What is a Successful Legal Career? |
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Originally Published in the Women Lawyers Journal
2015, VOL. 100, NO. 3
If asked to evaluate your career – as of this moment – as successful or not, how would you react? What would determine your conclusion? Had you prevailed in court last week, perhaps you would respond with an emphatic “successful.” But had you lost, would that mean that your career had not been successful?
If you’ve achieved equity partner status in your law firm you may well feel that you’ve been successful. The quantity of your compensation may influence your judgment. But what if you consider your comp compared to the men at your firm and note the disparity? Does that make you feel any less successful?
Carol,* a senior corporate partner at a global firm, recently confided to me that she finally feels successful now that she is among the highest compensated partners at her firm, alongside many of the men who’d previously surpassed her.
Defining success in the legal profession is a tricky matter, and has become even more so given post-recession changes in the industry. Within law firms, the traditional definition of success was advancement to equity partnership and compensation. In the years since the economic downturn, big law firms have changed their organizational structures.
The number of years to promotion has increased significantly. Even producing great work over the course of more years no longer guarantees promotion. Firms increasingly have focused on business generation and are loathe to promote an associate without being convinced of significant revenue-generating potential.
At the same time, attorneys who are already equity partners are scrambling to hold onto their business in a dramatically tighter and more competitive market. This leaves them with less time and incentive to develop junior lawyers. Competition for the ever-churning lateral market requires keeping profits per partner high, creating a disincentive for firms to promote associates to equity partnership.
The creation of multiple partnership tracks has also made promotion to equity more illusory. As a result, few associates now view doing great work as a likely path to success at the first firm that hires them out of law school. Promotion to equity has become the most elusive of the traditional objective success measures of a legal career.
Scientists who study the concept of career success [1],[2] point to its complexity. Status, promotions and pay – the traditional hallmarks of success – are “objective” measures. These use objectively verifiable criteria to evaluate success. However, organizational status, financial attainment, promotions and prestige do not necessarily make people feel successful. I have coached countless attorneys who have achieved these benchmarks only to find themselves feeling empty and unfulfilled. Furthermore, we know that even “objective” measures are contaminated by factors like gender and race. Disparities in access to opportunities leading to objective success as well as in evaluations, promotions and compensation continue to be prevalent in the profession.
Therefore, “subjective” measures of career success – those defined by an individual’s reactions to her unfolding career experiences – are crucial considerations. People conceptualize and evaluate their career success in terms of many factors related to their personal beliefs, values and aspirations.
These include competence, excellence, contribution, challenge, security, work/life balance, feeling valued, sense of meaning and purpose, service, fulfillment, autonomy, legacy and relationships with colleagues and/or clients, to name a few.
The evaluation of your career as successful may also have a temporal component. An associate grinding away long hours may not view her current accomplishments as successful but may consider her career in a broader time frame, anticipating future success as a result of her present-day efforts.
Maureen,* a new non-equity partner at her global firm, stated that, “When I became an associate I wanted success and success was partnership. Otherwise, why make the sacrifice?” Conversely, a recently de-equitized partner may or may not view her career as successful. To the extent to which she considers her reduced status to be a reflection of firm economics and looks back upon a career filled with achievements of which she is proud, she is likely to consider her career a success.
However, I have spoken with senior women in practice areas that have undergone significant changes and who blame themselves for their failure to “reinvent” themselves. In these cases, despite much prior objective evidence of success, these attorneys do not evaluate their careers as successful.
If you’ve ever received a bonus about which you were very pleased only to have your feelings change to disappointment when discovering how paltry your bonus was in comparison to those of others at your own or other firms, you know that our judgments of our success may be influenced by the achievements of others.
Research on career success documents that we evaluate our career outcomes relative to personal standards as well as the attainments and expectations of others.[1] Viewing one’s career as on-, behind- or ahead-of-schedule relative to peers is an example of an other-referent measure of success that can leave an attorney feeling prospering or defeated. Promotions and bonuses provide a powerful incentive for attorneys to compare themselves to others with dramatic consequences for their experience of success.
Recently I coached a young woman attorney who apparently had been on track for partnership at her firm. She received glowing reviews during her eight years at the same firm and had worked on significant matters.
The previous year the firm had brought in a complementary practice from another firm and the former and new practice heads assumed co-leadership roles. Unfortunately, the former leader – also her mentor – was not one to spend political capital advocating for his juniors while the new co-leader did this with relish. As a result, an associate who came in with the group from the other firm was promoted to partner while my client was only elevated to counsel.
Despite being promised compensation to offset the difference in status, she received only a small bump in pay. She had been billing roughly 3,000 hours/year and until this point had viewed the sacrifice as worthwhile. The decision left her devastated. She had no portable business; up until this point playing a prominent role on a senior partner’s matters was more than sufficient for promotion.
The decision reflected the power of senior partners, not anything inherent in the quality of her work. Yet she felt entirely devalued and humiliated by having given so much only to receive so little recognition. Despite not having felt particularly fulfilled by her work, she had felt proud and successful – until now. From that point on, she shifted her goals from advancing at the firm to saving as much of her paycheck as possible, leaving the office in time to see friends, and waiting until she had saved enough to leave practice altogether. The day she could retire from law and feel free to travel would be the day she would experience success.
It’s difficult to define success according to internal referents in a work environment that places value on objective factors like promotion, prestige and money. We are wired to compare ourselves to others and have a tendency to internalize the expectations of our work environments.
Big law provides multiple inducements to value objective and other-referent criteria of success. People with a high need for achievement may choose to work in such organizations with incentive systems that reward and recognize a few leading stars. It’s easy to become trapped trying to live up to and emulate these stars. It can become easy to believe that failing to invest heavily in things you believe will improve your chances of success means foregoing all you’ve invested and feeling like a failure.
In my experience, it is often getting outside this organizational frame of reference that enables people to consider alternative ways of measuring their own career success. For example, Elizabeth* contacted me when she was told that the prestigious, white-shoe firm in which she had worked for her entire legal career had decided to postpone her consideration for partnership because they were not yet convinced of her revenue-generating potential.
At best, she was able to negotiate for counsel status. Elizabeth loved the intellectual challenge of her work. She disliked the incessant client demands, especially those of her international practice. As the mother of two young children and married to another professional, she also felt continually taxed by multiple demands. She had found a way to juggle these, but constantly faced the criticism of senior male partners who disapproved of the ways she got her work done. They preferred the more paced approach afforded them by their stay-at-home wives.
When Elizabeth and I explored what made her feel successful, it was neither the approval of senior partners, the size of her bonus, nor the approbation of clients for being on calls at all hours. Success for Elizabeth was solving complex problems, particularly those that had significant policy implications. It became clear that a position in the federal government offered a far better shot at success and satisfaction than did her firm. Nevertheless, it was not until she actually made the transition that she stopped feeling like a failure.
The culture of the profession as a whole puts great emphasis on competition, winning, individual achievement, status and prestige. Research by Florida State University College of Law Professor Lawrence Krieger and colleagues [3],[4] has documented the dire effects of legal education upon the values and well-being of law students and ultimately upon the practicing attorneys they become.
According to this research, after beginning law school, students shift from values related to helping and community to external rewards such as money and recognition. The data indicate a general loss of sense of personal purpose. These changes are accompanied by increases in depression, anxiety and negative mood – changes that persist beyond the law school years.
Krieger’s research also indicates that success in law school measured by grades exacerbates the longer-term negative effects of law school. More “successful” students become more attracted to extrinsically oriented jobs and away from the service motivations with which they began law school. These findings have been replicated at multiple law schools and similar results have been found by other legal scholars. [5]
Most recently, Krieger [6] found similar relationships among a very large and diverse sample of practicing attorneys. The investigators found no or a negative relationship between grades, affluence, prestige and attorney well-being. The most satisfied and well-adjusted lawyers were those doing work they found personally meaningful and providing needed help to others.
Despite their smaller compensation, lawyers working in public service settings were more motivated by internal and personal values than those in higher-paying private practices and demonstrated higher well-being scores. The authors concluded “the shared understanding of ‘success’ needs to be amended so that talented students and lawyers more regularly avoid self-defeating behaviors in the pursuit of success.” [6]
Certainly there are attorneys at the largest law firms whose careers not only look successful through the prism of objective criteria but who would also judge themselves as successful according to subjective measures. But defining your legal career as successful has become increasingly challenging. Economically driven changes in the industry have resulted in fewer opportunities to achieve traditional benchmarks of success. Each corporation has only one General Counsel. The number of Margaret Brent annual awardees is finite.
Values have also changed over generations. Few law graduates now go to large law firms aspiring to equity partnership. Careers in the law, as elsewhere, have become less linear and more “boundary-less,” i.e., not limited to a single organization or a single career direction. Concerns about work/life balance are no longer limited to women. Studies show that both male and female millennials have no intention of trading off the quality of their lives for a paycheck. [7]
How, then, should you define career success for yourself? My suggestion is that you ground your definition in your values. By “values,” I mean the personal strengths or qualities you most want to express in your daily patterns of action. Values are chosen concepts linked with patterns of action that provide a sense of meaning. They can coordinate our behavior over long time frames.
Values can never be fulfilled, satisfied or completed; rather, they serve to give us a purpose or direction. Values should not be confused with goals, which are discrete objectives that can be evaluatedand completed in order to move you in the direction of your stated values. [8]
There are a few simple ways to focus on your values. First of all, imagine yourself as an 80-year-old woman. What will you need to look back on in order to feel proud of the work you’ve done and the life you’ve lived? When young attorneys seek you out to learn from your wisdom and perspective, what do you hope to tell them made your sacrifices worthwhile? What kind of a lawyer were you?
Finally, at the end of each day ask yourself, “What did I do today that I feel was worthwhile?” If you have the daily experience that you did something in the service of your values, you will have the opportunity to feel successful regardless of how much you were paid or how much prestige you garnered for your actions. And, if at the end of your career you can name things you feel proud to have done and feel that you stood for what mattered to you, then you are likely to consider your career as an attorney to have been a success.
ENDNOTES
*Client names and identifying characteristics have been changed to protect client confidentiality.
A. Heslin, Conceptualizing and Evaluating Career Success, 26 Journal of Organizational Behavior, 113 (2005).
Baruch & N. Bozionelos, Career Issues. In S. Zeldon, Ed., APA Handbook of Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Vol. 2., Washington, D. C.: American Psychological Association, 67 (2014).
S. Krieger & K. M. Sheldon, Does Legal Education Have Negative Effects on Law Students? Evaluating Changes in Motivation, Values, and Well-Being, 22 Behavioral Science & Law 261 (2004).
M. Sheldon & L. S. Krieger, Understanding the Negative Effects of Legal Education on Law Students: A Longitudinal Test and Extension of Self-Determination Theory, 33 Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin 883 (2007).
Elizabeth Mertz, The Language of Law School: Learning to Think Like a Lawyer. Oxford University Press (2007).
S. Krieger & K.M. Sheldon, What Makes Lawyers Happy?: A Data-Driven Prescription to Redefine Professional Success, 83 The George Washington University Law Review (2015, forthcoming).
Peggy Drexler, The New Definition of Success for Professional Women, Forbes (November 11, 2014, available at http://www.forbes.com/sites/peggydrexler/2014/11/11/the-new-definition-ofsuccess-for-professional-women-2/.
E. Flaxman, F. W. Bond & F. Livheim, The Mindful and Effective Employee. New Harbinger Publications (2013). |
New Year’s Resolutions for Your Personal Life |
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American Bar Association
Holiday Legal Themes
November/December 2013
Live as if you were living a second time, and as though you had acted wrongly the first time.
–Viktor Frankl
Think back to New Year’s Eve last year. Do you remember what you did to celebrate? Do you recall the resolutions you made? Although many people may be able to respond “yes” to the first question, most cannot to the second. In fact, the failure to behave consistently with these promises is so prevalent that fewer people each year even bother to make New Year’s resolutions.
What makes this tradition so compelling is the need for meaning in our lives. Writing about his experiences during the Holocaust, Viktor Frankl argued that the ability to make sense of and see significance in our lives and to have a strong sense of purpose is essential. Indeed, psychological science has demonstrated that people who view their lives as meaningful report higher levels of life satisfaction, happiness, general health, and social connection.
We are “wired” to try to understand the meaning of what happens to us. This is how we sustain ourselves through periods of pain, duress, and ambiguity. In addition, our sense of what is meaningful and important to us is the compass that enables us to set goals and persist in their pursuit despite obstacles and setbacks.
Making Meaning of the New Year
So, as we count down to 2014, whether or not we make resolutions, we tend to reflect upon our lives. We ask ourselves what we need to change, what we hope to do differently in the coming year. When we do make resolutions, we tend to think on a “micro” level: losing weight, exercising more, arguing less with our partner, or attending more of our daughter’s track meets. Yet these goals are in the service of larger values—the things that make our lives meaningful.
This is not merely an academic point. Understanding the meaning and value of the resolutions to which we commit makes us more likely to actually engage in the behaviors needed to accomplish these goals. Exercising more for its own sake, or because your physician has been nagging you to do so, it unlikely to provide the motivation for real behavior change.
Whether or not you make—or stick to—resolutions is less important than the extent to which your life feels meaningful to you. Do you know what makes your life feel significant? Do you have a clear sense of purpose in your life?
Lawyers and the Search for Meaning
Research on lawyers indicates that most went to law school with a clear sense of purpose for their work but graduated having lost sight of it. This may be one of many reasons why lawyers have significantly higher rates of depression, substance abuse, and other mental health problems than the general population. Certainly measuring life’s moments in six-minute increments is far from a meaningful life. Many solo and small firm practitioners have been able to retain a greater sense of purpose in their work than attorneys in large firms. Your ability to personally engage with your clients and understand their aspirations and concerns may allow you to feel that your work has significance.
Still, law is a demanding profession. The intense requirements of legal practice undoubtedly contribute to the high incidence of depression. The legal landscape has become more competitive than ever. As the job market for lawyers has shrunk, more and younger lawyers have hung out their shingles. A tight economy has decreased the demand for legal services. Worrying about getting and keeping clients can become oppressive.
Research suggests that lawyers tend to view the world more pessimistically. Certainly you’ve been trained to problem spot; the better you are at this, the more your services are in demand. But carrying this pessimism into life outside the practice of law predisposes you to depression. It’s hard to be happy when all you can see is what is wrong with everything.
The Effects of Stress
At its best, law practice can be very stressful. Litigants are not happy people. Opposing counsel can wear you down. There’s not a lot of positive emotion in law practice, and experiencing a lot of negative feelings takes its toll. Negative emotions narrow our attention—we’re focused on fixing what’s wrong. In this state of mind, it’s easy to miss the other things that are going on around us, particularly “the human touch”—perhaps the most meaningful part of life. While a busy practice can ease economic concerns, it brings other stresses.
In addition, the multiple demands of a heavy workload, taking care of family, driving through rush hour traffic, running to get groceries and dry cleaning—to say nothing of complaining or demanding clients—do far more than make you feel stressed. They put your body into chronic “fight or flight” mode. The result is a cascade of stress hormones, the overexposure to which disrupts almost all your body’s processes, putting you at increased risk for heart disease, memory impairment, and depression.
And if law was a “jealous mistress” before Blackberry's, what is it now? It’s easy to feel controlled by the electronic tools you bought with the intention of helping yourself. Our 24/7 devices delude us into acting as if human beings were made to function continuously. Without sufficient recovery time, we can’t help but become exhausted. I never cease to be amazed that a smart attorney who would never submit to surgery under the knife of a sleep-deprived physician continues to work on a brief after several sleepless nights. Sleep deprivation not only impairs efficiency and effectiveness; over time it can lead to permanent cognitive deficits and increase vulnerability to obesity, stroke, diabetes, and heart disease. Drinking coffee all day is no antidote.
Facing the New Year
Perhaps the most insidious way in which law practice can harm you is by enabling you to be too busy to think about all this. And the less you think about it, the worse it tends to get. Who wants to step on the scale knowing they’ve gained too much weight? Why would you want to go home to a spouse you know resents you for all the time you’ve spent at work? Not long ago a client of mine confided how much she dreaded her son’s approaching fifth birthday party. “I’ve missed most of the first five years of his life, and the party only reminds me of this,” she confessed.
If you use this time of year for nothing else, you might consider using it to face all those “What’s it all about?” questions you’ve been avoiding. Will that make you uncomfortable? Undoubtedly. Then why do it? It comes back to values. You value your life—after all, this is not a dress rehearsal. There are relationships you value and a range of things outside work that can provide you with a sense of significance. Keep in mind that people who believe their lives have meaning or purpose are less likely to report depression, anxiety, substance abuse, or workaholism. They feel more engaged in their work and, perhaps most importantly, more control over their lives. Without considering what makes your life meaningful and acting in ways that are consistent with what you most value, it’s impossible not to feel at sea.
No matter how far off course you’ve veered, you are still driving the bus. You—and only you—can make change in your life. If you are worried that you won’t live up to your commitments, understand that most people make resolutions with the best of intentions but don’t know how to effectively alter their behavior. In order to successfully make change, you need to have the right tools. No one gave you those in law school. Don’t let prior failures to change discourage you. Failures teach us about what doesn’t work—we can’t learn without them. You can cultivate a life worth living. Here are some things to try:
- Clarify your values. What do you stand for? What do you believe in? Consider moments in your life when you’ve felt most proud. What were you doing? Then ask yourself how other people would know what you value without your telling them. This second part is crucial because values are only meaningful if we act on them.
- Think small. We can only make change one small step at a time. Once we recognize how far some of our behaviors are from being aligned with our values, it’s easy to panic and feel the need to change everything. This is guaranteed to fail. Changing behavior is about self-control, and psychological research indicates that self-control is like a muscle. You have to exercise it for it to get stronger. Trying to change too much simply overloads and exhausts it. Similarly, fatigue, overwork, and distraction impair your self-control muscles just as they do the muscles you exercise at the gym.
- Be specific. Changing behavior requires conscious, intentional focus. Doing this necessitates disrupting automatic patterns of behavior. If my habit is to turn on my computer the moment I get into the office and I make a resolution to call an aging parent instead, odds are, the moment I get into the office I’ll turn on my computer and, at the end of the day, remember with chagrin the call I’d intended to make. Success requires a very specific plan—and reminders. Decide exactly what you will do and when and how you will do it. A resolution to exercise more is unlikely to be successful. However, deciding that you will go to the gym on Tuesdays and Fridays at 5:00 pm and putting those appointments in your calendar are more likely to make that happen.
- Focus on what you will do, not what you won’t. If you have ever tried not to eat sweets, then you probably know the wisdom of this. Having a specific plan for what you will do instead is far more likely to help you accomplish your goal. For example, rather than deciding that you won’t work late, determine when you will leave your office. Mark the time in your calendar. And make yourself accountable to someone for following through.
- Make self-care a top priority. In my many years coaching lawyers, especially women, I have noted the tendency for this value to fall to the bottom of the list. Self-care is not selfishness. It is the foundation for everything else. If you don’t make taking care of yourself a priority, you will not have the endurance to do all the other things you value. Yes, taking time to sleep or eat or exercise is time away from clients and family. But without taking the time to care for yourself you will undermine your effectiveness in the short run and risk not being there for anyone else at all in the long run.
- Focus your attention on the present moment. You can decide to spend more time with your family or take time to exercise, but if your mind is at the office, what’s the point? The famous biomedical scientist Jon Kabat-Zinn wisely said, “You only have moments to live.” We can only make our lives worth living if we can be fully present—with our clients, our loved ones, and ourselves. This kind of mindful, present, intentional focused attention is a skill that is easily learned; and the rewards are directly connected to living a more meaningful life. First of all, this will help you counteract any tendency you might have toward pessimism. Certainly you’ll keep seeing what’s wrong—but you won’t be able to avoid seeing “the good,” too. You’ll no longer be seeing the world through lenses that block it out. In addition, when you are able to focus on the present moment, not only is each moment richer, but it is also much easier to notice whether you are living in a manner that is aligned with what matters most to you. You’ll be less likely to get lost in the busy-ness of practice and instead be more fully present in the moments of your life. Wouldn’t that make for a good 2014?
© Ellen Ostrow, Ph.D., PCC, CMC. All rights reserved. |
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Time for a Rainmaking Coach? |
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American Bar Association, GP Solo
May/June 2012
Vol. 29 No. 3
Rhea’s solo immigration law practice had been very successful for a while. When business dropped off during the recession, she wasn’t all that surprised. However, as she saw the practices of colleagues begin to pick up, she became concerned. Why was the work she’d been getting before no longer coming to her?
After seeing me speak at a conference for solo and small firm attorneys, she called me to discuss how I might help her revive her practice. During our initial phone consultation we discussed the history of her practice. It became clear that she’d never really considered her ideal practice or how to market it. Like many solo attorneys, her practice had become defined reactively by the kinds of clients who had come to her. Not all of them were able to pay her fees. Many were individuals seeking assistance rather than employers. She realized the need to take a step back and proactively brand and market her practice, and we agreed to work together.
Over the course of the last 14 years, I’ve coached many solo and small firm attorneys to create and implement business development plans for themselves and their firms. They’ve practiced in places as far-flung as Maryland, Texas, Alaska, North Carolina, Alabama, Wisconsin, and Hong Kong. Their practices have included employment, white-collar criminal, investment management, general business, corporate, matrimonial, commercial litigation, and immigration. Some were just opening their firms and wanted to make sure they were embarking on a well-planned journey. Others, like Rhea, had gotten off to a strong start without assistance and then encountered unanticipated difficulties. All saw the value of engaging an outside consultant to help them clarify their practice and life goals, craft a business plan that reflected their values and aspirations, and implement that plan in a systematic and step-by-step manner.
Finding a Coach/Consultant
A Google search for rainmaking or business development consultants for attorneys yields approximately 50.3 million results. Finding the right consultant for you may seem daunting, but there are a number of things you can do to make it easier.
Seeking referrals from colleagues can be just as helpful with consultants as it is with physicians and lawyers. Ask around at your local bar association—consultants often offer workshops that members may have attended. If you can’t get any recommendations, the Internet is a fine place to start. Consider characteristics that might make you more comfortable. Some women attorneys prefer working with a coach who specializes in working with women lawyers. Others would only be comfortable consulting with someone who had practiced law in their own area of practice. Still others would prefer to work with a coach whose background is in psychology or business rather than law. Although these traits can help you narrow your search, don’t let them be deciding factors. Go to the consultant’s website and read about his or her work. Such websites often have descriptions of case studies or representative engagements.
Unfortunately, credentialing among coaches and consultants is not state of the art. There are people who have decided to call themselves coaches without receiving any coach training, whereas others have become certified. It’s a good idea to ask about the consultant’s training as well as his or her experience coaching attorneys in your situation. As with all professions, the possession of a credential doesn’t guarantee quality, and it certainly won’t tell you whether you and a particular coach will work well together.
The quality of the relationship is crucial because you’ll need to trust your consultant enough to be completely open about your goals, concerns, strengths, and weaknesses. Most consultants offer some kind of free initial consultation to provide you with a taste of what it might be like to work together. The initial consultation is your opportunity to ask all of your questions. Pay attention to how well the consultant listens to you. Do you feel heard and understood? Does the coach ask questions that spark important thinking about your practice and approach to business development?
You’ll probably want to know how long coaching will last. Some consultants offer programs for defined periods of time. However, you might want to consider a more open-ended relationship. You should not be required to commit to hiring the coach for a lengthy period of time. If the relationship isn’t working for you, you want to be able to terminate it and work with someone who is a better match for you.
The duration of a coaching relationship should depend on your goals. You’ll need to be able to work at a pace that’s optimal for you. In Rhea’s case, we contracted for two meetings per month. As we’re many miles apart, we work by phone and our sessions are 45 to 60 minutes long. We contract one month at a time. She has ambitious goals but works at a very rapid pace, so she’s likely to accomplish her plans in less time than someone whose practice is already very busy but not in a way that is ideal or sustainable.
How Business Development Coaching Works
Coaching is an action-oriented process. It begins with establishing clear, measurable, and realistic goals that you want to accomplish within a time frame. Your coach’s job is to keep you focused on these goals despite all the distractions that a typical law practice presents. You should expect to end each coaching session with a specific action plan that you and your coach have collaboratively developed. Your coach should hold you accountable for accomplishing that plan, but in a nonjudgmental fashion. The ideal consultant will provide suggestions if you ask for them but, more importantly, will ask you questions that facilitate your thinking and help you arrive at your own conclusions.
For example, Carolyn asked me to consult with her about building her commercial litigation practice. A small firm practitioner, she was worried that her practice would dwindle as the senior attorneys who had been feeding her work began to retire. She was pessimistic about her ability to bring in business because she hated “chit-chat.” She had been hesitant to engage a consultant for fear that she’d be pressured to make rain in ways that did not fit her personality.
Carolyn and I identified three coaching goals: (1) define her ideal client and practice; (2) identify her marketing preferences and strengths; and (3) increase her business development activity by 50 percent within the next six months. The first “assignment” on which we agreed was to have her write a sketch of her ideal client and matter. She reviewed cases she’d most enjoyed and clients she’d found most interesting in order to develop her description.
Carolyn knew what types of rainmaking activities she hated to do but was less clear about what she enjoyed doing. Through our discussions it became clear that she enjoyed public speaking about topics within her expertise. Therefore, we developed a plan for her to identify venues and ways of getting on agendas attended by her target market.
We were also able to redefine “chit-chat.” I encouraged her to think about the kinds of social interactions that she did enjoy. She began to think about networking as developing mutually beneficial relationships rather than making small talk and selling. She scheduled lunches with people who’d asked her questions at her presentations and colleagues who’d previously made referrals to her. Her plan was to learn as much as she could about the person with whom she was meeting rather than to fill space with idle conversation. This proved more doable than her previous approach to networking, and her successes helped build her confidence.
What to Expect from Your Rainmaking Consultant
Your consultant can’t guarantee your success—that’s up to you. But you should expect your coach to know something about how attorneys develop business. Your consultant should understand how your clients make buying decisions or be willing to have you educate him or her about the particulars of your practice and your market. Keep in mind that effective coaching does not necessarily require that your consultant be intimately familiar with the market for your services in your geographic area. Rather, your coach should be open to understanding these details or able to help you identify them and then assist you in using that information in ways helpful to the growth of your practice.
Your consultant should get to know you well enough to understand what kinds of business development activities will work best for you and to honor your strengths. Although a consultant should be encouraging you to step beyond your comfort zone, no one should be insisting that you do things that are inconsistent with your values or your strengths. For example, different approaches to rainmaking work well for introverts than for extraverts, and your coach should respect your personality and preferences.
Although there are consultants who have expertise with websites, social networking, brochures, etc., effective coaches understand the limits of their knowledge. These consultants will assist you to the extent to which they are able and then help you find others with the expertise you need.
Rainmaking success isn’t just about externally focused activities. It also involves developing internal systems that free more time for you to devote to business development.
Rhea, for example, knew that the lack of internal systems was hampering her ability to build her practice. We worked together to clarify her staffing needs as well as the most efficient ways to train new staff. Once she had the right administrative and paralegal assistance and had created handbooks for the most common procedures and document preparation, she was free to turn her time and energy to branding and marketing her practice.
Branding
An effective rainmaking consultant should ask you questions that enable you to articulate your personal brand. Who is your ideal client? What is your ideal matter? What sets you apart from others practicing the same kind of law? How do you want to be perceived? What space in the minds of people in your market do you want to occupy?
When Rhea reflected on the clients with whom she most enjoyed working, she recognized that they were highly skilled scientists requiring complex petitions for residency. However, she tended to accept a wide range of clients and needed to decide whether she wanted to be known for the work she found most satisfying. Although she seemed to have developed a reputation among such scientists, many of them were either unable to afford her fees or unwilling to pay them. However, she was centrally located near businesses that needed the kind of expertise these scientists provided. She decided to market directly to these businesses.
But why would these business owners choose her over her competitors? I offered my observations about her unique strengths, and she considered the feedback she’d received from clients. Rhea’s interpersonal skills as well as her deep commitment to the outcome of her clients’ petitions set her apart from others. She’d determined her brand. Now she had to communicate it effectively to her market.
Creating and Implementing a Business Plan
Most rainmaking consultants will provide their clients with a template of a plan for developing business. It can be simple or complex, but it must identify specific ways of becoming visible, developing credibility, and cultivating relationships with people in a position to make decisions about buying legal services.
Perhaps the greatest value provided by consultants is accountability. Too many attorneys have excellent business development plans buried under files on their desks. Once you get busy, will you continue to implement your plan so your pipeline remains full? If you can’t unequivocally say “yes” to that question, you might consider working with a rainmaking coach.
Ken had always approached business development in fits and starts. When his matrimonial practice was slow, he’d invite someone to lunch. When a case came in he’d get buried in work and completely neglect making rain. As a result, he spent too much time worrying about when the next matter would come in the door.
Ken knew what to do—he needed help actually doing it. At each coaching session he identified five contacts to call during the following week in order to schedule coffee or lunch. Even if he was unable to make a date to meet in person with these individuals—attorneys, psychotherapists, financial advisors, and other referral sources—he would touch base in order to stay “top of mind.” He also began writing a monthly newsletter to send to referral sources who signed up to receive it. Each issue briefly addressed a topic of importance to subscribers. For example, one issue explained the mediation process and its benefits and risks. His consistent efforts paid off: His practice is busy and he’s made marketing a habit.
How Much Consulting Is Enough?
Rainmaking consulting is not intended to be a long-term process. Ideally you’ll stick with it until you accomplish your initial goals. Often new goals arise as early ones are attained, and it’s not uncommon to extend the relationship to achieve new things.
Keep in mind that your work with a consultant is an investment in the success of your practice. Ideally you will reap handsome returns. As long as the relationship provides value, you may want to continue. But don’t be afraid to bring your coaching relationship to a conclusion—your consultant doesn’t expect to be at your side forever. You can always reengage a helpful consultant when the need arises. At the conclusion of a good coaching experience, you will have developed the mind-set, acquired the skills, and cultivated the habit of making rain on your own. Meeting your practice development goals should now be second nature.
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Counselor, Who Is Counseling You? |
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American Bar Association
February 27, 2012
“As any good mountaineer will tell you, a successful ascent requires a good deal of preparation: choosing fellow climbers, ensuring team conditioning, assembling first-rate equipment and having experienced guides.”
Jay M. Jackman. Quoted in Nichols, Nancy A. (Ed.), “Reach for the Top: Women and the Changing Facts of Work Life,” Harvard Business School Press, 1996, p. 81.
The need to strategically plan and navigate your career never ends. When you enter a new workplace, you need to understand the culture of the organization. As you move up the ranks, you need to master delegation and management skills. At midcareer, you may be ready for new professional challenges but still need some guidance. And retirement transitions require a different kind of assistance. Guided professional development, modeling advice, and advocacy are ongoing necessities for a successful legal career.
Every woman attorney, then, needs a mentor. But the old model of mentoring, in which a senior attorney took on a protégé, is rarely realistic in today’s legal workplace. First, the demands on the time of senior attorneys make it all but impossible for them to devote themselves to a mentor-protégé relationship. Furthermore, people are typically more attracted to those who are similar to themselves. In most legal workplaces, the most seasoned and powerful attorneys are still white men. Generational differences also make finding an ideal mentor difficult. And if you find such a perfect mentor, you will probably need to queue up––think of how many other women are searching for the same kind of counsel!
Additionally, traditional mentoring is skill focused. However, women and attorneys of color need mentoring that is not just instructional but also provides emotional support, builds confidence, and helps the protégé to effectively deal with the potential barriers to success posed by unintended bias and stereotyping. Women attorneys wanting to find ways to address work-family conflict need experienced colleagues who can empathize with their difficulties and share time-tested strategies. Similarly, women with leadership ambitions need models with whom they can identify.
Many firms have formal mentoring programs developed to address these needs. However, these relationships are “arranged marriages” in an association that in reality relies upon good chemistry. Even when mentoring programs are successful, they rarely address the needs of attorneys beyond the first few years of practice. The new partner, the midcareer attorney, and the attorney considering retirement are rarely offered mentors to help them navigate these transitions.
Your Personal Board of Advisors
It is essential to keep in mind that no one will ever care more about your career than you. When you take personal responsibility for your own professional development and success, you are far more likely to feel in control of your career and to overcome challenges to your success. Rather than wait for your firm or organization to provide you with the kind of mentoring you really need, why not proactively develop relationships with people who can provide mentoring across a wide variety of concerns?
You might think of this group of mentors as your own personal board of advisors. Whether or not you meet with all of them simultaneously, each board member can be chosen to fulfill specific needs. The list of expectations any attorney has of a good mentor is daunting. No wonder so few senior attorneys are willing to try to fill this role! You will be far more likely to get all the different kinds of help you need if you clarify your needs and objectives for mentoring relationships and then identify a group of people who can assist you in accomplishing your goals.
Selecting Members of Your Board
Mentoring needs change at different points in your career development. So the first step is to assess your requirements at this point in your career. Selecting potential mentors will depend largely on the results of your assessment. Ask yourself, “What expertise do I need to develop to undertake this challenge? What confuses me now that some clarification could help? Which path is so murky that I need someone who has traveled this road before?”
Your personal board of advisors serves as a kind of informal, customized, personal knowledge resource to fill in your knowledge and support gaps. Once you have determined the kind of knowledge, modeling, and advice you need, ask yourself, “Who would know something about this?”
Having identified your learning and support requirements, look for mentors in a variety of places. Ask successful attorneys to recommend people with particular expertise or those who have been helpful to them in some way. Look around your firm for people you admire and would like to emulate. Maybe you have come across an in-house attorney who is willing to advise you about how clients make buying decisions. Consider your former law school professors who possess the expertise you are trying to develop. Perhaps you have encountered an opposing counsel from whose experience you think you can benefit. You may have attended a CLE program and thought of the presenter as someone who could really help you succeed.
Every situation presents you with possibilities for finding mentors. Listen to the contributions people make at meetings you attend. Be attentive to those who have special expertise in areas you want to develop, those whom you admire, and those who have values similar to your own. Work on collaborative projects with people, both at work and in your community, and observe others’ strengths. Take note of good networkers whose success secrets you would like to emulate. If you attend a program and are particularly interested in the speaker, try to approach her afterwards. Tell her you admire her work and would like to learn from her, or that you want to achieve what she has and would appreciate her advice.
If possible, get a feel for what it would be like to work with a potential member of your personal advisory board. You might volunteer to serve on a committee or seek out an assignment that will allow you to work with a potential mentor as a way to establish a working relationship.
Try to spot people who seem particularly disposed to invest in a mentoring relationship. When people express genuine interest in you and your career, consider taking them up on it.
Different Functions for Different Board Members
New attorneys need a mentor within their organization who can help them learn about its culture. This mentor can provide tips on who is powerful, who the key players and decision makers are, whom to seek out, and whom not to cross. A more senior lawyer in your firm can help you learn the protocol; she can facilitate your socialization and integration into the firm. Colleagues with whom you forge alliances within your organization can assist you in learning the skills required for advancement.
It is extremely useful to find a mentor who does the same kind of work as you. A senior and successful attorney in your practice area who can provide candid and constructive criticism of your work––and who is not writing your formal evaluation––is an invaluable resource.
It is helpful for women attorneys to form alliances with other women who share their values concerning work-life conflict. It is even better if you admire how this person has handled the issues in her own life.
It is also advantageous to build alliances with people outside of your workplace. These may be individuals with expertise in areas where you have knowledge gaps, people you genuinely admire and believe can teach you a lot, and attorneys who are particularly supportive and whose perspective on the profession is of value to you. Your personal board of advisors may also include people in other professions, perhaps in the industry you serve. You might want to include a professional career/executive coach on your board.
Sponsors and Champions
Mentors may serve many different functions. They can enhance your career prospects by increasing your human capital, helping you to develop job-related knowledge, skills, and abilities. Mentoring can also help integrate you into the workplace. A mentor who “shows you the ropes” helps you negotiate the organization and provides insider information about organizational politics. Mentors may provide emotional support and modeling. However, studies of mentoring in law firms indicate that this is insufficient to enable a woman attorney to reach the highest levels of law firm leadership.
Another mentoring function is that of increasing the protégé’s social capital. A mentee’s career benefits when her mentor provides her with access to his network, facilitates her participation in collaborative projects, promotes her to others thereby augmenting her visibility and credibility, protects and champions her behind the scenes, provides challenging and highly noticeable work assignments, brings her along on client meetings and ensures that she plays an active role, and by association, signals her legitimacy to decision makers. A mentor like this functions as a sponsor or champion.
The sponsor on your board can make all the difference in enabling you to advance to the highest level of the profession. Research on the relationship between mentoring and the career success of women suggests that often a male attorney is most effective in filling this seat on your board. This is not surprising, given that the overwhelming majority of leaders in the legal profession are men. However, the gendered culture of law firms also influences the differential effects of male vs. female mentors for the careers of women attorneys. Success in most firms requires the ability to thrive in a highly competitive, aggressive, individualistic, heroic culture. These attributes, stereotypically associated with masculine behavior, are viewed as indicators of potential and fitness. Decision makers always have incomplete information about candidates for advancement. In the absence of sufficient, objective information to allow for a rational means of discriminating among aspiring attorneys, having a powerful male mentor signals to the predominantly male leadership that a woman lawyer has what it takes. In other words, a male mentor/champion may help you overcome unintended bias based upon gender stereotypes.
A woman lawyer without such an advocate is at a disadvantage. Research indicates that women with senior male mentors are more likely to advance and to receive higher compensation. In addition, formal mentoring programs are unlikely to help you reap the benefits of sponsorship. Instead, the voluntary selection of a protégé by a senior male signals to other firm leaders that you possess those qualities believed to be requirements for success.
Assuming a Leader’s Identity
While the sponsorship of a powerful senior male attorney is likely to facilitate attaining promotions, it does not appear to prepare women well for assuming the role and identity of partner or leader; nor does it inspire the confidence and satisfaction it is supposed to bring. The lack of women at the highest levels leaves many new women partners without a clear picture of how to act the part. Without such models, women can become less confident and more anxious. In addition, male mentors typically fail to provide other essential mentoring functions: social and emotional support, or advice concerning role ambiguity and work-family conflict. Research indicates that these functions are better served by women mentors.
Cultivating Relationships with Your Personal Advisory Board
The alliances you form with members of your board are substantive, strategically important business relationships. These are genuine, meaningful, and productive relationships with people at all levels of experience who can provide career enhancement and self-development.
Relationships with members of your board depend upon personal chemistry and often occur serendipitously. They evolve in a natural and authentic way. But you can influence serendipity by volunteering for committees or working on assignments that allow collaborative relationships to develop. This also allows both parties to evaluate the benefits of the working relationship.
Knowledge and assistance are privileges, not rights. It is important to clarify each person’s expectations of the relationship. Negotiate how long you expect the alliance to proceed in this form; at a later date you can always arrange to continue the relationship.
Try to gain an understanding of what each mentor needs for the relationship to be mutually rewarding. For some board members, helping another attorney succeed will be sufficient. Others may feel rewarded by your offers to assist them in writing articles or introducing them to other people in your network.
It is important not to abuse your relationships with the members of your personal advisory board. Be clear about each individual’s willingness to be available and helpful, and structure your requests accordingly. Treat these relationships with great care, show appropriate gratitude, and give proper credit for contributions. Never waste your advisors’ time. When you seek their expertise, prepare your questions well and summarize the efforts you’ve already made to solve the problem.
Lay the Groundwork In Advance
The worst time to be constructing your personal board of advisors is when you need it to work for you. It’s essential to be proactive and to find ways to build these relationships before you need to call on them for assistance. The kind of social capital provided by your relationships with mentors doesn’t typically produce quick dividends. The benefits of social capital take time to accrue. In fact, social capital is the by-product of your efforts to contribute to the success of others.
The principle of reciprocity creates social capital. Reciprocity begins with an act of generosity without the expectation of a return. Helping others without regard to how they will help you is the best way to make sure that you will benefit from the relationships you create. Working to understand the needs of others around you and doing your best to contribute generously to their success is the best way to plant the seeds for your own success. People whom you have helped will want to help you succeed. Consider potential contenders for seats on your personal advisory board and start planting those seeds.
© Ellen Ostrow, Ph.D., CMC
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