legal sanity

I've posted before on the dawning Conceptual Age and the lawyering skills we need to survive and thrive in this era that puts a premium on empathy, meaning and human-to-human connection.

There's always a dark hour before the dawn and, for lawyers, the shift into this new age has been marked by widespread discontent, depletion and attrition cycling through our ranks.

It's also been marked by the call of practitioners wanting to break this vicious cycle, like the one sounded in this recent boston.com article on Getting lawyers to reset moral compass [flagged at lexisOne]. It discusses the work of law professor and author David Hall, who believes that the legal profession "is in depression and must openly reclaim spiritual values to reconnect with its noble mission." According to the piece, Hall defines spirituality as "the intentional decision to search for a deeper meaning in life and to actualize in one's life the highest values that can be humanly obtained."

Hall's vision for reclaiming meaning in our work as service providers teams well with the idea that more and more consumers are looking for goods and services that offer something meaningful to them. This is the message of a book called Making Meaning: How Successful Businesses Deliver Meaningful Consumer Experiences that was recently reviewed at Harvard Business School's working Knowledge. It's now on my reading list. The part of the review that really grabs my attention is its rendition of the book's take on the experiences people find most meaningful: "accomplishment, beauty, creation, community, duty, enlightenment, freedom, harmony, justice, oneness, redemption, security, truth, validation, and wonder."

As with any transition, there will be those who embrace the organizational changes the Conceptual Age heralds and those who resist them despite all the warning signs that change is so desperately needed.

An article I read today - titled Got Kids? These Clients Don't Care - sharply reminds us that it can be tough to shake the old status quo; especially in a profession that, for years, has put a premium on paying our dues and encouraged us to value transactions over relationships.

Confirming that old habits die hard, the article shares how a panel of female corporate counsel recently advised a gathering of women lawyers to "keep their personal lives out of the equation." One panelist put it even more bluntly, stating: "You are a commodity to us." She then explained that when "she hires outside counsel, she cares about the work [ ] not the relationship."

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In the beginning of March, I (and others) posted on the sharp rise in client dissatisfaction demonstrated by the latest BTI Consulting Group poll of corporate counsel.

In the wake of this cyber commentary on its survey findings, BTI (via Senior Strategic Analyst Marcie L. Borgal) now offers its take on the matter in an article for The Law Marketing Portal titled The Declining Client Satisfaction Antidote.

Looking to the root cause of the malady at issue, Borgal identifies "three critical law firm behaviors that underlie falling client satisfaction." They are:

(1) Not keeping up with changing client needs
(2) Doing a poor job of articulating and delivering value
(3) Poor communication between law firms and clients

Proffering potential cures for these ills, Borgal states that we can "ensure alignment" between law firm services and clients needs by: engaging clients in an ongoing dialogue; honing our understanding of the client's business; and tailoring our "offerings to better meet the needs and demands of clients." She also suggests that we need to do a better job of demonstrating and communicating "the value delivered to clients before, during and after every engagement."

Highlighting the importance of boosting our communication skills, Borgal closes with the apt observation that "lack of communication serves to deepen the chasm between what clients want and what law firms deliver."

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I'm back from hiatus and shifting into work mode. I'll resume regular posting next week. In the interim, I'll pass along two great articles from Mediate.com.

In the first piece, conflict resolution expert Julie Denny offers insights and tips on constructive confrontation. Launching from the premise that "conflict can be an opportunity for personal growth, improved communications, better relationships and even untapped creativity," Denny gives us a few "simple tools" to use in conflict situations, including these: understand what's really going on; hang on to your goal; listen; and, validate the other person's point of view.

In the second article, conflict and communication skills trainer Judy Ringer extracts and distills core concepts from the plethora of books on the subject into a handy checklist for handling difficult conversations. According to Ringer, the list's common thread is this: you have more power than you think. That's because the "majority of the work in any conflict conversation is work you do on yourself. No matter how well the conversation begins, you'll need to stay in charge of yourself, your purpose and your emotional energy." This may be a stunning revelation for many lawyers since we tend to focus our energies on the others we converse with - a/k/a/ client, adversary, judge or colleague.

The article ends with some conversation openers for us to sample. Among them are:

"I think we have different perceptions about _____________________. I'd like to hear your thinking on this."

"I'd like to see if we might reach a better understanding about ___________. I really want to hear your feelings about this and share my perspective as well."

"I have something I'd like to discuss with you that I think will help us work together more effectively."

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I'm taking some time away from legal sanity over this week to spend some time with my family while the kids are off from school. I'll leave you with this article on lawyer efforts to balance work and family via flexible work programs and other law firm initiatives. More food for thought on work-life synergy can be found in a companion article featuring the Balanced Hours program recently launched at Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Nicholson Graham. Taking the topic of equilibrium to task is this post on Work/Life Balance in the Law Firm. In it, blogger Tom Collins bluntly asserts: "If you don't want to work nights and weekends, don't go in the restaurant business. If you can't stand the sight of blood, don't become a surgeon. If your aren't prepared to earn your professional spurs and build your book of business through long hours and putting clients' interests and deadlines first, stay away from joining a law firm." While I take issue with this assertion, I think it well states the opinion of many seasoned lawyers and fuels the ongoing dialogue on a very important issue.

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I'm in the midst of putting the finishing touches on a site redesign for legal sanity - a task I'm sharing with the very patient and talented folks at lexBlog. While taking inventory in my research folder, I came across some great business relationship resources I've been meaning to share.

In a post on The 12 Rules of Client Service, Dan Hull presents his final version of the "rule-by-rule '12-step' program for lawyers, professionals and executives" he's been working on for quite some time. He aims to help us "align the interests of clients/customers and service providers to the fullest extent possible."

Paying homage to his own and others' commentary over the last few months, Jim Hassett offers us a detailed, two-part guide on How to Conduct Client Satisfaction Interviews (and Part 2).

Having depicted law firm leadership as key to cultivating both employee evangelists and deeply satisfied clients, I was happy to find that the Center for Creative Leadership's homepage sidebar links to archived articles from its monthly e-newsletter, Leading Effectively.

Completing this resource roundup is a CareerJournal.com article tendering an annotated Reading List for Leaders On Their Way to the Top.

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In this post on lawyers as trusted advisors, I discussed how trust infuses the delivery and consumption of legal services.

Lately, I've noticed a lot of commentary on the importance of trust in building and sustaining business.

In a post (excerpted from an upcoming article) entitled Are Law Firms Manageable, David Maister proposes that "problems with trust" are one of the variables that keep lawyers from "effectively functioning in groups." And, Maister continues, the individual lawyer's tendency to mistrust is only fueled by the law firm milieu. He says: "Unfortunately, in many of today's firms that have been cobbled together from lateral hires and newly merged practices, the personal history that forms the basis of trust is often missing, as is the confidence that everyone will be practicing together for a long time."

Maister senses that this trust deficit will grow and wreak havoc until clients start pressuring firms to "act as firms" rather than "bands of warlords, each with his or her followers, ruling over a group of cowed citizens and acting in temporary alliance—until a better opportunity comes along."

Maister delivers a potent message here; one that threads through a recent post from the blog Synergy [as tipped by the folks at Be Excellent]. In it, Steve Sherlock asks "What is Great Leadership?" His answer is an enthusiatic "Trust makes a leader great!" Elaborating on his conclusion, Sherlock asserts: "A leader can be anointed or appointed but will only become great by building the trust of their followers or collaborators."

Trust - specifically trust-based selling - is also the subject of an interview with Charles H. Green, Maister's co-author on the terrific book, The Trusted Advisor. Highlighting one of the hallmarks of this approach to fostering business realtionships, Green states: "You have to trust that, if you keep doing the right thing for the client, in the end, that will be in your best interests too." He also assures us that taking the lead in building trust connections usually pays off since "80-90 percent of the time people respond in kind" when we "behave in a trustworthy manner."

The interplay of trust and consumer fidelity is detailed in this post from customer experience crossroads captioned Do Your Customers Trust You? Referring to a recent global trust barometer study(pdf), Susan Abbott writes: "If people lose trust in your company, they won't purchase your products or services (70-80%), they'll tell other people bad things about you (70-80%), they won't invest in your shares (65-75%), and they won't even work for you (40-50%)." Those are some eye-opening statistics.

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There's a lot of talk afoot about the latest law firm associate pay increases. Bruce MacEwen writes a great post addressing why young lawyers are paid so much. Adding his opinion about the law firm salaries arms race, Gerry Riskin says: "salaries alone do not buy you motivation, commitment, drive and the desired peak performance. They buy you compliance with extremely high billable hour targets. [T]he long term winners have to be competitive in their salaries but also must learn how to enhance the satisfaction of both lawyers and the clients they serve."

Riskin flags something really important here. The steady escalation of first year salaries since the mid-1980s has done nothing to stave off the equally steady rise in lawyer discontent. This pay more, bleed more paradigm is a surefire recipe for lawyer attrition and client dissatisfaction.

High pay might get law schools' best and brightest through BigLaw's door; but in the emerging age of the dual-centric worker, big money alone likely won't keep them toiling there year after year after year. Burn out, or its imminence, will send many young lawyers running to trade high pay for greater meaning, passion and purpose in their work life.

Law firms should heed the economics of lawyer depletion and invest heavily in employee engagement measures that - fostering fulfilling connections to colleagues, clients and company - turn today's young lawyers into the firm leaders of tomorrow.

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