"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.
According to Steve Davis, it all went pretty smoothly and quickly: negotiations in July and August, a preliminary agreement the last week of August, votes last Wednesday, September 26, and on Monday of this week, he became chairman of Dewey & LeBoeuf, the newest megafirm in the global law firm firmament, with 1300 lawyers, 26 offices in 12 countries, and a billion dollars in revenue.
So what accounts for this dramatically better outcome, compared to the Dewey/Orrick debacle-in-the-making that first hit the press last year this time?
For starters, Davis credits the two firms’ long-standing familiarity with each other. No East Coast/West Coast mystique to decipher and reconcile in this case: the two firms were only two floors apart at 140 Broadway for years and had dealt with each other on myriad matters. With good relationships long established, people at both firms, Davis contends, “quickly understood the underlying strategic rationale” for a combination.
Davis also believes Dewey & LeBoeuf enjoys another advantage that other recent megamergers did not. Both Dewey and LeBoeuf had high concentrations of lawyers in the same key markets—New York, London and Washington D.C. That’s an advantage? The beauty of the Dewey/Orrick merger was thought to have been little overlap, promising to produce that far-flung “globalness” instantly. Overlap, Davis contends, works in the firm’s favor. Unlike the “Noah’s Ark” that some combinations are left with—two of everything, with 1 in LA and 1 in Boston--Dewey & LeBoeuf’s geography is more likely to force the people and cultures at each key location to mesh.
D&L's executive committee of 22 is composed of 11 partners from each firm, and includes Morton Pierce, Dewey’s Managing Partner, with Davis in the chairman’s seat. After the Dewey/Orrick talks failed, Pierce’s management style was the subject of some bruising commentary, with particular notice given to the fact that he billed 3300 hours that year. See our February 7, 2007 entry “Talking to the Troops.”
So what will management at Dewey & LeBoeuf be like? Davis is often described as managing “like a CEO,” a role which, perhaps in a reflection on the famous independence of lawyers, one LeBoeuf partner characterized as an “elected dictator.”
Davis points to firms like Linklaters, highlighted in a recent American Lawyer article on Magic Circle firms, as being notably well-run while also decidedly not a democracy. “What other billion dollar business is run like a democracy?” he asks.Once the chair of LeBoeuf’s prized energy department, Davis cut his client time in half when he became LeBoeuf’s co-chairman in 1999. After becoming chairman in 2004, Davis devoted full-time to management. “That is a fundamental difference,” he acknowledges, between LeBoeuf’s management philosophy and Dewey’s, which he diplomatically declines to characterize as either “right or wrong.”
The full-time focus is conscious and necessary, Davis says, to effectively manage firms as large and complex as his, which are presented with issues, at least in terms of proportion, that a firm like Cravath, with 95% of its lawyers in one office, is not.
Davis anticipates that he will be the only full-time manager at D&L. "At LeBoeuf, we moved away from partners doing administration," Davis says, finding that keeping partners focused on clients while relying on professional administrators, often with law degrees, made for better results.
Whatever discussion there may be about style, one thing you can’t quarrel with is Davis’s results. In the five years from 2001 –2006, LeBoeuf’s profits per partner doubled amid an influx of star talent.
One result of that influx was that by 2006, a fifth of LeBoeuf’s equity partners had been at the firm less than two years. What has Davis learned about integrating laterals that may help now in his efforts to integrate the two cultures and their lawyers? “Treat people with respect and dignity, which often means really listening to them, giving them a fair hearing even if you don’t decide in the end to do what they want.”
What are his biggest challenges ahead? Organizationally, Davis is working on the firm’s practice structure and plotting future growth. Now the 5th largest firm in NY, D&L has 550 lawyers in NYC and 180 in London, making it also the 5th largest firm in London. Davis intends to grow that London office, where he sees the greatest potential payoff, anticipating soon spending two weeks a month there.
But his biggest challenge is, he says, an old one: how to give people in the firm a sense of ownership. “Law firms are pure personal services organizations-- it’s all about people and motivating them, so that they feel that they matter, because they do.” And his concern is that the bigger the firm, the harder that may be to do.
An article by Lucy Kellaway entitled "Just Say No to the New Managerial Cult of Yes" in the July 23, 2007 Financial Times pointed out that a lot of the job of management involves saying “no,” but the critical part, according to Davis, is "saying 'no' in a way that respects people’s dignity. How the person feels when they walk away is what’s important.”
And Davis admits he’s not immune to needing some reinforcement himself. A recent talk he gave to the Boston office produced an email from a college intern that he returns to when he could use a boost: “I have a very important job—it’s the only job I have, and you made me feel appreciated.”
Any question that Steve Davis is one of the more enlightened of the law firmus managementus species? No question.
A grand old firm has gone through a rough patch recently—one of its associates not only sued for sexual orientation harassment and discrimination, but also proceeded to file partnership documents and communications that S&C certainly would prefer to not have circulating publicly. Further, an article in the legal press lampooned a memo S&C sent around to its partners exhorting them, among other things, to say "thank you," in case their mothers had forgotten to instill in them that finer point of social intercourse. The legal blogosphere enjoyed batting that one around.
But S&C may have gotten the last laugh. In the Midlevel Associates Review released last month by The American Lawyer, New York law firms (as defined there to mean firms with more than 45% of their lawyers in New York) were once again roundly denounced, with this year only 7 firms making it into the top half of the 162 firms surveyed. The New York associates registered their dissatisfaction particularly regarding relations with partners, training, communication about what it takes to make partner and openness about firm finances. While New York firms have always performed poorly in these ratings, several firms fell precipitously since last year's survey—Cravath Swaine slid 27 places, Paul Weiss was down 59, Debevoise Plimpton fell 64 slots and Wachtell Lipton plummeted 74 places.
Thumbing its nose at the rest of the straggling New York herd was Sullivan & Cromwell, which vaulted from number 153 on the list up to number 48.
So now that all the chortling has died down, was it the "thank yous" that worked? Perhaps. But also, for the first time this past year, S&C leaders gave associates a series of briefings about firm finances, business strategy and the road to partnership. Chairman H. Rodgin Cohen and vice-chair Joseph Shenker, among others, made in-person presentations and took questions.
On those two most damning survey questions for New York firms, "communication about what it takes to make partner" and "openness about finances," S&C's ratings this year were 3.48 and 3.64 respectively, out of the ballpark compared to their prior year's ratings of 2.14 and 2.13, and even much higher than this year's average New York firms' ratings of 2.59 and 2.94.
So it looks to me like Mom was right. Talking it out—even those tricky financial matters and partnership issues that several New York firms said, and continue to say, were either too confidential or essentially none of the associates' business—creates rapport, incentive and even, get this, trust in an environment that sorely needs all three. And it does so quickly—with the results showing up in the first survey!
Mom would be so pleased.
Burnishing an image that is bankable is what every professional tries to do--both for him/herself individually and for the profession as well. Doctors take bed-side manners lessons, the NYPD are being instructed on common courtesies. What about lawyers? What do they do to bring out the gold?
From the looks of things, not much.
A Harris Poll annually asks the question “Who would you trust?” about various professions. Doctors, teachers, scientists, police officers, professors, clergymen and military officers routinely end up at the top of the trust chart, garnering more than 70% of the votes.
Lawyers are usually found settled at the bottom, where members of Congress, pollsters, trade union leaders and stockbrokers rank above them with 35% or less of the vote. There, in next-to-last place in 2006, lawyers sport 27% trustworthiness, one notch above the bottom-feeding actors, over whom lawyers are able to boast a one percentile advantage.
The recent portrayals of lawyers in mass media are evidence of how low the reputations of lawyers are sinking. Long gone is Perry Mason reassuring the wronged and bringing evildoers to justice. Last season’s TV series about a lawyer was titled “The Shark,” which pretty much says it all from an image standpoint. That series has been one-upped by this summer’s arrival of a lawyer drama entitled “Damages,” starring Glenn Close, who will always be remembered as one of our generation’s scariest persona—the man-eating, marriage-dashing, family unfriendly “Fatal Attraction” psycho. Legal advice, anyone?
Then there are the real-life reports that manage to make these fictional scenarios look reasonable: the senior partner who throws law books at associates, the criminal defense attorney found naked with an adolescent in the court's conference room, the litigator who admitted to altering documents in a consumer class action, the tax lawyer who bribed IRS officials to accept tax positions, the partner whose language in court was so egregious the head of the firm flew in to apologize.
Into this combustible scenario comes the question of whether law firms should be able to advertise in mass media, as do other professions, and if so, what they should be able to say.
The recent back and forth in New York, New Jersey and other states about whether law firms should be allowed to tout their "Super Lawyers" or other commercially recognized stars on their websites, use testimonials from prior or existing clients in their marketing materials, use unidentified actors in their ad campaigns or even send emails that don't clearly identify themselves as "soliciting" are no doubt reflections of the growing role that image marketing is likely to play for lawyers.
A recent article in the New York Times heralded the arrival of professional-looking canned law firm television commercials that are affordable to "the smaller, more local firms for whom the most important thing is the message to their communities," according to Spot Runner, who is working together with Martindale-Hubbell to market the commercials. While that approach may benefit a local firm whose clients and potential clients are individuals in the community, as the article notes, it is unlikely to be useful to large corporate firms. And the unseemly associations with ambulance chasing still prevail.
So, other than mass advertising, how do we burnish our image in this modern era?
Perhaps in the most old-fashioned of ways: by building relationships, one at a time. It does not produce a quick fix or an instant cache. It takes time-- both immediately and over the long run, so it's not very efficient. But building individual relationships is effective.
Clients say repeatedly that the quality they most want in their counsel is trustworthiness. Not just someone who gets the answer right. Or gets the answer right enough for the price. But someone who the client can count on to look out for their best interests, provide honest feedback and reliably follow through.
It's an image worth the investment.
Oddly enough, where it is most needed, Boards and other management groups may be the last frontier for achieving enhanced performance management.
Historically, the perceived advantages of relying on a managing group, instead of one individual, include access to the group's collective wisdom –"several heads are better than one"–as well as the ability to spread an increasing management workload over a number of people.
A recent Center for Creative Leadership study identified an additional advantage. Effective management these days requires the resources of several people, rather than the lone hero, in order to meet the global challenges of collaboratively connecting across boundaries of all kinds—geography, language, culture and expertise.
Avoiding "Extreme" Group Decision-Making
Yet there is a well-documented propensity for groups to drift toward "extreme" decisions, that is, a committee often makes a decision that none of the individual members of the committee, acting alone, would make. These group decisions can be extreme by being either extremely risky or extremely conservative, and you see lone Directors routinely disavowing their cohorts’ actions after the fact. There seem to be a number of reasons for this tendency:
Diffusion of Responsibility. An individual's part in a group's decision evidently weighs less heavily on him/her than an individual decision would, the implication being that not as thorough an evaluation of the issues is made when the decision is attributed to the group.
Ignoring the Lone Voice. Often groups do not properly take into account the most relevant expertise in the room. Most small groups tend to make decisions based on the information all members share about a topic, overlooking important facts that one or several people bring. Although management committees are usually looking for creative, out-of-the-box strategies, a solitary opinion is often taken lightly or ignored in the flow of debate within the group.
Social Pressure. The more bonded the group, the more committed they are likely to be to reaching a decision, particularly one that pleases most of the members, even if a decision should be delayed or a less pleasing one would in fact be best.
Competition. When committee members agree on the parameters of an issue, individuals may try to one-up each other by suggesting more and more extreme solutions, then promoting their solution as the best.
Stress. Groups under pressure act very much like individuals under stress, only more so. They often procrastinate, calling for further information, or become committed to bad decisions primarily to protect themselves and each other against criticism. This effect may account for the popular notion that committees tend to "split the baby," resulting in a less controversial solution that does not in fact work very well.
Seeing What Others Say
The impact of psychological factors on group decision making may go even further, to actually alter each person’s perceptions. A study using advanced brain-scanning technology shows that, in effect, group members often in fact see what the group tells them they see. In an exercise involving mentally rotating images of three-dimensional objects to determine if the objects were the same or different, subjects were assured of an incorrect conclusion by confederates and then agreed with those wrong answers 41% of the time. The brain activity of those who went along with the group was markedly different from those who took independent positions. When subjects concurred with wrong answers, activity increased in the area of the brain devoted to spatial awareness, meaning that their actual perceptions were being influenced. Those who made independent judgments showed activity in the region of the brain associated with conflict management, signifying an emotional toll for going against the group's perception.
Based on the results of this study, one of the potential major advantages of a group decision—"several heads are better than one"—can disappear if the group successfully, even if unintentionally, co-opts individual insights. The most problematic aspect of these results is that not only does the group lose the "lone voices," but also the lone voices lose their very awareness of their differing perspectives. The change in their perception makes them incapable of raising their idiosyncratic flags.
A Case In Point
The turmoil at Morgan Stanley a few years ago and the decisions made by its board of directors illustrate the impact of some of these tendencies. Composed of strong-minded, business-savvy individuals, the board nonetheless, through months and months of defecting key personnel, intense business and media criticism, embarrassing legal imbroglios, disappointing financial results and stalled stock performance, closed ranks around Philip J. Purcell, the Chairman and CEO to whom most were closely allied, repeatedly refusing to consider the reassessments urged on the board by varying stakeholders, including its star performers. The clear impression was that management at Morgan Stanley did not promote or value dissenting viewpoints that (as it turns out) could have provided a useful counterpoint to the "group think" that held sway.
Building the Optimal Management Group
As a practical matter, then, group members need to be able to listen carefully to lone voices yet not give in to the peer pressure of what others on the committee think. It is a complex balancing act.
There are certainly some strategies that leadership can employ to help groups avoid some of the “group think” forces that produce less than optimal decision-making. Leadership can make sure everyone is heard, that those speaking from particular strengths and expertise are identified and that their ideas are clearly articulated. Leadership can invest responsibility in individuals for evaluating, spearheading and implementing new initiatives, and they can allow sufficient time for each person to bring the full benefit of their analysis to the issues.
Leadership need not be "feel good" cheerleaders, though. While it is pleasant and in many ways beneficial to maintain a collegial atmosphere among the management group, it is not necessarily a matter of “the more friendly, the better.” Both a healthy dose of confidence in one’s own contribution and a respectful “show me” skepticism towards others’ viewpoints can be useful.
But there is only so much leadership can do once the group is composed. These studies highlight the importance to an organization in the first place of placing in these high-powered groups the types of individuals least likely to be swayed by the psychological forces in play.
One attribute that can make a strong contribution to these groups is emotional intelligence. That may come as a surprise to lawyers steeped in the virtues of analytical thought, but the data on this front is incontrovertible: rational decision-making is significantly impaired if the area of the brain relating to emotions is damaged or excised. And the ability to identify, use, understand and manage emotions—both one's own and others'—produces better decisions.
Another attribute of a "good team player" in this context is the ability to effectively make an individual opinion known to the group without creating a counterproductive backlash. Conflict in this situation may be inevitable and is often essential, acting as the crucible that purges the chaff from the wheat. After the dust settles, however, members should be able to find a collegial balance until the next set of issues arises.
Who are the optimal candidates for these high-powered positions? Those who:
• exhibit the character strengths of honesty and bravery,
• are high in emotional intelligence,
• are aware of their unique expertise and perspectives,
• are willing to speak out and promote their viewpoints,
• are committed to applying the same rigor to making good group decisions as they would apply to
making individual ones, and
• possess the collaborative conflict skills necessary to wrangle effectively over a highly charged issue without seriously undermining his/her relationship with other committee members.
How do you find management candidates with these specific characteristics? Most corporations evaluate their operational personnel through a combination of reviews and assessments to determine those who are likely to possess the qualities they want. But those same corporations rarely ask existing Board members or Board of Director candidates to undergo similar testing.
In law firms, nominations to a management group are often made on the basis of seniority, revenue-generation or availability of time, none of which takes into account any of these desirable traits. While attorneys often contend they "know" their partners, rarely have any assessments been conducted to verify those "hunches."
The good news is that, if an organization wants to improve its decision-making at the top, there are reliable methods to do so. Existing management group styles and the roles that individual members play can be assessed and developed and those most likely to be able to contribute to better decision making can be identified.
Ronda Muir will be making a presentation on managing the people risks that arise in law firms at a conference for Managing Partners in Chicago on Thursday, June 21. Sponsored by ARK Group, the conference, entitled “Developing a Risk Conscious Culture in Your Firm,” explores the relationship and interdependence of ethics, risk management and legal compliance.
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!”
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.
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.
“Under the entity model, as individual attorneys cede decision-making authority to the firm, including authority for decisions regarding professional responsibility and ethical behavior, they tend to renounce (at least implicitly) personal responsibility for moral decision making. Law firms as entities, however, have no inherent mechanism for replacing personal moral responsibility with institutional moral responsibility. In consequence, morality can fall through the cracks, allowing corruption to ooze into the enterprise. “
That conclusion is consistent with long-standing behavioral science research on groups. Individuals in a group tend to support group decisions that go beyond what they as individuals would do, feeling at best a highly diffused sense of responsibility. In other words, a group is more likely to embrace risks that its individual members would not undertake on their own.
Gallopoulos recommends that firms push the ultimate responsibility for ethics back onto the individual attorney, and also establish a formal firm compliance mechanism to support, encourage, require and police ethical behavior.
Values
Keeping their lawyers interested in their work and loyal to their firm is a priority for many firms today, particularly given the limited talent pool, the expense of recruiting and training, and the pervasive “free agent” mentality. To help them reach that goal, our advice to law firms is to start with a subject that lawyers are sometimes hesitant to embrace: values. “Values” are one of those emotionally loaded "soft" words that analytical lawyers worry could lead to potential managerial disasters ranging from self-righteous policing to relativistic nonsense.
But a discussion of values can also be the beginning of identifying, in a personal and professional way, what a firm stands for. Remember that 82% of lawyers go to law school for idealistic reasons. Most do not follow the obvious non-profit or government career path. But time and again surveys reiterate the importance to lawyers, and particularly to young Gen X and Gen Y lawyers, of finding personal meaningfulness in their work. Clearly articulated firm values can provide a rallying point for these young lawyers, who can then not only structure pro bono and other “do good” activities around those values but can also harness those highly motivated, competitive, Type A qualities for values they believe in. And those values are what can instill a type of firm loyalty that is entirely independent from the numbers on a paycheck.
Which Is It?
While we can debate the nuances among morality, ethics and values in another blog entry, the concept of personal integrity may be the simplest key to these three important law firm goals: achieving optimum productivity, maintaining professional ethical standards, and attracting and retaining valuable legal talent.
Prioritizing the discussion of integrity, explaining exactly what integrity means in the context of law practice generally and your firm’s practice specifically, and highlighting the importance of that attribute to the firm’s identity is a profound starting place on the road to good risk management and a more cohesive firm.
The legal industry's current strategy for hiring and keeping lawyers seems to be to throw more and more money at them, a strategy which has succeeded to date in producing unprecedented attrition and dissatisfaction rates.
Major law firms around the country just upped the ante for hiring a baby lawyer to $160,000 @ year, before bonuses, or roughly what seasoned federal judges in our country make.
Why more money?
Jack Nusbaum, Chairman of Willkie Farr & Gallagher, says "We expect our associates to work hard… maybe this will make them feel better about the Saturdays and Sundays."
Has anyone taken note of the American Bar Association survey conducted just this past November? Of the 2,377 respondents (most of whom were between 26 and 35 and had been practicing law for five years or less), 84.2 percent said they'd prefer to work fewer hours for less money. More than 30 percent would like to work 20 percent less and said they'd give up between 25 and 30 percent of their pay in exchange. The next largest group-- 27.8%--would settle for a 10% cut in hours. Did you get that? Associates would prefer to give up proportionally more money for incrementally less work.
So are we paying these high salaries--surprise!--for the clients? To show them that our firm can attract the best players?
"When I saw the announcement about the raises, I said ‘Oh God,” says Michael Roster, executive vice president of World Savings, a subsidiary of Wachovia Corp. But maybe not for the reasons you would expect. Salary raises mean law firms will put more pressure on associates to bill, but paying more for legal services, Roster says, is less bothersome to him than associate turnover. He says he and other general counsel prefer to work with associates with whom he has a history and who know his business well. "It hurts when firms can’t keep qualified people.”
“From my standpoint, I would view [lowering billable hour requirements] as a creative and enlightened way to reduce associate turnover and keep the best and brightest young lawyers,” says Barry Nagler, who chaired in 2006 the Association of Corporate Counsel’s board of directors.
Susan C. Robinson, associate dean for career services at Stanford Law School, also thinks that lowering billable-hour requirements could be a great recruiting tool, particularly for attracting lateral associates.
There is no question that firms are struggling with the phenomenon of associates not wanting to work as hard as generations past. Many studies indicate, in fact, that partners often bill more hours than their associates, turning the law firm pyramid model topsy-turvy.
And attracting and retaining associates over the next decade may be even harder. The standard characterization of “millennials”—those who graduated from high school after 2000 and will be graduating from law school starting in 2008--is that they are unwilling to compromise life and family for work.
The obvious hit from reducing billable hour requirements would be to partners' bottom lines. See our upcoming entry "The End of Profitability as We Know It?" But there are some countervailing tactics that can help improve profitability. Ida O. Abbott, former partner at Heller Ehrman White and McAuliffe, contends that billable-hour requirements could be lowered without cutting partner profits if the change involved more planning and better management. And law firms have not yet even begun to explore the types of management strategies that have produced the super-sized profits recounted in the newly released Firms of Endearment: How World-Class Companies Profit from Passion and Purpose by Rajendra Sisodia, David Wolfe and Jagdish N. Sheth. See our January 31, 2007 entry "Firms of Endearment."
Steve Susman, whose 85-lawyer Houston/New York litigation firm Susman Godfrey gave 2006 associate bonuses of up to $125,000, contends that "Any lawyer who is unhappy with their compensation should check into a mental institution."
Based on the adage about the mental state of people who keep doing the same thing but expecting a different result, there may be a few managing partners who should be joining those associates there.
The Center for Work-Life Policy’s latest research, titled “Extreme Jobs: The Dangerous Allure of the 70-Hour Workweek,” published in the December 2006 Harvard Business Review, reports that 35% of high earners work more than 60 hours a week and 10 percent work more than 80 hours a week. Their conclusion is that 20% of high earners in the US have “extreme” jobs, that is: 60 hours or more of work a week that often includes unpredictable work flow, tight deadlines, work events outside of regular work hours, availability to clients 24/7 and/or a large amount of travel, among other things. And 48% of extreme workers say they’re working an average of 16.6 hours more per week than they did five hours ago.
Sound familiar?
The reasons for such long hours? Among the external drivers: globalization and the round-the-clock availability it requires; vastly improved technology, allowing same-day delivery everywhere around the world; enhanced communication; increasing competition; and decreasing job security. Among the internal motivators: stimulating work, high quality colleagues, high compensation, power and status.
Sound familiar?
Noted were the sacrifices that these schedules require in personal and family life. More than two-thirds (2/3) do not get enough sleep, half don’t get enough exercise, and a significant number use alcohol, drugs, or food to alleviate their stress. The sleep deprivation alone can work havoc on professional and personal lives: a week of sleeping 4-5 hours a night induces an impairment equivalent to a blood alcohol level of .1%, which is legally equal to being drunk. Forty-two percent (42%) of extreme workers take 10 or fewer vacation days a year and more than half regularly cancel vacations. This in spite of data that shows that regularly taking vacations lowers the risk of death by nearly 20% among men between the ages of 35 and 57, often your most valuable age-range.
More than half say their sex lives have suffered; and nearly half say their work has interfered with their ability to have a strong relationship. According to the report, it is physically impossible to have a meaningful conversation with your significant other after a 12-hour work day. The American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers identifies a preoccupation with work as one of the top four causes of divorce.
Extreme workers also note the negative impact their work has on their children. The study pointed out that women, 20% of the extreme workers, are more likely to feel personal responsibility for these down-sides, particularly with respect to their children Three-quarters (3/4) of the women said their work interfered with their ability to maintain their homes (66% of men said the same thing),and 57% of women (and 48% of the men) do not want to continue their work pace for more than one year.
The part that doesn’t sound familiar is that two-thirds (2/3) of high earners in a range of professions and three-quarters (3/4) of top managers in multinational corporations say they love their jobs. “The big surprise of the data was just how much these extreme professionals love their work,” said Sylvia Ann Hewlett, president and founder of the Center.
Surprise, indeed.
Many doctors, lawyers and candlestick manufacturers may fall into the extreme category based on many of these standards but one thing is for sure: loving their jobs is not usually part of the extreme lawyer package. Attrition rates and simple "expressed dissatisfaction"--whether in surveys or on-line-- that have reached astronomical levels attest to that.
The take-home is that we can not blame the hours alone on lawyer dissatisfaction. There could be such a thing as an extreme lawyer who loves his/her job. And there are steps that can be taken to move your extreme lawyers towards that happier (and ultimately more profitable) place. Are you taking them?
One difference in Dewey and Orrick, and perhaps the biggest one, that may lie behind their inability to get in bed together is their management structures. Adhering to the old school, white-shoe model, Dewey management is accomplished by a rotating "good lawyer" who is engaged primarily in what (s)he wants to do and, one might argue, does best—lawyering. According to a January 22, 2007 Wall Street Journal article, Dewey Managing Partner Morton Pierce spent 3,300 hours last year on billable client work, or an average of 12.6 hours every weekday, raising the obvious question of how much time, if any, he spent on management. "Management is not my passion," Pierce admitted.
Orrick, on the other hand, is managed by Ralph Baxter, Jr., who hasn't practiced law since 1992, and who spends his annual 3,300 hours-plus on firm-wide town-hall meetings, informational web casts, and on-site and in-person office and partner meetings, exhibiting what David Wilkins, director of Harvard Law School's Program on the Legal Profession, calls "the epitome of 21st century law-firm leadership."
While those in academia may have easily come to that conclusion, in the industry trenches what constitutes the best firm leadership is still very much open to debate. There are plenty of issues raised by the 3-5 year rotating model vs. the long-term model, including the impact on long-term vision and strategy and succession planning, that we won’t go into here. But the even narrower discussion about whether firms should have full-time or part-time managers, regardless of their length of tenure, can start to sound positively moral, with both sides claiming rectitude.
The word that crops up is "professional." One of the Dewey partners supports the part-time manager concept because someone "who practices is more tuned into the professional philosophy." And if that's not clear, Cravath's managing partner, Evan Chesler, also a part-timer, points out that "the law is a profession—not merely a business." (Note the "merely.")
Of course, managing partners who enjoy only short terms would be foolish to give up their clients and cutting edge expertise for what might be a short round in management hell. Their “professionalism” is another word for survival. On the other hand, they are right that lawyers respect no one as much as another lawyer: what managers lack in management skills they may be able to make up for with sheer lawyer-to-lawyer hubris: my book beats your book.
The point being made, I believe, is that lawyers are professionals who should not stoop to being concerned on a full-time basis with crass business considerations—which some would argue is the vision that has gotten the law business in today’s mess.
The clash exhibits some geographical correlates. West Coast Latham & Watkins, like Orrick, has taken the full-time manager approach for many years. L&W’s Robert M. Dell has been Managing Partner since 1994, with the firm’s growth, many awards and consistently high standing in surveys of all sorts trumpeting success. Bingham McCutchen, an amalgam of East and West, made the decision in 1994 to convert to full-time management. While old-line but broadly flung White &Case has more recently done so. And East Coast Dewey and Cravath continue to resist.
The trend seems to be towards the West Coast-originated full-time business manager over the East Coast professional, perhaps simply in light of the success the former model flaunts as its firms race ahead of the rest. As Wilkins points out, "firms that have radically moved themselves up the prestige ladder and the profitability ladder and expanded their geographic scope have had full-time leaders."
The major accounting firms, which law firms are starting to resemble in size and reach, all opted for full-time managers years back Both Bingham and White & Case say they intend to follow up their conversion to full-time management by expanding further the number of lawyers who are full-time managers.
Of course, it must be theoretically possible to be a part-time manager of a large firm and still succeed in managing well. The question that always arises is how can management of so many egos-- who are quick to articulate and broadcast their skepticism—be effective without investing many hours of dialogue? The Wall Street Journal reported that Dewey’s Pierce "says he learned from watching Baxter that he could become a better communicator, particularly with other Dewey lawyers."
So perhaps the biggest challenge to Orrick may be finding an East Coast “mergee” whose management is sufficiently in touch with the troops—who takes the time and makes the effort to engage in effective communication, and who is therefore respected and trusted enough-- to be able to deliver both the votes and the bodies.
In a study conducted last fall of managing partners, general counsel, and other legal leaders, Altman Weil identified five key market trends and critical concerns. It noted that people management was one of the highest priorities on everyone's list, with one partner saying that he goes to sleep "never knowing who might be leaving tomorrow." The limited pool of quality law graduates, the "free-agent mentality" of lawyers from new associates to rainmakers, Gen-Xers emphasizing work-life balance and achieving diversity were all cited as challenges to people management by this august group.
To my mind, the other four critical areas identified-- growth, competition, client service and even pricing-- are also each dependent on achieving effective people management. Growth requires wrestling with "cultural, office and practice integration," competition is felt most dramatically in the "war for talent," with quality people, superior client service skills and strong training and development programs giving firms the competitive edge. Client service requires superior communication and relationship, among other, skills, and "improved project staffing." (See our entry today on KPMG's success with their staffing model.) Even pricing is acknowledged as a function of the quality of a firm's work and service-- which general counsel have consistently linked to people skills. (See our entries Do You Know Why You Were Fired? dated November 8, 2005 and Companies Unhappy with Their Law Firms dated December 20, 2006.)
So why do law firms and law departments not take advantage of the extensive body of expertise available on hiring, retaining, developing and motivating people? Maybe, as David Maister has suggested, it is the herd instinct that keeps them from going for the glory-- rather go down as a group than risk a "new-fangled" approach. Interestingly enough, that is what our psychological profiles of lawyers tell us-- that they are risk-averse, often low in resilience, optimism, and emotional intelligence, all of which has helped mire them in an 18th-century business model.
Here's the question-- which firms will be the real leaders, the ones who actually take the out-of-the-legal-box steps toward addressing these critical people management areas? Because there seems to be a consensus that that is the only effective way forward.
Accounting firms have long been ahead of law firms in innovative management strategies for personal service firms-- and as law firms head toward numbering thousands instead of hundreds of lawyers, there is much we can learn from how accounting firms manage people.
At a two-day ARK Group conference in December on Women in Professional Service Firms, Sandra Bushby, KPMG's national director of Women's Initiatives and other Workplace Solutions, recounted how KPMG uses workstyle assessments, particularly the "color-coded" Birkman Method, to put together successful client and project teams. The firm-wide assessments were undertaken primarily as a risk management strategy-- to build teams that have the varied talents to insure that everything from technical details to interpersonal skills to long-term visionary considerations are fully dealt with. But by balancing teams with accountants with red, green, yellow and blue workstyles, KPMG is finding that it is also achieving an unexpected bonus:solving the diversity puzzle-- creating culturally, gender and racially diverse teams.
Law firms, whether big or small, have a world of insight available to them from the use of assessments, which they often do not take advantage of. Lawyers will contend that law is too "technical" or "expert' a service for personal or work styles to have any impact on success. Yet accounting is no less technical, and accounting firms have had to become expert in drilling down to the most effective risk management tools available-- which style assessments unquestionably are. To have the additional bonus of effectively producing diverse teams without resorting to "affirmative action" add-ons is ground-breaking-- a one-assessment-for-all-purposes bonanza.
Between 1986 and 2005, the number of lawyers employed by the nation’s 100 largest law firms nearly tripled, from roughly 25,000 to more than 70,000, and the most recent report is that the Am Law 100 gained 4% in numbers of lawyers this past year. During this time the number of top students at top law schools has not increased measurably.
In the last two years, firm attrition rates have gone up dramatically. According to NALP reports, in 2003 53% of fifth-year associates had changed firms. In 2005, that percentage rose to 78%, more than three-fourths of associates, and 81% for women of color. According to The American Lawyer, in 2005 2,429 partners left their firms for other attorney jobs, compared with 2,081 in 2004, up more than 20%.
More and more law firms are trying to land a limited number of top-tier associates, who will, once bagged, nonetheless leave their firms—most while still associates, but others as partners. Therein lies the recruiting challenge.
Some firms are looking to alums to fatten their recruiting pool. On October 16 2006, The National Law Journal highlighted how firms are working harder to maintain ties to alums, sometimes succeeding in bringing that talent back to the firm. Vinson & Elkins partner Veronica Lewis, who left to go in-house for more flexibility, was courted personally by V&E’s managing partner, and returned as a partner after 18 months. Gibson Dunn was cited as viewing rehires as a growing component of its recruiting program.
The National Law Journal’s Sept 25, 2006 special section on the Business of Law included a lead article on the hunt for talent. It suggests that top students at less prestigious schools be carefully considered and that summer programs should more accurately reflect real legal practice, both to educate the associate and to test the students’ interest in and commitment to the practice of law. Third, it advocates that firms “integrate, integrate” to bolster retention generally and diversity specifically. However, the assertion that attorneys envision their law firm as not merely a job, but a professional home base that they return to after government or academic stints, is out of touch with the realities of modern legal practice. As ideal as that goal may be, given the turnover in attorney ranks, both associate and partner, loyalty to a firm looks fast to becoming an outdated concept.
Another alternative is to make sweeping changes in the way you hire and care for your associates. Assessments that corporations have used for decades more accurately pinpoint those candidates who are likely to flourish in the practice of law as you practice it and who can add a healthy mix to your current team. Refining your culture by addressing the most important concerns of your hires will go much further towards raising retention rates than throwing another wad of money at them.
While Emotional Intelligence has become a popular buzzword, the researchers on whose work Daniel Goleman based his bestselling Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ, only formulated an assessment to test EI in 2002. Called the MSCEIT (Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test), it is the only EI assessment based on abilities instead of self-reports, i.e., it gauges your actual EI performance instead of asking how good you are at EI.
Does it make any difference whether a lawyer is emotionally intelligent or not? To determine whether there is a correlation between emotional intelligence and excellence in lawyering, we undertook a study.
We began with lawyers listed in The Best Lawyers in America as our "excellent" lawyers. Those willing to participate were given the MSCEIT and follow-up feed-back free of charge.
Our participating lawyers practice across the country: Seattle, San Francisco, Chicago, Houston, Columbia, SC and New York. Their firms range from a small, 15 lawyer boutique to regional powerhouses to global behemoths. And the results are interesting.
While these excellent lawyers, like lawyers in general, are better at analyzing emotions than recognizing them, they are operating on a higher EI plane than their colleagues. The excellent lawyers' significantly higher average total results and significantly higher ability to manage emotional relationships may account for at least a part of their excellence: they are generally more emotionally intelligent and they are better in relationships with clients and colleagues.
Stay tuned for some of the (non-identifying) specifics on the best performing individuals.
CALL TO BEST LAWYERS TO PARTICIPATE
While we have a good start, we want even more results to produce a more reliable study. We invite any lawyers now listed in The Best Lawyers in America to take the MSCEIT—a 40-minute confidential on-line survey-- at our expense. We will provide you with individual feed-back, a written report, and the opportunity to have your firm identified as high performing.
Harvard Law School’s goal in its revised curriculum this year is to teach young lawyers how to “resolve client dilemmas.” How exactly is that done successfully in the modern practice of law? By calculating dollars won in the final judgment, for example? By assessing the investment of time and energy versus the payoff?
Everyone has by now heard of the prevailing sentiment that no one wins in litigation any more. If that statement is even somewhat true, what is the course to resolving a client’s dilemma in a way that will be viewed as successful?
The mediation industry has arisen almost entirely as a reaction to the mistrust of lawyers and what is perceived as their conflict-escalating processes. Even arbitration is becoming viewed as saddled with some of the time-consuming, rigid aspects of litigation, and in-house counsel are moving towards mediation, or at least including mediation in their bag of tools. Paul Adams, Associate General Counsel at the Gap, finds mediation “a very, very powerful process with a strong emotional component. It’s informal and the plaintiff feels like he’s controlling what’s happening.” He also notes that it allows for more creative resolutions.
Thane Rosenbaum argues in his book The Myth of Moral Justice: Why Our Legal System Fails to Do What’s Right (HarperCollins) that what clients want most is an emotional relief--to feel that their position has been understood and acknowledged. "Clients of all stripes walk out of the courtroom saying 'That’s it? I didn’t even get to say what I think?'" Lawyers, he argues, are limited by their legal vision—rather than just channeling their clients’ anger through a legal claim, such as breach of contract, which may not really address the client’s underlying grievance, lawyers should be listening to and acknowledging the hurt, and be able to offer nontraditional ways for that hurt to be addressed. While Rosenbaum’s claim that our current system of justice is morally deficient does not seem to have been challenged, his suggestions as to how to change it have been met with charges of being naive and impractical.
Web.com’s Corporate Counsel Jonathan B. Wilson’s book Out of Balance: Prescriptions for Reforming the American Litigation System takes a less radical approach to reforming how we address our clients’ dilemmas, including advocating for arbitration, mediation and a number of other alternatives.
Thomas Barton, who teaches creative problem solving and preventive law at The Center for Creative Problem Solving at California Western School of Law in San Diego, extols creative legal problem solving not only for the satisfaction it gives the client, but also for the effect it has on the lawyer involved: it feels great to do creative work that really resolves the dilemma. See www.cwsl.edu/cps According to Barton, there are two major steps involved: expanding the context of the problem so that all the dimensions are exposed, and building a larger repertoire for resolution, which includes being open to whatever constitutes “success” in the client’s mind.
Malcolm Gladwell’s book Blink cites research that shows that doctors who are viewed as a valued resource and are able to build a trusted relationship with their patients are not sued –even if they have committed malpractice. While admittedly a subjective standard, shouldn’t lawyers be aiming for that same type of relationship with their clients? The one that makes them “right” no matter what their advice is?
Christopher Columbus Langdell, first dean of Harvard Law School in 1870, formalized what is now classic legal education, pioneering the use of the Socratic method and a course of study driven by reading appellate court decisions. But “the world of law has changed,” Harvard Law School’s Dean Elena Kagan recently announced, and so finally has Harvard’s curriculum. This year first year law students will be required to take a new course, among others, on legal problem solving, i.e., resolving clients’ dilemmas rather than simply analyzing abstract legal issues. Other law schools, including Stanford and Northwestern, have incorporated similar programs into their curriculum.
A recent survey conducted by Pace University School of Law of midsize law firms in New York, Connecticut and New Jersey asked firms to name a law school with the ideal curriculum. Nearly 60% couldn’t identify even one. About a quarter of the firms cited the greatest weakness of law school graduates as a lack of real-world experience. Over 20% of the firms polled felt that law school curriculum should include some clinical experience.
“You can get a J.D. without having any connection with a client,” said Mark Heyrman, director of clinical programs at the University of Chicago Law School. “No medical student could graduate without at least having some patient contact.”
The clinical component of law school education is expanding. And there are external prods. The American Bar Association now requires accredited law schools to offer “real-life practice experiences.” Some state bars are also mandating certain client training before associates can interact with clients. And, as pointed out in an earlier blog note, corporate clients may designate how senior an associate has to be before working on their matters.
Another message that the increase in associate departures may be sending is that our attempts at mentoring are failing. Mentoring has become a favored buzzword recently that many law firms at least pay lip service to. Most of these programs tend to fairly arbitrarily assign new associates to mentors, dictate a certain number of meetings annually, and require reams of paperwork. They are, in short, more a product of lawyers’ natural tendency to be “thinkers” (78% of lawyers) instead of “feelers” (22%), using the Myers-Briggs personality trait descriptions. Mentoring is business shorthand for “someone to watch over me,” a skill that does not come naturally to attorneys.
Sullivan & Cromwell has recently announced a revamping of its mentoring program for its general practice group in New York and Washington. There are separate programs for junior associates—paired with mid-level associates who focus on acclimation and socializing—and more senior associates, who are paired with two partners to help develop skills.
Why are law firms and law departments providing this “soft” support for young attorneys? There is, of course, always the “herd mentality” argument, that if other firms are doing it in this competitive talent market, so must we. But that begs the bigger issue. Why, after generations of no such official “coddling,” have associates begun to need this sort of assistance, and, more astonishingly, firms have been providing it?
Why firms provide mentoring is partly in response to what firms view as ill-prepared and poorly motivated young associates, coupled with the exodus of those associates when they are throw in to sink or swim. Add to this the growing bigness of law firms, with more extensive policies, rules and procedures, and mentoring becomes a formalized, lengthy orientation process.
But I would wager that an even bigger reason behind the need for mentoring originates in the personal lives of the Gen Xers, Yers and Zers themselves. These young people are more likely to have been supported financially and academically up to and through college and law school, so they expect continued support. They have also grown up in a more generally “therapized” culture, where identifying needs and asking for them to be met is a sign of mental health. Finally, the continued breakdown of the nuclear American family and its broad geographical dispersion may mean that, as their careers progress, these young adults need to replace or supplement lagging or distant family support with relationships at work. If they're not getting that support from your firm or department, they will go elsewhere.
Part of the growing managerial team at law firms over the last decade or so has been the addition of the Professional Development or Career Development Officer. The goal, according to one firm, is happier, more productive attorneys who in turn are less likely to leave. The trend began several years ago, when large firms, such as Paul Weiss, whose current Director of Professional Development is David Cruickshank, realized the benefits of actively directing and supporting their attorneys' career development.
Over time more firms have signed on to the concept, such as Chicago’s Gardner Carton & Douglas (soon to merge with Drinker, Biddle & Reath), which in 2004 appointed their first Chief Career Development Officer, responsible for the summer associate program, orientation of new associates, assignments and feedback, mentoring, training and formal performance reviews. Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal also hired at that time its first Chief Learning Officer, as have Holland & Knight and Arnold & Porter. Each position is tailored to the individual firm’s goals and requirements-- some focus primarily on providing targeted training to associates and partners, some attempt to manage quality assurance or reach out to alumni, while others take a more free-wheeling approach. Cordell M. Parvin, the lawyer at Jenkens & Gilchrist who became their first official Attorney Development Officer a few years ago, said at the time that his firm was moved to formalize the position in order to help their lawyers make for themselves a career that they love. “We’re in an era where young lawyers have never been paid more money, and they’ve never been more unhappy.”
Adding Internal Coaches
A recent twist has been the inclusion of individual coaching responsibilities in the Professional Development officer’s role, or, as in the case of some firms, such as Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe (soon to merge with Dewey Ballantine), Arnold & Porter and Fenwick & West, the addition to the team of an internal full-time coach. Like the Career Development position, the coach's role can be defined in many different ways, depending on the values and goals of the firm. And the coaching methodology could differ significantly depending on which of the myriad coaching approaches are used.
The Challenges of Coaching Lawyers
Dr. Martin Seligman, the Fox Leadership professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, founded the school of Positive Psychology, which focuses on factors that make for professional and personal success, instead of following the traditional diagnostic model of addressing weaknesses. His work identifies optimism particularly as producing sizeable psychic benefits. A widely successful coaching program based on Marty's positive psychology model encourages “learned optimism.”
According to Marty's research, however, lawyers are strongly pessimistic-- so much so that law appears to be the only career where pessimism is a career enhancing attribute. So the question arises as to whether changing lawyers' pessimism to optimism will kill the goose that lays the golden egg. Ideally, such coaching would give lawyers the ability to switch out of their day-job mindset, not only when socializing or in family situations, but also when engaging in non-lawyering professional activities like managing their firms and courting their clients, producing bottom-line benefits.
Enter keywords:
Muir Lectures on Improving Management Decision-Making
On Wednesday, February 17, 2009 Muir will lecture students at Northwestern University's Business Institutions Program on improving management decision-making, using law firm management committees as a case study. Based in part on the article "Promoting an Effective Board or Management Group," the discussion will explore, among other subjects, optimal personality traits for good decision-making, how to construct effective teams and the challenge of avoiding extreme decisions.
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