lawyer experience management
There’s a good deal of discussion and debate out there about the new era of customer relationship management in which the emphasis is increasingly placed on understanding and optimizing the customer experience.
While reading up on this subject for my training and development business, it occurred to me that law firms and the legal profession would greatly benefit from pursuing something I call lawyer experience management (LEM). LEM initiatives would afford invaluable insight into how and why lawyers are -and aren’t - energized, fulfilled and inspired by their work. Toward this end, they would assess how lawyers typically feel when interacting with their firms and fellow professionals. They’d also gauge how lawyers commonly react to the true culture of their firms and profession over time.
Of course, this kind of self-scrutiny would require a huge amount of openness and honesty on the parts of practitioners, firms and professional associations. But, there is precedent for this kind of candor. In order to ensure sustainability and curb attrition, organizations are taking steps to identify and reform arrogant and abusive executives. They’re also using executive coaching to cultivate effective leaders.
In any kind of self-inquiry - including the corporate version that LEM would require – adding a healthy dose of humor to the candor often helps the process along. In this spirit, I highly recommend that you get a copy of blogger-author Jeremy Blachman’s very funny new book, Anonymous Lawyer, which offers a hiring partner’s (maybe-not-so) satirical look at life at a prestigious firm. You’ll get a flavor for the book from the related Anonymous Law Firm site.
While, ultimately, each of us is responsible for optimizing our own life in the law; concerted efforts to understand and buoy the lawyer experience within firms and in the field can only work to our collective benefit.
While reading up on this subject for my training and development business, it occurred to me that law firms and the legal profession would greatly benefit from pursuing something I call lawyer experience management (LEM). LEM initiatives would afford invaluable insight into how and why lawyers are -and aren’t - energized, fulfilled and inspired by their work. Toward this end, they would assess how lawyers typically feel when interacting with their firms and fellow professionals. They’d also gauge how lawyers commonly react to the true culture of their firms and profession over time.
Of course, this kind of self-scrutiny would require a huge amount of openness and honesty on the parts of practitioners, firms and professional associations. But, there is precedent for this kind of candor. In order to ensure sustainability and curb attrition, organizations are taking steps to identify and reform arrogant and abusive executives. They’re also using executive coaching to cultivate effective leaders.
In any kind of self-inquiry - including the corporate version that LEM would require – adding a healthy dose of humor to the candor often helps the process along. In this spirit, I highly recommend that you get a copy of blogger-author Jeremy Blachman’s very funny new book, Anonymous Lawyer, which offers a hiring partner’s (maybe-not-so) satirical look at life at a prestigious firm. You’ll get a flavor for the book from the related Anonymous Law Firm site.
While, ultimately, each of us is responsible for optimizing our own life in the law; concerted efforts to understand and buoy the lawyer experience within firms and in the field can only work to our collective benefit.
I like that you're posting more frequently lately. Your blawg remains the best.