Law People : Law Practice Management, Organizational and Personal Dynamics; Talent Management : Ronda Muir of Law People Management, Inc.

One of the more interesting client assignments we have had involved a small practice group in a middle-sized firm on the West Coast.  The firm charged us to find out what was "wrong" with the group and "fix"it or, if it couldn't be fixed, the firm was going to dump the whole group.

When we arrived at the firm to familiarize ourselves with the issue, the tension was palpable.  Clearly this group had made enemies of the firm leadership.  We were told that the group was unprofessional and disorganized, although, when pressed, not many specifics were forthcoming, only the general consensus of the rest of the firm that the group was not conducting their practice at the level of excellence that was the firm's tradition.

The dissatisfaction with this group became even more puzzling when a review of the firm financials and interviews with group members and a few of their clients showed that the group was quite profitable, with new work pouring in regularly, their clients seemed generally pleased with the group's representation, and the lawyers in the group expressed some of the highest satisfaction ratings with their practice of all the lawyers in the firm.

What exactly was going on here?

The entire firm took the Meyers Briggs Trait Indicator (MBTI), an assessment that measures four different personal style preferences.  The mystery was instantly solved! 

The fourth continuum that the MBTI measures covers work management, including time management.  One side of the continuum is what is considered the "business standard":  working in a methodical, incremental way over a specified time period in order to finalize on schedule a project (these people are called Judgers or Js).  About 65% of lawyers are on this side of the continuum, as are over 50% of the general public.  Nearly all of the lawyers in our client firm who were not in the suspect practice group were Js.

On the other side of the continuum are people who work in a very different fashion:  they often think about the project, going far afield or engaging others' opinions, during most of the time period before the project is due. Then some time fairly close to the due date, these people hunker down, possibly pulling an all-nighter or two, until the project is finished, hopefully without any glitches that delay the delivery beyond its scheduled date. The people on this side of the continuum are called Perceivers or Ps and every one of the lawyers in our despised practice group was a P.

There are benefits to both workstyles. Ps often bring a fresh up-to-the-minute perspective from outside the usual resources. And Js can be counted on to be methodical and organized in their approach.  There are also weaknesses to both styles.  Ps may get so focused on thinking and research that they may not calibrate their slide into first base accurately and end up with a Chinese fire drill stretching over many days and even then concluding with a late delivery.  Js may be so consumed with finishing in an orderly fashion and on time that they fail to find and consider some of the stickier, more problematic issues that might slow them down, but may also be the crux of the assignment.

The real problem lies in the interaction between the types. The Js judge Ps as much by the unmeasured, erratic pace of their completion as by the quality of the final work product.  While Ps consider Js to be too narrow, regimented and possibly out-of-date in their approach.

Which roles the types play--who has the supervisory attorney role and who is the associate--also impacts how their respective behaviors are viewed.  Often supervising Js find their associate Ps to be "lazy" or "procrastinators" because in week one of a three week project they don't have the 3 page outline the J would have had at that point.  The P associate finds the J supervisor unnecessarily meddlesome--the associate has promised that the work will get done on time and it will, in spite of the J's rigid ideas about time management.

On the other hand, supervising attorneys who are Ps are often famous for running their teams late into the night before a deadline, which particularly the J associates resent because they would have time-managed the completion in such a way as to be simply putting on the finishing touches during the last few days and possibly enjoying a night at the theater. 

So that was the answer to our client's dilemma.  Was this practice group unprofessional?  No, they were simply Ps being  judged by J notions of efficiency.  Within the group, the Ps were well adjusted to each other's style and the clients were satisfied.  It was only when the Ps were working outside the group--working jointly on projects or sharing clients with other groups in the firm--that tensions rose.

Did behaviors have to change to solve the perceived problem?  Awareness produces a huge shift on its own--it is the original and most effective change management tool.  Once the Js realized how the Ps worked, and that they could do so successfully by their clients' standards, there was an immediate improvement in inter-partner relations.

But some behaviors did change.  The J partners stopped goading the Ps at the outset of the project to produce evidence of its commencement. The P partners made sure they communicated to the Js at regular intervals that their projected delivery was on schedule, or they made clear as soon as possible if it was not, and when it would be delivered.

There were no doubt lingering doubts on both sides of the continuum as to whether they could work together happily, but at least they learned as a firm how to do so successfully.  And there is no question in our minds as to whether the clients benefited from having both types on their projects--they definitely did.

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In a new CareerBuilder survey of more than 2600 hiring managers and human resource professionals nationwide, 71% said they value emotional intelligence in an employee more than IQ and 34% said they are placing even greater emphasis on emotional intelligence when hiring and promoting employees post-recession.  And 59% said they would not hire someone who has a high IQ but low EI, while 75% said they would promote a high EI worker over a high IQ candidate.

Why do these hiring managers value EI so much?  Because, they said, the high EI employees:

• are more likely to stay calm under pressure
• know how to resolve conflict effectively
• are empathetic to their team members and react accordingly
• lead by example
• make more thoughtful business decisions

What behaviors do these managers look for that indicate high EI?  Employees who:

• admit to and learn from mistakes
• keep emotions in check
• have thoughtful discussions on tough issues
• listen as much or more than they talk
• take criticism well
• show grace under pressure

Another recent announcement was the inauguration of the USF SELECT program, in which a small group of incoming University of South Florida medical students are being admitted into an elite program based on an evaluation of their emotional intelligence.  The SELECT program is based on the expectation that "students with higher emotional intelligence can become more engaged, compassionate physicians who work effectively with teams and can lead change in health care organizations." Although this is the first time USF has used emotional intelligence as a gauge of leadership potential, the goal is to eventually incorporate EI training into the curriculum for all medical students, a trend in medical school education that is spreading rapidly.  

The SELECT program will include peer and faculty "coaching" groups intended "to help them cultivate this skill set of emotional competence," according to the USF Vice Dean Dr. Alicia Monroe. 

In order to choose the incoming SELECT class, faculty submitted applicants to a 90-minute "behavioral event interview," a method of interviewing that is often used in the business world and is starting to be used by some law firms, but is rarely part of academic medicine applications. Students were asked to recall how they reacted to specific quandaries or important events in their lives and what they learned from each situation. Teleos Leadership Institute staff trained the SELECT faculty to look for "a grounded explanation in students’ lived experiences," Dr. Monroe said. "To see, through this, how the students articulated the way in which they reason, problem-solve and use self-awareness to interact effectively with others, to communicate empathy and to manage relationships.."

In asking how he viewed the relevance of the EI screening, one of the successful candidates stated that "Once we become more aware of how we interact on an individual level, we will be prepared to collectively lead efforts for systemic changes in healthcare delivery. This is the big picture and it is still abstract, but I hope this program sets us up to do just that."

Halfway around the world, the new Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard's department is providing emotional training workshops and personal coaching to her cabinet and staff.  "The fundamental purpose...is to foster enlightened and responsible leadership," according to one of the providers.

What is the common thread here?  Emotional intelligence is no longer a "squishy" concept that starry-eyed granola eaters and new agers proselytize.  We lawyers are about to be set back in our perennial competition with doctors by their realization that EI conveys real advantages, something corporate managers are already well aware of.

Will lawyers get the message?  Or are we too smug in how enlightened we are already?

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The rate of depression among lawyers is widely recognized as a multiple--in some studies a double-digit multiple--of the rate of depression in the general population and also in other professions.  This rate is high by the second semester of law school and only escalates over time.

There has been speculation as to whether depression in lawyers is a condition that is coincident with their predominant attribute of pessimism or is itself a separate attribute that might be a career enhancer in its own right.  Swiss watch makers have for generations piped downbeat music into their work rooms to produce a higher rate of accuracy in work that is technical and painstaking but also repetitive. Are lawyers naturally better suited to do the personal services equivalent of master watchmaking because of their inclination towards depression?

A recent study seems to provide at least a partial answer.  In "Performance benefits of depression: Sequential decision making in a healthy sample and a clinically depressed sample," by Bettina von Helversen et al, published in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology, the following conclusions were reached:

"Previous research reported conflicting results concerning the influence of depression on cognitive task performance. Whereas some studies reported that depression enhances performance, other studies reported negative or null effects... [W]e studied the performance of individuals - in a complex sequential decision task - who are nondepressed, depressed, and recovering from a major depressive episode. We found that depressed individuals perform better than do nondepressed individuals. Formal modeling of participants' decision strategies suggest that acutely depressed participants have higher thresholds for accepting options and make better choices than either healthy participants or those recovering from depression."

So exactly how were these depressed people functioning better? 

"[D]epressed participants accepted options less readily, which led to longer search and better choices. These results suggest that depression, by fostering greater persistence, may improve performance in certain tasks."

In other words, depressed people persist by passing up okay alternatives for a longer time and therefore eventually find a better choice than non-depressed people do.  The implication is that the depressed feel less pressure to come up with a solution quickly.

There are some other, less dramatic advantages to management to having a depressed work force--depressed workers are more likely to agree to what would otherwise be perceived as an over-reaching schedule and other onerous work conditions. Depressed workers are less likely to demand higher compensation or promotions.  They are also less likely to insist on using their own approach to managing a matter or staff.  Most of these advantages stem from the fact that the depressed don't have the psychic energy to devote to these peripheral matters--they are intent on getting the difficult meat of their work done and need all that they can muster to do that alone.

Lest we sound like we are glorifying depression, also note the long-standing disadvantages to depression.  Again, quoting the above article: 

"Depression modifies eating and sleeping habits, changes psychomotor patterns, and impedes cognitive functioning (for a review see Levin, Heller, Mohanty, Herrington, & Miller, 2007). Moreover, depressed people find decision making challenging (Monroe, Skowronski, Macdonald, & Wood, 2005; Radford, Mann, & Kalucy, 1986; Saunders, Peterson, Sampson, & Reardon, 2000) and tend to ruminate about problems (Ewards & Weary, 1993). In addition to these challenges, depressed individuals perform poorly in memory (Jackson & Smith, 1984), reasoning (Sedek & von Hecker, 2004), and choice tasks (Conway & Giannapoulos, 1993; Gillis, 1993; Murphy, et al., 2001)."

That list gives us some insight into why, if depressed lawyers are making better decisions in at least certain circumstances and offer other advantages to management, we aren't embracing the depressed lawyer model in recruiting and advancement. In short, a depressed work force doesn't perform at its highest level.

But to quote further the authors of the study: "Despite these findings, recent work has attempted to detect whether depression offers benefits that offset its negative consequences and, thus, explain its evolution (Andrews &Thompson, 2009; Hagen, 2002; Keller & Nesse, 2006; Nesse, 2000; 2009). These investigations have found that negative affective states can promote analytical reasoning, which facilitates systematic and thorough information processing (e.g., Schwarz & Bless,1991). In this vein, Andrews and Thompson (2009) contend that depression may be an adaptation that enables complex problem solving, suggesting that depression may improve performance on tasks that demand rumination and persistence. This resonates with literature suggesting that negative affect promotes more systematic and thorough processing of information (e.g., Schwarz & Bless, 1991), and it also dovetails with investigations showing that depression inhibits goal disengagement, increases persistence (Andrews & Thompson, 2009), and leads to difficulties in decision making (Radford et al., 1986; Saunders et al., 2000)."

These depressed ruminations may also challenge managers trying to motivate their lawyers to work more quickly in a fixed fee environment.

All in all, isn't depression as a career advantage a bummer for the industry?

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One of the more interesting findings in emotional intelligence research is that people who read emotional cues in others are generally good at reading their own emotional states and vice-verse—those who read themselves well are likely to read others well also. Conversely, an inability to read either oneself or others signals the corresponding inability. These findings are so well-established that most EI assessments only test a person’s ability to read external cues—knowing that the results will apply to that person’s ability to read their own emotions as well.

While this correlation may seem logical, we know that the experience of emotions is often different from what that experience looks like from the outside. A number of explanations have been offered for this linked phenomenon—perhaps it is simply a matter of having the vocabulary to describe emotions generally, or having actually experienced the emotions in question.  

 

A new study sheds some light. “Embodied Emotion Perception: Amplifying and Dampening Facial Feedback Modulates Emotional Perception Accuracy” by David T. Neal, a psychologist at the University of Southern California, and Tanya L. Chartrand, a professor of marketing and psychology at the Duke University Fuqua School of Business, published in Social Psychological and Personality Science, reports that not only do those who have had Botox injections not express facially what they are feeling, they also have very little idea what others are feeling as well.

 

According to the study, an observer unconsciously mimics another person's expression, and it is the experience of feeling that facial expression that leads the person back to understanding the emotion that produces such an expression. In the experiment, women with Botox injected 2 weeks prior to the assessment were significantly less accurate at decoding both positive and negative facial expressions than those who had been injected with a facial filler that did not impact muscle function.

 

In a second related experiment, participants with a gel on their face (similar to a facial mask) that required them to work their muscles harder to make facial expressions could more accurately identify emotions in others.

 

What does this mean for us in law practice?

 

Lawyers consistently score lower than the general population on emotional intelligence. The base of emotional intelligence requires the ability to “read” emotions—which information is then analyzed as to how to best manage those emotions. If the underlying “read” is not accurate, then we are caught in a “garbage in, garbage out” situation that makes any analyses and management decisions (skills that lawyers are not deficient in) nonetheless invalid.

 

The stoic lawyer who does not express emotions may be the very paradigm of the inaccurate reader—unable to express these emotions him/herself, s/he cannot identify the emotions others are feeling.

 

The good news here is that a short intervention may well be all that is needed to improve the situation—while two weeks can dampen one’s ability to express and therefore read others’ emotions, a similar period of concentrated training in expression can result in a significant improvement.

 

As part of our high-potential coaching program, we are able to offer that training to your best business development and leadership prospects.

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Perhaps your mother's adage about what makes for beautiful is not entirely correct.  It was recently announced that economists at the University of Texas-Austin analyzed data from five large surveys of more than 25,000 people conducted between 1971 and 2009 in the US, Canada, Germany and Britain and came up with what may or may not be a surprising conclusion:

Physical beauty gets you both money and happiness.

Participants in the top 15% of people ranked by looks were more than 10% happier than those in the bottom 10% of looks and the extra economic benefit that resulted from beauty accounted for at least half of that extra happiness--evidently better-looking people generally earn more money and marry people both better-looking and also higher-earning.

Another economist at the University of Texas-Austin, Daniel Hamermesh, a leading researcher of beauty and success,  presided over a series of surveys in the United States and Canada just over a decade ago which showed that for men the ugliness “penalty” was -9% in earnings while the beauty premium was +5%.  For women, perhaps surprisingly, the effect was less marked: the ugliness penalty in earnings was -6% while the beauty premium was +4%.

An article in the Economist a few years ago entitled "To Those That Have Shall Be Given" reported on research finding that as a general matter physical attributes associated with beauty also "give clues about intelligence, and that such clues are picked up by other people."

So where do we lawyers stand on the good looks=happiness/earnings/intelligence calculation?

Fortunately, Dr. Hamermesh has looked into that question also.  In his paper  "Beauty, Productivity and Discrimination: Lawyers' Looks and Lucre," examining the careers of graduates of a large, unnamed American law school (University of Michigan), he found that

• Those rated attractive on the basis of their matriculation photographs went on to earn higher salaries than their less attractive classmates.
• Better-looking attorneys who graduated in the 1970s earned more after 5 years of practice than their worse- looking classmates, other things equal, an effect that grew even larger by the 15h year of practice. There was, however, interestingly enough, no impact of beauty on earnings among 1980s graduates.  
• Women who graduated from law school in the 1970s were better looking overall than women in the 1980s.
• Attorneys in the private sector were judged better-looking than those in the public sector.
• Attractiveness may determine which practice group you are in--regulatory lawyers were the worst looking and litigators the best looking.
• Male attorneys' probability of attaining an early partnership rose with beauty, which was not true for female attorneys.  

Or, as the question was posed by Above the Law: Are Attractive People Better Lawyers? According to that entry, quoting Hamermesh: “They’re not necessarily better lawyers. They just get paid more.”

Hamermesh also found evidence that beautiful people bring more revenue to their employers than the less-beautiful, at least in the advertising industry.  Among Dutch advertising firms, those with the most beautiful executives had the largest size-adjusted revenues—a difference that exceeded the salary differentials of the firms in question.

Hamermesh conceded that he could not determine from the data whether the beauty effect occurred because clients discriminated in favor of the good-looking or because better-looking lawyers were able to obtain greater financial gain for their clients.

Even more recent research seems to support these findings--such as the role that beauty at a young age may play in making people extroverted, and therefore more likely to have higher earnings and enjoy more happiness-producing relationships, and the advantage that physically attractive children of both sexes have in being seen by their peers as socially skilled (Vaillancourt & Hymel, 2006).

There may also be some anecdotal support for these findings. The looks of attorneys at DavisPolk, one of the more profitable firms in the country, have long been lauded, and started getting extra attention when photos began appearing on the firm website.

However, not everyone is convinced of the reliability of Hamermesh's and others' data--for a sampling of the responses ranging from dismissal to skepticism to giving the benefit of the doubt, see comments at the ABA report.

In sum, as the Economist article points out, "sadly reminiscent of the biblical quotation to which the title of this article refers... there is a feedback loop between biology and the social environment that gives to those who have, and takes from those who have not."

By the way, are there any odds in investing in the improvement of our looks?

In Shanghai, where the difference between the ugliness penalty and the beauty bonus was greatest, Dr. Hamermesh looked at the relationship between women's spending on their cosmetics and clothes and their income.Higher beauty expenditures did correlate with a small increase in earnings, but not enough to pay for them in a strictly financial sense--the beauty premium generated earnings worth only 15% of the money expended.

What about the benefits of plastic surgery? Soohyung Lee, an assistant professor of economics at the University of Maryland in College Park, found by studying before and after photos of members on a dating website “that plastic surgery is not profitable in a monetary sense.” “I can’t comment on the happiness,” she added.

So what do we do with this information?  Hamermesh points out that it is not illegal to discriminate on the basis of looks, and, all else being equal, it might be a perfectly legitimate business strategy to hire the more beautiful candidate.  In these times of continuing economic pressure on law firms, being attractive may be more important than ever for gaining employment and hiring attractive lawyers may be just the kind of hedge that law firms can live with--at no cost added.

 

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The Value Advisory issued a press release today announcing the formation of a veteran group of advisors to provide law firms with strategies and resources that align firm offerings and operations with their clients' objectives.  At a time of increasing client demands for value at a reduced cost, The Value Advisory works with firms to assess their clients' changing standards and deliver services that meet those standards--in a way that honors the firm's historical values and reputation and also profitably sustains its future.   

The Association of Corporate Counsel, the country's largest organization of corporate counsel, has identified six critical measures of value in the delivery of legal services and has already rated over 5,000 lawyers on those factors. 

Where do you stand with your clients?

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Muir's "The Unique World of Lawyers" explores the ways in which the personal style of lawyers differs from that of the majority of Americans and how it effects both what lawyers perceive and how they are perceived.

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Muir's "Emotional Intelligence for Lawyers" reviews the history of the development of emotional intelligence and how it applies to lawyers.

Muir's "The Importance of Emotional Intelligence in Making Partners" was awarded the Edge International Law Practice Magazine Award for excellence in writing. 

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Back when we were all focused on raising our retention rate of associates, I also waved the flag about the poor retention rate we have with the lateral partners we hire--a musical chair game that has been in full swing for a number of years and seems to have survived or at least is being revived after the downturn. 

What data we have implies that, while only about 40% of new hire associates last longer than 3 years, an even lower percentage of lateral partners do.  Anecdotally, one can find rates that are astoundingly low--in some firms only one in 4 or more lateral partners work out.  

These are particularly humiliating statistics because, in spite of the ethical constrictions on gaining client and current firm information, we still have MUCH more information about lateral partner candidates than we have about law school graduates: if we haven't personally practiced law across from these lawyers or on the same side of the table with them, we usually have friends, clients or colleagues who have.

I was recently in a roundtable discussion with lawyers addressing this issue.  One managing partner said that both the spectacular successes and the miserable failures of lateral hires seem like random events--how is one to guess? Another managing partner answered that he found that the reasons for a lawyer not working out are often right there in the pre-hire information--but no one paid adequate attention at the time.

Here are a few tips for improving your lateral partner hiring outcomes:

1.  Don't bother to proceed with lateral candidates who want to discuss compensation during the first conversations.  Very few successful lateral changes are made on the basis of a step-up in compensation--those who make a move for that reason will find a reason to move again.

2.  In making your financial calculations, don't assume that the lateral's book will materialize.  Yes, that means you are primarily hiring the person for their expertise and not their client list.

3.  Look for candidates who want a better platform and more support than they currently have, and make sure you can provide it.  The primary reason for laterals leaving these days is failure to find the level of firm support for their practice that they expected.

4.  Be careful of lawyers coming from an entirely different background--small firms, government or corporate counsel if, for example, yours is a big firm.  There are many administrative and procedural differences in these environments, as well as substantive differences (conflicts are not something most of those lawyers have had to think about) that can wreck havoc.

5.  Avoid the institutional drive to hire.  Set up some roadblocks that require a stop and re-think or the momentum of the hunt will result in a hire whether it ultimately makes sense or not.

6.  Plan carefully all aspects of a lengthy, detailed integration.  Think summer associate program, but more substantive.  Where the lateral sits, who the mentor(s) are, how your clients are introduced to the lateral, how the lateral's clients are introduced to the firm, how the lateral will meet other firm attorneys and visit other firm offices, who will work for the lateral, which committees s/he will sit on, what type of specific training the lateral will need and when and by whom it will be provided--these are just the beginning of the long list of considerations. Feeling like an outsider is the second major reason that laterals leave firms.

7.  Make someone accountable for the lateral's success.  This should be a partner of significant rank; it should not be a young partner or someone in the HR department.  Make sure that this person also gets support and recognition, including having their role taken into consideration in the determination of their compensation.  If you don't pay for it, you don't value it.

 

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In a recent interview about her book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, Dr. Carol Dweck, the Lewis and Virginia Eaton Professor of Psychology at Stanford University, explained how a person's mindset can account for success. 

She identifies two major mindsets--fixed and growth.  In a fixed mindset, we think we know our strengths and weaknesses, believe that they are "fixed" and think we should only attempt undertakings that use those strengths.  This type of person often cites genetics or background as limiting factors to their productivity.

With a growth mindset, we believe that we can grow into the skills needed for success. That is, we have the attitude that with analysis and persistence and feedback, we can stretch and extend our abilities over time.  The basis of these differences in mindset lie in one's sense of control and optimism--attitudes that have long been associated with greater success and sense of well-being.

Dr. Dweck's research on athletic performance is intriguing--the more athletes believe that their success is a function of effort and practice (as opposed to "natural talent"), the better they do.  Even more importantly, the more they believe that their coach thinks their success is a function of effort and practice, the better the athletes do.  

She also points out that in India and Asia, the common belief that children are blank slates at birth who can learn anything help people there succeed.

Her research also has relevance to those of us practicing law.  As measured by various assessments, lawyers are highly pessimistic and also have low resilience to setbacks (an indication of low sense of control). When gauging ourselves, and particularly in mentoring others, it is important to focus on the process--how much time and energy is being put into the effort and how persistent the person is.  Encouraging those traits will pay off with better performance over time than praising how "smart" someone is or how "natural" they are at something.  In fact, that type of praise is shown by Dr. Dweck's research to actually lower productivity--trapping the person in the narrow range of their perceived ability and making them fearful that they can't always live up to that talent or go beyond it.

Lawyers are also not inclined to take risks and therefore are less likely to proceed, whether personally or as a firm, when they are not certain they are likely to succeed.  In this time of fast-paced changes, however, Dr. Dweck points out  the disadvantage of such a fixed mindset.  With law practice undergoing tremendous transition, that reluctance can put both a person and a firm at the back of the evolutionary process that will produce better services. 

Dr. Dweck has developed an assessment to determine one's mindset and strategies for changing a mindset from a fixed one to one of growth, both of which we can offer as a part of your complete professional development plan, whether for one attorney or a large group.

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Muir recently led an Introduction to the Business of Law seminar for junior associates at an AmLaw 100 firm. The presentation is customized to the firm and is gauged to bolster associates'  engagement and loyalty and to improve their productivity. 

Topics include a definition of terms, such as utilization, realization and cash management, and a discussion of what drives the economics of law firms, the impact of current marketplace trends, as well as how all these factors influence every associate's career, and what they can do to benefit themselves and their firm.

Director of Professional Development: "Associates called me specifically to thank me for setting this up; others said that the topic answered a lot of questions they wanted to know about (but probably wouldn't have asked). Several who didn't make it called to ask if I had recorded it because everyone said it was a good presentation...plus I appreciate that you were great to work with."

Partner in charge: "This was a very helpful presentation--a number of associates came up to me afterward to say how thought -provoking it was. It is difficult at times, particularly with the most junior associates, to get them to ask the questions they want to ask. You answered many of them in your presentation. We look forward to doing this again."

Firm Consultant: "The presentation was excellent. Law is a business like any other business. Every attorney, particularly at these large firms, should know about what you discussed in your presentation."
 

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Should we be identifying and spotlighting our superstar associates? Recent research may be pointing to an unexpected answer. 

Economic tournament theory addresses competitive situations where success is based on relative rather than absolute performance (think sports games vs. standardized test results).  While competitive situations can often lead to motivated employees who work hard for top spots, recent research has found that the presence of a "superstar" can reverse that dynamic, making the competitors give up in the face of likely defeat.

Jonah Lehrer's article in the April 3-4 weekend edition of The Wall Street Journal specifically raises the question as to whether these recent findings in tournament theory about the disabling effect of superstars might account for, among other things, lackluster performance of associates in law firms. Given that this particular tournament often ends in an up-or-out decision (particularly given the recent trends), and that the number of lawyers who make partner will be even fewer than the historical few, the supposition is made that once associates recognize they are not up to a superstar level, they may actually lower than performance. 

As further ammunition for that concern, we note that the recent trend toward merit-based promotion and compensation systems will make the superstars more apparent to everyone in the firm and also earlier than under the old lock-step system.  So what do we do now?

Lehrer's article implies that hiring the "best" candidate, if it means someone who will leave the others in the dust, might not be the best approach.  Should firms really consider such a "not the best" approach?

We would make a more pointed recommendation--hiring only those candidates who can truly compete will keep the tournament in a healthy realm.  Firms can start by hiring a smaller class that they heavily invest in (in terms of assessing initial strengths and weaknesses, providing professional development and supporting personal morale).  Couple that increased "glue" with the possibility of a larger proportion of the smaller group being likely to make partner, and firms are likely to be well on the way to a harder working associate group.  And that scenario is consistent with other trends encouraging lower leverage.

A win/win all around.

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It was my great pleasure--something I don't often say about a conference-- to attend this invitation-only gathering last week, March 21-23, of both august and up-and-coming law industry professionals as they prognosticated the future of our practice and what that might in fact look like up close for a broad array of providers and clients. 

While I will digest and relay over the next few weeks a number of interesting findings and tantalizing predictions that were discussed, let me summarize a few currents that are of particular interest to me.

One, notable is the influx and rising success of non-lawyer services in this emerging marketplace, whether those services are provided by in-house specialists in law firms, wholly-owned subsidiaries of firms, or independent companies.

Two, changes making their way into law firms are both reducing incoming associate classes and also raising the ante for efficiently training and promoting those associates, with the result being that firms are experimenting with more discriminating approaches to hiring and more sophisticated methods of providing professional development.

Three, perhaps as a corollary of at least the first point above and probably the second point as well, law firms are becoming truly more diverse workplaces that respect and rely on the contributions of non-lawyer sociologists, MBAs, IT specialists, project managers, psychologists, accountants and other professionals to more efficiently analyze, structure and deliver services responsive to client needs.

Stay tuned for the  review of this conference's exciting topics.

 

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Firms are placing their futures at risk if they cannot identify, develop and empower the next generation of leaders.  So it is no surprise that more law firms are investing in leadership development.  For example, according to PaLAW 2009's 14th annual Managing Partners Survey, cited in the November 23, 2009 issue of The Legal Intelligencer, the number of firms surveyed that provide leadership training at any level increased from 40.5% in 2008 to 67.7% in 2009, almost a 60% increase. 

What does it take to be a good leader?  And do we lawyers have what it takes?

There are numerous theories about the best style of leadership--see  Primal Leadership (2002) by Goleman, Boyatzis and McKee for an informative evaluation of 6 major styles. Apart from style, Richard Daft, author of The Leadership Experience, cites numerous studies that have sifted out five recurring personal attributes of successful leaders: openness to experience, emotional stability, conscientiousness, agreeableness and extroversion.

If you look around for potential leaders in your firm, chances are few of your colleagues possess all five of those attributes.  While conscientiousness is something lawyers tend to have in spades, openness to experience (also known as risk tolerance), emotional stability (or emotional intelligence) and agreeableness (aren't we hired NOT to be agreeable?) are all factors that in various studies lawyers tend to fall short on. Certainly, we have clear and robust data that most lawyers (over 70%) are introverts, rather than extroverts. 

So can introverts lead?  Successfully, that is?

Yes they can.  If the concern is that introverts tend not to be charismatic, outgoing personalities, Jim Collins's book Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap . . . And Others Don't provides some comfort. Collins discovered that glitzy, dynamic, high-profile CEOs are actually a hindrance to the long-term success of their corporations. Charismatic leaders are attractive to others, but they may be less effective in drawing people to the mission and values of the organization itself.

Collins contrasts Lee Iacocca, Chrysler's leader and spokesperson in the 1980s, with Colman Mockler, the CEO of Gillette from 1975 to 1991. While Iacocca almost single-handedly steered his car company away from disaster and put it on the road to prosperity, after his retirement Chrysler's profits faltered, and the company was sold to a German rival five years later. Apparently Iacocca had done little to invest in his successors or build a culture that would ensure the longevity of Chrysler.

In sharp contrast, Mockler made personal sacrifices and took substantial risks for the long-term success of the company and the profits of the shareholders, and he was so effective that $1 invested in Gillette in December 1976 was worth $95.68 in December 1996 and eventually earned a significant premium when the company was sold to P&G in 2005. Laconic and reserved, Mockler labored in relative anonymity for a big-time executive; he was a man who prioritized the success of his company over ego gratification.

Mockler and executives like him are examples of what Collins calls "level 5 leaders," those who are modest, self-effacing and understated, and display a workmanlike diligence—more plow horse than show horse, they set up their successors for even greater success in the next generation.

Leadership guru Peter Drucker goes further to say that "charisma becomes the undoing of leaders. It makes them inflexible, convinced of their own infallibility, unable to change."

So maybe we introverted lawyers, likely to be low on the charisma meter, may have some hope of mastering leadership. Certainly being people who think before we act and listen before we talk can be useful in leadership roles.

Successful leadership may also be enhanced by introspection--a natural for introverts. Leaders who scrutinize every aspect of their leadership and personality (and that of others) may be able to find internal motivations and assumptions that contribute to dysfunction and inefficiency.

Another way that introverts may be able to surpass the traditional leadership attributes is in their ability to "make sense." Wilfred Drath and Charles Palus at the Center for Creative Leadership explain that "most existing theories, models and definitions of leadership proceed from the assumption that somehow leadership is about getting people to do something."  Essentially cheerleading.  That is an effort that requires relish for and persistence in being extraverted.

But Drath and Palus reimagine leadership as "the process of making sense of what people are doing together so that people will understand and be committed." Leadership, in this view, is a matter of providing interpretation. Leaders can give people a lens and a language for understanding their work and experiences in light of larger purposes. They can help shape the mental frameworks of others so that those people see themselves as making contributions to the mission and direction of their organization, working in community for a common purpose.  Here is an opportunity for the thoughtful introvert to make his or her mark.

In the corporate world over the past decades, leaders have produced greater organizational efficiencies by employing advanced analytics and defined metrics and systems. But most organizations that have successfully manipulated these resources are finding it difficult to extract even greater efficiencies from them over time. Many are turning to their human capital as the next source of growth.  Yet many businesses are realizing the difficulty of identifying and developing leaders, particularly those who can lead this kind of productivity growth.  For example, the 2008 IBM Leadership Survey found that over 75% of CEOs lamented their ability to identify and develop leaders to succeed them.

Law firms should take note. 

Leadership involves not just leveraging the collective knowledge and expertise of an organization. Leadership is also about cultivating and nurturing human capital, particularly in such a talent-dependent industry as ours.  Leaders who recognize the perennial needs of individuals to be appreciated, to be part of a community and to feel they are contributing to the greater good are more likely to be able to raise the productivity of their troops.

And introverts can do that.
 

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Here's some more data that puts into question our reliance on high scores and law school credentials in determining which lawyers we want to populate our firms with.

LSAT Scores

According to a chart prepared by the Tax Prof Blog, math or physics majors are likely to score the highest on their LSATs, theoretically making them the best candidates for law school and the best lawyers.

Or maybe not. As one blogger commented, "At a prior AmLaw 100 firm, I was chastised for not getting the chair of the IP department 'out there more,' writing, doing press. My response, 'The guy has an undergrad in chemistry, then went off to law school. I’m lucky if he opens his door.'

But this blogger goes further: "The BUSINESS of law, and the success of any given individual lawyer, is becoming more dependent on the development of personal relationships, the ability to reach out and promote one’s self, and SALES, [so] we need to remove the barriers that keep those who are so predisposed out of law school."  Or, as one article recently proclaimed: "Emotional Intelligence a New Hiring Criterion."

Following that prescription--matriculating and then hiring candidates based on something other than hard scores or law school credentials--would require a much more sophisticated method of discriminating, such as personality testing, as part of law school entry requirements or firm recruitment considerations.  Are we ready for that? 

We know that rainmakers and managing partners show a different array of personality traits than most lawyers--they are more social, more extroverted, more resilient, more empathic and more persistent--in total, more emotionally intelligent.  Should we be populating our firms from the bottom up with more of those traits?  Particularly now that one of the survival strategies for practicing law requires successful marketing, business closing and relationship building? And if so, what are the best procedures to insure that we identify a high percentage of the kinds of lawyers we want to hire?

Screening for these rarer combinations of traits might also require firms to look at a broader range of law schools than they typically have--at the very time that the pendulum appears to be swinging back to hiring only from the most prestigious schools. 

Premier Law Schools

A recent study entitled "After the JD" by the American Bar Foundation points out some of the benefits of broader recruiting.  The study concludes that graduates of non-elite law schools who work at the top 200 firms are happier than their colleagues from top-tier schools and also last longer in their jobs.

Why would that be?  It makes sense that lower-tier law school grads would work harder to nail the few BigLaw positions available to them, and, as a result, would be both more grateful for their jobs and also likely to have fewer opportunities to leave.  Other pundits have suggested that student who opt for regional law schools are more likely to have stronger family and community relationships that they want to maintain.  And that they are also more likely to have financial considerations that militate in favor of attending a less expensive law school with the possibility of working part or even full time.  Strong relationships, financial savvy, self-regulating drive--maybe our kind of candidates?

But regardless of how good it is for us, recent market pressures may in any event make firms drop the broad-barreled recruiting approach.

As Aric Press in The American Lawyer points out: "I fear that we will look back at the exuberant spree of the last few years as the high-water mark of non-elite law school hiring. There simply weren't enough bodies to go around, so the Big Law machine was willing to expand its recruiting pool. The fact that some of those hired performed well, or were happier with their lots, or possessed the drive and emotional intelligence that clients crave will not be enough to change old habits. When it comes to preserving the prestige patina, sometimes the rules of cognitive dissonance are suspended."
 

Press also reminds us of the opportunity these kinds of findings afford those firms who are thinking about their future and trying to insure its success--"an opportunity for the firms wise enough to seek first-class talent no matter what brand is on a diploma. Putting that attitude into practice would be an important part of an effort to take hiring more seriously, of not relying on admissions officers to do the work of hiring committees, to actually define attributes that firms and their customers need--and then try to recruit for them. Rather than retrench, this is a moment to put your partners to work on the future of your firm. As it happens, they have plenty of time to devote to the project."

Informal Survey

Let us know what you and your firm are doing in two areas of recruiting: 

1. Have your target law schools broadened or narrowed and why?

2. Have the attributes you are looking for changed?   In which ways?  And how do you identify those attributes in candidates? 

Stay tuned.

 

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The recent 5-4 Supreme Court ruling on the New Haven Fire Department vocational advancement exam in Ricci v. DeStefano once again stirs the waters on the question of how to choose the best from among a crowd. (See our entry "The Outliers of Law--Embracing Heresy".) The "best" in this case was determined to be simply the highest scorers, even if those scores seem to imply discrimination against a particular group. 

What's Sonia Got to Do With It?

A lot of press has been devoted to parsing whether Sonia Sotomayor's vote with the majority at the appeals court, which affirmed throwing out the test results, implies her personal position on affirmative action.   

A look at Sotomayor's own test scores gives an interesting gloss to the discussion.  She was, by her own admission, an "affirmative-action baby" who did not do well on her SATs  and LSATS, or at least not as well as her fellow students at Princeton and Yale.  Yet she went on to graduate from Princeton with highest academic honors and has reached the upper echelons of law practice.  As Walter Kirn said in a recent New York Times article about his own experience at Princeton, "the poorer and browner of my classmates — particularly the women — seemed to study twice as hard as I did, clocking endless hours in the library and forgoing weekend parties for late-night cram sessions. Maybe their SAT scores were lower than mine, but they ranked higher than I did on the effort scale. And on the bravery scale too." 

So was this a case of retrospective justice-making by Ms. Sotomayor? 

Regardless of what Sotomayor was doing in the public sector, the glaring lesson to be taken from her own story is that aptitude assessments are not the last word on potential for achievement.

The Texas Experiment

In 1997, Texas House Bill 588, better known as the "Top 10 Percent Law," was passed, guaranteeing high school graduates who ranked in the top 10% of their senior class, regardless of their SAT or ACT scores, admission to a state institution.  While hotly contested at the time as risking the influx of less able students, it is a law that school administrators and legislators agree "by any measure of public policy is a success."

Not only did the 10% plan in Texas get more minority students into top public universities with race-neutral criteria, it spawned similar programs in California and Florida and the consideration of many other states. (Due to its immense popularity, last month the Texas Legislature agreed to limit to 75% of its freshman slots the number from the program that their flagship school, the University of Texas at Austin, had to admit.)  According to the most recent issue of Inside Higher Ed, "every internal study that... the UT system conducted and every external study has shown that the 10 percent students, relative to others, have done better by any measure -- lower attrition rates, graduate in shorter time periods," etc.

As Malcolm Gladwell wrote in his 2001 New Yorker article "Examined Life": "Critics of the policy said that it would open the door to students from marginal schools whose SAT scores would normally have been too low for admission to the University of Texas—and that is exactly what happened. But so what? The 'top ten percenters,' as they are known, may have lower SAT scores, but they get excellent grades. In fact, their college GPAs are the equal of students who scored two hundred to three hundred points higher on the SAT [emphasis added]. In other words, the determination and hard work that propel someone to the top of his high-school class—even in cases where that high school is impoverished—are more important to succeeding in college (and, for that matter, in life) than whatever abstract quality the SAT purports to measure. The importance of the Texas experience cannot be overstated."

Predicting the Best Lawyers

A number of studies have looked for what might predict eventual success as a practicing lawyer. Evidently LSAT scores, and not undergraduate grade point averages, are the best indicators of academic performance in the first year of law school, and academic performance in the first year of law school appears to be the best predictor of whether the new graduate will pass his/her state bar exam on the first attempt. There is also a very strong correlation between the personality attribute of pessimism and law school grades, i.e., the higher the pessimism, the higher the grades.

But none of these factors--undergraduate grades, LSAT scores, law school grades--gives us the key to determining who is likely to be at the top of the lawyering heap. 

A New Kind of Test

Continue Reading...

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The Grant Study is an extraordinary longitudinal study undertaken in the late 1930s to shed light on "the urgent question of how to live well."  As participants, a group of 268 (male) Harvard College sophomores, including John F. Kennedy and Ben Bradlee, were chosen for showing particular promise.

An article interestingly entitled "What Makes Us Happy?" in the June 2009 issue of the Atlantic explores what we might learn from 72 years of following that gifted group.

The biggest surprise may be how unreliable those evaluations at a formative age turned out to be for purposes of predicting future success and happiness. Or perhaps, that in spite of those evaluations, how inevitable stumbling is.

As David Brooks, in his May 11, 2009 editorial "They Had It Made" in The New York Times relates: "Their lives played out in ways that would defy any imagination save Dostoevsky's.  A third of the men would suffer at least one bout of mental illness.  Alcoholism would be a running plague.  The most mundane personalities often produced the most solid success."

Almost as interesting as the study is the man who has been overseeing it for more than four decades, George Vaillant.  Vaillant doesn't hesitate to arrive at a familiar yet profound conclusion:  relationships are the key to happiness. 

Yet the difficulty of putting that dictum into practice is evident in Vaillant's own life.  At work, he has proved to be a valued colleague and mentor.  On the personal front, things are much more challenging.  His father committed suicide, which his mother never acknowledged, his three marriages all ended in divorce and his children describe their home as being a "civil war" and their father as having a problem with intimacy.

There are some other interesting takeaways from the study, which Brooks points out.  All the men tended to cope better as they aged.  Those who suffered from depression by age 50 were much more likely to die by age 63.  Those with close sibling relationships proved much healthier in old age than those without them.

What is not clear is why these particular young men were chosen to participate in the study in the first place.  All we really know about them is that their admission to Harvard College at that time meant they were at least reasonably bright and probably the sons of influential and wealthy families. And that someone at  Harvard College had a high opinion of them. 

Of course, in the 1930s they didn't have access to the bundle of assessments available to us in the 21st century.  The "science" of head size and phrenology (the study of bumps on the head) had had its heyday during the prior century. The concept of an assessable intelligence quotient had only recently been introduced; the Wechsler Intelligence Scale would appear a few years later.  

What did the Grant Study originators think success in "living well" meant?  And what did they think it took to accomplish that?   In other words, what specific attributes were they looking for?  Might the many different paths that the participants eventually took reflect a lack of a clear vision on the part of the originators as to their concept either of success or its antecedents?

Perhaps Brooks' note that "the most mundane personalities often produced the most solid success"  informed another editorial, "In Praise of Dullness," that appeared a week later.  There he cited a recent study that seems to point to "relentless and somewhat mind-numbing commitment to incremental efficiency gains" as the critical attribute of successful CEOs.  Even if that correlation is in fact relevant (see the comments on Richard Edelman's "Dull Advice," which question its relevance as a broad-based indicator), it seems unlikely that it was young men with that attribute whom the Grant Study originators sought to identify.

Knowing what you are looking for in any selection process is critical.  Organizations around the world use sophisticated assessments to choose candidates for employment and advancement based on the competencies, attributes and traits that they have found predict success in their organizations.

Yet we recruiters of legal talent often don't know what we are looking for.  At a roundtable two weeks ago on legal hiring, David Van Zandt, Dean of Northwestern University School of Law, entreated law firms to develop a better model for selecting their summer associates.  "I've long advocated that firms really need to look at their data... and identify the characteristics that they're looking for in their candidates," Van Zandt said. Now, "you just go out and throw a wide net and pull people in." 

In fact, as we've suggested (see our entry "The Outliers of Law--Embracing Heresy "), the single attribute--high class standing--that firms do look for may be the one that could well be jettisoned--or at least modified--with little impact on the quality of legal services.

What the Grant Study does show is that predicting the future course of even a bright young person with a shiny veneer of promise can be difficult.  And that regardless of their credentials or intelligence, many are likely to fall to the various vicissitudes of man--mental illness, addiction, relationship breakdown. 

So then, what can one do to be happy?

Valiant knows: "Happiness is love, full stop." 

Now it's just a matter of implementation.

 

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Malcolm Gladwell's latest book Outliers, the Story of Success argues that what accounts for success is often not what we expect.  High IQs or a prodigious ability in computers or exceptional musical talent is not sufficient to explain Nobel Prize winners and Bill Gates and the Beatles.  While a certain level of intelligence, skill or talent may be a necessary ingredient for success, it is not sufficient.  Luck, opportunity, hard work, support and training all play important roles.  Raw ability--intelligence or talent--is only a threshold.  When faced with a class of clever boys, as Gladwell repeatedly points out, knowing one boy's IQ is of little help in determining his standing among the group.  Extensive research validating that attitude has led psychologist Barry Schwartz (full disclosure: he was my psych professor at Swarthmore) to suggest that elite schools could give up their complex admissions process and simply hold a lottery for everyone above a certain threshold of eligibility--the "good enough candidates"--without producing a loss in their graduates' accomplishments.

In April 2008 the Indiana University School of Law-Bloomington issued a research paper entitled "Are We Selling Results or Resumes?: The Underexplored Linkage Between Human Resource Strategies and Firm-Specific Capital" by William D. Henderson, a respected authority on lawyers and law firm management who may be in need of better title-writing skills.

Henderson describes the "Cravath system" that Cravath, Swaine & Moore developed in the early 20th century in order to distinguish its legal services:  "Hire the best graduates from the best law schools; provide them with the best training, and at the end of a six-to-ten-year apprenticeship, promote the best associates to partner."  Ironically, instead of distinguishing Cravath's brand, in fairly short order that system became standard industry practice, hence the run-up in associate salaries when increasing demand over the last 20 years from all those wannabe premier law firms outstripped the stagnant supply of premier graduates.

Included in the "peculiar market dynamics" that Henderson notes as a result of the widespread adoption of the Cravath model is 1) the resistance of clients to having those escalating salary costs passed on to them, resulting in their request that junior associates not work on their matters, and 2) the inability of a large proportion of firms who use this model to simply absorb pay raises that can't be passed on to clients. 

So-- Voila, the current standoff between valued-centered clients.and expense-laden firms.

What does Outliers and that very long, obscurely-titled paper have to do with one another?  Henderson makes the point that law firms able to deliver high quality legal services at a fixed cost are in a position to reap enormous financial rewards.  How to do that?  He cites empirical evidence that "within a certain range, differences in cognitive ability, such as I.Q., are uncorrelated with contributions to organizational productivity, and that among knowledge workers, organizational productivity is primarily a function of work strategies that are teachable and trainable."  Those conclusions were drawn after evaluating engineers and other high-level service providers.

Henderson points out that young lawyers with slightly less elite credentials are willing to work very hard for less than elite salaries, particularly if they are being trained.  These lawyers provide firms with the opportunity through knowledge management, business processes, lawyer training and teamwork to develop "firm-specific capital.--i.e., an asset whose value is unique to the firm because it cannot be removed by departing partners nor easily duplicated by competitors."   That is, by engaging "good enough" lawyers and aggressively managing them using the tools that other industries employ to provide high-quality, fixed-price services, a firm can make a name for itself and profitably escape the Cravath model.  Both Gladwell and Henderson point to the enormous financial success of Wachtell Lipton and Skadden Arps in the 70s, firms started by unmarketable lawyers who addressed underserved niches. 

Howrey has just announced that starting this fall it will be paying first and second year associates reduced salaries in connection with a program of limited billing requirements and supercharged career development.  During those years, associates will have intensive training opportunities and be seconded to clients, judges and not-for-profit organizations in order to ramp up their skills.  Managing Partner Robert Ruyak "said the new approach is not a way to save the firm money. In fact, he said, it's going to cost between $3 million and $4 million to implement once training costs and the unbilled hours the associates work are thrown in."

"The way we see it though is that it's going to cost more in the beginning because we're creating something from scratch, but once we get going and we start having a group of young, experienced lawyers coming out ready to handle client matters, we're going to turn a profit much more quickly than we would under the old model."

Howrey and the few other firms who have introduced a version of this approach have not said that part of their plan is to hire "good enough" lawyers, instead of the most highly-credentialed, but the effect remains similar--they are paying less for their incoming talent on the theory that those young lawyers will be bright enough to learn the types of skills and service that the firms intend to pin their reputations on.

What's the biggest hurdle here?  The hurdle that may keep some firms hesitating is the feared implication that by not paying the top entry salaries, which for decades has signaled the pecking order of firms in recruitment, firms adopting this kind of approach do not have "the best" lawyers. 

Perhaps now is the time to embrace the heresy that having "good enough" lawyers is in fact good enough to be successful.

 

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Regardless of what you think of Sonia Sotomayor's politics, President Obama has touted his Supreme Court nominee as having two distinct qualities that he implies our judges don't always have:  practicality and empathy. 

What is the likelihood that any such description of her is correct?  And on what basis can we make such judgments?

A look at what we know about lawyers' personal styles as shown on various assessments indicates that, indeed, lawyers are most likely to be "high concept" thinkers, or "Intuitors" according to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI).  Over half of lawyers are Intuitors, while only 1/4th of the general public are. That type of thinker stands in contrast to those who are more concrete and thus better able to see practical implications--the MBTI type called "Sensors." Almost 3/4th of the general public but less than half of lawyers are Sensors. Perhaps Sotomayor's reputation for being practical arises from her being in that smaller group of more concrete lawyers.

Lawyers are also more likely than the general public to be MBTI "Thinkers" instead of "Feelers," a distinction that recognizes how people make decisions.  Thinkers rely more heavily on objectivity--stepping away from the issue, while Feelers are more likely to make decisions using empathy--putting themselves into the scenario to see what it feels like.  More than three-quarters of lawyers are Thinkers, while less than half of the general public is.  This decision-making style is also the one MBTI type where gender plays a role--about half of men in the general population are Feelers, as are 2/3rds of women.  Among lawyers, 4/5ths of male lawyers and 2/3rds of female lawyers are Thinkers.  As a woman, Sotomayor has a statistically better chance of being more inclined to empathic decision making.

Armchair psychologizing obviously has its risks, but simply looking at the MBTI odds makes it likely that there is in fact a basis for thinking that practicality and empathy are in shorter supply among lawyers, and therefore among judges, than out in the rest of the world.  So regardless of her various policy and political leanings, Ms. Sotomayor might in fact be able to bring those very attributes to the Supreme Court bench.

 

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Ronda Muir will be a featured panelist at the annual general meeting of the Attorneys' Liability Assurance Society (ALAS) in Quebec City, Quebec to be held June 25-26.   ALAS is the premier provider of professional liability insurance for large law firms in the United States, currently insuring 237 firms.  Muir will discuss lawyer personality, firm culture and other aspects that impact risk particularly in the context of mergers and lateral hires. Over 250 loss management and managing partners are expected to attend. 

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Muir's September 5, 2008 entry on "The Depression Demon Coming Out of the Legal Closet" has been published in the Spring2009 newsletter of Virginia's Lawyers Helping Lawyers, a 20-year old non-stock corporation endorsed by the Virginia State Bar, The Virginia Bar Association, the Virginia Trial Lawyers Association and the Virginia Board of Bar Examiners.

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What does behavioral science and our expertise about lawyers tell us about President and Mrs. Obama, who are both Harvard-educated lawyers?

Assessments.   A number of assessment tools give us a profile of what a typical lawyer's attributes are. Lawyers on average score one or two standard deviations higher on IQ assessments (i.e. 115-130) than the general US population.  Using the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, lawyers are likely to have the following personality types:  "introversion" (need for time alone to think and recharge), "intuition" (greater comfort with concepts than with details), "thinking" (decision-making based on objective reasoning rather than empathic compassion) and "judging" (a work style that methodically charts out and completes goals).  According to the Caliper Profile, compared to the general population, lawyers generally have high levels of skepticism and strong abstract reasoning skills, highly prefer autonomy ("I am the boss of me"), exhibit a strong sense of urgency, show low resilience in the face of setbacks (and criticism), and are often uncomfortable and/or unskilled at forming and building relationships ("sociability").  Of the five conflict resolution styles, lawyers tend to use only two:  competing ("I want to win") and avoidance, compared to the collaboration that business people often prefer.  Lawyers also have on average lower (by one standard deviation) emotional intelligence than the general US population and are much more pessimistic.

Handedness. President Obama, as he recently pointed out when signing his first Executive Order, is a lefty. Mrs. Obama is right-handed.

Humans--while not the only species to exhibit handedness--are and have been for over 5,000 years the only one with a consistent, strongly preferred handedness. Ninety-three percent (93%) of humans are right-handed and a higher proportion of males than females are left-handed.

The left hemisphere of the human brain processes things in parts and sequentially, and is usually the center for language, science, mathematics, and logic. When the left side of the brain is dominant, it controls the right side of the body, making these individuals right-handed.  The right side of the brain synthesizes and is a source of dreams, fantasies, art, music, and feeling, and is dominant in left-handed individuals.  Almost half of left-handers also use their right hemisphere for language.  Lefties are therefore more likely to mix emotion and language, vision and feeling.

Is it better to be left-handed?  Research on handedness tends to place the abilities of left-handers at the extremes--over-represented among both the gifted and the mentally challenged.  And a number of miscellaneous attributes are reported to be associated with being left-handed, including higher instances of allergies, alcoholism, epilepsy, eczema, thyroid problems, and a shorter life-span by an average of nine years.  Also, a significantly higher portion of male lefties than righties are homosexual. 

What makes someone left-handed?  Premature birth, prolonged labor and breech births seem to correlate with babies who become left-handed. While there is no conclusive explanation for handedness, one theory suggests that the male hormone testosterone might be responsible. Large amounts of this hormone slow left hemisphere development in the male fetus and might explain the clear predominance of males among lefties. 

The hormonal theory also seems consistent with differences that have been found in cognitive performance at the intersection of handedness and gender.  For example, overall, males perform better than females on spatial tasks (a left hemisphere and therefore right-hand dominant task), while left-handed males perform poorer than right-handed males on those tests (and right-handed women perform poorer than left-handed women).  As to verbal abilities (a right hemisphere and therefore left-hand dominant task),  left-handed males out perform right-handed males (and, by the way, right-handed females out perform left-handed females).  So the picture that emerges is that left-handed males are most like right-handed women in their cognitive approaches. 

Analysis of career choices show, as would be expected (and I predicted in a college paper too many years ago to admit to), that a disproportionately high rate of left-handed males, consistent with their superior verbal abilities, are lawyers.  Similarly, I surmised (and as to which I can now claim vindication), right-handed women should also be over-represented among lawyers.

Blood Type.  Okay, we are starting to get a little far out here, I admit, but several theories contend that blood type relates to specific personality clusters, a result of metabolism and other organic forces that mold leaders, followers, bean-counters, risk-takers.  In Japan and other Asian countries, a resume often includes blood type to bolster the applicant's qualification for the job.  In any event, the Obamas' blood types do not seem to be publicly available and Barack Obama's mixed racial heritage (as well as some mixed race heritage on Michelle Obama's side) make assumptions based on race difficult.  Nonetheless, people of African ancestry are most often Type O, the original blood type.  According to Eat Right for Your Blood Type by Dr. Peter. J. D'Adamo, Type Os tend to be hardy and strong, are best fueled by a high protein diet and need heavy physical exercise.  Type Os also have a strong drive to succeed and often exhibit leadership qualities, including a willingness to take risks and, concomitantly, a high degree of optimism.  Former president Ronald Reagan, to whom Obama has been compared, was a Type O, as is Queen Elizabeth II and Charles, the Prince of Wales.

Education.  Moving on to nurture.  Some contend that a lawyer's law school affects how he/she approaches and resolves issues. Noam Scheiber of The New Republic contrasts the differences between the chaotic early days of Clinton's presidency with Obama's smooth and "brutally efficient" transition, concluding that part of the explanation for the difference "lies in the elite institutions that socialized them -- namely Yale and Harvard, their respective law schools."

According to Carolyn Elefant in the Legal Blog Watch, "Scheiber contrasts the rigor and competitiveness of Harvard Law School with the somewhat more relaxed environment at Yale. At Yale, class attendance wasn't required, and professors engaged students in broad policy discussions. By contrast, Harvard classes focused more tightly on legal issues. Likewise, at Yale, the law review conferred little prestige, because anyone could join, whereas at Harvard, law review participation depended upon grades and a writing competition. As a result, Harvard Law review editors like Obama stood a good chance at a coveted Supreme Court clerkship."

Brian Lauter at The Shark goes further to say that it is college that provides "the more formative experience. Personal identity, at least partially formed during the college years, guides the way we approach decisions and situations" -- including one's choice of law school.

Ultimately, Elefant agrees "that our personalities matter much more than where we attend school -- undergraduate or law school. Had Bill Clinton attended Harvard, he probably would have chafed against the rules and formalities with his less-disciplined personality, but I doubt that Harvard would have changed him. Likewise, if Obama had gone to Yale, it's not likely that the relaxed atmosphere would have encouraged him to drop his work ethic."
 

What's Different About the Obamas.  Of course we have more information about the Obamas than just that they are lawyers, what schools they went to and their handedness.  Some of the other information out there can help us piece together a more specific read on their personal work styles. 

First, the fact that both Obamas left the traditional law firm track makes them more likely to be exceptions to the average lawyer profile rather than the rule.  Lawyers who are high on extroversion, sociability, compassionate decision making, and optimism are often the ones most uncomfortable in law firm culture and the first ones to go.

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At the meeting of the American Bar Association's Law Practice Management section today in Tucson, Arizona, Muir was presented with the 2007-2008 Law Practice Magazine Edge Award for Bronze Feature Article for her article in the July/August 2007 issue of the magazine entitled "The Importance of Emotional Intelligence in Law Firm Partners." The Edge Awards are sponsored by Edge International, and each year recognize excellence in writing for the magazine.

 

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Lawyers are introverts, big time.  According to Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) results, almost 3/4th of lawyers, compared to only 1/4th of the general public, are introverts.  That means they go inward to charge their batteries-- preferring internal introspection to external interaction. 

On the Caliper Profile personality test, lawyers also rank astonishingly low in the sociability trait--which measures how comfortable a person is initiating and building close relationships. Low sociability scorers are less inclined to enjoy interacting with others, preferring to spend more time with information. 

Of course, we know that lawyers are thinkers--they think, analyze documents and deals, edit and write, all loner tasks.  In a recent study, lawyers ranked sixth overall on a list of the 200 best jobs for introverts, just behind the loner braniacs who work as computer software engineers and accountants. 

The question for management becomes how to integrate these loners not only into a coherent, committed organization but also into the 21st century vision of service delivery:  coherent, committed teams.  How do you overcome/compensate for the introverted nature of lawyers in day-to-day management, business development endeavors, client service?

Slowly.  Start by using the strengths of introverts--such as their tendency to (appear to) listen and to deliver well-thought-out opinions-- and proceed from there logically to the overwhelming consensus from research that collaboration improves productivity and satisfaction. 

 

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What is the most important attribute to be looking for as you groom your young lawyers for management? 

A 2006 study reviewed in the Leadership and Organization Development Journal assessed the relationship between emotional intelligence and managerial effectiveness, confirming what you might expect.  A total of 38 supervisors (37 males and 1 female) and 1,258 subordinates from a large manufacturing organization participated. Data analysis found that the total MSCEIT score (an emotional intelligence assessment that I consider most reliable) displayed a strong positive correlation with supervisor ratings; that is, the more emotionally intelligent the supervisor, the more effective and productive s/he was rated by others in the organization.

First, I would point out that this study doesn't tell us whether these emotionally intelligent supervisors who were rated more effective actually were more effective than their lower EI colleagues.  All we know is that they were perceived to be more effective.  The implication being that even if those high EI supervisors weren't quite so great in the accomplishments department as advertised, their loyal team still saw them in the best possible light.

This distinction is particularly important in environments such as law firms and law departments, where dramatically high skepticism (averaging in the top 10% of the American population) creates hurdles that make it hard for managers to establish rapport and trust, much less garner appreciation for a job reasonably well done.  Second- and third-guessing is often standard procedure, regardless of how demonstrable  the accomplishment might be.  While emotionally intelligent managers may be in fact most effective, this and other studies demonstrate that they are in any event going to have the interpersonal skills to align legal staff and professionals on the same side.  Given the challenge of creating supportive cultures for growth and accomplishment in law organizations, identifying these kinds of leaders becomes imperative.

Two major subscores make up the MSCEIT total score.  In the study above, Experiential EI, which includes perceiving and using emotions, was found to be very highly correlated with high supervisor ratings, whereas the Reasoning EI subscore, which includes understanding and managing emotions, displayed no significant correlation.

Our study of emotional intelligence and lawyers (also using the MSCEIT) indicates that lawyers' scores in EI are generally a standard deviation below the general population (that is, 85 compared to 100).  In addition, lawyers score significantly lower on the Experiential subgroup than on the Reasoning one.  Their ability to "read" their own and others' emotions is notably low compared to the general population, and they also are not facile at "using" emotions, i.e., moving from a less appropriate emotion to a more appropriate one.  Their Reasoning scores are usually significantly higher than the Experiential ones, lawyers being evidently well-suited to logically analyze even the emotional realm.  The problem is that weakness in reading emotions creates a garbage-in, garbage-out result when that reasoning horsepower is applied to inaccurate information.  So lawyers often get blind-sided by what they hadn't originally correctly perceived .

This finding as to the importance of Experiential EI to effective management can be critical in the case of managing lawyers.  Not only should we be grooming our young lawyers to be emotionally intelligent managers, but we should also be specifically rewarding those who are expert at recognizing and using emotions, an item I would bet is not currently on any evaluation form.

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"We evaluate 'courage' as a behavioral characteristic of our lawyers, and we link this evaluation to compensation," says John P. Donahue, Senior Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary of Rhodia Inc., in the July 2007 issue of InsideCounsel.   Rhodia has "embraced professional objectivity of its in-house lawyers as a core value" and Donahue wants to make sure that "our lawyers can deliver bad news to clients," with whom they are often closely aligned. 

Valuing Courage

Given the data we have about the strong tendency of lawyers to avoid rather than confront conflicts (yes, even those feisty litigators, oddly enough) (see my article "The Unique Psychological World of Lawyers"), Donahue's goal is one that can't be lauded enough.  Hospital administrators contend that a ratio of 1 conflict avoider in 4 employees results in a "dangerous workplace"--think:  "I don't want to get so&so in trouble over reusing needles" or "Maybe she'll start writing down dosages after she gets used to our procedures". 

Left to their own proclivities, lawyers' much higher rate of avoidance than hospital workers risks being just as dangerous.  Avoidance not only fails to resolve firm and client issues, but at the extreme, failure to report and confront violations of Sarbanes-Oxley, insider trading and discrimination laws, to name a few, can not only crater a career, but also a firm or a company.  Add in malpractice, fraud and the range of criminal possibilities (see, for example, Enron and other corporate demises and the unfolding saga of Milberg Weiss Bershad & Schulman) and silence should never be considered golden.

Hence Donahue's laudable efforts to support and promote courage.   

Which is where our thought for today could end.

Evaluating Courage

But Donahue goes further than suggesting putting in place environmental supports like "constantly talking" about maintaining objectivity, creating a culture that embraces bearers of bad news and rotating lawyers among client departments. He wants his lawyers' courage to be evaluated and then to compensate them accordingly.

Evaluating courage or any other personal characteristic as it relates to their work is a radical idea to many lawyers. Basing compensation on that evaluation is outlandish.  They don't know what a "behavioral characteristic" actually means, don't trust the evaluation process, and certainly don't think their compensation should be linked to so un-rigorous a process.  They are, after all, good lawyers, and good lawyers average in the top 10% on the characteristic "skepticism" in personality assessments (see again my article "The Unique Psychological World of Lawyers").

In this case, they should get over it.  Whether Donahue is using structured assessments or more unstructured evaluation techniques, these behavioral and personality evaluations are likely to be the key for law firms and law departments to break their recruitment and retention quandaries and, as icing on the cake, help solve the diversity dilemma.  (See my January 5, 2007 blog entry "KPMG Model Delivers Risk Management, Teamwork, Client Satisfaction and Diversity Too," reporting on KPMG's use of the Birkman Method assessment to revamp its business model and achieve retention and diversity goals.)

This is not a new position, at least for me.  (See my article "The Case for Assessment: Using Discrimination for Better Hiring," which outlines all the uses of assessments in the non-law firm world and how law firms might profit from them.)  And now the tipping point is in sight as more law departments and law firms inch towards greater use of evaluations and assessments-- and trumpet the benefits.

General Counsel Scott Terrillion, of Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals Inc, uses an "evaluative selection method" to find the best attorneys for his company, with diversity being a natural consequence.  Roland Dumas, director of diversity for the legal recruiting firm Major, Lindsey & Africa, points out that "if a law firm screens candidates based on what law school they went to and how well they did there, it won't achieve much diversity.  There simply are not enough African-American and Latino law students in the top law schools who would survive the 'top quarter' cut."  Instead, Dumas recommends "capabilities" interviews, which use rich conversations to probe candidates to find those who have the talents the firm values. 

Struggling to complete with bigger firms, Kansas City, Mo.-based Blackwell Sanders developed a system for selecting and assessing associates that is more behaviorally evaluative than most firms use, and it found that using these behavioral evaluations, starting with the initial interview, enabled the firm to spot talent it might otherwise miss. The firm has documented its efforts in a handbook, From Classes to Competencies, Lockstep To Levels, which, according to the foreword by Ida Abbott, is "an act of remarkable candor and leadership ... [that] will enable law firms to expedite the design and implementation of competency-based evaluations and performance-based advancement."

The proof, as they say, is in the pudding.  Blackwell Sanders doubled the total number of minority associates, tripled the number in recent incoming classes, and increased by 22% the number of females associates.  Perhaps even more notable, a "high" minority attrition rate declined to "0" within four years. 

Jeffrey N. Berman, managing partner at Berman Fink Van Horn, says that for the last 10 years his firm has taken an even more radical step--using individually administered psychological assessments as part of their hiring process. Determining assessment traits important to the firm has given the firm "a handle on the type of attorney that is going to be happy and successful here," Berman says.  

The firm tells all prospective hires, lawyers and staff, that they will be required to take a personality test if an offer is made.  Contrary to the fear of many hiring partners, Berman reports that no one has ever objected to the assessment or refused to proceed, in part, he believes, because everyone in the firm has participated and also because it has been so accurate in predicting success.   "It never ceases to amaze me how accurate the testing is," he adds, noting that it has never proved inaccurate with anyone they've hired, even when the results contravene the impression of interviewers.

So diversity is not the only benefit firms can expect from the targeted use of evaluations and assessments--law turnover and high satisfaction and performance result as well. 

Our firm offers law departments and law firms state-of-the-art advice on identifying the characteristics that produce happy, productive lawyers in your environment and designing evaluations and assessments to use in hiring and promoting those candidates.  Don't be left in the backwash.  This is a wave that can do much to move you forward.

 

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"Think of a succession plan as life insurance for a law firm." 

An article in the August 24-30 issue of the Puget Sound Business Journal entitled "Firms Make Plans to Carry on When Leaders Go" quotes Ronda Muir on the subject of succession planning and describes the services that she and Robin Rolfe Resources performed for a Seattle law firm.

"Senior Attorney Jay Derr of Seattle firm GordonDerr said that nearly three years ago his firm decided to hire Muir and company to put together a succession plan... Thus, the preparations were in place when founding attorney Peter Buck decided to leave... to start his own firm...' We felt no economic blip from it at all,' said Derr."

"Succession is especially critical to the survival of so-called first generation 'founder firms,'"said consultant Muir.  'It involves finding a dynamic leader who can transition into a new role... and moving the founder to a different level...'"

 

 

 

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Ronda Muir's article "The Looming Associate Crisis" leads the July 2007 ALM Law Firm Partnership & Benefits Report, Volume 13, Number 6.   

After reviewing statistics that show an ever-tightening supply, and potentially less qualified pool, of associates who are paid more yet leaving earlier than in years past, Muir recounts some of the tried (and perhaps less currently true) strategies for coping, and also identifies some more radical solutions that innovative, forward-looking firms can benefit from.

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An article by Ronda Muir entitled "The Importance of Emotional Intelligence in Law Firm Partners" appears in the July/August 2007 issue of the ABA Law Practice Management Section's Law Practice Magazine. 

Among the attributes that emotionally intelligent partners bring are better judgment, higher productivity, enhanced business development skills and better client relationship management.  Most importantly, high emotional intelligence fuels the kind of leadership-- one which promotes collaboration and teamwork-- that is critical to excellence in the 21st Century, and that can provide firms with a competitive edge.

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Oddly enough, where it is most needed, Boards and other management groups may be the last frontier for achieving enhanced performance management. 

Historically, the perceived advantages of relying on a managing group, instead of one individual, include access to the group's collective wisdom –"several heads are better than one"–as well as the ability to spread an increasing management workload over a number of people. 

A recent Center for Creative Leadership study identified an additional advantage. Effective management these days requires the resources of several people, rather than the lone hero, in order to meet the global challenges of collaboratively connecting across boundaries of all kinds—geography, language, culture and expertise.

Avoiding "Extreme" Group Decision-Making

Yet there is a well-documented propensity for groups to drift toward "extreme" decisions, that is, a committee often makes a decision that none of the individual members of the committee, acting alone, would make. These group decisions can be extreme by being either extremely risky or extremely conservative, and you see lone Directors routinely disavowing their cohorts’ actions after the fact. There seem to be a number of reasons for this tendency:          

Diffusion of Responsibility. An individual's part in a group's decision evidently weighs less heavily on him/her than an individual decision would, the implication being that not as thorough an evaluation of the issues is made when the decision is attributed to the group.

Ignoring the Lone Voice. Often groups do not properly take into account the most relevant expertise in the room.   Most small groups tend to make decisions based on the information all members share about a topic, overlooking important facts that one or several people bring. Although management committees are usually looking for creative, out-of-the-box strategies, a solitary opinion is often taken lightly or ignored in the flow of debate within the group.

Social Pressure. The more bonded the group, the more committed they are likely to be to reaching a decision, particularly one that pleases most of the members, even if a decision should be delayed or a less pleasing one would in fact be best. 

Competition. When committee members agree on the parameters of an issue, individuals may try to one-up each other by suggesting more and more extreme solutions, then promoting their solution as the best.

Stress. Groups under pressure act very much like individuals under stress, only more so. They often procrastinate, calling for further information, or become committed to bad decisions primarily to protect themselves and each other against criticism. This effect may account for the popular notion that committees tend to "split the baby," resulting in a less controversial solution that does not in fact work very well.

Seeing What Others Say

The impact of psychological factors on group decision making may go even further, to actually alter each person’s perceptions. A study using advanced brain-scanning technology shows that, in effect, group members often in fact see what the group tells them they see. In an exercise involving mentally rotating images of three-dimensional objects to determine if the objects were the same or different, subjects were assured of an incorrect conclusion by confederates and then agreed with those wrong answers 41% of the time. The brain activity of those who went along with the group was markedly different from those who took independent positions. When subjects concurred with wrong answers, activity increased in the area of the brain devoted to spatial awareness, meaning that their actual perceptions were being influenced. Those who made independent judgments showed activity in the region of the brain associated with conflict management, signifying an emotional toll for going against the group's perception.

Based on the results of this study, one of the potential major advantages of a group decision—"several heads are better than one"—can disappear if the group successfully, even if unintentionally, co-opts individual insights. The most problematic aspect of these results is that not only does the group lose the "lone voices," but also the lone voices lose their very awareness of their differing perspectives. The change in their perception makes them incapable of raising their idiosyncratic flags.

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Why Feedback?

Effective leadership in lawyers is achieved by using some of the same strategies that work with other high-performing professionals, while also requiring an appreciation of the nuances that are particular to the legal personality.  Awareness is the standard starting point for most leadership assessment and improvement programs.  Studies have clearly shown that the higher your self-awareness, the better a manager and performer you are, and, as an added carrot, the more you actually enjoy your work. 

Unfortunately, studies also clearly show that the higher you rise in the ranks of an organization, the less likely you are to be accurately aware of your impact.  Thus, oddly enough, in any given business the CEO is probably less informed about how she and her work are perceived by her colleagues--below, across and above her-- than is the night typist.  This turn of events is often attributed to the fact that the higher up most organizations one goes, the less systematic, extensive and honest is the feedback. 

Feedback and Lawyer-Leaders

Lawyers, and certainly general counsels and firm partners, often function like the CEOs of their own small businesses, and therefore risk suffering from that same top-of-the-heap lack of awareness that other senior management executives experience.  As to the younger lawyers, while run-of-the-mill annual associate reviews are often standard, most of these reviews are still not successful in effectively giving meaningful feedback . And once those lawyers become senior managers or partners themselves, there is usually no system at all for them to get feedback-- from the associates who work for them, from other partners or senior managers or from clients. 

There are well-established ways to produce effective feedback in an organization: professional assessments of individual working styles using Myers-Briggs and other testing instruments, regular feedback-targeted personal reviews, mentoring programs that include in-depth feedback, and department, practice group or firm-wide meetings or retreats. Bottom-up (from associates) and cross (from other partners or colleagues) reviews are recent additions to the array of law firm/law department feedback systems that try to provide senior lawyers with that critical awareness.  Other tools are practice group, partnership and client surveys, particularly if the surveys are followed up with face-to-face discussions. 

Unfortunately, giving and receiving written and person-to-person feedback strikes many lawyers as bordering on, if not squarely in, the realm of useless touchy/feely psycho-babble. Yet it is a skill that should come easily to lawyers.  Rigorous analysis and clear communication, particularly in identifying issues and crafting resolutions, are the stock-in-trade of what we do.  Why then is it that lawyers so resist using these potentially powerful tools in their own practices?

Feedback and the Half-Empty Glass

The wrinkle here may well lie in other personality attributes that lawyers often possess.  First, as a group, lawyers score high on resistance to feedback-- they get defensive and don't listen, or lash out with their point-by-point answers.  Part of this response derives no doubt from years of advocacy thinking-- every point deserves a good counter-point.  The high esteem that lawyers tend to hold themselves in-- another trait that serves them well when under attack from opposing counsel-- also feeds the inability to hear "criticism." 

A further attribute that may well contribute to lawyers' disinterest in feedback is their inherent pessimism. Martin Seligman, a University of Pennsylvania psychology professor who has been a leader in the development of the field of positive psychology over the last ten years, identified lawyers, in a survey of 104 careers, as the most pessimistic.  While researchers can argue whether that attribute makes lawyers likely to be more or less accurate in their assessments of legal situations, it does make them, as a group, more resistant to "new" policies or procedures, and more likely to think that remedial steps are of dubious value. 

"Peanuts" and You:  Cashing in on a Valuable Commodity

I was recently in the student center of a large suburban high school.  In a deja vu from a "Peanuts" cartoon strip, a teenage boy sat behind a hand-written sign that said "5 cents -- I'll tell you what I think of you."  Beside the sign was a very large pile of nickels.  An enterprising kid was demonstrating what a valuable commodity honest feedback is. 

Lawyers have the skills and the opportunity to cash in on that valuable commodity.  As lawyers, we can begin our leadership effectiveness program right there:  by simply learning something about ourselves, we can start accessing a whole new array of potentially useful tools for enhancing our practices and our lives. 

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Ronda Muir, Senior Consultant, led a two and a half day retreat at the end of May for UNICEF's 22-person Armenia office to help them better serve the country's children.  She was engaged to improve teamwork, communication and conflict resolution and to assist in the office's preparation for upcoming reviews and its transitioning to potential structural and policy changes. 

Through the use of individual and team MBTI work style reports, personal conflict style assessments, emotional intelligence tests and a confidential office-wide survey, Muir assisted the team in identifying personal and office strengths and challenges and in determining strategies for improved communication, conflict management and change management.

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Ronda Muir, Senior Consultant, has been asked by UNICEF's Armenia office to lead a two and a half day retreat at the end of May to help improve teamwork, communication and conflict resolution. Through the use of individual and team MBTI reports and emotional intelligence assessments, Muir will help the team identify personal and office strengths and challenges and determine strategies for improved communication and conflict management in order to better serve the country's children.

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In connection with the 129th annual International Tradmark Association meeting in Chicago, Ronda Muir, Senior Consultant, presented a program on Wednesday, May 2, at Robin Rolfe Resource's Women's Power Breakfast for seventy senior corporate and law firm women in intellectual property.   Her presentation focused on what makes lawyers, and women lawyers, different from other professions and how to use those differences to make good lawyers better.  This year INTA welcomed over 8,500 registrants from around the world.

 

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Give yourself the advantages that insights from sophisticated behavioral science tools and informed collaboration can produce.  Out of ideas for how to motivate your team?  Can't take another day with a difficult boss or colleague?  Strung out from too many committments and not enough time?  Looking for a meaningful way to both practice law and live your life?

Achieve improvements in your professional and personal life, including progress in leadership and management skills, work/life balance, conflict management, business development and time and resources management. 

Our experienced lawyer coaches use their expertise and assessments to give you the tools to maximize your strengths, raise your emotional intelligence and social IQ, as well as benefit your bottom-line results.  You choose the program that best suits your needs and schedule.

For further information, contact RMuir@RobinRolfeResources.com. 

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The 100 Best Employers

From over 400 organizations surveyed, five law firms, down one from last year and with most of the survivors heading down the list, made Fortune magazine’s 2007 list of the best 100 employers to work for: Alston & Bird, Arnold & Porter, Nixon Peabody, Perkins Coie and Bingham McCutchen, with Morrison & Foerster having dropped off.

The list is based on two criteria: an evaluation of the policies and culture of each organization, and the opinions of the employees, which is given more weight. Two-thirds of the total score comes from responses to a 57-question survey, on attitudes towards management, job satisfaction, and camaraderie, sent to at least 400 employees from each company. The remaining one-third of the score is based on demographic makeup, pay and benefits programs, and culture.

It's a tough competition, with No. 1-rated Google providing employees free gourmet meals, a swimming spa and free doctors on site.

But apart from offering outsized bennies, there are some lessons Google may be able to offer us legals.

Hiring for the Right Reasons

Google has doubled the number of employees in each of the last three years, and now with 10,000 employees, expects to double in size again this year, resulting in about 200 hires a week. It also enjoys an attrition rate of 4%, low by Silicon Valley standards. Historically, much like law firms, Google has relied on grade requirements and interviews to make hiring decisions. The challenge is to continue to find valuable employees at such an astounding rate of growth.

A recent review of over 2 million data points made it clear that Google's hiring criteria were not necessarily correlated with success at the company. So Google has revamped its hiring process, using assessments of existing personnel to produce a more quantitative measurement of success in terms of skills, intelligence, personality and integrity. All incoming applicants will now take a personal survey, which Google is already finding produces better matches for its work and culture.

Lessons for Law Firms

Law firms with spiraling growth requirements are competing to hire from the same number of law graduates with good grades from the same number of top-rung law schools as 20 years ago. The lesson from Google, the best company to work for and possibly the hiringest company as well, is that grades and an interview don't do it anymore. Now is the time to identify your real indicators of success and hire candidates with those.

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In a study conducted last fall of managing partners, general counsel, and other legal leaders, Altman Weil identified five key market trends and critical concerns.  It noted that people management was one of the highest priorities on everyone's list, with one partner saying that he goes to sleep "never knowing who might be leaving tomorrow."  The limited pool of quality law graduates, the "free-agent mentality" of lawyers from new associates to rainmakers, Gen-Xers emphasizing work-life balance and achieving diversity were all cited as challenges to people management by this august group. 

To my mind, the other four critical areas identified-- growth, competition, client service and even pricing-- are also each dependent on achieving effective people management.  Growth requires wrestling with "cultural, office and practice integration," competition is felt most dramatically in the "war for talent," with quality people, superior client service skills and strong training and development programs giving firms the competitive edge.   Client service requires superior communication and relationship, among other, skills, and "improved project staffing." (See our entry today on KPMG's success with their staffing model.)  Even pricing is acknowledged as a function of the quality of a firm's work and service-- which general counsel have consistently linked to people skills.  (See our entries Do You Know Why You Were Fired? dated November 8, 2005 and Companies Unhappy with Their Law Firms dated December 20, 2006.)

So why do law firms and law departments not take advantage of the extensive body of expertise available on hiring, retaining, developing and motivating people?  Maybe, as David Maister has suggested, it is the herd instinct that keeps them from going for the glory-- rather go down as a group than risk a "new-fangled" approach.  Interestingly enough, that is what our psychological profiles of lawyers tell us-- that they are risk-averse, often low in resilience, optimism, and emotional intelligence, all of which has helped mire them in an 18th-century business model. 

Here's the question-- which firms will be the real leaders, the ones who actually take the out-of-the-legal-box steps toward addressing these critical people management areas?  Because there seems to be a consensus that that is the only effective way forward.

 

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Accounting firms have long been ahead of law firms in innovative management strategies for personal service firms-- and as law firms head toward numbering thousands instead of hundreds of lawyers, there is much we can learn from how accounting firms manage people.

At a two-day ARK Group conference in December on Women in Professional Service Firms, Sandra Bushby, KPMG's national director of Women's Initiatives and other Workplace Solutions, recounted how KPMG uses workstyle assessments, particularly the "color-coded" Birkman Method, to put together successful client and project teams.  The firm-wide assessments were undertaken primarily as a risk management strategy-- to build teams that have the varied talents to insure that everything from technical details to interpersonal skills to long-term visionary considerations are fully dealt with.  But by balancing teams with accountants with red, green, yellow and blue workstyles, KPMG is finding that it is also achieving an unexpected bonus:solving the diversity puzzle-- creating culturally, gender and racially diverse teams.

Law firms, whether big or small, have a world of insight available to them from the use of assessments, which they often do not take advantage of.  Lawyers will contend that law is too "technical" or "expert' a service for personal or work styles to have any impact on success.  Yet accounting is no less technical, and accounting firms have had to become expert in drilling down to the most effective risk management tools available-- which style assessments unquestionably are.  To have the additional bonus of effectively producing diverse teams without resorting to "affirmative action" add-ons is ground-breaking-- a one-assessment-for-all-purposes bonanza.

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While Emotional Intelligence has become a popular buzzword, the researchers on whose work Daniel Goleman based his bestselling Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ, only formulated an assessment to test EI in 2002. Called the MSCEIT (Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test), it is the only EI assessment based on abilities instead of self-reports, i.e., it gauges your actual EI performance instead of asking how good you are at EI. 

Does it make any difference whether a lawyer is emotionally intelligent or not? To determine whether there is a correlation between emotional intelligence and excellence in lawyering, we undertook a study. 

We began with lawyers listed in The Best Lawyers in America as our "excellent" lawyers. Those willing to participate were given the MSCEIT and follow-up feed-back free of charge. 

Our participating lawyers practice across the country: Seattle, San Francisco, Chicago, Houston, Columbia, SC and New York. Their firms range from a small, 15 lawyer boutique to regional powerhouses to global behemoths. And the results are interesting.

• This group of excellent lawyers performed 20% higher on average than lawyers generally.
• This group's highest score was in Understanding Emotions, the most cerebral of the four branches of EI, and the branch that most lawyers perform best in.
• Also like most lawyers, this group's lowest score was in the Perceiving Emotions branch. Although notably higher than the average lawyer score in this area, even excellent lawyers barely score the national average.
• Excellent lawyers score significantly higher than lawyers generally on the sub-branch Managing Emotional Relationships. 

While these excellent lawyers, like lawyers in general, are better at analyzing emotions than recognizing them, they are operating on a higher EI plane than their colleagues. The excellent lawyers' significantly higher average total results and significantly higher ability to manage emotional relationships may account for at least a part of their excellence: they are generally more emotionally intelligent and they are better in relationships with clients and colleagues.

Stay tuned for some of the (non-identifying) specifics on the best performing individuals.

CALL TO BEST LAWYERS TO PARTICIPATE

While we have a good start, we want even more results to produce a more reliable study. We invite any lawyers now listed in The Best Lawyers in America to take the MSCEIT—a 40-minute confidential on-line survey-- at our expense. We will provide you with individual feed-back, a written report, and the opportunity to have your firm identified as high performing.

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In a December 13, 2006 Legal Times article extolling the energy and talents of Pamela Rothenberg, the managing partner of Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice’s Washington D.C. office, Rothenberg stressed how much she relies on The Gallup Organization strengths, an assessment that is described in the book First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently, in managing the firm. 

Martin Seligman, the Fox Leadership Professor of Positive Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, has worked with The Gallup Organization to expand and refine their strengths assessment to make it particularly relevant to lawyers. Seligman is so certain of the usefulness of the Gallup strengths assessment in raising productivity, that he has issued a challenge to assess free of charge the members of any firm willing to participate, on the condition that he be paid 10% of their increased profits. 

We have used the Gallup strengths assessment in a number of client projects for law firms and law departments. If you are interested in participating in Seligman’s challenge, or simply want to know more about these strengths and how they could be useful to improving productivity in your firm, contact us.

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BTI Consulting Group recently announced the results of its sixth annual client service survey, with the conclusion that corporate America is not very happy with their law firms.  Of the more than 250 corporate counsel and top executives interviewed over the past year, only 32% said that they would recommend a firm that worked for them.

Of those firms who were in the top 30 for client service, Sidley Austin topped the list.  In a separate list of the most arrogant law firms, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom took top honors.  It was notable that California and other West Coast firms were well-represented on the former list and New York and other East Coast  firms seemed to dominate the latter.  Several firms are clearly working their way up the service list, including Morrison & Foerster and Reed Smith.

While the survey provides useful data for most firms for understanding their public persona and marketing themselves to prospective clients, those who didn't do well or who figured prominently in the arrogant and other undesirable lists should do their own risk management review and come up with strategies to address their shortfalls.  Understanding the firm's values and how the culture reflects them, possibly reevaluating and redirecting either or both, educating both associates and partners in client service, raising the firm's emotional intelligence, and setting a timeline to confirm by marketplace and client surveys the effectiveness of the firm's new policies are possible strategies.  In a competitive marketplace where clients are king, doing nothing is not a reasonable course.

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Christopher Columbus Langdell, first dean of Harvard Law School in 1870, formalized what is now classic legal education, pioneering the use of the Socratic method and a course of study driven by reading appellate court decisions. But “the world of law has changed,” Harvard Law School’s Dean Elena Kagan recently announced, and so finally has Harvard’s curriculum. This year first year law students will be required to take a new course, among others, on legal problem solving, i.e., resolving clients’ dilemmas rather than simply analyzing abstract legal issues. Other law schools, including Stanford and Northwestern, have incorporated similar programs into their curriculum. 

A recent survey conducted by Pace University School of Law of midsize law firms in New York, Connecticut and New Jersey asked firms to name a law school with the ideal curriculum. Nearly 60% couldn’t identify even one. About a quarter of the firms cited the greatest weakness of law school graduates as a lack of real-world experience. Over 20% of the firms polled felt that law school curriculum should include some clinical experience.

“You can get a J.D. without having any connection with a client,” said Mark Heyrman, director of clinical programs at the University of Chicago Law School. “No medical student could graduate without at least having some patient contact.”

The clinical component of law school education is expanding. And there are external prods. The American Bar Association now requires accredited law schools to offer “real-life practice experiences.” Some state bars are also mandating certain client training before associates can interact with clients. And, as pointed out in an earlier blog note, corporate clients may designate how senior an associate has to be before working on their matters.

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Part of the growing managerial team at law firms over the last decade or so has been the addition of the Professional Development or Career Development Officer. The goal, according to one firm, is happier, more productive attorneys who in turn are less likely to leave. The trend began several years ago, when large firms, such as Paul Weiss, whose current Director of Professional Development is David Cruickshank, realized the benefits of actively directing and supporting their attorneys' career development. 

Over time more firms have signed on to the concept, such as Chicago’s Gardner Carton & Douglas (soon to merge with Drinker, Biddle & Reath), which in 2004 appointed their first Chief Career Development Officer, responsible for the summer associate program, orientation of new associates, assignments and feedback, mentoring, training and formal performance reviews. Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal also hired at that time its first Chief Learning Officer, as have Holland & Knight and Arnold & Porter. Each position is tailored to the individual firm’s goals and requirements-- some focus primarily on providing targeted training to associates and partners, some attempt to manage quality assurance or reach out to alumni, while others take a more free-wheeling approach. Cordell M. Parvin, the lawyer at Jenkens & Gilchrist who became their first official Attorney Development Officer a few years ago, said at the time that his firm was moved to formalize the position in order to help their lawyers make for themselves a career that they love. “We’re in an era where young lawyers have never been paid more money, and they’ve never been more unhappy.”   

Adding Internal Coaches

A recent twist has been the inclusion of individual coaching responsibilities in the Professional Development officer’s role, or, as in the case of some firms, such as Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe (soon to merge with Dewey Ballantine), Arnold & Porter and Fenwick & West, the addition to the team of an internal full-time coach. Like the Career Development position, the coach's role can be defined in many different ways, depending on the values and goals of the firm. And the coaching methodology could differ significantly depending on which of the myriad coaching approaches are used.

The Challenges of Coaching Lawyers

Dr. Martin Seligman, the Fox Leadership professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, founded the school of Positive Psychology, which focuses on factors that make for professional and personal success, instead of following the traditional diagnostic model of addressing weaknesses. His work identifies optimism particularly as producing sizeable psychic benefits. A widely successful coaching program based on Marty's positive psychology model encourages “learned optimism.”  

According to Marty's research, however, lawyers are strongly pessimistic-- so much so that law appears to be the only career where pessimism is a career enhancing attribute. So the question arises as to whether changing lawyers' pessimism to optimism will kill the goose that lays the golden egg. Ideally, such coaching would give lawyers the ability to switch out of their day-job mindset, not only when socializing or in family situations, but also when engaging in non-lawyering professional activities like managing their firms and courting their clients, producing bottom-line benefits. 

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In-House Counsel recently reported on the results of the Managing Outside Counsel Survey Report prepared by the Association of Corporate Counsel and Serengeti Law of Bellevue, Washington.  The study revealed, among other things, the four reasons that companies are firing outside counsel. In 2005, 55.6% of the General Counsel surveyed reported that they terminated the relationship with at least some of their outside firms, up almost ten percent (50.7%) from 2004. The reasons most cited for firing outside counsel were:

1.       poor quality of work

2.       lack of responsiveness

3.       high fees

4.       personality issues 

Note that, after the threshold issue of competent work, two of the three main reasons for firing an outside firm were for deficiencies in what some lawyers refer to as “soft” skills—lack of responsiveness and personality issues. 

How responsive are your lawyers?   Do they have well-developed client relationship skills?

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The Fifth International Positive Psychology Summit 2006 was held October 5-7 in Washington DC.  Dr. Martin Seligman, the Fox Leadership Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, founded the school of Positive Psychology, which focuses on factors that make for professional and personal success, rather than following the traditional diagnostic model of addressing weaknesses.  There were a number of presentations of interest to lawyers.

Richard Florida, an economist, Hirst Professor in the School of Public Policy at George Mason University, author of the bestseller The Rise of the Creative Class (Basic Books, 2002) and The Flight of the Creative Class (HarperCollins, 2005), was the keynote speaker.  The dramatic results of his research found that highly talented people will overcome financial disincentives to join communities and businesses that promote subjective well-being, such as supporting diversity and encouraging tolerance.  His astonishing findings are that it is the people, the "soul of the city," that drives the production of jobs and financial success, rather than the other way around, as classic economics theory maintained.

These findings fit nicely with the results of David Maister's survey on the factors that drive financial success in personal services businesses.  Maister asked simply "Are employee attitudes correlated with financial success?"  In his book Practice What You Preach:  What Managers Must Do To Create A High-Achievement Culture, he expands on the results of that survey.  Not only is the answer "yes", but, more importantly, Maister found that it is attitudes that drive financial results and not the other way around.

The message for law firms and law departments is that, in a world of escalating pay raises but ever-increasing movement, the soul of the firm-- and how it influences employee attitudes and their sense of well-being-- cana be the key to achieving financial success.

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