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

The words being thrown around were trust, intimacy, empathy, vulnerability, honesty, transparency, communication, emotional intelligence, teamwork, forgiveness, feedback, collaboration, connectedness, courage, relationship-building.  It would be understandable if you thought that you had walked into a marital counseling conference or some new-age event.  

In fact, the setting was Georgetown University Law Center’s March 9th conference entitled "Welcome to the Future: Trends in the Delivery of Corporate Legal Services," led by Co-Director Mitt Regan.

After presentations on survey data showing how firms attract and keep potential clients (more on this in later entries), the attributes that were identified as being most conducive to outstanding client service were those listed above that make all types of relationships good and better.  And it was acknowledged that it can take only a few individual lawyer behaviors to destroy a client's trust, and in a startlingly short time.

Jeff Emelt, GC at GE, was quoted as saying that empathy is the quality he wants in his lawyers, which is particularly important when he gets legal advice he doesn't like.  While his predecessor valued his favored lawyer for being the best listener he'd ever met. 

Susan Hackett of the ACC Value Challenge said all the metrics used by firms and clients to capture data and set and meet goals need to be discussed with a lot of transparency and vulnerability--so clients can see how firms make their profits and even what those profits are.

Lisa Damon, member of the Executive Committee at Seyfarth Shaw, was instrumental five years ago in designing and promoting a firm culture that emphasizes "standing in the shoes of the clients," relying on transparency, communication and collaboration to weld strong bonds. While only into the first year of that program, Damon says that they already have delighted clients who are more engaged in the entire client/lawyer process.

Amy Schulman, Executive Vice President and General Counsel at Pfizer, was the featured speaker, discussing the Pfizer Legal Alliance, a program in its 3rd year that limits the number of firms that Pfizer uses to 20 for the bulk of its work. Pfizer requires that the firms use another value device other than the billable hour to determine fees ("If what you use to anchor the relationship is money, you’re going to lose, because it's not motivational at some point," according to Schulman), that they help Pfizer achieve an overall 15% reduction in legal spend, and that they work cooperatively with each other, as needed, to staff and manage projects. 

Each firm has an in-house relationship partner at Pfizer and Pfizer encourages secondments and sharing associates, even recruiting at law schools together with some firms. Twice a year Pfizer grades each law firm on performance issues ranging from substantive knowledge to responsiveness to willingness to collaborate, as well as how well they take the feedback they are given. This is, of course, a challenge for most lawyers--they are often highly defensive to anything that smells of criticism.

"We learned a lot about firms," Schulman says, "by whether they welcomed the feedback or responded by saying, 'You got it wrong.'" 

According to Schulman, making the PLA work is like developing other intimate relationships--it takes hard work, vulnerability and bravery--and ultimately requires a leap of faith. "Relationship-building requires a certain kind of emotional courage and confidence."

Most speakers acknowledged that feedback from clients is necessary to improve relationships--proactively asking for and acting on client evaluations should be the starting point of sophisticated client service.  But once the feedback is received, understanding how to respond at the time and in the future requires a panoply of skills that firms must identify, develop and support from the top down.  Inculcating these skills and values into the DNA of a firm becomes geometrically more difficult as the size of the firm increases.

As J. Warren Gorrell, Co-CEO of Hogan Lovells, pointed out, there is "a lot to be learned by firms from organizational behavior theory."

There were a couple of provocative questions.  Are women lawyers more likely to have some of these skills and therefore be able to deliver better service?  And if so, why aren't they being recognized and rewarded for those abilities?

And in the end does expertise always trump empathy or any of these other touchy, feely skills?  The conclusion seemed to be that regardless of the legal arena or degree of subject matter difficulty, quality of advice is considered a given from all firms, with clients repeatedly going to the qualified law firm that provides them with the better relationship as well.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

In addition to establishing metrics for demonstrating, for instance, who in the firm does what and how for project management or other purposes, there are metrics out there that track what individual firms charge for various units of work, so that inside counsel can compare value among firms in a more finely calibrated way.  

A survey by CT TyMetrix Inc. and The Corporate Executive Board, The Real Rate Report, culled through $4.1 billion invoiced by over 3,500 law firms and 90,000 individual billers in 51 metropolitan areas over three years (2007-2009) to companies ranging in size from 1-1,900+ attorneys, and in 16 industries, including energy, entertainment, finance, insurance, healthcare, manufacturing, pharmaceutical, retail and technology. Key topics they were looking at include:

• Actual rates charged to corporate clients by law firms by geography, work and matter type, matter phase, and timekeeper (partner, associate and paralegal) role, practice area and experience level.
• Law firm staffing trends, including staffing profiles for different matter types, timekeeper billing patterns, and a breakdown of how billing has changed in the past three years.
• Portraits of typical corporate legal matters across law firms by type, length and cost of specific matter phases, and timelines from service to billing.

The results?  First, apparently lawyers nationwide have variable rates for the same work. The survey found that 85% of lawyers change their rates for the same work depending on the client, with median variations in some practice areas averaging as high as 17+%.   

So in case you've been wondering why clients keep going next door looking for a better deal, they evidently have good reason to.  Not only did the survey find that firms charge different rates to different clients, it found that the longer clients stay with a law firm, the more likely they'll pay more than newer clients coming through the door. Yes, you read that right. We don't seem to offer frequent flyer programs.

According to Steven Williams, a Corporate Executive Board managing director, "jumps in partners' and associates' rates outpaced increases at four-year private colleges, blue- and white-collar hourly wages, and producer and housing price indexes since 2000,"  and experience has little correlation with rates. Over the three year period of the survey, nearly one in 5 lawyers increased their hourly rate by $100 or more, with percentage increases for associate hourly rates rising the most.

What is more important to rates than expertise or experience is where the lawyer works and how big the firm is. A big city firm--located in Chicago, LA, NYC, San Francisco or Washington, DC--adds an average of $131 to an hourly rate, although firms in the metro South racked up the largest increases. 

New York City law firm partners charge the most in the US at about $700 an hour, with Washington, DC partners coming in at a close second at $600 an hour.  DC lawyers raised their rates an average of 10.5% between 2007 and 2009.  In comparison, lawyers in Detroit only raised their rates 2%, the least in the country, and Dallas invoices rose the highest, at 21.9%.

And size matters: for every 100 lawyers in a firm, clients pay another $10 an hour for the associates and about $100 more per hour for a partner.

Apart from having this more global information, one wonders how long it could possibly take companies to assemble and process this type of information in their increasingly sophisticated proprietary databases, if they have not already done so.

What do your rates say about your firm? Do you understand your rate structure?  Who has the authority and for what reason to vary rates?  Are your rates insensitive or even downright greedy when it comes to the work of your most loyal clients?

Clients are going to compare rates of different firms for similar work and make a value judgment--where are we getting the most bang for our buck?

One interesting side effect of this particular metrification may turn out to be that it puts firms in the position of claiming that their hourly rates are not really indicative of the value of their work--contrary to the last few decades of billing babbling. That the rates are simply a revenue metric determined by the firm to make sure they cover their costs and produce a profit. 

Are you looking forward to that conversation?

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

Muir will speak on Law Practice in the 21^st Century:  What It Means for You at the Women Lawyers Alliance annual meeting in Chicago on Friday, May 20.  Muir will review the massive changes that law practice is undergoing globally in this new century and what it means to individual lawyers and their law departments and firms in terms of competition, recruitment, staffing, client development, compensation, professional training and personal career management.  Join the Women Lawyer's Alliance and register for the annual meeting here.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

At this year's Annual Meeting of over 2000 general counsel and senior in-house counsel, the Association of Corporate Counsel continued its promotion of the Value Challenge--i.e., making sure outside counsel understand what corporate counsel expect from them. So far, over 5000 lawyers have been rated on their competence in six critical areas.  And ACC hopes to double that number soon.

Janine Dascenzo, a member of the ACC Value Challenge Steering Committee and chief litigation counsel at GE, noted that her CFO expects legal spending to be reduced by 25% year-on-year, which far exceeds the savings some firms propose by holding rates for 2011 to 2007 levels. She advocated for lawyers adopting skills business has long used to realize profits on fixed-price contracts. 

Aileen Leventon of QLex Consulting, Inc. led the basic skills session on Legal Project Management, with three firms--Shook Hardy & Bacon, McDermott Will & Emery and Kilpatrick Stockton--demonstrating how they use project management principles and technology applications to profitably manage work priced at fixed fees or other value-based fees.

Leventon has learned a lot about client expectations in the course of teaching project management skills to more than 200 General Counsel over the past year.

According to Leventon, here are the six things GCs want their law firms to know:

1. Law firms fundamentally do not understand that legal spending is corporate overhead and has to be managed aggressively - consistent with every aspect of the corporate budget. Expenses are scrutinized by many internal stakeholders: CFO, Controller's, Investor Relations, and Procurement.

2 .Legal is not only not exempt, but is held to a higher standard because of the widely-held business perceptions that law firm lawyers make too much money and that legal work is rarely revenue-producing for the client.

3. Law firms must recognize that legal work is not an end in itself. Law firms are engaged because there are business problems - not legal issues. Business problems need results. Legal issues are only one of many factors that are brought to bear in addressing client matters.

4. Law firms must learn how to manage their work better. They need ongoing communication within their firms about how specific work links to the client’s budget so that matters are properly staffed. Firms must learn how to use planning and forecasting tools, just as the general counsel have learned to use matter management systems and e-billing.

5. Law firms should communicate at the beginning of the matter about assumptions supporting budgets and then initiate conversations when matters are coming in over budget. Too many law firms think that if an interim bill is paid, they do not have to discuss being over budget with the client. "They paid my bill so they know what is going on" isn’t sufficient.

6. Predictability is key. Even if a matter is coming in under budget or additional resources will not be required, the client needs to know that as soon as possible. The client's budget is a portfolio of matters--not just those handled by a particular law firm--and the surprise of coming in under budget at the end of the year is not received as favorably as a law firm might think.

How is your firm doing?

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

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.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

Now is the time to really get to know your clients. What are their budgetary constrictions?  What are their priorities for the next two years?   What do they want more of and less of from their outside counsel?  What keeps them awake at night? 

Do you not only know the answers to all of these and other questions but are also proactively doing something about each of them?

In a recent article in The Legal Intelligencer entitled "Firms, GCs Starting to Talk the Talk," Gina Passarella reports on the growing awareness of law firms of the necessity to dialogue with their clients about their delivery of legal services. 

As Lorraine Koc, general counsel of Deb Shoppes, notes, "the idea of communicating with clients is something that virtually every business does except for law firms."

Some firms realize the importance of addressing that, particularly in the context of this economy.  "If you don't have communication and [clients] can't tell you what they like and dislike, then you're leaving them one choice and that's to leave," Flaster Greenberg managing partner Peter Spirgel says of the reasoning behind their hosting client panel presentations.

Reed Smith has held a client panel at every one of its firmwide meetings since at least 2000. The firm also surveys clients at the conclusion of large matters and survey its largest clients regularly. Managing partner Gregory Jordan also meets with clients regularly to learn more about their businesses and get feedback on the firm's work.

What is the best approach to determining client feedback and where do you start?  Which clients do you include?  How do you format the inquiry? In a forum or with each client individually?  Who inquires and what questions do you ask?  What technology best assists the inquiry?  And, most importantly, how do you translate the information you get into substantive improvements in client delivery?

Our firm provides unparalleled expertise in assessing and cementing relationships between law firms and their clients.  Now is the time.  Let us help.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

This is the time of year when many of us take stock of our direction and goals and make plans to step up our effectiveness.  This particular year, 2009, many lawyers are facing an extremely difficult once-in-a-century marketplace for which no one has been truly prepared.  So we may also find ourselves questioning our ability to successfully grapple with the challenges ahead.  

How to acquire the skills that will improve your practice and advance your leadership in such a disorienting environment?

The old adage of two heads being better than one is born out by the data available on the results of coaching.  According to a January 13, 2009 article by Susan Letterman White in The Legal Intelligencer, "a research report by Diane Coutu and Carol Kauffman in the January Harvard Business Review found that coaching is a business tool most often used to develop the capabilities of high-potential performers or facilitate leadership transitions," and one which produces quantifiable benefits. "The Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology has reported that coaching leads to higher interview ratings for individuals. Telecommunications Weekly reported in November that a change program, which included coaching, improved customer satisfaction by 10 percent and call resolution rates by 56 percent at Motorola. And according to a 2008 article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, coaching of university faculty improved the writing process of professors who were under pressure to publish."

As Ms. White states, "coaching is to a lawyer what organizational development is to a law firm; they both foster intentional change toward particular goals through a collaborative process. The goals are those that move the client to a higher level of professional effectiveness...Most importantly, a good coach is paid to ask the right questions."

In addition, a good coach is one who listens.

Sheryl Axelrod of Hepburn Axelrod & White, a Philadelphia firm, was quoted in the article as extolling the benefits of coaching in a law firm context. "We worked with a coach who had an uncanny ability to not only listen to our needs, fears and desires for our firm, but our own internal dilemmas and concerns about each other."

Of course, after listening, a coach must also be able to help coachees arrive at and implement beneficial changes.  And those changes are sometimes unexpected.  In the Hepburn Axelrod case, "one of our partners...reach[ed] the difficult decision to leave the partnership."

But the proof is in the pudding.  "The result of the coaching is that our firm, on our own, and our former partner, on his own, are each thriving in a market in which most firms are doing worse, not better, than the year before, " Axelrod said.

Quantitative evaluations of coaching are rare, but those that have been done demonstrate conclusively its effectiveness and bottom-line contribution.  In an evaluation by MetrixGlobal of an executive coaching program provided by the Center for Performance Excellence in 2004 to Booz Allen partners and principals, results indicated that "all leaders readily applied what they gained from their coaching experiences to make significant strides in self-development, while over half (53%) made significant improvements in their relationships with peers and team members and some  leaders (19%) went on to significantly improve client relationships; gaining greater clarity about how their behavior impacted clients and being better able to respond to client issues."

Of eight business areas senior leaders expected executive coaching to impact, "two were found to be positively impacted by at least half of the leaders who were coached: teamwork (58%) and team member satisfaction (54%). Three other areas were selected by 31% of the leaders as having been impacted: quality of consulting, retention and productivity."

Monetary benefits were rigorously documented in this evaluation. "The total monetary benefits were $3,268,325 with four impact areas each producing at least a half million dollars of annualized benefit to the business: improved teamwork ($981,980), quality of consulting ($863,625), retention ($626,456) and team member satisfaction ($541,250). Given a total, fully loaded cost of the coaching of $414,310, the ROI was 689%."

Coaching can provide to all lawyers the simple but valuable assistance of a supportive yet out-of-the-law-firm-box perspective that can be critical when steering through dangerous waters--and that can positively impact the bottom line. That perspective can help you become a more effective  partner, develop individual business, expand your expertise, master management responsibilities and otherwise plan and implement the next step in your career (whether you are motivated to do so proactively or reactively).

At RRR, we offer confidential high-performance coaching programs of six to eighteen months that are tailored to your objectives and your schedule.  Contact us for a consultation on how we can help you achieve your goals in 2009.

Happy new year!

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

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. 

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

The use of assessments worldwide is rapidly expanding and lawyers are still lagging at the back of the pack--way back. 

An article by Lisa Belkin in yesterday's New York Times notes that there are 2,500 "profiling instruments" that companies rely on more every year when deciding whom to hire or promote. Sixty-five percent of companies surveyed reported using assessments in 2006, up almost double from the 34 percent reported a year earlier, according to Staffing Industry Report, a human-resources newsletter.

To paraphrase her article, the content of tests has stayed more or less constant for three decades. What has changed is the workplace. The cost of losing experienced employees now represents a tremendous lost of investment.  "Employers want a guarantee that a new hire will stick — and the best way to do that is to make sure that job and candidate are a good fit in the first place."

Globalization that separates performance and accountability/review across continents has further complicated the process of finding and training the best person for the job. So offering on-line testing across those continents makes these assessments not only appealing but also fast.  

I am often asked by potential clients, particularly those who have been in corporate settings, if we either offer or recommend simple, cost-effective assessments for them to use in attorney recruitment, training and development.  While we can recommend and administer a number of good assessments that can be highly useful -- Myers Briggs Type Indicator (the most popular test in the country, used by 89 of the Fortune 100 and taken by 2.5 million Americans each year), Caliper's Personality Profile, Birkman Method, MayerSaloveyCaruso Emotional Intelligence Test, Thomas Kilmann Conflict Instrument, among others--they are not inexpensive and they are not targeted to lawyers. 

A recent college graduate friend took a Johnson O'Connor aptitude assessment, a common test for teens and young adults to help determine career possibilities.  Since her father and grandfather are lawyers and she is considering going to law school, she was surprised to find that "lawyer" was not one of her designated career possibilities.  She was told that a few years ago Johnson O'Connor stopped offering "lawyer" as an option for any of their test-takers.  The reason?  They are no longer able to reliably correlate attributes or aptitudes with the successful practice of law.

And therein lies one of the problems with assessing attorneys.  While research has indeed identified a number of attributes that lawyers exhibit to a greater degree than others-- for example, high pessimism, skepticism, urgency and autonomy, and low resilience, sociability and collaboration-- the problem lies in the data that shows the impact these characteristics are having on practitioners.  These very attributes present in so many lawyers are also the attributes contributing to the dissatisfaction and distress that the legal profession exhibits:  astonishingly high rates of depression and other mental illness, substance abuse, suicide, and divorce, for starters. High rates of dissatisfaction that are also contributing to the staggering drop-out and attrition rates.

In addition to the challenge of identifying what makes for a good (as well as well-adjusted lawyer), there is also the expense of doing that well.  The testing often done at corporations is highly individualized, developed after an extensive review of what attributes in fact produce productive and satisfied employees at that particular company, and sometimes at that particular location.  Google hires over 10,000 new employees each year and enjoys the amazingly low attrition rate of 4%, but to accomplish that.it invests in a highly detailed questionnaire and assessment that is developed from extensive employee data   That process is not inexpensive. 

Not only is it the individual lawyers who have complex and sometimes hard-to-read attributes.  Law firms and law departments, often in spite of their studied denial, also have "personalities."  Understanding those personalities is critical in determining the type of person who will thrive or fail there. 

Our unique expertise in understanding the attributes of individual lawyers, as well as each legal workplace, makes us ideally suited to help you enter the challenging world of 21st century attorney assessment, development and retention.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

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.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

In a report released October 1^st, Catalyst, a New York consultancy, found that Fortune 500 companies with at least three women on their boards strongly outperformed those companies with fewer or no women. Based on a study of four years of corporate results, the correlation was found to be so direct that the more women who serve on a board, the better the bottom line. 

The companies with the highest percentage of women on their boards had equity returns 53% higher, returns on sales 42% higher and returns on invested capital at least 66% higher than those companies with the least number of women board members. Higher returns kicked in once at least three women served on the corporation’s board, the study found, with companies having only three women board members raising each of those returns an average of 5% over corporations with fewer women.

Why would female board participation produce such concrete financial results? Various consultants and academics speculate that women are better able to understand the customer base, particularly of consumer goods companies, and that showcasing women on the board helps attract and retain women employees throughout the company. 

Another reason may well be women’s often strong collaboration skills, empowering them to better resolve conflict and move boards through the thorny discussions necessary to make and carry through critical decisions.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments (2)
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

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.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link

"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.

• Email This
• Print
• Comments
• Trackbacks
• Share Link