lawyer experience management revisited
"We want employees to have an experience that revitalizes them and changes their thinking – that brings them back with brand-new ideas and perspectives. If they're not growing as people, we're not growing as a company."
When you read and re-read this quote, what does it trigger for you? What kind of business leader do you attribute it to? Most likely, you can envision the statement coming from the top tier of a progressive, worker-centric company like Apple or Yahoo.
But, these words were spoken by lawyer Lee S. Rosen, CEO of the Rosen Law Firm. Rosen is one of the employers featured in a recent Christian Science Monitor article on the benefits of employee sabbaticals.
Borrowing a custom from academia, some corporate employers are offering these paid and unpaid time outs as part of their employee recruitment and retention efforts.
Rosen encourages his employees to use the time to “do something that’s meaningful to them” (the link is mine). Lisa Angel, a Rosen lawyer who’s profiled in the piece, says that she “needed a change from the rigors and emotions” of her work in divorce law. She spent her 3-month sabbatical traveling solo in China and Southeast Asia. The time away, she asserts, changed her “perspective about the balance of work and life and “enabled her to continue practicing law.”
Offering sabbaticals is one way that law firms can foster a culture of meaning and nurturing. Complementary avenues of cultural change in the legal profession will be explored at Touro Law Center’s upcoming conference on Law as a Healing Profession.
The conference takes place on November 4-5, 2007 at Touro’s campus in Central Islip, New York. I will be there as a keynote speaker and panelist. To see the roster of other presenters and for more information, you can view the event brochure here (pdf).
