Monday, March 8, is International Women's Day. So how are we doing?

Bain and Company recently released results of a survey, reported in the Harvard Business Review, of 1,800 business people worldwide. 80% believed that companies benefit from a gender diverse workforce; 75% reported having initiatives in their workplace to improve gender parity; but less than 25% felt those initiatives were effective.

When it comes to the law, women have been in the law practice “pipeline” for over three decades now; there are currently more women than men graduating from law school, where women have for some time made better grades than their male counterparts, which has resulted in women joining the ranks of prestigious firms in large numbers over the years. Whether for culture or client reasons, women's initiatives abound.

Yet women leave the practice of law  (not just change jobs) much faster than men—although not because of low performance—and constitute a mere 16% of partners in major law firms. 

How have women done in the current recession?  Better than might have been predicted.  According to a National Law Journal article entitled "Bad Times Could Have Been Worse for Women," "women lawyers have not suffered more in the current recession than their male counterparts. At least not when it comes to headcount at NLJ 250 firms."  According to The National Law Journal's 2009 survey of the nation's 250 largest law firms, the number of women lawyers at those firms decreased overall by 2% during 2009, compared to an overall headcount loss of 4%. And while the average number of female associates fell to 112, compared with 124.7 in 2008, the average number of women partners went up slightly, to 41 from 39.4.

Nonetheless, the National Association of Women Lawyers’ November 2008 report "The Third Annual National Survey On Retention And Promotion Of Women In Law Firms" reveals an alarming difference between the amount of power and money men and women have in large law firms: “At every stage of practice, men out-earn women lawyers… Male equity partners earn on average over $87,000 a year more than female equity partners. In 99% of large firms, the most highly compensated partner is a man.” The report also notes that women have no presence at all on 15 per cent of the nation’s largest firms’ governing committees.

And to further complicate things, one managing partner of a large firm claims that in spite of beefing up its diversity credentials and trotting them out in response to every RFP a socially conscious potential client has submitted, he believes that those credentials have not gotten the firm one piece of business.

What's going on here? Are women not up to the heavy lifting that firms require?  Are we as firms doing a poor job of delivering and following through on those diversity initiatives?  Or are the initiatives out of touch with want women are looking for? Are law firms, clients and others paying lip service to a bigger umbrella that in fact they don't put their money (and matters) behind?  If clients and firms resolve to be gender blind, shouldn't all this work out fairly to both genders in the end?

Or, in other words, what do women want?

A lot of ink has been spilled over that question. In and out of the arena of practicing law.

The authors of the Bain and Co. survey mentioned above urged firms to develop "less rigid promotion processes and career paths" in order to better accommodate women.

“If companies want to help more women climb the corporate ladder, they have to go beyond flex jobs or flex hours. Instead, they need to develop less rigid promotion processes and career paths — and actively promote and ‘de-stigmatize’ flexible career arcs within the organization. For companies, the pay-off can be huge: not only will they double their talent pool of leaders as more women return to the workforce in senior positions; they will also retain more male and female employees in the long-run and slash retraining costs.”

In a study conducted by Rutgers’ Center for Women and Work, more than 70% of the women lawyers who had left their jobs during the previous five years said their previous employer was not supportive of full-time flexible alternatives, while only 30% described their current employer as unsupportive of such arrangements. 

“An important new finding of this study is that women lawyers often choose an exit strategy when faced with the dilemma of choosing between work and family obligations,” the study said. “The business case for more family-friendly approaches to the practice of law could not be more clear.”

A study of thousands of associates using Westlaw throws some interesting light on the question. 80% of the associates worked in AmLaw200 firms and  the remainder worked at firms with more than 80 attorneys. The gender split was 50/50.

Four types of associates emerged.  The group dubbed Career Practitioners, who are driven, aspire to partnership, and will take on as much work as a firm gives them, constitute 23% of the associates and are 60% male.  Flexibility Seekers, about 23% of the associates and 60% female, are looking for a satisfying career that allows work-life balance and become less interested in partnership over time.

The 3rd group, Called Lawyers, 24% of the total, have the highest percentage of females (63%) and the highest percentage of non-Caucasians (35%). This group is the most satisfied with compensation and the most passionate about the practice of law. Called Lawyers are as willing as the Career Practitioners to volunteer for committees or other firm work, but for different reasons. They also significantly value their personal and family time, and in this are more closely aligned with the Flexibility Seekers than with Career Practitioners. The 4th group, the Willing Workers, representing about 30% of the associates, have no particular passion for the law, but are willing to work hard and follow directions – unusual for attorneys who are typically highly autonomous. Willing Workers will become partners as a means to higher income, but they are loath to sacrifice quality of life. Their motto is: "Work hard, play hard, retire early." 

Note that three of these four groups place a high value on lifestyle or family obligations.  And that women are most populous in those groups.  Doesn't that support the sneaking suspicion more than a few have had that women aren't really in it for the long and hard haul, like the grizzly senior partners they are meant to succeed?  Doesn't that kind of information make a myth out of the vaunted value of diversity?

A critical finding here is that according to survey respondents, the same proportion of lawyers in all of these groups are rated satisfactory or above on performance reviews.  That is, no one group is more likely to be better lawyers than the others.

If performance is – and it should be – the primary criteria, there is essentially no difference among the four groups. Therefore, if firms promote the first and familiar group (with a larger male population) over the second and third groups (with larger female populations) or even the fourth group in the hope that they will be the best associates and partners, firms would be unnecessarily reducing their pool of candidates by up to 75% for no good reason.

Yet in fact Career Practitioners tend to hire other Career Practitioners, whether they are men or women, black or white, just as MBTI "Thinkers" tend to hire other Thinkers, resulting in law firm environments that are extraordinarily well suited for only one stripe of lawyer, forestalling every advantage that real diversity might bring.  

The real diversity challenge becomes accepting that excellence can be achieved in (and should be expected of) a truly diverse workforce--not only diverse in terms of gender and race, but diverse in attitudes and expectations about their practice and lifestyle.  In other words, excellence doesn't just come in the "driven" package--that package looks dedicated and workaholic and even macho--but that's not what is necessary to get the job done...well, very well. 

One challenge may be to offer our firms as a home to all lawyers, regardless of any attribute other than excellence.

And this might be the ideal time to start experimenting with different approaches to law practice.  Larissa Glubb made these observations in my "Women In Law--For Us and By Us" blog on LegalOnRamp:

"Most women are prevented from reaching partnership or management positions because the organisations they work for value time, not results. Female lawyers, especially those with family responsibilities, desire and require control over their work and their work choices, which is very difficult to achieve if 'time' is the main measure of success... Lawyer’s bonuses and opportunities for promotion are more often than not linked to meeting or exceeding a set number of billable hours per year, rather than the quality of the work performed or the results achieved for the clients."

In his book Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us, Daniel H. Pink challenges traditional assumptions about what motivates us to achieve at work. In a chapter on the benefits of self-direction in the work place, Mr. Pink has this to say about lawyers and the traditional legal workplace:

“…at the heart of private legal practice is perhaps the most autonomy-crushing mechanism imaginable: the billable hour. Most lawyers – and nearly all lawyers in large, prestigious firms – must keep scrupulous track, often in six-minute increments, of their time…As a result, their focus inevitably veers from the output of their work (solving a client’s problem) to its input (piling up as many hours as possible). If the rewards come from time, then time is what firms will get. These sorts of high-stakes, measurable goals can drain intrinsic motivation, sap individual initiative, and even encourage unethical behavior”.

According to Ms. Glubb, "If legal organisations were to trust that the professionals they have hired can get the work done to the satisfaction of the client, it should not matter whether this work is done at home or in the office, in the morning, before the school run or in the evening once kids are in bed. These legal professionals have years of experience and are being trusted to complete transactions worth millions, yet are not trusted to balance their commitments."

A Results-Only Work Environment (ROWE), advocated by Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson in their book Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It, is how Best Buy successfuly changed from an hours to outcomes work environment. The message Best Buy promoted is: “It doesn’t matter where you work, or when you work, as long as the work gets done.”

“There’s a misperception out there that just because a manager lets an employee go to a dentist appointment, that’s flexible working. That’s not flexible working at all. ROWE is really putting the freedom and the power back in the employee’s hands to determine what and how and when they work best. A Results-Only Work Environment is about recognizing and acting on people’s need to have more control over their lives to meet all the demands in their lives.”

Glubb says that Latitude-South, a legal outsourcing company she works for, has built a business model around this concept. "Many detractors will say that client demands preclude such a significant organisational change. We disagree. Our experience has been that our clients value expertise and experience and recognise that it is these inputs that produce the results they require. The work must still be done, yes, but it does not always need to be performed between the industrial age hours of 9am – 5pm, in the traditional setting and in a traditional way."

Whether it is legal outsourcing or more women in high places that you are after, an attitude less fixated on comparing accrued billable hours might be the place to start, and now might be the time.

So what women want may well be what over 75% of the legal workforce wants: control over how they get the results that are expected of them.

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Back in 1998 management guru Peter Drucker suggested that the capability to operate productively when change is the norm would be critical in the 21st century. Much has been said of late on this issue of managing change when change is the norm, including articles in the Harvard Business Review and from McKinsey.

There are big differences in approach and execution between, on the one hand, bringing about a change and making it stick and, on the other, embedding into an organization the capability to grow in a business environment where change is constant. The first attempts to bring about a single change in an organization that is sluggish and resistant. The second is about developing within an organization a comfort with ongoing change and the ability to leverage that comfort for its own ends. The suggestion from Drucker and all those that have commented since on this subject is that this ‘agile and preemptive organization’ is the future--a place where a change management program, at least as we use that term today, is not necessary.

There are challenging aspects in attempting to change an operation to an agile and preemptive organization. Many conventional values and beliefs about what is, or is not, best practice must change. These two bear mention: The underlying acceptance of hiding or burying bad news and/or spinning accountability to avoid blame must be seen as entirely unacceptable, even if things ultimately turn out for the best. Defensiveness and avoidance of conflict are both attributes that are central to many lawyers’ work style. The logical consequences of those attributes are self-and-other deceiving and justifying behavior, and in the old paradigm often produced a negative result—blind spots in client service, lack of responsiveness to colleague and client feedback, and ultimately exposure to malpractice claims. These behaviors now must be seen as a greater sin than not achieving expected base-line performance. Although frustrating to senior management in stable times, this behavior can have a disastrous impact in times of turbulence. This change is very difficult to bring about in real terms, and the solution is not just a no-blame culture, because people justify and deceive not just to avoid blame.

Another example relates to the conventional view of planning. Making long term plans in times of change is forecasting in fog. Visions are fine as long as they remain visions. The kind of planning that is now required is the type that adapts, flexes and is capable of responding to new opportunities on a continual basis. The fact that only 12% of strategies are ever executed may help in a perverse way, but this change requires a whole new attitude to feedback and accountability.

Peter Senge, author of The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of the Learning Organization, also contends that in a rapid-fire, information-driven, technology-powered world, success is contingent on our individual and corporate abilities to adjust, adapt and learn. The organization, therefore, must incorporate processes of reflection and evaluation into its organizational systems, he says. Leaders must commit to their own personal learning as well as fostering an environment of learning in their organizations. We lawyers are often on a “drive to closure” escalator that makes it hard to step aside and undertake that sort of reflection.

Chris Argyris, emeritus professor at the Harvard Business School, advocates "double-loop learning." He takes the position that most people define learning too narrowly as mere "problem solving," so they focus on identifying and correcting errors in the external environment.  If learning is to persist, managers and employees must also look inward to reflect critically on their own behavior, he says, identifying the ways they often inadvertently contribute to the organization's problems, and then change how they act. In particular, they must learn how the very way they go about defining and solving problems can be a source of problems in its own right.

There is much of this accommodation to a new constant-change climate that falls into what is essentially an emotional category—how to appeal to and acclimate people who are not by their natures or histories comfortable with change. For example, lawyers are notoriously risk-resistant. Change is therefore anathema because it is by definition taking a risk. How do we effect a change in so fundamental a trait? A trait that is useful when advising our clients yet perilous if allowed to shape our practices? And not only must our approach understand and appeal to our deepest inclinations but it also demands that we put into place more objective, operational changes in the shape of a whole new set of specific working practices.

The problem is that so much of the solution to achieving this new business model of accommodating, no, even encouraging and celebrating, change will not be found in our practices of the past. 

It is a brave new world--one which we would prefer to avoid.  But can we afford to?

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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?

There seems to be some hope.  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 even introverts can do that.
 

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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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"In times of drastic change, it is the learners who will inherit the earth.  The learned will be perfectly positioned for a world that no longer exists."  Swarthmore College's 2009 Lax Conference's keynote speaker Richard Teerlink started his presentation with this quote from Eric Hoffer.  

Teerlink led Harley-Davidson's fabled turnaround, fueled in part by his belief that people are the most important resource in any company.  Teerlink was CFO, CEO, and Chairman of the Board of Harley-Davidson during the time it went from the stepchild of a public company to private ownership by 13 managers carrying $40 million of debt to its reemergence as a public darling again.

How did they do it?  At the time of HD's privatization, the Japanese dominated the motorcycle industry, and HD's board had to make some tough decisions: they laid off 40% of the workforce--all at once, Teerlink points out, so that fear would not weaken the remaining group; cut compensation of the rest of the employees; killed an expensive new development project; reduced their dealer network; asked suppliers for reductions; eliminated all the Senior Vice-Presidents so that responsibility would be pushed down further in the ranks, with more direct reporting to top management and fewer silos; and collaborated with employees, dealers and customers to enhance the HOG experience. 

Teerlink says that as with all major shakeups HD made some dumb decisions but learned to reverse course quickly.  An advertising campaign was launched that honestly acknowledged past weaknesses and promised owners a different experience.  And the company delivered. 

Teerlink emphasized to HD employees that they were not selling machinery, but an emotional experience, one that offered entertainment and a community.  Thus the HOGS--Harley Owners Group--was born, with networking, social events and riding support (fly and ride, for example) offered nationwide. 

The premise that "people are an organization's only sustainable competitive advantage" drove Teerlink's transformation of HD.  His book, "More Than a Motorcycle: The Leadership Journey of Harley-Davidson," chronicles how he brought that premise into reality.

At a time when law firms are facing some of the most challenging marketing conditions of all time, we might do well to learn a few things from the people who brought us the HOGS.

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A well-known investment banker confided recently that lawyers are partly to blame for the financial meltdown.  Why, apart from wanting to deflect the responsibility to someone other than bankers? 

The reasoning was that, particularly with the advent of Sarbanes-Oxley, lawyers have become such an integral part of the business process that their bias toward risk-aversion has seeped into the bones of corporate decision-making, making those decisions technically compliant but shortsighted from a policy and business standpoint.  Life without lawyers, or at least life with fewer lawyers, according to this highly-respected viewpoint, would improve business and the economy.

Covington & Burling partner Philip Howard arrives at a similar conclusion for somewhat different reasons.  He contends in his new book "Life Without Lawyers" that a fear of litigation has stricken many of America's industries, including both health care and education, paralyzing doctors and teachers, among others. "It's as if everyone has a little lawyer on their shoulder whispering in their ear all day long," he says. Howard argues that the economic crisis presents a needed opportunity to overhaul the legal system. With an activist president and a Congress controlled by Democrats, he sees major structural changes on the horizon.

"An essential component to making anything work that's broken is rebuilding the legal infrastructure," Howard says. It's harder to change the rules in times of prosperity, he says, but the challenging times ahead could initiate just such a reset.

A recent series of front-page New York Times articles reports that worker-compensation programs, designed to fairly and efficiently compensate workers for workplace injuries, is neither: bureaucratic gridlock and expense have resulted in a high-cost system for employers that is slow and inefficient in compensating deserving employees.  Who is to blame for these problems?  Lawyers.  Both those working inside these programs and those on the outside who made a "fair and efficient" alternate system necessary in the first place.

Finally, if you are not already doubled over from guilt, a Talk of the Town entry by Jane Mayer in the April 13, 2009 issue of The New Yorker recounts the research of English barrister Philippe Sands into the activities of the six Bush Administration officials, including William J. Haynes II, former Pentagon general counsel, who are being sued this week in Spain for the torture of Spanish citizens at Abu Ghraib. Sands' conclusion: "I've got a particular bugbear about lawyers.  If not for lawyers, none of these abuses would have ever occurred."

So there you have it.  Not only are our finances in disarray but our reputations and future prospects are sinking faster than a rock.  

There is no doubt that data shows that lawyers are more risk-averse, analytical, pessimistic, short-sighted and zero-sum out-to-win-oriented than their business contemporaries/clients.  Those same attributes often are what makes them good lawyers--able to see and remedy highly technical compliance and other problems that others cannot and win verdicts for their clients in a zero-sum justice system.  But, as with all good things, there are also downsides.

One challenge that lawyers are going to have in the new age dawning is to refashion in a major way at least the perception and probably also the reality of their impact on business and the economy.  The (very) old perception of lawyers as trusted advisors has given way to something closer to that of self-interested leeches who manage to rain on everyone's parade while siphoning off a percentage of GNP. 

As always, it is the balance that is key.  Lawyers can genuinely assert expertise in a number of areas that business people need and lack.  And lawyers should be compensated for that expertise.  And certainly lawyers are obligated to take stands to protect their clients and to avoid allegations against themselves of malpractice or furthering crime.  However, maintaining respect for the business process, even when it differs from how lawyers would do it, structuring your practice (and your fees) so that reaching the goals the client sets is the driving force, remaining cognizant of the lawyer's role of delivering services rather than achieving dominance-- these are changes of attitudes easier advocated than done. 

How to accomplish those changes is not found in any class any of us took in law school. A careful look at each firm's practice, its values and its strategic plan--and how those influence client service and associate and leadership development on the ground, rather than just in classrooms--is a critical first step to finding the appropriate balance.

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Shedding additional light on earlier explorations in this forum of the subject of happiness is a new book written by Arthur Brooks that distills mountains of data on the subject.  For one thing, politics and happiness turn out to be clearly correlated.  But the correlation may not be what you think.

For starters, conservatives are happier than liberals.  Much happier.  And they have been for over 35 years.  Almost twice as many who describe themselves as "conservative" or "very conservative" say they are "very happy" (44%) as those who consider themselves "liberal" or "very liberal" (25%).  Brooks ascribes that result to three factors:  conservatives are twice as likely to be married, twice as likely to attend church every week, and more likely to have children.  They are NOT, however, richer than their more liberal, more miserable cohorts.

In fact, when the religious and political data are combined, a fascinating continuum of happiness appears.  Religious conservatives are ten times more likely to report being "very happy" than "not too happy" (50% to 5%).  Secular conservatives and religious liberals are about equally happy in the middle. And secular liberals are as likely to say they are "not too happy" as to say they are "very happy" (22% vs. 22%).  

In addition, extremists on both sides are happier than their more moderate cohorts.  Of those "extremely liberal," 35% say they are very happy (vs. 22% of the ordinary liberals) compared to 48% of extreme conservatives (vs. 43% of their less extreme brethren). Brooks attributes the extremists' happiness to their conviction that they are right, which, he notes, often leads them to conclude that the other side is not merely wrong, but evil.  Evidently two-thirds of America's far left and half of the far right say they dislike not only the other side's ideas, but also the people who hold them!

Brooks finds the determinant underlying happiness to be attitude.  Conservatives are more optimistic, believing that if you work hard and play by the rules, you can succeed.  Liberals, on the other hand, tend to focus on injustice and victimization, encouraging people to feel helpless and aggrieved.

So what does this mean for us hard-working lawyers?  The striking correlation is with the well-established personality trait that lawyers exhibit en masse:  pessimism, which, according to Brooks' analysis, should mean that we are also a less happy lot. 

And indeed we are.  It is now well-documented that lawyers are less happy in their work and their personal lives than nearly every other profession surveyed.

Maybe we should get hitched, join a church and start a brood? 

For a full book review of "Gross National Happiness," go to The Economist.

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What's the route to higher efficacy and productivity?  Might that be by staffing with "messy" groups?  So suggests a recent book entitled The Difference:  How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools and Societies by Scott E. Page, professor of complex systems, political science and economics at the University of Michigan. 

Using mathematical modeling, Dr. Page shows how variety in staffing produces organizational strength-- and bottom line results.  In his models, diverse groups of problem-solvers outperformed groups made up of similar individuals with high problem-solving ability.  The diverse groups got stuck less often that did the smart individuals, who tended to think similarly.

According to Dr. Page, different talents and perspectives, which he calls "tools," bring more and different ways of seeing a problem and result in faster/better ways of solving it.  Diverse cities are more productive, diverse boards of directors make better decisions, diverse companies are more innovative.  Interdisciplinary work is the biggest trend in scientific research, he says, and should be the route that business and the professions pursue.

So what does this have to do with lawyers?  Law departments that stretch across many countries are often diverse by necessity.  And by going global, many firms are diversifying by circumstance.  In both cases different cultural, personality and economic perspectives come into the mix.  While trying to preserve the benefits of diversity, these departments and firms are also confronted with the morass of confusion that many different people doing things differently can make.  Molding those differing perspectives into the "BigLaw" firm or department way of doing things--either purposefully, by circulating the administrative memo or lecturing the new recruits, or inadvertently, perhaps by unconsciously discouraging lawyers from ringing an alarm when they spot missteps, can leave you with unintended consequences. 

KPMG's program to test all US partners (see our KPMG Model Delivers Risk Management, Teamwork, Client Satisfaction and Diversity Too) and then use that information to balance various teams--marketing, client, industry and management, to name a few--is a shining example of the usefulness of diverse approaches to every type of issue facing professional services firms.  KPMG is affirmatively pursuing and integrating diversity in their business model to great benefit.

Finding the right balance to both capitalize on the benefits of diversity and to minimize the administrative and management fallout produced by those differences is a modern law firm's challenge.  There is every reason to believe that getting it right is worth the effort.

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Is living a life filled with distrust and deception the price of achieving professional success?  As we head into another year, it is a query worth pursuing.

Steve Katz, adjunct professor at Northwestern University's Business Institutions Program, points out a bestseller published in 1998 that purportedly draws from centuries of powerful leaders (on the order of Machiavelli, Talleyrand, Bismarck, Catherine the Great, Mao, Kissinger, Haile Selassie, etc.) for the best strategies for achieving business success. 

The problem with The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene (designed by Joost Elffers) is that virtually every one of these "laws" are counter to most current notions of business ethics and best leadership practices, and in some cases contravene a number of other generally accepted precepts as well.  Which doesn't mean that there aren't plenty of people out there who nonetheless following these "laws."

Mastering one's emotions and perfecting the arts of deception and indirection are, the author asserts, the essential keys to success. Here are some examples:

•   Law 3:    Conceal your Intentions
•   Law 7:    Get others to do the work for you, but always take the credit
•   Law 11:  Keep people dependent on you
•   Law 21:  Play a sucker to catch a sucker-- seem dumber than your mark
•   Law 27:  Play on people's need to believe to create a cult-like following
•   Law 33:  Use each person's weakness as a thumbscrew you can turn to your advantage
•   Law 44:  Disarm and infuriate your enemies by mirroring their values and their actions

While mastering one's emotions is a worthy and productive goal that few fully attain, recent research shows that using that skill to suppress emotion at the workplace will not produce much success.  Lack of effective use and conveyance of emotion, particularly by the leader, is most likely to produce a working group that is not cohesive and not satisfied. 

Perfecting deception and indirection would hardly seem to be what would distinguish anyone from the crowd these days.  And in a post-Sarbanes Oxley world, wielding deception and indirection as tools of management could possibly lead to the wrong side of the bars .

What is not particularly surprising is that the books that Amazon.com identifies as most often bought along with 48 Laws of Power are Get Anyone to Do Anything; Never Feel Powerless Again by David J. Lieberman and The Mystery Method: How to Get Beautiful Women Into Bed by "Mystery" and "Lovedrop."  (Was that a collective rush to Amazon?)

The point is that these kinds of  "power" plays are most likely the province of people who feel they lack influence, allure, value.  The sorry result of resorting to these tactics is that, whatever success is achieved in the short run (and I'm not assuming there usually is much), in the long run not only is there no success, but the journey to that unsucessful end will have been quite an unpleasant one for both the "power player" and his/her team.   

A better stance would be to do the opposite of what each of these rules suggest: 

• Make your intentions clear
• Give credit to others even when you have done some of the work
• Provide the support that can set your team free
• Be a source of information and inspiration to those working with you
• Give others the gift that you believe in them
• Show how each person's strengths can help them and their team work better and happier
• Take a stand for your values and make sure your actions follow suit

So, let us take the opposite of another of these "power laws", Law 20 (which advises not to commit to anyone or anything), and commit to a new year of achieving the kind of power that results from using both emotions and intellect to effectively and honestly build trust and respect at work.

Happy new year!

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A recent article in the New York Times on young 20-something Internet mega-millionaires quoted one as saying “You ask yourself, ‘Why am I not happier given how lucky I’ve been?’”

While we as lawyers, being supremely circumspect, would rarely verbalize this sort of “squishy” sentiment out in the open, given the levels of unhappiness in our profession, it is a question we should be asking ourselves. 

So here are some of the findings about "happiness," which has exploded as a subject of research over the last few years. Let’s start with the data on the current state of happiness in the US.

Recent surveys point to a relatively high “happiness quotient” these days:

·             86% of Americans are content with their jobs (General Social Survey)

·             76% are satisfied with their family income (Pew Research Center Survey)

·             62% expect their personal situation to get better over the next five years vs. only 7% who expect it to get worse

·             65% of Americans are satisfied over all with their own lives—one of the highest personal satisfaction rates in the world.

As the query of that Internet mega-millionaire illustrates, happiness is not correlated with financial resources or even political stability: countries like Nigeria, El Salvador, Columbia, Mexico and Puerto Rico (along with Switzerland, Denmark and Canada) register higher rates of happiness than the US in the World Values Survey. Other countries, such as Romania, Russia and other former Soviet countries, consistently score at the bottom.

This fairly rosy picture in the US becomes decidedly darker when we factor in the “happiness” data on lawyers:

·             Lawyers generally have one of the highest dissatisfaction rates with their work of all industries/professions, with 65% of young associates surveyed by the ABA last year intending to change professions within two years.

·             Lawyers also have the highest “personal distress” rates of any industry, exhibiting dramatically higher incidences of suicide, mental illness, divorce and substance abuse than other industries. 

Women lawyers seem particularly effected by these developments:

·             Fewer women are seeking law degrees: from 1963 through 2001 female enrollment at law schools climbed nearly every year, from 3.7% to a peak of over 50%; since 2002, however, the percentage of women in law schools has declined each year, currently down to 46%.

·             At a time of very high attorney turnover generally (over 20% leave their jobs every year), the highest drop-out-of-the-profession-entirely demographic is women.

·             In spite of many years of women in the "pipeline," only a small proportion of women stay to become partners in law firms (17%) or senior legal counsel in corporations (18%).

The message seems to be that, in spite of Americans' general glee, few lawyers are happy living the lawyer's life.

What Makes Us Happy?

As it turns out, over the last few years a wave of books on happiness, primarily written by academics, have been published. Among them are:

The Pursuit of Happiness, by David G. Myers

Happiness, The Nature and Nurture of Joy and Contentment by David Lykken

Happiness, A History by Darrin M. McMahon

Authentic Happiness by Martin Seligman

The Art of Happiness by the Dalai Lama and Dr. Howard C. Cutler

The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt

Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert

Happier: Learn the Secrets of Daily Joy and Lasting Fulfillment by Tal Ben Shahar

Most of these books are based on David Lykken's findings that there is an individual “set point” of happiness to which most people revert, regardless of their life circumstances—illness, financial concerns, family problems. Lottery winners and paraplegics, those both accepted and rejected as partners or general counsel, all on average return to their baseline levels of happiness within a year.

If health and other circumstances don't impact our happiness, what does? Jonathan Haidt compares our emotional life in The Happiness Hypothesis to a small, conscious monkey riding a large, unconscious elephant: in many ways we are estranged from the great bulk of our own inner feelings. The running commentary in our minds about what we feel and why is often simply wrong, he contends. For example, research subjects unknowingly hypnotized to react in a specific way to a cue quickly come up with rational, and in their mind truthful, “explanations” of why they acted that way, even though those explanations are causally entirely beside the point: their reaction was programmed in their unconscious by the hypnosis. 

Not only are we not able to access a great part of our inner feelings, evidently we are not very good at analyzing the happiness data that we do have access to. Daniel Gilbert in Stumbling on Happiness explains that we are very bad at remembering what made us happy in the past and in predicting what will make us happy in the future, often overestimating the bang we will get and how long it will last. For example, people often list children as a source of happiness, yet the data indicates that children in fact are "extremely negative," "mildly negative" or have no effect on overall happiness. (More about this later.)

Could We Be Happier?

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One of the requirements of the Sarbanes-Oxley rules for publicly traded companies is that they demonstrate that they are promoting an "ethical culture" in the workplace.  What does that mean?

"The Manager's Book of Decencies:  How Small Gestures Build Great Companies" by Steve Harrison, chairman of Woodcliff Lake, N.J.-based Lee Hecht Harrison, the employee outplacement arm of Adecco Human Capital Solutions, a division of Adecco SA of Glattbrugg, Switzerland, is an attempt to answer that question.

Mr. Harrison's contends that an ethical culture is the result of many small, and sometimes large, gestures made over a long period of time, with the driving force coming from the top.

"Being decent isn't about being nice... or spending more money-- it's about treating people fairly," Harrison claims. He also believes that good role models at the top have certain common traits. Those Harrison acknowledges as outstanding role models are Colgate-Palmolive Co. chairman Reuben Mark, Nucor Corp.'s former CEO Kenneth Iverson (who died in 2002), Campbell Soup Co. president and CEO Douglas R. Conant, Southwest Airlines Co. chairman Herbert Kelleher, and Dial Corp.'s former president and CEO, Herbert Baum. 

These five leaders exhibit what Harrison calls a high level of "moral intelligence," which is marked by humility and honesty during both good times and bad.

If employers can pay attention to the issues that matter to their employees, "like finding some kind of fulfillment in the job they come in to day after day...then they're on their way to creating a culture of decency which is critical to attracting, retaining and engaging employees."

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Should lawyers “do the right thing” in addition to “being right”?  

A favorite cartoon depicts two lawyers at a desk evidently discussing strategy. One lawyer says to the other: “Is it right?… Is it fair?  Get a grip, Carlton—we’re a law firm!”

Integrity

In an interesting study issued recently, the Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence found that financial advisors who demonstrated high levels of “moral and emotional competency” nearly doubled the S&P 500 return on their client portfolios in the years 2001 through 2004, delivering an average return of 25%. 

Of the various attributes studied, integrity had the single strongest impact on client returns. “Results showed that Integrity was the key behavioral competency which predicted the most positive returns for clients." 

Integrity was defined as acting consistently with what one says is important, in other words “walking the talk.”  An example was an advisor willing to give up a lucrative client rather than compromise his/her principles, such as ultimately recommending that a client seek advice from another advisor because the advisor could not in good conscience implement a plan believed to put the client at significant financial risk.

Ethics

In the process of updating his 1996 book The Honest Hour: The Ethics of Time-Based Billing by Attorneys, William George Ross determined that lawyers in 2007 are significantly more likely than a decade ago to pad their bills with unnecessary hours or bill two clients for the same time. Almost 55% (up from 40%) of associates and partners surveyed report performing unnecessary work, and 35% (up from 23%) say they bill two clients for the same time. The number of lawyers who believe double billing is ethical also rose from 35% in 1996 to 48%, and more than two-thirds of lawyers say they have specific knowledge of bill-padding by others.   

Morals

In a May 2, 2007 Law.com article entitled “From Moral Partners to a Moral Firm”, Gregory S. Gallopoulos, the managing partner of Jenner & Block, suggests that the integrated enterprise model that many successful law firms are adopting now, in which strategy and vision belong to the entity as a whole rather than to individual partners, risks producing a vacuum in the area of firm morals. 

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Firms of Endearment: How World-Class Companies Profit from Passion and Purpose
by Rajendra Sisodia, David Wolfe and Jagdish N. Sheth contends that companies with more emotionally intelligent employees have stronger bottom line performance than those who don't.  David Wolfe can be a controversial adviser, and some have suggested that being recognized as a good corporate citizen should be sufficient reward for conscientious organizations, without having to convince themselves that both their individual psyches are above par and that their bottom line improves as well.

Regardless of the sniping, the underlying research makes the FoE claims believable.  High EI clearly hits the bottom line. Ninety percent of top individual performers across industries have high EI whereas only 20% of low performers do. Those who raise their EI are roughly 25% more productive than before.   Insurance agents who score high on EI sell twice as much in policy premiums as agents who score lower. Managers at American Express Financial Advisors who complete a training program focusing on one's own and others' emotional reactions achieve significantly higher rates of growth in funds under management than their untrained peers.

Plus, data suggests that employees who are emotionally intelligent are more likely to access and profit from feedback, helping them achieve more over time.

So the logic of companies who have more emotionally intelligent employees out-performing their lower EI brethren (and sisters) certainly makes sense.

The application to law firms and law departments, where checking one's emotions at the door is standard procedure, is obvious-- more emotional intelligence--whether hired, trained, or promoted-- will not only improve culture but produce bottom-line results.

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Carol S. Dweck, a Stanford University psychology professor, is the author of the recently published "Mindset: The New Psychology of Success," which documents how people with a "growth" mind-set who believe they can improve themselves out-perform those with a "fixed" mind-set who believe their capabilities are fixed.  "The growth mind-set person recognizes that you're not good at something before you're good at it," Dweck points out. 

In one instance, Dweck found that when people experience a blow to their self-esteem, those in a fixed mindset repair their self-image by trying to feel that they are better than others, which n a business setting might take the form of blaming or taking things out on a colleague. Those in a growth mindset recover their self-esteem by trying to improve themselves and correct their deficiencies.

While it's gratifying to see the impact of personal belief documented so clearly, parts of this thesis are hardly new-- optimists outperform pessimists across all industries and job descriptions (except in law), in part simply because they believe they are capable of effecting change.  And the success that this sense of empowerment generates in any arena leads to the expectation of and achievement of success in others.  Optimists are also more resilient--understanding that specific setbacks are just that, and not a referendum on their personal worth, which makes them more likely to persevere.

Which brings us to lawyers, the least optimistic of any career, for whom Dr. Seligman has documented that pessimism is in fact a career enhancer, and who consistently score low on resilience.  For lawyers, the new psychology of success begins with systematically training themselves to confine their pessimism to their legal analysis and to bolster their resilience and optimism in the rest of their lives, including management.

In any event, Dweck's overall assertion that rigid thinking benefits no one, least of all yourself, and that a change of mind is always possible, is welcome.

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Two recent books highlight some of the challenges in building strong practices:  retaining and promoting women and balancing life and work.

Ending the Gauntlet: Removing Barriers to Women's Success in the Law (Thomson/Legalworks, 2006) by Lauren Stiller Rikleen, a partner at the Massachusetts law firm Bowditch & Dewey, reviews the lack of professional fulfillment and the unsustainable personal sacrifice that the current law firm structure engenders in its lawyers, and identifies how these struggles are even more acute for women trying to succeed. While Ms. Rikleen suggests that leaving behind the billable hour fee structure, improved mentoring and other changes within firms can start a transition, it is her opinion that clients and law schools are the ones who have the power to make radical changes in the legal profession and its treatment of lawyers, particularly women.

The ABA's "The Lawyer's Guide to Balancing Life & Work: Taking the Stress Out of Success" by George W. Kaufman (2006) explores the ways that legal practice supports or undermines all lawyers' quest for success, advocating a personal self-assessment to gauge expectations, values and goals and the use of an individual action plan to realize a future more attuned to those issues.

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Two recently published books by female doctors highlight some of the differences between the genders in brain development and differentiation, and give insights as to how to best use our diverse legal talent pool.

The Female Brain by Dr. Louann Brizendine explores the differences in the way women process thoughts compared with the way men do.  For example, women use 20,000 words a day compared to 7,000 for men. Evidently everyone starts out with a female brain. Until eight (8) weeks after conception (when testosterone is introduced), all brains are female. When the testosterone surge arrives, cells in the communication and emotion centers are killed off and more cells in the sex and aggression centers are born. As a result, females can hear a broader range of sound frequency and tones in the human voice, are better able to observe facial and other emotional cues, and display greater interest in getting another’s attention.   Female newborns less than twenty-four hours old respond more to the distressed cries of another baby and to the human face than do male newborns. Four year olds that have the highest quality social relationships also registered the lowest doses of testosterone level in utero. Pre-adolescent girls take turns twenty times more often than boys. Girls use language to get consensus, influencing others without telling them directly what to do. They make joint decisions, often agreeing to others’ suggestions, or setting forth their ideas in a form of questions, such as “I’ll be the teacher, okay?” The disorders that inhibit people from picking up on social nuance, such as autism spectrum disorders and Asperger’s syndrome, are 8 times more common in boys than in girls.

Dr. Marianne J. Legato's new book, Why Men Never Remember and Women Never Forget (Rodale, 2005), points out some significant differences in the male and female brains:

·        Female brains produce a hormone called oxytocin that motivates making and preserving connections with other people.

·        Women have a higher rate of blood flow to their brains, making them potentially more efficient.

·        While men have on average 10% heavier brains, women have more gray matter in the frontal cortex of their brains than do men, which is the executive center of the brain and controls complex behaviors.

·        Women also have more connections between the two sides of their brains, allowing the processing of several different streams of information at once. This difference results both in more linear problem-solving approach in men, analyzing and solving one issue at a time, and increased multitasking in women, which some research suggests is less efficient than the linear route. 

·        The amygdala, the primitive part of the brain that responds quickly to stress, has extensive connections in women to the parts that control blood pressure and heart rate, while men have fewer connections, resulting in a greater ability in men to be untouched physiologically by stress.

·        The female brain has higher levels of the hormone estrogen than men, which prolongs the production of cortisol, so a women feels more stressed for a longer period of time than a man in the same situation, and estrogen also activates a larger field of neurons, giving women a more detailed and vivid memory of the stressful event.

·        Regarding communication, women have more gray matter in the left brain, which processes language, and women use both sides of their brains for speech, unlike men, who use only one. Women have more dopamine in the language parts of their brains than men do, allowing more fluid and efficient processing of language. In addition, women usually are much more able to reading subtle or nuanced expression, probably as an evolutionary aide to caring for pre-verbal infants. The net results give women a decidedly increased capacity for, and interest in, communicating. 

·        Higher levels of testosterone have been correlated with enhanced spatial imaging ability (such as manipulating three-dimensional concepts) but with a diminished ability for verbal expression.

·        Others' expectations play a big role in girls' performance. Girls told that the math test they are taking has a gender bias do much worse on the same test than if they are not told that.

·        There are some researchers who believe that the detachment and difficulties in communicating relating emotionally that autistics exhibit are the results of an "extreme male brain," potentially caused by exposure to high levels of testosterone in utero. There are much higher rates of autism among boys than girls.

·        Men's brains atrophy more with aging than do women's—it begins earlier and is more pronounced on the left, language-based side.

·        A study published in Science on what made working women happy reported that homework and commuting ranked the lowest, but watching TV alone ranked very high, above shopping and talking on the phone. Interestingly enough, taking care of children ranked below cooking and just above housework. The amount of sleeplessness and tight work deadlines decreased enjoyment of all pleasurable activities.

·        Women are more stressed than men. A major National Consumer's League study in 2003 found that younger people were more stressed than older generations, and women were significantly more stressed (84%) than men (76%). Men were worried about their work, women about their family, although women who work and have a family seem to get less stressed out when something goes wrong in either place. In addition, women are 2/3 more likely to be depressed than men.

·        Chronic anxiety is associated with reduced brain mass and impaired memory structures in the brain.

·        Stress enhances the speed at which male rats learn,  while female rats' ability was impaired. Nonetheless, women are more resilient after stress than men are: they recover more quickly and more fully, most often from bonding with others.

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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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