legal sanity

A few weeks back, I wrote about the importance of creating a connection culture in the law . One of the best ways for law firms to create connecting points for their lawyers is to gain insight into points of disconnection. As I’ve previously noted, two frequently cited causes of lawyer disconnect are the competitive nature of the business and long working hours.

According to a post from Chris Bailey at the always-interesting Bailey Workplay blog, another major cause is invisibility. Bailey attributes this problem to incompetent leadership. Specifically, he asserts that managers can do a lot of damage when they ignore employees. Ignoring actions, in turn, can take different forms, including:

• Not acknowledging contributions
• Not recognizing expertise
• Not seeing the individual worth
  

As this post from Matt Homann suggests, anxiety can also promote lawyer disconnection. Homann points to a Harvard Business article that tells us How to Deal with Anxious People. The piece leads with an anatomical fact: When we’re anxious, our minds constrict and we’re more apt to cut off our rationality and act impulsively. Consequently, law firm leaders looking to alleviate anxiety – and the disconnection it can foster – need to talk to or with anxious lawyers rather than at or over them.

The article goes on to instruct that the best way to navigate these challenging talks is to observe the anxious person’s body language. People who feel that they’re being talked over will “leave the conversation at the earliest opportunity.” When they’re talked at, people tend to tuck their chin down or stick it out to show that they’re intimidated or ticked off, respectively. By contrast, when you talk to an anxious person, they’ll “nod from the neck up.” Similarly, someone who senses that they’re being talked with will usually relax their shoulders and neck, “as if you've told them: ‘It'll be okay. We can work this out.’”

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In past posts, I’ve discussed the broken windows theory as it relates to the practice of law and, more specifically, to the creation and cure of client service problems. In a nutshell, the theory holds that firms should focus on identifying and quickly repairing their broken windows – those aspects of their operation that signal an indifference to client satisfaction.

As this Small Firm Business article conveys, law firms looking to stem client dissatisfaction - and the attrition it can compel – often conduct client surveys. The surveys are drafted and administered to obtain feedback about:

• Clients' satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the attorneys and staff who served them

• The timeliness, responsiveness and value of work performed

• The need for additional services and greater cost or quality control

• The need for greater lawyer specialization

• Whether clients would use the firm again and refer the firm to friends and associates

As the article suggests, it’s a fairly futile and wasteful for firms to undertake these surveys if they don’t follow-up and redress the client service issues brought to light.

To bridge this gap between intelligence gathering and action, some firms are “creating specific positions to facilitate and organize communication between major firm clients and the attorneys representing them.” That’s the message in a recent article from The Recorder featured at law.com.

Led by client service executives with titles like Chief of Practice Excellence; law firm client relations teams “provide attorneys with news on the clients' activities and goals, serve as point people for clients with questions or issues and help attorneys maintain regular contact with clients.”

It would be interesting to compare the client opinion on firms embracing this team approach with the client perception of firms that do little or nothing to inspect and repair their broken windows.

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A little while back, I wrote a post on creating a more fulfilling legal career. It conveyed my thoughts on a New York Times article describing the diminishing lure of the law.

One of the resonant complaints I hear from lawyers is that they feel very disconnected from their colleagues and firms. They attribute their sense of isolation to, among other things, the competitive nature of the business and long working hours. These kinds of complaints inspired me to write posts like:

• fostering connecting points for employee engagement

• connecting with others – a key lawyering skill

• making the connection: engagement, evangelism and experience management

Their common theme is connection – the damage caused by its absence and ways to build it in the legal profession.

Connection is also the theme of a new ChangeThis manifesto by leadership expert Michael Lee Stallard. Titled The Connection Culture: A New Source of Competitive Advantage (pdf), the manifesto poses the compelling question: What is it about connection that makes it so powerful?

Stallard offers up this gem of an answer:

“[W]e are humans, not machines. We have emotions. We have hopes and dreams. We have a conscience. We have deeply felt human needs to be respected, to be recognized for our talents, to belong. [ ] When we work in an environment that recognizes these realities of our human nature, we thrive. [ ] When we work in an environment that fails to recognize this, it is damaging to our mental and physical health.”

He then explains and explores the core elements of a workplace Connection Culture:

• Vision (“everyone in an organization is motivated by the organization’s mission, united by its values, and proud of its reputation”)

• Value (“everyone in an organization understands the universal nature of people, appreciates the unique contribution of each person, and helps them achieve their potential”)

• Voice (“everyone in an organization participates in an open, honest and safe environment where people share their opinions in order to understand one another and seek the best ideas”)

Stallard aids our understanding, and amplifies his message, by giving examples of businesses and business leaders who have successfully embraced these core components.

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My vacation presented me with another opportunity to inventory the contents of my blog hopper. I found that much of it pertained to the ins and outs of lawyering. So, I decided to offer it to you here as a chain of related topics:

The top link in the chain is this article addressing why associates bail out of law firm life. Among the reasons cited are the:

• Absence of management expertise and meaningful feedback

• Law students’ misunderstanding about the practice of law

• Lack of work-life balance

The article goes on to outline steps that firms can take to remedy the problem of attrition, including:

• Mentoring Programs

• Hiring in-house professional development directors

• Providing business development training

Logically linked to these points is a post about coping with the anger and resentment that often accompanies career change and this piece questioning the sanctity of, and potential power imbalances in, the law firm mentor-mentee relationship.

The chain continues with information geared to helping young associates build their book of business. Pam Slim explains the business benefits of being a matchmaker and offers some concrete ways to take on that role, such as:

• Introducing like-minded people

• Forwarding information and resources to people who can use them

• Connecting people who have complementary interests, products or services

On a related note, in companion posts, Robert Middleton gives us some practical tips and tactics for quelling our marketing fears (and Part II ).

Jim Hassett rounds off the roundup links with a post profiling one firm’s efforts to help associates hone their relationship-building and business development skills. Noting the win-win nature of these initiatives, the article states: “business development training produces greater associate satisfaction, more satisfied clients and more interesting business opportunities.”

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In the last several years, I’ve logged a lot of online and offline hours learning, thinking and teaching about work-life synergy for lawyers (pdf). Although different issues converge under this umbrella, one topic that garners a lot of attention is flexible work options. It’s something I’ve addressed in posts on:

• Becoming more flexible

• Flexible work for lawyers 
  

• The flexible law firm: reality or pipe dream?

About a month ago, I came across a boston.com article on workplace trends for 2008. In it, columnist Maggie Jackson declares: “Fluidity is in. Piecemeal flexing is out.” She’s referring to a movement in corporate America to retrain the focus away from flexible work programs and towards the more fluid “Mass Career Customization" (MCC).

Championed by Cathleen Benko of Deloitte & Touche, MCC presumes that, today, more and more employees want to tailor their careers by “periodically adjusting their work pace, job setting and schedule, workload, and company role.”

After reading the article, I went over to Deloitte’s website and continued my MCC studies through a podcast that explores how MCC is not just a women’s initiative. Given the emergence of a dual-centric workforce, career customization serves the needs of men and women alike. I also vetted this series of in-house articles on Building a Lattice Organization. (The MCC model can be visualized as a career lattice - with numerous paths leading to different kinds of success – as opposed to a career ladder.)

In the wake of this education, I started considering the ways MCC might play out in the legal profession. Law firms aren't known for being early adopters of new workplace trends. That’s why it was so interesting to read a recent New York Times article – aptly titled Who’s Cuddly Now? Law Firms – that profiles a new proposal to bring customized career tracks to the law.

The proposal, called FACTS, is the brainchild of work-life consultant Deborah Epstein Henry. Henry doesn’t propose that firms do away with the billable hour. Rather, she suggests that they move from a liner to a more fluid billable hour model that recognizes how lawyers’ work-life needs may change at different stages of their careers. The acronym FACTS reflects the variety of work hour modes that Henry envisions:

• Fixed

• Annualized

• Core

• Targeted

• Shared

To learn more about the FACTS, you can read Henry’s article outlining her methodology (pdf). Those of you in the New York area can join in the conversation when Henry presents her program on Monday, March 3, 2008. To learn more about the program and register for it, visit Flex-Time Lawyers.

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Kevin O’Keefe and Carolyn Elefant , among other bloggers, recently posted about this New York Times piece on the diminishing lure of the law. I read the article when it first ran and liked it a lot. But, the news it imparted was not earth shattering by any stretch.

For years, theorists, academics and others have been decoding and commenting on the root causes of lawyer discontent and attrition. When legal sanity launched in 2004, one of its main objectives was to highlight their work and related efforts to remedy an ailing legal profession. Since then, coverage here has included posts on:

• the antidote for lawyer discontent
• the economics of lawyer depletion 
• connecting points for employee engagement 
• wake up calls for lawyers and law firms 
• toxic law firms
  

Threading through the broader conversation about life in the law today – and echoed in the New York Times article - is the realization that the legal profession is out of step with larger social-cultural-generational shifts towards creative personal and business pursuits. You can sample some of the discussion on the new “Creative Age” through these posts:

• working with meaning
• lawyers in the conceptual age 
• the brave new world of law 
• are you untouchable?
  

The lingering question for law firms and practitioners alike is how to bring more creativity to the everyday practice of law. The first step, of course, is to acknowledge the creativity deficit and the problems deriving from it. From there, firms could take it to the people and ask their lawyers what kind of creative outlets and opportunities they’d like to have on the job. Beyond getting this direct input, firms could demonstrate their commitment to creativity through policy and marketing initiatives.

For some inspiration, firms can look to resources like this article on creativity and success (emphasizing the “simple and wonderful truth that all people have the capacity to be creative”) and this terrific marketing-lateral recruiting campaign from Chicago’s Ungaretti & Harris.

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The ABA Journal online tipped me to a great article in which lawyer-author Richard Susskind explores how and why the legal profession is on the brink of fundamental change. The article is the first in a series of excerpts from Susskind’s forthcoming book, The End of Lawyers? Rethinking the Nature of Legal Services.

Like other forward-minded thinkers, Susskind challenges us to “introspect” and honestly consider the skills, talents and capabilities we possess that can’t “be replaced by advanced systems or by less costly workers supported by technology or standard processes, or by lay people armed with online self-help tools.” One of Susskind’s aims is to help us see and understand the natural evolution of our chosen profession and to embrace those changes as opportunities to take on new lawyering roles “which may be highly rewarding, even if very different from those of today.”

It’s a common refrain about the transformation of legal services – the times they are a-changin'. As always, the lingering question is how practitioners and law firms will change with the times.

That question is addressed from a number of different perspectives in the latest issue of The Complete Lawyer, which focuses on Viewing The Law In 2020. I particularly enjoyed consultant Bill Cobb’s article that asks: Are You Ready For The Revolution In Legal Services?

Cobb identifies client power and reliance on alternative providers as two of the key change drivers in the practice and business of law. He goes on to depict the changes attributable to increased client power, such as “fixed fees and lower rates.” Cobb also discusses how the Internet gives people access to a bounty of “quasi-legal service” providers, ending “the monopoly that lawyers have had on providing legal services.”

Although it’s not on all fours with the topic of the legal profession’s future; my latest article for TCL – titled For Associates, Relationship Building Skills Are Essential – provides some practical tips and exercises for young associates looking to optimize their future success and happiness in the law.

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I’ve explored the connection between self and work in posts like this one on avoiding self-less lawyering and this one on valuing your self in the practice of law.

Last week, I received an email from career coach/lawyer Michael Melcher announcing the “birth” of his new book, The Creative Lawyer: A Practical Guide to Authentic Professional Satisfaction. I have the book (thanks, Michael!), am eager to read it and will review it here soon.

In the interim, you can sample a bit of The Creative Lawyer’s offerings in a post by Gretchen Rubin that asks: Do You Know Yourself? “Lightly” adapting a quiz from the book, Rubin poses seven questions to help us pinpoint what interests us. While they’re all important self-inquiries, the one that really resonates for me is: What types of activities energize you?

I believe that we can learn a lot about ourselves and our relationships by exploring what energizes and depletes us. This is an anchoring premise of my training and development programs for lawyers. It’s also a point that I highlight in an article on Critical Relationship-Building Skills For Associates that appears in the current issue of The Complete Lawyer.

Someone who has taken affirmative steps to connect her self with energizing work is this blog’s co-producer, Lori Herz. Lori started her own business writing and communications consulting venture a year ago. Last week, she launched her companion blog, Write for Clients. As she explains in this LexBlog interview, the blog aims to help service professionals better understand how business writing can be a powerful relationship tool that connects you to people you work with and want to work with.

I encourage you to visit Write for Clients and join in the conversation about writing for your business success.

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Over the years, when considering how law firms can fix their client service problems, I’ve looked to different sources of ideas and inspiration. I’ve tracked the movement to educate medical doctors on treating the patient as a whole  – body, mind and spirit. I’ve also looked to the marketing world to gauge the latest thoughts on creating client evangelists (pdf) and avoiding negative word-of-mouth.

One often-cited key to building successful and enduring client relationships is authenticity – the desire and ability to lay down our shield, open up and let our clients get to know who we are, what’s important to us and where we stand.

Steve Pavlina offers a great post on authentic communication. In it, he points to John Kinde’s commentary on the power of authenticity. Kinde, in turn, forms his message around inspiring footage of the late Fred Rogers speaking at a 1969 senate hearing about funding for the newly formed Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Click here to watch the clip. As Kinde points out, what’s remarkable about this interaction is how Mr. Rogers’ authenticity affects the hard-nosed politician he’s addressing. It’s moving and, yes, instructive, to see a person who's so genuine and crystal clear in sharing why he’s here and what he stands for.

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I just finished reading a great ClickZ article by Pete Blackshaw on the interplay of emotions and customer service. Blackshaw notes that we’re in a “new era of consumer control” marked by the rise of Consumer Generated Media (CGM) -- also known as User-Generated Content (UGC) and User-Created Content (yes, it’s the other UCC). These platforms include:

• Blogs

• Podcasts

• Web Forums

• Discussion Boards

• Wikis

Citing Dan Hill’s new book Emotionomics: Winning Hearts and Minds, Blackshaw explains that “nothing else is more emotional for the consumer” than customer service. So, with this new shift in control over publicity and reputation, businesses are at risk if they don’t “get a handle on consumers' (read clients') emotional needs and wants” as they play out through the multi-tiered service dynamic.

I’ve discussed this issue before in posts on:

• Client experience management

• Lawyer experience management

• Fallout from our failure to listen to clients

• Client happiness and the power of mea culpa 
  

But, as Blackshaw makes clear, it’s getting more and more imperative for lawyers and law firms to be cognizant of our clients’ emotional response to our services. After all, we aren’t immune to the kind of viral backlash that millions of disgruntled consumers spread across the Web every day.

The question remains: how do we monitor and manage how our clients emotionally experience our services?

As this article called Love the complaining customers suggests, we start by paying close attention to client complaints. As the piece highlights, “the person who complains is doing you a favor, because he or she highlights the problems that silently cost you customers.”

Before you’re tempted to think of this as the exclusive province of firm marketing departments or management committees, it’s good to remember that each and every one of us can make or break our clients’ emotional experience.

This point is well made in a Wall Street Journal article about United Airlines Capt. Denny Flanagan, who regularly “goes out of his way to make flying fun for passengers” (tipped at Church of the Customer).

On this same note, I heard renowned restaurateur Danny Meyer speak 10 years ago. He said that the key to creating a 5-star restaurant is to field complaints about the dining experience before the customer leaves the restaurant. By being proactive in this way, you gain the priceless opportunity for an on-the-spot fix and can make other improvements going forward.

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My 6-year-old son is a baseball fanatic. He knows everything about his beloved New York Mets, down to the daily action on the farm. Since we live nearby, he’s eagerly tracking the construction progress at Citi Field, the Mets’ new ballpark that’s slated to open in 2009.

To give him a taste of what the new stadium might be like, on a recent family trip, I arranged for us to attend a Cleveland Indians game at Jacobs Field. From unobstructed views of the beautifully groomed turf to easily accessible concessions and luxury box seats, the stadium is designed to optimize the visitor’s experience.

While I’m a fan of my hometown Shea Stadium for sentimental reasons, it’s clear that it was not built with the customer’s concerns, perceptions and feelings in mind. By contrast, as conceived, Shea’s successor follows a new trend in baseball to cater to the attendee’s desire to have – and pay a premium for - a more intimate ballpark experience.

I’ve previously written about this trend toward customer experience management (CEM). Like other new business concepts, CEM puts a right-brain spin on service delivery. It considers how businesses can map, improve and deliver experiences that their customers or clients value on both a functional and an emotional level.

Given the widespread reports of impaired client relationships, law firms may want to take a closer look at the client experiences that they routinely offer. A firm’s CEM audit could include an appraisal of its:

• physical plant

• lawyers’ business relationship skills

• approach to business development

• client-centric marketing programs

• client satisfaction survey results

• client attrition statistics

This kind of honest appraisal will provide a solid platform for launching effective law firm CEM initiatives.

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I’ve previously written about moral intelligence and the emergent Conceptual Age that places a premium on empathy, meaning and human-to-human connection. I’ve also discussed how the incoming generation of lawyers highly values meaningful work.

Echoing these markers of a warming social-cultural-business climate, the Christian Science Monitor has a great piece on college efforts to “prepare students to be moral exemplars and socially responsible leaders.”  The key components of this campus-based moral leadership campaign are:

• Striving for excellence

• Personal and academic integrity

• Contributing to a larger community

• Taking seriously the perspective of others

• Ethical and moral reasoning

Duke University is one of the campaign’s early adopters. Its endowed program, DukeEngage, funds undergraduates who want to spend time contributing “to the public good anywhere in the world.” If you visit the program’s main site, you’ll find links to some very inspiring blogs that chronicle the students’ experiences.

As these kinds of programs take root in colleges and universities across the country, they’ll likely spread to graduate schools, including law schools. Transitioning from this academic milieu to the law firm environment, newly-minted lawyers will have little tolerance for anything less than positive law firm leadership.

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In my most recent post on intimacy and the lawyer-client relationship, I wrote: “It’s basically the same kind of intimacy that fuels healthy connections to family and friends. Many lawyers find it hard to drop the mantle of authority and really get to know their clients as human beings who have fears, hopes and challenges. But, this kind of sincere human-to-human exchange is what compels prospects to become clients and compels clients to stay with us and refer us more business.”

The bottom line is that our business relationships are not the cool, aloof, dull and dry second-cousin of our personal relationships. Business relationships are personal. They require us to be genuine and empathic. So, when we’re out in the world engaging with prospects and clients, it’s important to throw our selves into the mix. It’s also important to understand those aspects of our selves that tend to attract and repel people.

In a post called How to be likable to people who are complaining about you, columnist Penelope Trunk candidly reports on her recent experience with a panel audience that took issue with her message and her personal demeanor. Gerry Riskin similarly weighs the business-personal nexus in a post listing 7 Client Interaction Blunders That Blow It Every Time. The list includes: (1) Not being yourself; (2) Not listening and (3) Trying to be cool or aloof. Notably, Riskin derives his list from a post by fellow blogger Brad Isaac illuminating 10 First Date Blunders That Blow It Every Time.

Author and speaker Tim Sanders lends another perspective on navigating the personal side of business relationships in a commentary titled Don’t say an unkind word to help. He reminds us that a tameless tongue can wreak havoc on our business and personal connections.

This last point was recently brought home for me by a Small Firm Business article called Small Firms Think Big When It Comes to Clients. The piece gives me a very nice nod for the client service I provide to Equinox Fitness Clubs. But it features (with a photo no less) my former law partner Larry Rosen, now of Rosen Weinhaus in New York. Along with Corey Kupfer, Larry and I partnered in a successful Wall Street practice for five years. Although we all decided to go our separate ways - and naturally experienced some tensions during the dissolution – we’ve kept our business and personal ties intact. In fact, Equinox initially contacted me about handling its trademark work on Larry’s recommendation.

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It’s time for the quarterly vetting of my blog hopper – the file where I keep articles, notes and ideas for future blog posts.

Weighing in on business relationships is:

David Maister, who advises us to Build Relationship Plans Not Sales Plans. He says that companies too often confuse sales activities like CRM and cross-selling with relationship initiatives, which are designed to earn, build and deepen an asset - the client (customer or consumer) relationship.

Carolyn Elefant, who takes a two-pronged look at Building Relationships as a Way to Market  and Building Relationships to Build Business. Using my post on intimacy and lawyer-client relationships as a launching point, she highlights an ongoing blogger dialog about growing business relationships through social networking sites such as facebook and Linkedin.

Alexander Kjerulf, who shows us how a sincere, timely and “homespun” apology can fix damaged business relationships.

Addressing workplace issues are articles on:

The emergent midsize firm trend of hiring development directors to address associate retention and attrition.

The growing number of lawyers deciding to leave law firms to go in-house.

Steps firms can take to understand and stem associate attrition (hat tip to Counsel to Counsel).

The generational divide that needs to be bridged When Whippersnappers and Geezers Collide in today’s law firms.

Lending insight into embracing change in and outside of the legal profession is:

An overview of Three Principles of Change from The Practice of Leadership. My favorite of the trio is the simple, but profound: In the realm of human activity, things change only after they are accepted for what they are.

Jim Hassett’s overview of Harvard Law School’s reaction to changes in the profession.

Topping off the hopper’s contents is some lighter fare in the form of:

Eric J. Heels’ terrific depiction of what’s wrong with law school education (tipped by Ernie the Attorney).

A brilliant court decision resolving a dispute about lawyers who lunch (pdf).

Award winning journalist Judy Martin’s recent Work/Life Monitor Podcast in which we discuss my views on cultivating work-life synergy in the law.

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My wife, Lori, and I just returned from a trip to Jackson Hole, Wyoming. I was there to deliver a program with business relationship expert Keith Ferrazzi of Ferrazzi Greenlight.

This is a breathtaking part of our country – the natural beauty of Grand Teton and Yellowstone are not to be missed. I visited both as a teenager, but it was a whole new experience for me this time around. The trip also offered some great vistas on the underpinnings of successful client relationships in the law.

On our way out to Wyoming, I had the pleasure of meeting a United flight attendant named Brian Van Buren. As we boarded the plane in New York, Brian greeted us with a big hello and hearty laugh. I could tell this was a genuine introduction to a very warm and approachable person. During the in-flight service, we started talking. In the ensuing few hours, as he helped and joked with my fellow passengers, Brian returned to me at intervals. I learned that he wears many hats – among them, flight attendant, minister and hospice volunteer. He started his volunteer work after his wife died. We spoke about his passion for all aspects of his work in the world, about his personal challenges and triumphs, and about the nature of death and dying in our country. By the time we got off the plane in Denver, I felt a bond with Brian that went beyond the typical customer-service provider connection.

What forged this bond was intimacy.

As I’ve noted before, and as Keith Ferrazzi points out in his bestselling book, Never Eat Alone, many people shy away from the idea that intimacy is key to successful business relationships. By intimacy I’m referring to a willingness to get to know the human being behind the issue or need that comes across our desk (or the airplane call button). It’s basically the same kind of intimacy that fuels healthy connections to family and friends. Many lawyers find it hard to drop the mantle of authority and really get to know their clients as human beings who have fears, hopes and challenges. But, this kind of sincere human-to-human exchange is what compels prospects to become clients and compels clients to stay with us and refer us more business.

I revisited this same lesson during my stay at the terrific Snake River Lodge and Spa. The valet attendants went well beyond their job parameters to provide me and Lori with some great tips on area sites and dining. One young man, Ben, took it even a step further. When we returned the car to him after an outing, he followed up on his recommendation by asking how it played out for us. His focus on enhancing our experience made him and his service stand out.

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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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Last week, over at the motto blog, contributor Curt Rosengren wrote about a new, albeit small, study addressing what people are looking for in their next job. The survey found that the respondents didn’t consider a “move up the career ladder” a top priority. Instead, they put a premium on finding work that “challenges and stimulates them," satisfies their personal values and fits their lifestyle.

The survey’s findings aren’t surprising. They’re likely a sampling of a larger trend that’s emerging with the rise of the dual-centric workforce. As I’ve discussed here before, more and more lawyers are hungry for work that inspires, energizes and fulfills them. To sate that hunger, they’re willing to leave the security of law firm life and ride the job circuit to find a place and position that’s the right fit for them.

There are some law firms and businesses that have put themselves on the leading edge of legal service innovation by recognizing the trend depicted in the survey’s results.

One of these innovators is Axiom Legal, a law firm that’s built a thriving business and earned a stellar reputation by hiring top-notch big firm alumni and matching them with corporate clients on an as-needed basis. I had the pleasure of meeting with Axiom CEO Mark Harris a few weeks ago and came away very impressed with his business model and clear vision of what it means to be a happy, healthy and satisfied lawyer.

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My recent posts about narcissism and self-awareness in the practice of law prompted a friend of mine to question the boundary between the two concepts.

This is a great question.

I’m not a therapist, won’t pose as one and certainly can’t give a clinical definition. But, I’ll share my layman’s take on the answer.

As I’ve noted here before, many people resist the notion of self-reflection and self-expression as vital business skills because it raises the specter of the robber barons of yesterday (and today) – people often pejoratively described as Self-Absorbed; Selfish; Self-Centered; and Self–Aggrandizing. While I understand why they make this connection, I believe it’s a faulty one. There’s a big difference between being a complete narcissist and infusing a healthy sense of self (an amalgam of our needs, wants, interests and values) into our work and workplace relationships.

People certainly can take self-awareness and self-expression to an unhealthy extreme such as narcissism. When they do, there’s no room for anyone else. There’s no give and take. So, there’s little to no chance of creating mutually rewarding and lasting relationships in business or elsewhere. But, the same poor odds hold when we try to cultivate business connections without putting our self into the mix. As I’ve also previously asserted, business relationships are as much about valuing and evincing our selves as they are about reaching and helping others. Both aspects (self and other) need to be expressed and honored to foster lasting connections for business success and satisfaction.

Highlighting this last point is a mediate.com article by Trime Persinger titled What Do You Want? In it, Persinger looks at self-expression as an important, but unsung, relationship skill. Noting that our “parents, our peers, and our culture have taught us that it is selfish to ask for what we want,” she discusses why we shouldn't heed that lesson and offers guidance on asking for what we want from others.

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In my last post, I noted that self-knowledge is one aspect of the emotional intelligence (EQ) that’s integral to our success in the law. I’ve previously discussed why I consider self-awareness and self-expression elemental to effective lawyering. To forge lasting and rewarding relationships with others – clients, prospects or coworkers – we first have to meaningfully connect (or re-connect) with ourselves.

Through posts from Stephanie West Allen and Susan Cartier Liebel, I learned that a recent Harvard Business Review article on authentic leadership (order page) identifies self-awareness as “the most important capability for leaders to develop.”

Although she doesn't dispute this finding, West Allen does suggest that self-awareness may be a lofty goal because it's "elusive of definition and difficult to achieve."

I agree that self-knowledge is not easy to come by. It takes time to undertake this kind of inquiry. But, with persistence and some guidance, I think that self-awareness is something that most of us can gain to the benefit of ourselves and our business and personal relationships.

For people who resist the idea of isolated introspection, it’s reassuring to know that we can learn a lot about ourselves by interacting with people (clients, coworkers, friends and family) and engaging in activities (work assignments, business development, recreation and community events). By noting who and what regularly makes us feel energized and positive as opposed to depleted and negative, we get a solid idea of what we need from the practice of law and in life. Identifying our own needs in this way is a core component of self-awareness.

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During the summer, I wrote a post about affinity groups – workplace groups typically formed as part of larger diversity efforts to connect lawyers around such common denominators as race, ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation. I suggested that firms seeking to curb lawyer attrition and build esprit de corps could take the concept a bit further and sponsor affinity groups around a host of shared interests like books, sports, travel and music.

By acknowledging and fostering these connecting points between employees of all levels, firms would send the potent message that they see and care about the humans behind the titles and roles they play at work. And lawyers would gain a sense of visibility and value that comes from being able to express and explore their outside interests on-the-job.

Firms could also import the affinity group concept into their organizational learning initiatives. Lawyers in need of better business development, communication and leadership skills might respond more quickly and favorably to a learning system that reflects and draws on their shared interests.

To spark the formation of interest-oriented affinity groups, firms could create an online and/or offline space where lawyers could access and share content akin to this Fast Company article on 12 must-listen-to podcasts for creative knowledge workers. The podcast coverage includes art history, blues music, museum artifacts and culinary arts.

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Over the years, I’ve regularly posted on three related topics:

• Employee Engagement
• Employee Evangelists
• Lawyer Experience Management

All three distill down to a core element of mutually-beneficial relationships. Regardless of the nature of the relationship -- co-workers; employer-employee; leader-team member; or service provider-client – this mutuality derives from identifying, openly acknowledging and acting on our own, and one another’s, needs, interests and strengths.

Over at her excellent blog, Management Craft, Lisa Haneberg points us to her recent fireside chat (a/k/a podcast) with speaker and best-selling author Marcus Buckingham. As I’ve noted before, Buckingham is an authority on how people can play to their strengths in the workplace. In this podcast, he “shares several stories and suggestions that can help everyone enjoy their work more fully while benefiting the organization in a deeper way.”

As I listened to it, what stood out for me was Buckingham’s finding that, today, less than 2 out of 10 Americans believe they employ their strengths in the workplace most of the time. This is despite the popular company refrain that “our people are our greatest asset.”

Buckingham proposes a solution. He says that it all boils down to you and me (that is, the onus is not on the organization or its leaders). We are the experts on our own strengths and weaknesses. Strengths are activities that invigorate us and weaknesses are activities that deplete us. According to Buckingham -- and it makes total sense -- we can be really good at lots of different activities; but we need to be honest about how they make us feel before declaring them strengths.

So, if we want to work in strengths-based businesses, teams and relationships; each of us needs to discover our strengths and then see if and how we can engage them through our work. Buckingham has a new book coming out in March that will help us identify or strengths and put them to work.

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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.

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I recently read a pair of interesting posts by Michelle Golden and Charles H. Green outlining why they object to the use of the terms “trust” and “trusted advisor” in professional firm marketing materials.

Green - who co-authored the terrific book, The Trusted Advisor, and runs seminars on the same subject – got the discussion rolling by remarking that professionals shouldn’t affirmatively proclaim their status as, or intent to be, trusted advisors to clients. Why? Because trust is “an outcome, not a come-on.” Echoing Green’s suggestion that it’s really up to clients to pronounce us trust-worthy, Golden adds that “trusted advisor” is used so often in promotional channels that “it’s now cliché.”

Green and Golden make valid points. But, I have a slightly different take.

Trust has become a key concept - and key word - in the service professions for very good reasons. We live in a world where people often don’t live up to their promises. Most legal disputes, in essence, concern a breakdown in trust. So, as professionals, we need to be vigilant about the role of trust in legal matters and be sensitive to not setting up false client expectations of our services.

That said, if we’re sincere and determined in our desire to foster trust-based client connections (really, the only kind of client connections there should be), there’s nothing wrong with letting the world in on our authentic intention. People seeking legal counsel – most likely operating under a trust deficit  - will only benefit from our candor about placing a premium on trust.

To be sure, we don’t need to use the words “trust” or “trusted advisor” to convey our offerings (although I see nothing wrong with using them). There’s lots of ways to let clients and prospects know that we’re committed to cultivating trust-filled, meaningful and mutually beneficial relationships with them.

Regardless of the words we choose to state our commitment to trust, as Golden and Green suggest, this can’t be an empty promise. We have to team our public words with consistent, professional and personal action. As the very cliché phrase goes: We need to walk our talk.

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By now, many of us have heard and read the buzz about Time Magazine naming the denizens, creators and consumers of “the new digital democracy” – namely, me and you – its Person of the Year.

Anyone who frequents this blog knows how thrilled I am to have this forum for sharing my views and filtering information on optimizing the practice of law.

Although I blog for my own enjoyment and outlet, it’s always great to hear from readers that one of my posts sparked a meaningful conversation or contemplation. So, naturally, I was very pleased to learn that legal sanity has won this year’s Blawg Review Award for the Best Mentoring Law Blog. Thanks very much for the honor and recognition.

What I appreciate most about blogging is the opportunity it provides to raise awareness about our ability to, as Mahatma Ghandi so beautifully suggested, “be the change” we want to see in the legal profession.

This is a message that redounds through the Time cover story about the online world of citizen journalists and change agents. It’s also a core message running through a post on citizen marketers from the Church of the Customer Blog and a recent BusinessWeek article called True Believers. They discuss customer evangelists who are so passionate about a product, service or company, that they volunatrily “generate media” about it – shouting its praises (or sins) from the virtual rooftops.

Over the summer, in a post titled lawyers as user-innovators, I wrote about the power of this evangelical force that’s readily available for law firms to acknowledge and tap. I also noted that many lawyers are embracing the role of the citizen-innovator and coming together in communities – such as the blogosphere - in which they openly share ideas on legal service innovation.

On January 9, 2007, I’m giving a free teleseminar called XE Factor: Creating Work-Life Synergy. The program’s hosted by Lisa Solomon’s Legal Research and Writing Pro. I hope you’ll join me. You can register and get additional information here.

I wish you all a very Happy New Year!

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In a post about the new legal marketplace, I said that a “quest for meaning – in the form of feeling valued, valuable, important and visible – fuels a client’s decision to retain or relinquish a legal service provider.” Our clients are seeking meaningful connection to the experiences, goods and services they consume. Lawyers are no different. We’re engaging the emerging culture of meaning as service providers and as consumers. And, on the consumer side, more and more of us are looking for meaningful jobs and work assignments.

I’ve previously discussed the ingredients of meaningful work. One of the main ones is play. Work that’s infused with a good measure of play is more enriching for many of us than play-free pursuits. Echoing this point is a Fast Company article called The Future of Work. In it, Richard Watson notes that work life is changing as we move from the second industrial revolution -- the information revolution -- to a third industrial revolution that involves a “shift from left to right-brain economic production.” According to Watson, “child-like receptivity and cognitive flexibility” as well as “playfulness” may be prevailing, adaptive traits in this new economy characterized by rapid change, flux and uncertainty.

The intersection of work and play is also the focus of a terrific blog that I’ve pointed to several times before: Bailey Work Play :: The Alchemy of Soulful Work. Its publisher, Chris Bailey, has culled a lot of great information on the subject and candidly shares snapshots of his quest to help himself and others “integrate the principles of the soulful workplace, leadership, and relationships into day-to-day business practices.”

Additional insight into steps we can take to bring a sense of play into our law work can be found in a Small Firm Business feature about bringing more ease to our facial expressions. Stating that many lawyers walk around all day with “a sour look that puts off our colleagues and clients,” the piece suggests that we consider smiling more because it connects us to our clients and builds relationships.

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It’s that “most wonderful time of year” again. As people clamor to find just the right gift for that special someone, the debate about the commoditization of the season rages on. Is it the meaning or the money that’s at the heart of the holidays?

While this question comes into sharp focus at this time -- intensifying in pitch as we contemplate our life’s course for the New Year -- it’s really a query that pertains to many aspects of our lives that we experience year round.

In a thought-provoking post over at Brand Autopsy, John Moore asks: “Does money matter more or does meaning matter more when hiring and retaining employees?” Drawing on his experience working for two values-based companies, Moore observes that people often trade in a higher salary so they can “leave a company they [don't] believe in to join a company they [do] believe in.” But, once they become “weathered and tenured employees,” making meaning alone becomes an insufficient reward. They also desire a paycheck that adequately reflects their experience and worth.

So, it seems, meaning and money are both strong business forces. In the law’s private sector, however, it’s typically the lure of big money that gets newly minted practitioners through a firm’s door. Then, once these lawyers become “weathered and tenured,” they find themselves ready and willing to sacrifice their high salaries for more meaningful work in the law or elsewhere.

I’ve previously talked about the ways law firms might acknowledge and honor this money-meaning interplay. Lending some more insight into the subject is a fascinating BusinessWeek online article called Smashing the Clock [hat tip to Pamela Slim].

It profiles Best Buy’s latest experiment in revamping its hardcore workplace culture. According to the piece, the initiative – named ROWE, for results-only work environment – aims “to demolish decades-old business dogma that equates physical presence with productivity.” Now, headquarter employees “are free to work wherever they want, whenever they want, as long as they get their work done.”

Perhaps the most inspiring part of this endeavor to infuse work with more meaning is that it started from the bottom up. It is “an idea born and nurtured by a handful of passionate employees” responding to a company that – like many law firms – has a history of being heavily afflicted by “stress, burnout, and high turnover.”

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