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Volume 2, No. 2 - June/Juin 2005
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Leadership and Practice Group Management: The Key to a Superior Platform*Richard Potter, Q.C.** First appeared in Strategies (the journal of the LMA) in January, 2003. One of the key elements of a superior law firm platform – many believe it to be the most vital of all – is the role of leadership within the firm. However, this critical element is usually examined only in relation to top management or to the more general issue of how lawyers apply leadership concepts to their individual practices within the firm. Instead, we need to frame the element of leadership squarely in terms of the Practice Leaders of a firm. How do these business unit managers shape up in their vital role as front line management of a law firm? Some of the elements examined here are Practice Leader qualifications and training, the extent of autonomy and responsibility given to Practice Leaders, and the support given to Practice Leaders by top management. 1. Why Better Practice Group Management Now? After several years of concentrating on “the big picture” of firm-wide strategy, senior management has realized that Managing Partners, simply by pronouncing on the subject, cannot implement the changes that their strategies require. To do that, they need the dynamic co-operation of their business unit managers – the Practice Group Leaders. In addition, they have discovered that corporate clients have become much more sophisticated and have their own ideas how improved practice management can give them better service. As a result of these converging forces – pressures from top management and from clients – the art of practice leadership has taken on new significance. 2. The Primary Role of Practice Leadership When a firm decides to give new emphasis to practice management, the factor which must be given the highest priority is how the firm identifies and motivates its Practice Leaders. Once a firm has accepted that it needs to delegate real authority downward and that it must react positively to clients’ demands for better practice management, it follows that leadership assumes primary importance. The quality of leadership at the level of the Practice Group often determines which practice areas will prosper and which will fail to achieve their potential. 3. Superstars and Rainmakers Need Not Apply Practice leadership is about communicating, not about lawyering as such. The most successful leadership platforms are built around interpersonal skills such as the ability to enthuse and motivate others and a capacity to share knowledge and experience. Such a platform is not grounded merely on seniority, rainmaking or professional success as a lawyer. So the first question to be faced by senior management is whether the right people are filling practice leadership roles. Many successful firms have found they gain great advantage by using the rainmaker/superstar as the titular head of the Practice Group, while having “real”, day-to-day management exercised by another person who has the requisite administrative skills. The selection process should be rigorous. It should include assessments of candidates’ emotional quotient and aptitude for administration and, above all, the level of their native interest and enthusiasm for assuming a leadership role. Never, never should a firm appoint a strongly reluctant or “compromise” candidate who needs to be tempted or cajoled into acceptance of a leadership role. 4. The Practice Leader’s Role and Mandate On what criteria will the Practice Leader’s performance be measured? This is a key question to be addressed by management at the outset – a time when buy-in by both parties is most effective. If a Practice Leader is to be given real responsibility, then she/he must be given real powers. A degree of decision-making autonomy is essential to encourage the development of managerial skills. Goals must be articulated clearly and a process of measurement and review instituted. In terms of “best practices”, assessments to agreed goals should be done on a 360º basis, that is, leadership should be assessed by peers and from below, as well as using the conventional top-down approach. By far the most important criterion – the one that shapes all others – is the amount of time which is committed to the job. Senior management and each Practice Group Leader should be clear as to the minimum and maximum time he/she is expected to spend on the job. Time spent on leadership must be “equivalent-to-billable-hours” time! If not, only a miracle will rescue a practice management program. It cannot be over-emphasized how very time-consuming is the role of leadership. It cannot be skimped and cut back, without seeing a direct, negative impact on the morale and effectiveness of the team. 5. Training and Coaching for Leadership Newly fledged lawyers are rarely given wide responsibility for a complex or novel piece of work. Why, then, do some firms think that they can throw inexperienced lawyers into the management of challenging administrative questions? Seldom have new candidates for practice management leadership had any previous and significant managerial experience. It is vital, therefore, that younger Practice Group Leaders be given training appropriate to their levels of experience. Beyond initial training, because new concepts and skills require repetition, coaching is a key follow-on element of leadership training, especially for younger candidates. By itself, attendance at seminars, internal or external, does not guarantee implementation. And because coaching is an activity, and not a skill that automatically can be exercised by lawyers within the firm, this is an area in which the firm should retain outside expertise. 6. Practice Leaders and General Firm Management In the most successful firms, Practice Group Leaders are integrated into overall management, either via representation on the top management body or via their role on a leadership council which meets regularly and has direct access to the executive leadership of the firm. Either method serves to demonstrate to the wider audience of lawyers throughout the firm the strategic importance that the firm places on practice management. In addition, such a system of integrating practice management allows the firm to reap the benefits of cross-fertilization of ideas and best practices. Without this, practice management can become a sterile, inward-looking exercise for the benefit of the lawyers, instead of an outward-looking, creative process giving tangible benefits to clients. When a practice management system is upgraded to the next level, clients will experience the result directly. And that is why better practice management is profoundly powerful. The changes it produces at the client interface produce immediate impact, an impact that often results in a firm taking clients away from its competitors. But who is the primary agent for change in practice management? Is it the Managing Partner and an Executive Committee? Is it that nebulous entity “the partnership”? Is it the administrative staff? All have a role but, in reality, it is “none of the above”. Wise management knows that of all the players involved, it is the Practice Leaders who will determine the success or failure of practice management. It is on the quality of their practice leadership that the firm’s platform rests. * © 2002-2005 Richard Potter and Law Marketing Association. Maintaining Yourself and Your Practice Through Personal TraumaEdward N. Levitt* This address was part of the Ontario Bar Assistance Program Breakfast Session at the Ontario Bar Association Annual Institute 2005 on Friday, February 4. No one can present this message better than he can, so the following is the full text of Ned’s presentation. OBAP is grateful for his participation and willingness to share his experience for the benefit of others.
August 30, 1995 was hot and sunny. I was aglow with good health, a thriving practice, and a wonderful family. By midnight my world was shattered. My beautiful 18 year daughter, Stacey, was struck and killed that night by a car. What followed was a rapid descent into excruciating pain, self-doubt, depression and thoughts of suicide. I wondered how I would survive, let alone continue to practice law. It did not take long for me to realize that suicide was not an option; how could I leave my other daughters, Marni and Jacqueline and my wife Cheryl to cope with yet another loss? With the love and support of my amazing friends and family, I began the very long road to rebuilding my personal life. Returning to the office a mere week after the accident was more about needing to feel human than about trying to provide legal services to my clients. Gradually, over time, with the understanding and support of my firm and professional help, I was able to regain my professional equilibrium. As I emerged from the depths of despair, I began to see, with brilliant clarity, how much our culture denies death and pain and clings to myths about human suffering and human need. I found much solace in helping others through their bereavements and grew as a person in the process. I learned from my own experience and theirs about the enormous obstacles facing the traumatized in our world. These obstacles are particularly daunting for traumatized lawyers, in part because we feel we must, as advisors, present a strong and unblemished image to our clients and colleagues and in part because we believe that we can solve any problem on our own. Asking for help seems to be the hardest thing of all. The problems, of course, are not just those of the lawyer experiencing the trauma. The well-being of the rest of the firm and the clients are also at risk at such a time. Add to those problems the moral dilemmas that present themselves – Can he handle the files safely? How long should we support him? Can I trust him with my legal work? – and you get a particularly challenging environment for everyone. For the one experiencing trauma, the first and most important thing to do is ask for help. Often that requires an enormous amount of soul searching and the strength to admit to ourselves and the world that we may not, at the time, be as strong as we thought we were. How much stronger you become after you get the support you need! Knowing your limits and working within them during the period of trauma is also important, not only for the sake of the clients and firm, but for your own healing process. Nothing sets you back more, during trying times, than taking on too complex tasks or too heavy a workload. At the same time, completely severing yourself from professional work, unless it is clearly necessary, may complicate your return to full practice. Choosing a wise balance is so important. As we build our fortunes, skills and reputations, we lawyers have a terrible habit of ignoring our health, working to exhaustion and denying our needs and the needs of those close to us. These are lifestyles we can ill afford during a time of trauma. More than ever, we must be vigilant about our health, both mental and physical, and take time for ourselves. For the colleagues of a lawyer experiencing personal trauma, I have the following advice to share:
I personally have seen, time and time again, that individuals can grow stronger and wiser from the challenges in their lives, even the traumatic ones or maybe especially the traumatic ones. I did! Among the many gifts Stacey left me as she left this world is the knowledge that I heal myself when I help others. * Edward N. Levitt is a partner in the firm Levitt, Hoffman and practices franchise law in Toronto. He is also actively involved in Bereaved Families of Ontario — a volunteer organization that helps parents with the grief following the loss a child. Adobe Acrobat 7 Professional - Exploring New Potential for the PDF File FormatStephen Bird* Late last November I attended an Adobe seminar on Acrobat 7.0 Professional (Acrobat 7 Pro). I was impressed with how Adobe has taken PDF (Portable Document Format) creation forward to help users, in Adobe's words, "improve the accuracy of their work, ensure the timely participation of multiple document reviewers, meet tight deadlines, and reduce costs." For example, Acrobat 7 Pro users can convert a variety of document types (such as those from Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Project) into Adobe PDF format1 and then assemble the documents into one comprehensive file that can be shared. Adobe tells us that pages in such a combined PDF document are in the order chosen (via drag-and-drop) by the author, and maintain the original document's look and feel. Microsoft Access files can be converted to Adobe PDF with one button click, and selected portions of Web pages can be converted from Microsoft Internet Explorer. Although earlier versions of Acrobat can be used for scanning and applying optical character recognition (OCR) to paper documents, Acrobat 7 lets users do this in just one step. Microlaw's Ross Kodner tells us this was accomplished in Acrobat 5 by downloading the free "Capture" plug-in and with Version 6 it is included under "Document | Paper Capture." Acrobat 7 Pro files can retain information about the underlying structure of the original document – which may or may not be a good thing. It can be a good thing when, for example, documents are more accessible to people with disabilities. However, it may not be a good thing if Word metadata are carried forward into the PDF document. Esquire Innovations (http://www.esqinc.com), producer of iScrub, tells us that even PDF documents can contain metadata carried over from Word documents. IScrub has been designed to remove metadata prior to the PDF conversion, thus ensuring clean PDF files. Recent versions of WordPerfect, which doesn't contain metadata, has a built-in PDF function found under "File | Publish To." And, as a reminder for those with disabilities, while Adobe mentions using standard Windows and Mac OS text synthesis capabilities or screen reader software for blind or low-vision users, Acrobat's built-in feature, found under "View | Read Out Loud," should not be overlooked. Microsoft Outlook users can convert e-mail memos or an entire message folder into PDF files in order to share, archive or combine into a PDF document. Attachments and hyperlinks automatically are retained, and the PDF file contains bookmarks to the e-mails sorted by sender, date and subject. Acrobat 7 Pro also includes tools for checking a document's structure and correcting potential accessibility problems before distributing a PDF file. Acrobat 7 Pro lets Reader7 users – such as external clients, partners and associates – participate in a document review with their comments appearing together in a single PDF file. Commenting tools automatically are turned on when a Reader 7 user opens a PDF file sent for review by an Acrobat 7 Pro user. The review comments added to the PDF document then can be exported back to the Word 2002 and Word 2003 files from which the PDF file was created, which makes it easy to incorporate suggested changes. Hint: Adobe Acrobat Pro, Standard, and Reader default to a user's C-drive “My Documents” folder to find and open files. Unlike Word and WordPerfect it is impossible to change this default location; however, it is possible to create a shortcut so that a different documents folder is just a mouse click away on first starting Acrobat or Acrobat Reader. Here is how: click on File, then Open which takes users to My Documents, then right mouse click anywhere in a blank area of the list, choose New, Shortcut and in the Browse box insert the location where documents are stored (e.g., E:\Docs), then Next, give it a Name (e.g., ~Docs or ~E-Docs if you have more than one drive shortcut), and Finish. The tilde sign (~) puts the shortcut name at the top of the list for quick access. This is an easy link from “My Documents” to your preferred “Docs” folder in a different location on (perhaps) a different drive. Acrobat 7 Pro includes document security and control features to restrict saving, copying and printing. When Acrobat 7 Pro is integrated with Adobe LiveCycle Policy Server, users can create a server-managed security policy and apply it in one step to PDF documents. For example, a PDF file can be created to give one reviewer read-only access for five days, while another reviewer can read and print for ten days, after which access to the document expires. The program can determine and report on what has changed between two versions of a document; a highlight is placed where a change was made. A Summary Page, noting all changes by all users, can be prepared and archived with the document. Finally, users can roll back changes. This allows them to revert to the use of the original signed document. Final Thoughts I like the ability to add headers and footers (e.g., "Confidential - For Internal Use Only, 2005-03-15") and watermarks (e.g., "Draft"), with varying degrees of opacity. I also like the ability to embed multiple data types (e.g., a sound recording) into a file (which later can be deleted). My impression is that Acrobat 7 Pro is faster than earlier versions – perhaps because of improved code as well as the use of Adobe Acrobat Speed Launcher, which loads on system start-up. Acrobat 7 requires Win2000 with SP2 or WinXP Pro/Home/Tablet PC Edition (as well as Mac OS X v.1 0.2.8, 10.3), so users of other operating systems will have to stay with earlier versions of Adobe Acrobat. Street upgrade/ prices are approximately $197/$557 for the Professional Version and $123/$370 for the Standard Version of Acrobat 7. There is also an enterprise "light" product, sold only in volume quantities, called Acrobat Elements. For those interested in a great deal, then consider the superb Fujitsu ScanSnap scanner which comes bundled with Adobe Acrobat 7 Standard and ABBYY FineReader OCR for ScanSnap (http://www.fujitsu.ca/products/scansnap/fi5110eox). PDFZone (http://www.pdfzone.com/news/1900-PDFzone_news.html) says Acrobat 7 will not have the same number of changes as Acrobat 6 when Adobe broke Acrobat into three editions: Professional, Standard and Elements. PDFZone suggests the Standard Version will become a more useful application for secure document sharing in the office environment. Hardware requirements include an Intel Pentium-class processor, 128MB of RAM (256MB recommended) and 510MB of available hard disk space; an optional installation files cache (which is recommended) requires an additional 510MB of available hard disk space. Other requirements include Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5, 1024x768 screen resolution and a CD-ROM drive. An Internet connection or phone call is required for product activation. Should you upgrade now? Well, given that the legal profession is a target market (http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/pdfs/AcroLegalWPFinal.pdf), it is likely many new features offered by Acrobat 7 will be appreciated by lawyers and their clients. The more I use Acrobat 7 Pro, the more I like what it has to offer! For more information about the Professional Version, visit the Adobe Web site
at * Stephen Bird is a lawyer with the Lanark, Leeds & Grenville Legal Clinic in eastern Ontario (http://www.legalclinic.ca) and a Contributing Editor of The Lawyer's PC, a newsletter for lawyers using personal computers, published in the United States by West Group where a version of this article first appeared. You can contact Stephen via e-mail (StephenBird@lawyer.com). 1 Unless stated otherwise, all references are to the Adobe PDF format rather than to PDF documents created by PentaWare, WordPerfect, etc. While Acrobat 7 Pro cannot retrieve WordPerfect (.wpd) documents directly, a simple workaround is to save the file using PentaPDF or WordPerfect’s Publish To PDF and then retrieve the new .pdf file into Acrobat. How to Thank a ClientWendy Werner* Each year law firms large and small hold client events, and give gifts, notes, or cards that tell the people who make their business possible, “thank you.” Marketing committees, partners, and individuals rack their brains for just the best way to express gratitude for client work, and as a way to further those relationships. But what is the best way to send that message in a way that is both appropriate and timely? And why discuss this now? And, if we often recognize those relationships at the holiday season at the end of the year, when is the best time to think about this process? What better time than now, when time constraints are not upon you, and there is time to gather data that may help you make an informed choice months from now. In addition, part of what you want to think about is how a formal “thank you” and gift giving fits into your overall marketing plan. The early part of the year is a good time to think about how you want to go about fostering those client relationships for the year, including those end of the year recognitions. Cards at Other Times Many firms and individual lawyers send holiday cards. It’s traditional, it is recognized as a good time to acknowledge relationships, and it comes at the end of the year when we are reflecting upon our client work. That’s the upside. But if one of the purposes of sending cards is to stand out to a client and to be recognized, this is the time of year when there is the most traffic. One of the other times when it might be preferable to send a card would be for Thanksgiving, a holiday devoted to giving thanks for the good things in life, and one that is not associated with any specific religious faith. Valentine’s Day can be another time to recognize your clients and you can probably be assured that you will be the only professional service firm who will express your affection for your clients on that day. If you have a closer relationship with a client, thanking them on their birthday could also be a way of creating a more personalized response to their use of your services. Just as the holidays may not be the best time to send a card; it may also not be the best time to hold a client function. Some firms hold a Thanksgiving, or harvest oriented event to make the passage of the season into winter, and say thank you at a time of year when clients may not be as besieged by holiday activities. Events held in the summer as a picnic or at a baseball game can foster a more informal environment, and can also offer the chance to get to know clients’ families as well. One of the other benefits of client events is the chance for clients to meet one another. Business relationships or connections can be forged in these settings between clients as well as with the hosts of the event. Individualize Your Recognition There is nothing wrong with recognizing all of your clients in the same way, but there can be some great advantages to trying to recognize clients as the individuals that they are. One size can fit all, but the best recognition is often that which acknowledges the uniqueness of the individual responsible for sharing business with you. If you know that your client is a golfer, sending golf balls with your firm name, or his or her name might be an appreciated gift, but if your client doesn’t golf, this “one size fits all” response can be a clunker. The same thing goes for sending wine, food, or candy. Above all, you want to make sure that anything that you give your client as a gift is not in violation of any internal policy of their organization about receiving gifts. One of the best ways to think strategically about gift giving is to observe your client during the year and to pay attention to the things that they talk about in your more casual conversations. Twenty years ago most attorneys were men, and most clients were men. But times have changed, and it’s important not to make assumptions about your clients and what might be of interest to them based upon their gender. At the same time, firms recognizing that women clients and women attorneys may have different ways of connecting than their male counterparts, are trying to engineer events and gifts that may be of greater interests to female clients. These may include events such as a female client and attorney weekend at a spa, with scheduled and unscheduled activities, or a charitable event that offers women clients and attorneys an opportunity to hold an event benefiting a charitable organization whose primary client populations are women or children. Another aspect you might consider is how critical this client is to your business success. You may not want to give the same recognition to a client responsible for 25 percent of your business than you would to a client who has sent you two matters in a year. A two-attorney firm I know gives their clients cookie gift boxes every year. The principal happens to be married to a caterer; and together they bake hundreds of fabulous cookies for his clients. The two attorneys then deliver the boxes of cookies themselves to the many not for profit agencies they represent. Their clients have come to look forward to this gift every year with great anticipation. And the “sweat equity” and personal approach always makes a great impression. Remember, it’s About Them Sometimes when law firms mix marketing with gift giving, they have a tendency to want the gift to be a reflection of their firm. Hence the coffee mug with logo, the key chain with logo, and/or the umbrella with logo. This is not the time to be self-serving. If the gift is truly about the recipient, giving brand-oriented materials may not show your true appreciation. Sometimes people give their clients gifts that include gift certificates for restaurants. Although your client may enjoy your time, it may be more of a gift to let them have a great meal with their spouse or friend without an attached business component. On the other hand, time with their attorney without an accompanying bill can be perceived as a gift. The key is to know your client and what will make them feel appreciated. Recognizing Others through Charitable Giving One of the best ways to make an impression on a client is to recognize a charity. This can be done in a firm wide way, or you can instead make a donation to a charity or not for profit organization most favoured by your client. Does your client sit on the board of any not for profit groups? Does this business entity participate in a particular charitable giving program? If you take note of the charitable events to which your client may have invited you over the past year you may find a key to something they would appreciate receiving in terms of recognition. Some firms simply tell their clients that in lieu of individual gift giving that the firm has decided to name a specific charity as their recipient of a charitable donation for the year – or that they are donating the money they might have spent on a holiday event to a charitable organization. Be Spontaneous Sometimes the best way to recognize the client is by acting on the moment. If you have received a particularly nice piece of business, or if you have completed a large transaction that involved a significant time commitment on the part of the client, acknowledging that commitment with a letter, or a gift at the time, once again being mindful of potential gift policies on the part of the client. A note at a time when you aren’t heavily invested in a clients’ work, thanking them for their past commitment to your firm is also welcome. Tending the relationship in times when you are not doing a significant amount of work for someone can help keep your firm front of mind, and serve as a reminder that you might be a good firm to recommend to someone else. Being There Of course the best way that you can show your appreciation of a client is through doing good work. And the best way to tend the relationship is through good communication. From the highest grossing partner to the front line receptionist, everyone in your organization needs to understand the importance of all of your clients. Returning phone calls, responding to e-mail, checking in, and treating all client matters with the seriousness they deserve is the best acknowledgement of all. * Wendy L. Werner is the owner and principal of Werner Associates, a
legal consulting and career coaching organization. She can be reached at www.WendyWerner.com/associates.
This article originally appeared in The St. Louis Lawyer, a publication of
the Bar Association of Metropolitan St. Louis. Twenty Lessons for Lawyers Starting Their CareersDennis Kennedy* Nobody hands you an instruction manual or a playbook when you start your legal career. Much of what you need to know is not told to you. Much of what you need to know is learned the hard way, often from making mistakes. Sometimes you are being evaluated on how well you perform when no one gives you instructions and sometimes it's just the case that no one is giving you any instructions. In my legal career, I've been in big firms and smaller firms. I've been a summer associate, an associate and a partner. I've run a firm's summer program and I've been involved in hiring. I've seen a lot and, from time to time, I've tried to put together the lessons I've learned. Sometimes you are not ready for the lesson. Sometimes you think you know the lesson, but you later realize that there was a different lesson that you weren't able to see until later. Some lessons are painful, but many come from other lawyer's generously sharing their experiences. In the spirit of sharing lessons, I offer 20 lessons I now think that I have learned about starting the practice of law and, in particular, working at a law firm. 1. Learn the culture. Your most important job from the time you accept a job is to learn the culture of the organization you are joining. Although most people focus so much on getting the job that they neglect to notice much about the culture of a firm before they start, it is a good idea to make some observations about the culture of a firm even in the interviews. After you start working at a firm, you want to put a lot of effort into learning the culture of the firm. The “myths” and “legends” of the firm can help you out. If the managing partners of the firm shared a table in the library for their first few years in the firm, you’ll want to hesitate before you demand new furniture. An oft-repeated tale of a female partner who called into the office within an hour of giving birth to a child can give you a clue as to what lawyers will think of your request for substantial paternity leave. You’ll want to learn what to wear, what hours you really need to work, whose opinions matter most and, especially, what major mistakes that associates who are no longer with the firm made. You will also want to start to develop a sense of what partners have in common, what made them partners and whether any of those things appeal or apply to you. How do you do this? Talk to people and listen carefully to the stories. I recommend starting with the people who interviewed you. It’s safe to assume that they liked you. Make efforts to know people outside your department. If you have to work on Saturdays, don’t be afraid to stop by someone’s office and introduce yourself and ask them about themselves and what they like about the firm. Get them to tell you stories. 2. Begin the search for a mentor. The one thing that became crystal clear to me is that your success and happiness in law or any other profession depends on finding and maintaining mentor relationships. Over the long term, finding a mentor is the most important thing you can do when starting your career. Despite books and articles that have been written about how to find mentors or, worse, how to put someone on the spot and ask him or her to be your mentor, finding a mentor is a mysterious process that takes time and often evolves organically. In the interview process, you are likely to see people who may one day fit the bill. I wouldn’t “target” them, but I would make an effort to get to know them and to work with them. There can be disappointments – people aren’t what they seem, great attorneys may not be great people, and, as I found, people do die unexpectedly. You want to find that person who can teach you not only the law, but ethics, respect for people and the law, honor and the “little” things like that. You want to hear their stories, understand their insights, and earn and experience their faith in you. In the right case, the right person will be willing to share all that. There’s no more important key to your career. There’s a great Eastern proverb I’m fond of: “when the student is ready, the teacher will come.” Prepare yourself to be ready. 3. You get all the feedback you ask for. Feedback means different things to different people. In four years of running a summer program for my old firm, I spent a lot of time talking about "recognizing" feedback. This is another reason why learning the culture of your firm and the traits of individual attorneys is so important. Many attorneys will say nothing about your work and continue to give you more and more work. To you, this can be frustrating. In their minds, they have given you the highest form of feedback. “If I didn’t like the work, I wouldn’t give them more.” They don’t realize that most of us need to hear the words. Even for the well-intentioned lawyer, demands get in the way of providing the kind of feedback attorneys want to give. Remember to ask. No one really minds someone who is sincere asking for a few minutes to talk about an assignment. Don’t make assumptions about the feedback you get. A hearty “great job” and no specific comments may disguise the fact someone can’t believe what a poor job you did and just wants to get you moved on to someone else. I was notorious for telling people sincerely that they had done an excellent job and handing a document back to them in which it seemed I had changed something in every sentence. I was utterly sincere – they had done a great job in giving me something I could easily tailor to my audience. I had to work on my presentation to convey my message in a better way. Assigning attorneys often want you to produce something that advances the process, gives them something to work with and allows them a good framework to make stylistic changes for the intended audience. I learned that it can be hard for people to hear the compliments when all they see is a sea of corrections. A good pointer is to be persistent in asking for specifics. You need to ask why something is a good job when you can’t see why it is. Learning from others about an attorney’s style can be a big help. 4. Write for the right audience. Nothing gets new lawyers into more trouble than writing for the wrong audience. An attorney who wants a 3-page memo will never be happy with a memo that looks like a law review article, no matter how good it may be. Writing for clients is an art. Unfortunately, none of this is typically learned in law school. The key: look at models. Ask for a letter like the one you are supposed to write. Ask the assigning attorney for an example of a memo he or she liked. Talk about who the intended audience is. Then, make sure that you do what the assigning attorney tells you he or she wants. When I ran a summer program, I gave my own independent evaluation of the summer interns’ written work by taking it home the night before the review and reading it all at once with the TV on before I went to bed. I felt that that approach gave me the perspective of a typical harried, tired and distracted attorney who wanted to know what the main points are. If I could tell what the memo was about and what its main points were, I knew someone had done a great job. Be clear, concise and make it easier to find your main points and conclusions. Oh, yeah, attorneys really are looking for your conclusions. Remember to give them. 5. Learn the lines of gossip and be careful. It always amazed me that even after I warned them about revealing too much of their personal lives, I’d see summer associates and young attorneys talking about the travails of his or her love life, his or her latest hangover, and teenage indiscretions with the very staff members who were most likely to spread the story all over the place and to either distort or embellish it in the process. Use good judgment. In any firm, you should assume that the personal secrets you disclose will make the rounds of the firm quickly in a somewhat distorted form that will emphasize the scandalous aspects. That’s not a comment on any person or any firm; it just happens. Let me repeat a word that you want to know and understand: JUDGMENT. 6. The first few months will be physically exhausting. The biggest surprise new attorneys have is how physically tiring it is to work. This may come as a surprise, but sitting at a desk working all day, often ten hours or more a day, will wear you out until you get accustomed to it. This happens to everyone. You get tired in the afternoon and soon find that you are nodding off at home at 8:00 at night on a regular basis. I don’t know many young attorneys who didn’t think that they were getting mono after their first few months of work. You get used to it, but it takes a while. Physical exercise, going out to lunch, and walking around the office to take a break can help. 7. Be yourself . . . within reason. Everybody wants to be their own person, but you have to use common sense and good judgment. Surprisingly, the worst mistake you can make is to try to fit yourself into what you imagine the organization’s mode to be. First, you won’t get it right. Second, you’ll give people a sense that you are inauthentic. Here’s an example. A friend of mine and I became partners in my old firm at about the same time. The only thing we clearly had in common was that we both came in very early in the morning and there were only a few lawyers who did that. Shortly thereafter, the early morning hours were populated by bleary-eyed associates who decided that early morning hours were a key to the partnership mix. They came to their senses fairly quickly. There are many ways to express yourself as an individual within the framework of the normal culture of the firm. You can buy many different shades of gray suits, for example. Seriously, though, a big issue in any organization is “fit.” You do a disservice to yourself and to the firm by not being yourself. Life is short – you don’t want to trap yourself at a place that doesn’t fit you. Remember that it is possible that you made the wrong choice of employers. 8. Attitude matters. A general rule of thumb is that an attitude of entitlement will kill your chances at most firms. Your work is just beginning – lawyers don’t really respect the work you did in law school. You are definitely back at square one and have to prove yourself all over again. An attitude that indicates that you have made it, that you are ready to reap the benefits of your education immediately and a sense that you don’t have something else to earn, will cause you nothing but problems. You want to be self-confident, but humble, willing to learn, respectful of your position and ready to work. Imagine two new attorneys doing the identical work on a document and the documents having identical typos and mistakes. If you have a good attitude, communicate with the assigning attorney and show a willingness to learn, I guarantee that the worst comment you’ll get is that it was a good effort. If you have a “bad” attitude, act like you know it all and that the project is beneath you, you risk someone questioning whether you even have the ability to be a lawyer. 9. Learn your place in the pecking order. I used to joke in the hiring process that we should hire military veterans because they knew that you started at the bottom and earned your way up the ladder. Resist the inclination to see yourself on a level well above paralegals, secretaries and staff. Everyone plays a different role and the values of these roles are not determined by title. If you’ve been at a firm for a few months and get into a situation where you force a partner to choose between supporting you or the secretary he or she has had for ten years and relies on in ways you can’t even imagine (until you have a secretary you rely on for ten years), I guarantee that 100% of the time the partner will support the secretary. It’s a showdown you can’t win – don’t try to force it. Classic mistake: a partner assigns a project to you that you know in your heart is “paralegal work.” You stew about it for a while, talk to other associates who commiserate you, and, almost inevitably, walk down to a paralegal where you all but throw the assignment on his or her desk as you “delegate” the project back to the paralegal. In almost every case, one thing has happened and three other things will happen. The assigning attorney has already had a discussion with the paralegal and there is a reason you got the work. The second thing is that before you get back to your desk, the paralegal will be telling the assigning attorney what you did. The third thing is that you will soon get a pointed lecture on how projects given to you are meant to be done by you. The fourth thing is that the next time the paralegal has a choice of making your job easier or harder, he or she will probably let you take the more difficult route. 10. Trivial-seeming projects are given to you for a reason. Many attorneys spent their early years doing work that is now routinely done by paralegals. Trips to the court to file documents allowed them to learn procedures and make friends at the court. Recording deeds and searching land records allowed them to learn the processes involved. Trips to distant courts got them out of the office for a few hours. I have fond memories of this and it baffles me how some young attorneys seem to want to duck this type of work. You’ll later learn that more thought than you ever imagined went into the choice of projects you were given and that there is a training process going on. Don’t get indignant that you are a lawyer and feel that above certain assignments – look for lessons to learn. There are plenty of them. 11. Make life a little easier for older attorneys. I gradually grew to realize that many older lawyers are uncomfortable with one-on-one lunches, especially with members of the opposite sex or people young enough to be their children. It’s a cultural thing, but it helps to respect it. Invite a group of people or include a peer. They may well be more uncomfortable than you are. 12. Don’t turn in rough drafts. Almost every attorney has a story to illustrate this point. My story is fairly common. On the last day I worked before heading off for Christmas vacation during law school, an attorney asked me to do a rush project that he had to deal with the next day. I explained my situation and he said, “That’s fine. Give me whatever you find, your handwritten notes, anything; I don’t care if it’s typed. I’d rather that I just get your research.” On my return, I found that he hadn’t looked at the materials I gave him for two weeks and, when he did, complained to everyone about the unprofessional work I had done and his disbelief that I’d given him anything handwritten. Well, you live and learn. Get things polished up. With computers, hardly any young attorney ever writes anything in longhand, so this little rite of passage may be disappearing. The moral of the story: get written work into as polished and as standard a form as you can and at least write “draft” across the top. 13. Make the IS people your friends. I can assure you that, rightly or wrongly, the technology "needs" of new associates are not at the top of any firm's technology agenda. Don't assume that someone is looking out for your technology interests. In fact, you will undoubtedly see many cases where the best technology goes to people who have the least need to use it. Meet the IS people. Help them out. When you need some help or there's an opportunity to get better technology, you’ll have a sympathetic ear and you’ll be talking to the person who can help you out. 14. Learn the best ways to get to talk to individual attorneys. You have a question you need to have answered by the assigning attorney. As far as you can tell, his telephone is glued to his ear. What do you do? You have to learn strategies. It might be e-mail. It might be a phone call. It might be hanging outside his door like a lost dog until he is off the phone and then charging in. Generally, an attorney’s secretary is the best resource, but talk to others who do work for the attorney. You’ll find that those in the know will have ways to get his or her attention. You need to learn how to be one of those in the know. 15. Speaking at client meetings. You see more young attorneys go up in flames in this situation than any other. Understand that the client sees you as expensive surplusage in the meeting and doesn't really want to see you there. You don’t want to remind clients why they think that way. You can also cause a lot of problems in ways that you simply will not be able to understand until several years later when you are at a different firm. Here are a few good rules: Speak only when spoken to. I always believed that you went into the meeting with the client seeing you as the bright, young (although expensive) attorney. It’s easier than you think to change that opinion for the worse. There is no joke that you can tell that will be a guaranteed winner. Don’t even think about taking the risk. Never correct the lead attorney no matter how wrong you think he or she is. It’s more likely that you are wrong. Mention it after the meeting – the attorney will make the call to the client if a correction is necessary. If you have an established relationship with an attorney, you might have ways to raise a question so that the attorney has a chance to reconsider, but be careful. If you notice that another lawyer is calling the client by the wrong name or referring to the wrong case, you might want to slip a note under his or her nose. Most of the time, you will be invited to attend a meeting to take notes and to observe and learn how to conduct a meeting. Do that. The fact that you won the client counselling competition in law school does not give you a license to think you’ve learned it all. If you are asked to summarize your research for a client, try to hit the main points and finish within a minute. If the client has further questions, he or she will ask. Almost no client will want to hear about the fascinating distinction you’ve found between two obscure cases on a tangential point. The client is thinking action steps and doesn't want to be reminded about how much they are paying for you to research obscure point and talk in a language he or she can't understand. The bottom line: talk with the lead attorney about what he or she wants you to do in the meeting. 16. Report back after a few hours. If your project is taking too long, let the assigning attorney know. You’ll get mixed signals on many projects. An attorney will say that the research will take about two hours, but that you have to be sure to get the right answer, no matter what. Forty hours later, you may have your answer, but when the attorney sees your time record, he or she will hit the roof. Give a status report. Ask for more direction. Re-engage the attorney in the project. Make sure you understand what is being asked. By the way, if the research would have taken a few minutes or hours, the attorney would have done it himself or herself. You should expect not to find easy answers. Also, it is really difficult for experienced attorneys to estimate accurately how long it will take a young attorney to do a project. 17. The two-year rule. I learned that it takes about two years of practice to feel like your getting the hang of things. Unfortunately, about two years later, you realize that you really didn’t know very much two years earlier. However, it is a significant and confidence-building milestone in your career. 18. Think about Tom Peters’ resume rule. In his book, The Circle of Innovation, Tom Peters talks about looking at your resume on a regular basis and assessing at least annually what you’ve added in the way of specific projects to your resume. Think of the three or four resume-enhancing projects that you’ve done each year and write short summaries of each of them and your role in them. It is wise to update your resume every year, even if you are not actively looking for a job. I suggest that you keep that updated resume on your home computer and not on the office network. 19. Keep developing networks. For many reasons, young lawyers change jobs frequently. Don’t get so caught up in the law firm's cocoon that you neglect outside relationships that can help you if you have to leave or the firm merges or changes drastically. Bar activities and alumni networks are good ways to proceed. 20. Get involved in the firm. Part of becoming a partner in any firm is getting out of passive "I'm-just-an-employee" way of thinking. You want to be at a place where you feel like it is your firm. One good way to start to get involved is to help out with interviewing. Another thing is to volunteer to be part of committees. Show that you are interested in the firm. Partners like to see associates who are committed to the firm itself and don’t give the sense of "just passing through." Learning the law necessary to do your job is hard enough, but don't neglect the work you need to do to learn how to practice law. Be observant, listen carefully and test your assumptions. You will have plenty of mistakes from which you can learn many of your own lessons, but consider the lessons I learned. I hope that by teaching you some of the lessons I learned, you can have an easier time in some of those areas and concentrate your energies on some of the other areas that deserve your time and attention. * Dennis Kennedy (dmk@denniskennedy.com) is a
well-known legal technology expert, technology lawyer and blogger (http://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/).
He is an award-winning author and speaker on these topics and a member of
the ABA's Law Practice Management Section's TECHSHOW Board, Webzine Board and
Council. Earlier versions of some of these lessons appeared in Kimm Alayne
Walton's What Law School Doesn't Teach You: But You Really Need to Know.
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