarded powerhouse that the in-house team would have you believe.
- Associates would see that, conversely, the legal function is often seen as the "business prevention unit" within a company, and is avoided in the usual run of events.
Contacts within the client's line management would be established, so that they can help the client's own in-house lawyers be more effective.
You could also impress the client with the quality of your associates, since you would choose your delegate carefully. In this way you would build a long term client relationship based on what we preach; really understanding the client.
A great deal has been written about the Boomers, Generation X and Generation Y.
The FT entered the fray on Thursday with a well-crafted piece looking at ways some companies are linking the retiring generation (Boomers) with Generation Y to give the feedback and meaning that characterises the Generation Y.
I don't know of any law firm that is this pro-active. Advantages could include:
- Linking the "grey hairs" heading for retirement with NQ's might well bridge the feedback gap that hard-worked partners are often accused of neglecting.
- Linking could also give those retiring a sense of legacy, and a chance to share the accumulated wisdom which is rarely captured on a formalised basis.
- Linking could be a natural part of the wind-down process, formalising the latter stages of a highly successful career. Note the Cisco example given by the FT.
In my experience mentoring programmes usually stumble because of the mentors preoccupation with his/her career&clients, or the unwillingness to give frank feedback.
Perhaps Boomers heading for retirement would be the answer.