legal sanity

Over the summer, I wrote a post about lawyers as user-innovators. Reiterating my beliefs about the genesis of law firm evangelism, I noted that, in many ways, lawyers are the first-line consumers of their firm’s brand and business cultures. I then asked: What would law firms look like if they considered their lawyers a potential community of user-innovators and actively nurtured that potential? What positive shifts in the firm’s environment, service model, and employee commitment and morale would result?

Kathy Sierra of Creating Passionate Users helps answer this question in a post titled Don’t ask employees to be passionate about the company! Sierra suggests that firms don’t need lawyers who are passionate about the firms they work for. They need lawyers “with a passion for the work they’re doing.” Accordingly, firms should “act like a good user interface (UI)”: They should make it easy for people to do the work that they’re passionate about and then let them run without interference.

As for client relationships, Sierra points out that “caring about the user” and their positive experience is part and parcel of being passionate about our work. So, employees are happy and engaged. Clients are happy and engaged. And the firms? According to Sierra, it’s a win-win-win proposition because, by “letting employees express the passion they have for their work [firms] end up with employees who'd never consider going elsewhere.”

For more insight into tapping the lawyer evangelist in you and your firm, join me and eight other presenters (including bloggers Larry Bodine, Ed Poll and Gerry Riskin) live on the afternoons of March 26 – 30, 2007 for The First Annual Lawyer Mastery World Wide Tele-Summit. During the 5-day, 10-hour event, you’ll learn breakthrough ideas, innovations and discoveries that will help you get the most out of your career, your business and your life in the law.

I’m giving a program on XE Factor: Relationship Skills for Success. The Summit kicks off with a powerful 90-minute panel session during which all nine program presenters will discuss their vision of the legal profession and law firm of the future. I hope you’ll join us.