legal sanity

The latest issue of Law Practice magazine is out and features articles relevant to Legal Sanity. Writing In Praise of Slowness, journalist, author and admitted "former speedaholic" Carl Honore discusses the emergent "slow revolution" that's compelling people "across the world" to downshift "both on the job and off." Honore highlights how some businesses are facilitating this slow-down by providing "chill out rooms" and encouraging nap breaks. The revolution's long-arm can also be seen in the soaring popularity of yoga, the construction of "walkable neighborhoods," and in concerted efforts to counter the hurried child syndrome. The article includes sidebar profiles on lawyers who've embraced slowness and a list of tips on reducing the speed of our lives. In case our prescription for slowing down includes lightening our client load, consultant Susan Saltonstall Duncan shares "exercises and how-tos" on finding and keeping the clients we like. Janet Ellen Raasch - a writer/ghostwriter who works closely with lawyers and other professional services providers - continues the theme of cultivating relaxed lawyers in an article exploring some new twists on law firm retreats.

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I've shared before that, as part of my training and development business, I teach conflict management skills to lawyers and business leaders. In prior posts, I've discussed the importance of understanding our own perspective on conflict. I've also commented on the high costs of everyday conflicts. Given reports of rising incivility in the workplace, it's vital for lawyers to learn how to handle conflicts they regularly encounter - whether they're engaged in them as participants or neutral managers. In this conflict management primer, business consultant and coach Jerry Straks offers up "six principles" for de-stressing conflicts and transforming them into opportunities. Among other key points, Straks emphasizes the need to listen in a way that's "respectful, caring, curious, accepting, open, and responsible." He also reminds us that conflicts "are only rarely about what they appear to be about. To the extent you can listen yourself all the way down to the roots of the conflict, you improve your chances of reducing conflict stress." A nice addendum to Straks's input is this piece on peer conflict coaching from lawyer Michael W. Rawlings. It shows the value of "developing a culture of conflict competency" within a business organization (read law firm).

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Here's the next installment in my series of roundups on rainmaking for lawyers: Larry Bodine continues the nature v. nurture networking debate with a post and related Law Marketing Portal article about lawyers as natural-born marketers. Bodine cites a study by Dr. Larry Richard of Hildebrandt International finding that, due to certain personality traits, "only 20% of lawyers are natural born marketers." Of the remainder, "55% of lawyers can learn to be rainmakers" while "25% are hopeless at marketing and should be ignored." I've commented on this notion of the hopeless lawyer rainmaker before. Blogger JD Hull expresses sentiments similar to my own when he states that we lawyers are teachable creatures and that law firms should work hard to cultivate an inclusive "marketing culture." The Law Practice Management blog adds to the conversation on whether lawyers can be taught to market by offering "five tips to build a solid foundation in networking." To round out this installment of the rainmaking roundup, I'd like to join in the rousing cyber welcome extended to professional service firm management expert David Maister and his new blog.

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I've previously posted on collaborative law, a relatively new approach to conflict resolution where the parties and their lawyers agree to work through disputes without resorting to the courts. I've also discussed the rising tide of lawyer incivility. I had a bit of an epiphany after reading this new article and this one on these crisscrossing topics. There's a new type of collaborative lawyering going on that has little to do with dispute resolution, but does much to counter the decay of professionalism in our field. The new collaborators are the law bloggers who support one another every day by sharing their ideas, insights and resources. I've previously stated my belief that no lawyer is an island. We need to surround ourselves with a network of advisors and mentors, regularly exchange our knowledge currency with others and acknowledge people for the perspective they offer us. The blogosphere provides a great avenue for this collaborative effort, as beautifully illustrated in this post from JD Hull; this one by Tom Collins and this one from Jonathan Stein.

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I noticed an advisory theme afoot in my recent RSS readings - a flurry of how-tos for bettering our communication skills. This is popular fodder for building legal sanity, as demonstrated here; here and here (among others). The roundup this time offers us practical pointers on optimizing public speaking gigs; road rules for kicking butt on conference panels (thanks to Matt Homann for the tip); and insights into making business meetings worthwhile. While we're on the theme of themed commentary; I want to highlight two more related posts. While not directly on point for building communication skills, this post from Curt Rosengren and this article via Evelyn Rodriguez both help us get to what's behind any form of genuine self-expression: being in touch with what we love to do in the world. Rounding out the roundup is a terrific post from Presentation Zen that compels us all to approach our efforts with a fresh eye and a beginner's mind.

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I want to give you a heads up about two upcoming programs that fuse the worlds of law and spirit. On Friday, February 10, 2006, from 7-10pm, the New York Open Center will present The New Legal Paradigm: Conscious Lawyering and Holistic Professionalism. According to the promotional copy, this program for lawyers "seeking to bring awareness and presence to their personal and professional lives" will include "meditation, exercises, lectures and group discussions." With the guidance of Cheryl Conner - a Harvard-trained former federal prosecutor and educator "committed to integrating spiritual perspectives within the legal and business systems" - participants will "gain new tools to better serve their 'whole' legal clients, balance and heal conflicts, craft legislation, and relate to organizations from a holistic perspective." You can register for the program here. A bit further down the road, on June 19-23 and June 25-29, 2006, the Harvard Negotiation Insight Initiative (HNII) is holding its Summer Learning Forum, entitled Spirit in Action, at Harvard Law School in Cambridge, MA. Part of Harvard's renowned Program on Negotiation, HNII aims to "explore what mindfulness and the great wisdom traditions have to teach us in the negotiation and dispute resolution field." You can learn more about HNII here and investigate its upcoming program here.

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I was roving the Web for commentary on Dale Carnegie's classic relationship tome How to Win Friends and Influence People and was delighted to find this convenient guide from Notes of Intelligence. Depending on your time constraints or your fancy, you can choose from two convenient summary sizes: the basic (@ 5 minutes read time) or the comprehensive (@ 14 minutes read time). The text of both summaries is in outline form, presented under the main themes of Business Relationships; Selling Your Ideas; and Leadership. As an interesting aside, the guide's author tracks the online traffic this summary effort generated.

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This WSJ.com article discusses the Dilemma of the Third Years; the tendency for associates to leave law firms by the end of their third year of practice. After outlining the costs of such premature attrition - (1) "the average big law firm doesn't start recouping its cash flow investment in an associate until about midway through an associate's fourth year" and (2) the fleeing associates need to be replaced with more costly lateral hires - the article asks "Can law firms change the status quo?" Answering with a stirring "Maybe," the piece goes on to highlight the part that partners play in the attrition dilemma. It seems that many associates today are opting out of the law firm tenure track because they see just how grueling and unhappy partner life is. While it refers to one firm's "balanced hours" response to the call for reform from the top down, the article doesn't mention another, very viable approach to stemming the tide of associate attrition: firm-wide and one-on-one initiatives like the ones discussed in this overview of law firm coaching programs.

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In a recent post, Tom Kane of thelegalmarketingblog.com offered some insight into what our clients want from us, their legal service providers. His overview reminded me of a related question that lawyers often raise during my programs on optimizing the attorney-client relationship. Although worded in a variety of ways, the question remains the same in hub and heart and goes something like this: What do I need to know about my clients to best serve them? While there's no one "right answer" to this question, this post from morepartnerincome and this one from lawjobs.com suggest that lawyers must become intimately acquainted with the nature and nuances of their clients' day-to-day business operations. As a baseline deliverable, clients expect services and solutions that reflect their corporate culture and aspirations. This kind of intimacy takes us beyond monitoring industry trends. Among other things, it requires us to regularly connect with our clients in person, walk their halls and factory floors and speak their business language instead of legal-talk. I think this ongoing dialogue about gauging and meeting our clients' real needs and interests is a vital one for lawyers to engage. A congruent conversation about monitoring client satisfaction is blazing through the law blog world right now. Here are some bits of it, loosely joined by me: Allison Shields at Legal Ease comments in three different posts here, here and here. James Hassett also gives his opinion in three-part harmony at his blog, Law Firm Business Development (tip by JD Hull of What About Clients?). And Patrick Lamb adds his thoughts at In Search of Perfect Client Service.

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As many of you know, I'm a big fan of the blog Creating Passionate Users. My thoughts on the thoughts of its proprietor, Kathy Sierra, have featured prominently at Legal Sanity since its inception, as evidenced in this post, this one and another (among others). Sierra's insights on how to meaningfully connect with, and convey information to, our users (a/k/a clients or consumers) are among the lodestars of my new training and development business. While her ideas are typically fresh and well-expressed, this post and this companion summary distilling learning theory basics just blew me away. Generous in content and spirit, they offer us a "crash course on [ ] learning techniques gleaned from cognitive science, learning theory, neuroscience, psychology, and entertainment (including game design)." Sierra points up that, contrary to popular belief in the halls of law schools everywhere, learners aren't "empty vessels waiting to be filled with content pushed into it by an expert." Rather, she says, learning is a form of "co-creation between the learner and the learning experience." As educators, it's our job to enhance the learning environment in a way that optimizes this co-creative force. Sierra provides tips to ease our effort, like using visuals, redundancy, variety and surprise to convey our message in a way that makes the learner feel relaxed and confident. She even includes a handy (pdf) outline to keep us relaxed and confident as we try to employ what she's helped us learn about learning.

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The other day, I watched my young son build an orb-like structure out of Tinkertoys. For those of you needing an introduction, this is a great spoke-and-wheel based construction set that's been around for several generations (my son plays with my old sets). As I watched him piece his creation together spoke to hub and hub to spoke, I couldn't help but think about the importance of connectedness and inter-connectedness as we work and play. It's been a while since I last posted a roundup of current thoughts on networking. This post from the Milestone Group discusses "relationships as currency" and offers bites from a (subscription-only) article from the December 2005 Harvard Business review entitled How to Build Your Network. This article and this one offer lawyers some helpful business development tips. For the introverts among us, tips for the networking-phobic flow in the collaborative text of this post from the Never Work Alone blog. That same post mentions Keith Ferrazzi's terrific business relationship book Never Eat Alone and tips us to this great bit of networking wisdom from the genius of Dick Richards at Come Gather Round.

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Last week I wrote about the importance of owning the service delivery mistakes and missteps we make and take. This point came through to me again as I read this Fast Company blog commentary about the customer loyalty inspired by one airline pilot's willingness to walk the aisles, extend a face-to-face apology and explain the reasons for his plane's repeated runway stalls. While you'd hope that this would be a routine response to extraordinary circumstances, we all know it wasn't. The leadership skills and candor that this pilot displayed against an all-too-familiar backdrop were exceptional. There simply aren't a lot of people in authority positions who understand the power of this kind of candid, human-to-human connection and acknowledgement. Perhaps if more lawyers understood how to own up to weaknesses in their client services, you'd see fewer cases of the angry client syndrome featured in this recent article.

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Around this time of year, people often check their career pulse and, depending on the reading, think about changing jobs or starting a new business. For those in the throws of this regular checkup, Curt Rosengren offers up his new career change quiz. Using a ranked response format, the quiz consists of 15 statements concerning our current job, including: "The work I do energizes me; My work is a good fit for who I am; I would do this even if I didn't need the money; My work feels meaningful." Although the statements seem a bit redundant, I think the repetition serves to deepen our self-inquiry and heighten our honesty as we go down the list. Rosengren's quiz pairs well with this post from a new blog by venture capitalist and author Guy Kawasaki (heads up via Seth Godin and Lisa Haneberg). Kawasaki argues that businesses should forgo mission statements in favor of corporate mantras, simple and direct three or four-word statements that "help employees truly understand why the organization exists." I like this idea a lot. And it can be tweaked to aid folks contemplating career change. To gage our career satisfaction, we can devise personal mantras that reflect why we choose to help the organization (people or person) we work for exist. To put it differently; in four words or less, state why you expend your time, energy, passion and other resources on the work you now do in the world. For example, my mantra might run something like this: "to extinguish lawyer burnout" or "to optimize client relations." For more career change insights and tips, you can check out this recent article and this one.

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Speaking engagements have become a big part of my business doings. As I discussed here, I've spent a lot of time working and re-working my content, delivery style and deliverables to ensure that my programs channel what I call my personal presentation brand - the mode of presentation that reflects how I best convey my message and how my target audience best consumes it. In weighing the latter part of this branding equation - how to optimize audience, or consumer, experience - I've culled information on learning styles from various sources, like the ones I reference in this post and this one. I've also benefited from the guidance of Dr. Roger Greenaway. A proponent of experienced-based (or active) learning , Greenaway writes and speaks extensively about this education approach that melds the "worlds of talk and action." You'll find a comprehensive archive of his work here. As a big believer in the power of active learning, I was happy to come across this post from Bert Decker's communications blog. In it, Decker points out that a lack of audience involvement can render any business presentation unmemorable. Citing a survey finding that 90% of people remember "what they see, are told, respond to and do [emphasis added]," Decker aptly concludes that the "secret to having your listeners learn and remember something is to take their involvement up the steps from Seeing to Responding, and Responding to Doing."

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As evidenced here, here, here and here, I enjoy reading and writing about the nexus between mediation and the law. Many observers have tried to deconstruct mediation and offer glimpses into its future applications in and outside of our legal system. One of the most recent discourses on the subject comes in this interview with well-known mediator and author Kenneth Cloke. Despite its packaging as a piece on mindfulness and commercial litigation, the interview is not confined to that topic. Indeed, one of its main themes germinates in Cloke's observation that there's "no reason to 'legalize' the mediation process or make it 'safe for litigation' because, in doing that, "we strip mediation of a significant part of its power." Specifically, Cloke sees mediation as essentially "a law-designing process, in which the parties are empowered to craft their own set of rules and figure out how they want to implement them." Commercial litigation - and the rule of law it's grounded in - is antithetical to this design process because the law does not embrace creative problem-solving, teamwork or consensus-building or consider emotions as integral to dispute resolution. Instead, the law "only looks backwards, to facts and precedent" and parcels out distributive justice by assigning blame among parties. Despite these differences, in Cloke's vision, the future holds distinct possibilities for a symbiosis of mediation and commercial litigation: "One is that the entire legal profession will 'morph' into a higher, more evolved level of problem solving and functioning. The second is that there will be a branching, and that there will be a continued need for what people in the legal profession do, which is to apply coercion to resolve conflicts that should not be resolved by force and cannot be resolved by consensus." On another future note, this is my first post of the New Year. 2005 was a fantastic time of personal and professional growth and change for me and I really enjoyed connecting with you all through this blog and at other venues. I look forward to continuing the journey in 2006.

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