legal sanity

I’ve previously written about lawyers weighing fit over prestige when deciding where to work. I’ve also noted how law firms are taking steps to screen out would-be associates  who don’t mesh with their culture and business model. The launch of multiple initiatives evinces that law students are also focused on finding fitness, or mutuality, in the lawyer-law firm relationship.

A couple of months ago, I posted about  Ms. JD, an online community “serving women in law school and the legal profession.” More recently, a dialog has generated around a group of students from top tier law schools who have banded together as Law Students Building a Better Legal Profession. The group states that it’s concerned about the legal profession’s future and recognizes “that law students have become part of the problem by focusing on paychecks and bonuses, while avoiding the tough questions about the conditions of working lives and associate satisfaction.” Willing to sacrifice higher pay for a better work life, the group’s members seek law firm reforms to ensure that “practicing law does not mean giving up a commitment to family, community, and dedicated service to clients.”

That group and its objectives have met with some scrutiny and criticism, as evidenced by the comments thread following this WSJ.com story titled You Say You Want a Big-Law Revolution. Calling the group Pontificating Outside Observers (or POOs), Blogger Stephanie West Allen questions whether its members have the right or reason to challenge the state of the legal profession when they have yet to experience it first hand.

But law students aren’t the only “outsiders” or eyewitnesses questioning the profession’s status quo. According to a recent post at the Legal Writing Prof Blog, the Association of American Law Schools has added a new section called Balance in Legal Education to its roster. Championed by Professor Larry Krieger of Florida State University School of Law, the group is dedicated to “advocating for a more balanced approach to both legal education and law practice."

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In recent posts, I’ve questioned what will drive change in law firm culture and whether law firms can change to meet lawyer-user demand. With the imminent wave of Baby Boomer retirements, it’s time for law firms to innovate – to adapt their business environment, model and practices to meet the needs and demands of the young associates who support firm leaders today and who will (hopefully) become firm leaders in the future.

When I consider the word innovation, I usually think of change, adaptation and invention. These three words are definitely hallmarks of entrepreneurship and the kind of business savvy detailed in this article on the new fleet of New York City taxi cabs. They also connote the sense of spirit, resilience and open opportunity captured in this inspiring video clip flagged by Kevin Eikenberry.

Most practitioners and outside observers wouldn’t connect these words or the related sense of spirit with the mainstream legal profession. But, there’s a lot of innovation afoot in the law. As I announced a few months ago, the College of Law Practice Management is an organization dedicated to highlighting change, adaptation and invention in law practices around the world. It sponsors the InnovAction Awards as part of its “worldwide search for lawyers, law firms, and other deliverers of legal services who are currently engaged in some extraordinary innovative efforts.”

The award application deadline is June 1, 2007. The winners will be presented on September 8, 2007 at the College’s annual meeting in Philadelphia, PA. For more information on the award and entry requirements, visit InnovAction here.

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Last week, Jonathan D. Frieden, Jim Hassett, Peter Marx and I presented a panel on blogs for the Law Firm Growth Management Conference held at New York’s Harvard Club. Over at his blog, Jonathan has a very nice synopsis of the points we covered . One topic that really struck a chord with me was how blogging might benefit large law firms. I suggested that there are many benefits to practice group blogs written by younger associates and supervised by partners, such as:

• Creating visibility for the group and establishing its expertise
• Keeping group members current on recent developments in their practice area
• Fostering group camaraderie and communication
• Giving young attorneys an avenue for sharing their voice, skills and wisdom (a nice counterpoint to trudging away anonymously on research, document review, contract drafting and the like)

Looking at this list, it’s fair to say that practice group blogs can do a lot to nurture the partner-associate business relationship and to foster meaningful connections between young – and often marginalized and disengaged – lawyers and their firms. By giving their associates (and, perhaps, summer associates) group blogging responsibilities, firms send a strong and clear message that they recognize the importance of keeping new lawyers engaged and challenged. The young lawyers, in turn, feel valuable and more integral to their practice group’s and firm’s successes.

For more insight into the topic of law firm blogging, check out these posts from Ron Friedmann, Steve Matthews and Kevin O’Keefe here and here.

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I’m happy to be hosting this week’s blawg review, a carnival (or roundup) of recent law blog commentary. Thank you to all the bloggers, readers and others who sent in posts for my consideration. I read them all and learned a lot from them. Below, you’ll find the submissions that worked best with my chosen theme of creating successful business relationships in the law. I hope you enjoy reading the selections as much as I enjoyed putting them together. So, here we go:

Tom Collins posts on a study finding that Law Firm Clients Prefer Smiles. Apparently, smiles are contagious. As Collins points out, “What you project through your mannerisms is often what you get back from the person you’re dealing with.” Simply put, people want to deal with people who improve their day.

Reflecting on the publicized, unsavory conduct of a particular lawyer, Sheryl Sisk Schelin notes that incivility in the practice of law (and elsewhere) “always – always – has an impact on those who observe it.”

In a post evidencing the relationships fueled in the blogosphere, Tom Kane points us to The 12 Rules of Client Service authored by fellow blogger Dan Hull. The rules are excerpted from a practice guide Hull’s firm gives to its associates and paralegals. Among the relationship-oriented rules Hull imparts is “Rule Four: Deliver Legal Work That Changes the Way Clients Think About Lawyers.”

David Maister shares his take on research showing that Happiness is Relative. He observes that, for most people, happiness lies in “whether or not you have more or less than others.” It all comes down to who you’re comparing yourself to. Maister ends by questioning how we pick the groups we use as reference points in determining our happiness quotient.

In a post on client relationships titled Don’t Treat All Your Clients The Same, Michelle Golden writes that it’s okay to calibrate our service offerings to the type of client we’re engaging (very best v. good v. base line). Drawing an analogy to the airline industry, she suggests that with each step up in the client hierarchy, we can step up our level of service.

Looking at the foundation for our business connections, Anthony Cerminaro writes that our business relationships thrive when we Live Authentically by being true to who we are – to our values, passions and needs – in our work. In another post called Seven Habits of Servant Leaders, he shares his views on how leaders can create strong workplace relationships.

Also exploring leadership in the law, David Jacobson opines that law firms and their business relationships benefit from having a consigliere in the firm's top management team.

Carolyn Elefant refers us to a handy checklist that associates can use to vet the employee-law firm relationship and assess whether they’re Living in a Dead-End Job.

Offering us additional insight into the law firm-associate relationship, Nathan Koppel posts about one firm’s decision to host etiquette events (focused on table manners) for its fleet of summer associates.

Taking us from the dining table to the larger networking circuit, Bruce Allen presents his latest installment in a series of posts on Developing Face-to-Face Networking Skills. He says that it “makes a lot of sense that most of us are not getting any relationship mileage from the people we’re meeting” at networking events. Allen goes on to tell us how we can up our mileage in a few easy steps.

Taking a look at the tech side of facilitating successful business relationships, Tom Mighell introduces a discussion of Wikis for Lawyers and refers us to a radio show he recently did on the topic.

That’s the roundup for this week.

A new blawg review is published at a different law blog every Monday. You can visit Blawg Review for information about next week’s host, Enrico Schaefer, and for instructions on how to get your blawg posts reviewed in upcoming issues.

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I’m happy to announce that, on Monday, May 14, 2007, I’m hosting Blawg Review #108, a carnival (or roundup) of recent blog commentary on the theme of creating successful business relationships in the law. If you’d like to submit a relevant post from your own or someone else’s blog, feel free to do so by Saturday, May 12th. You’ll find submission guidelines here.

As I’ve previously mentioned, the topic of creating successful business relationships and avoiding unsuccessful ones has become a focal point of my coverage here at legal sanity as well as a mainstay of my learning programs business. The law firm-lawyer connection is one of the key relationships I consider on both fronts. In past posts, I’ve looked at it from the perspective of:

• employee engagement
• lawyer experience management
• creating employee evangelists
• fitness
• mutuality
• law firm leadership/culture change

Offering another point to consider is this Brazen Careerist post on the evolution of employee loyalty. In it, Penelope Trunk notes that the incoming generation of workers has a different notion of loyalty than its predecessors. In this age of job-hopping, loyalty doesn’t mean sticking with one company for your entire work life. It means being “loyal while you are there.”

So, what creates this new brand of loyalty?

For employees, loyalty derives in large part from finding “a place that contributes to your core needs, in a way that gives you the opportunity to express passions in significant ways.” Employers, in turn, attract loyalists by rallying employees around a common mission or by making it easy for them to pursue their individual missions in and outside the workplace. Trunk gives us some good examples of loyalty-generating business initiatives.

Echoing her take on the subject is this post from Cali’s Work + Life “Fit” Blog discussing how companies can better support employees caring for children with special needs. Citing the unique challenges facing these working parents (on a national scale, 1 in 12 employees has a child with special needs), the post lists flexible work options, more comprehensive healthcare, on-site support groups and educational programs among other constructive employer efforts. It’s not hard to envision the kind of loyalty that naturally results when an organization recognizes and positively addresses the needs of a sizeable employee population like this one.

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I regularly visit the topic of fostering change in the legal profession. Last week, I questioned whether law firms can change to meet the demands of the next generation of practitioners. I suggested that some firms will step up to that challenge, while others will turn a blind eye and deaf ear to the telltale signs that their business model needs updating.

Change (the kind that comes peacefully and without overthrow) can occur on a cultural level only if the change drivers are speaking up and the establishment is listening. There needs to be a welcomed, open and constructive dialogue as well as a willingness and capacity to change. When all these components converge, there’s a ripe opportunity for positive change. There may be resisters, but that’s par for the course of any major shift.

As my previous post on the subject conveyed, the incoming cohort of lawyers can identify the workplace changes it seeks. Accustomed to speaking their mind, these new lawyers are likely more than willing to talk to firm leaders about those changes. The open question is whether law firm leaders can and want to listen up; especially when the status quo is serving them extremely well (as blogger Carolyn Elefant highlights, over half of the Am Law 100 firms just reported that their average partner compensation exceeds $1million).

Some firms recognize that firms, clients and lawyers all benefit when junior associates regularly share their thought processes with senior attorneys. But, other firms do their best to perpetuate a culture of silence, as Bruce MacEwen details in a great post called Do You Know What Your Associates Think?

According to MacEwen, “abrupt, truculent, holier-than-Thou” and adversarial by nature, law firm leaders tend to create a widespread fear of speaking up in their firms. It’s difficult to change from such a fear-based culture to one “open or conducive to speaking up.” MacEwen surmises that the key change driver is leader behavior.

I agree that, ideally, leaders should be part of the change effort. But, they’re not essential change agents. As I’ve stated before, when the new generation of lawyers takes a stronger foothold in the profession, evolution will start disfavoring firms -- and law firm leaders -- that ignore their needs in favor of a culture of silence.

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