What training should law firms offer? Networking 101.

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I wrote a couple of weeks ago about the “soft” skills on which law firms can profitably offer training to summer associates.  Networking was on that list, and it’s probably my top pick for the hands-down most important soft skill.  I received a number of questions about what I mean by teaching networking.  So, here’s a brief overview of the networking seminar that I’ve developed.  The seminar of course goes more deeply into the how and where of networking, as well as focusing on self-presentation skills… But this is the foundational material.

Networking for Career Advancement

Few “soft” skills receive as much attention in law school as networking.  The reason is simple: networking will have a huge influence on your career success, so attention to why, where, and how you network will pay immediate rewards.  The good news is that you network every day, whether you recognize it or not.  You have networking opportunities every time you come into contact with another person, so your focus should be on how to make the best use of those opportunities.

Why should you network?  Networking is critical for client development.  Most people who have a legal need will ask their colleagues and friends for lawyer recommendations – and that’s true whether the need is personal (i.e. will and estate matters) or business (i.e. commercial litigation).  People hire, give work to, and buy from other people they know, like, and trust.  That’s what networking accomplishes.

Networking is not the process of going somewhere armed with business cards, ready to pounce on the first person you encounter to get the business.  That’s the kind of behavior that gives networking a bad name and leads nice people everywhere to dread it.  Instead, networking is relationship-building.  It’s the process by which you meet someone, learn about him, his work, his interests, his family, what he needs and desires, and so on.  It’s developing an acquaintanceship that may yield benefits someday for you or someone you know.  Sometimes the benefits are immediate: occasionally, networking will reveal an immediate need that you can meet or will lead you toward an as-yet undiscovered opportunity.  More frequently, it’s simply the opening stages of a relationship that will mature over time.

Where should you network?  Anywhere and everywhere.  Networking can be structured.  Most commonly for lawyers, networking occurs at bar association meetings and firm- or law school-sponsored social events.  As a law student, look forward and think of networking as something you can do for your own professional and career development starting now.  Networking opportunities come up every day, every time you meet someone.  When you meet someone at the gym, that’s a chance for networking.  Attending a party is a networking opportunity.  Even attending your child’s little league game can be an occasion for networking.

You can and should network whenever you meet someone, but you should be networking to build relationships and not to get a job or get business or to get anything else.  The best networking occurs when the person with whom you’re networking has no idea that you are networking.  It’s social behavior at its best. 

How should you network?  This is a broad topic that deserves a post of its own.  But the bottom line is that you should seek to get to know other people, to look for opportunities to make yourself useful to them, to be other-focused.  There are two reasons for this.  First, and most importantly, this is an honorable way to conduct oneself in any setting.  Second, people like to talk about themselves and their business, but few people like to listen deeply.  You will distinguish yourself by focusing on the person with whom you’re in conversation.  She will appreciate your attention, and she’ll especially appreciate anything you can do to help her.  One terrific way to follow up on a networking contact is to send an article that would be of interest to your contact.  It shows that you were paying attention, and it’ll demonstrate your desire to help that person.  Your contact will be flattered by the attention, and he will reciprocate because he will be curious about the person who is so nice and so interested in him and his business or his life. 

One book that I highly recommend for summer reading is Bob Burg’s Endless Referrals.  Although the book is written primarily for sales professionals, everyone can benefit from the other-focused networking skills that Burg teaches.

We’re as green as Kermit the frog.

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Lawyers who regret attending law school are green with envy of those who made other decisions, while some aspiring law students are green in their naive approach to what it means to be a law school graduate.  The grass is greener on the other side… And let’s not forget the green cash that magically appears (or is that disappears??) upon graduation from law school.

There’s a fascinating post on the WSJ law blog, entitled Law School: Does It “Keep Your Options Open”?  The question is whether, because of the cost of law school tuition, it’s a cost-effective strategy to attend law school to keep open a variety of options, rather than to become a lawyer.  The answer appears to be a resounding no:

There’s something wrong with a system that makes a whole lot of people pay a whole lot of money for jobs that are not worth it, or that have no future. If we wanted to be honest, we would inform students that law school doesn’t keep their options open. Instead, we should say that if they work hard and do well, they can become lawyers.

So says Cameron Stracher in a WSJ article (available online only with a subscription).  A New York Law School professor and author of Double Billing: A Young Lawyer’s Tale of Greed, Sex, Lies, and the Pursuit of a Swivel Chair, Professor Stracher is also a blogger who asks whether one man can change his life by making dinner with his family at least 5 nights a week for a solid year.  (It looks as if the answer to that question is yes, but perhaps we should wait for the “great book, and a great movie, then a great bathtowel and beach chair, and finally a great sequel” to follow.)

The publisher’s synopsis of Double Billing says, “As the author vividly describes, law school may teach you how to think like a lawyer, but it’s being an associate that teaches you how to behave like one. Or misbehave. Stracher doesn’t mince words about the duplicitous behavior and flagrant practices of many lawyers in his firm, which is one of the premier partnerships in America.”  Notwithstanding Professor Stracher’s current employment, that’s a rather unflattering view of law school and practice.  In candor, I haven’t read the book (yet, though it’s on my constantly growing list), but it could be either an accurate portrayal or a Swiftian satire or possibly a combination of the two.  So, perhaps the gist of Professor Stracher’s article is not surprising.

What is surprising about the WSJ blog is the comments.  A few aspiring law students provide the tenor voice begging for guidance while the percussion section provides a drumbeat of danger warnings: tuition is expensive, law doesn’t pay well enough for the vast majority of graduates, the work is dull and oppressive, and business school (presumably investment banking) is the route to true wealth.  The composition is rounded out with a staccato of reeds who ask when lawyers came to be such whiners.

Wow.

It’s certainly true that law school is now very expensive, even at most state school.  My own anecdotal evidence suggests that a substantial number of college students go to law school because they don’t know what else to do.  (I was a college senior in a 1990 English class when the professor asked how many of us were headed for law school.  A forest of hands went up.  Then he asked how many of us had any intention of going to law school before junior year, and mine was the only hand still up.)  And frankly, I do believe that those who end up in law school for lack of anything better to do have a much more difficult road to professional success (certainly in terms of personal satisfaction and enjoyment) than those who actually want to be lawyers.  I think the group next likely to suffer the consequences of an uninformed decision to attend law school are those who lack a realistic understanding of what a legal practice is all about.

If you’re headed to law school, ask yourself why.  If your answer is some version of “Eh, what else would I do?” start thinking now.  You can save yourself a lot of pain and tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of dollars if you clarify your reasons and your goals now.  If your answer is that you watched a lot of Law and Order (or Ally McBeal or any other tv show) and you know you’ll enjoy practice, do some informational interviewing now.  You may save yourself lots of money and heartache as well.  Personally, I’m in favor of an entrance and exit exam for law school: “Why are you entering law school” and “Why are you a lawyer”?  A cogent answer to these questions may be the best indicator for a meaningful career.

Does that mean it’s all gloom and despair if you went to law school and didn’t particularly want to be a lawyer?  Or if you’re practicing now and you’ve lost the passion — or perhaps never had it?  No.  It may take some self-examination (and the answer may be challenging, such as to change your area of practice or to leave the law altogether) but just about anyone can find a viable path in the law or a productive use for a law degree.  (For some resources, check the books on my Resource page.)

The road from law school is not paved with gold bricks.  It’s a lot of hard work, and the reward cannot be viewed solely as a matter of finances for the great majority of graduates.  As Professor Stracher says, hard work in law school promises only that a student can become a lawyer, and even that isn’t guaranteed.

If you have a vision for your practice (a reason for your decision to become a lawyer), be sure that vision is somehow integrated into your day-to-day life.  If you don’t, work to develop one.  The surest route to become permanently seasick-green is to finish law school, to be a lawyer, to be swept into a career that you didn’t want or intend and to see no way out.  If that describes you… Please, stop and think.  Get a partner to help your strategize what is and isn’t working.  It is possible to be a happy lawyer or to be otherwise happily employed with a law degree.

But, really…. Check out those WSJ blog comments.

Change your mind, change your practice(s).

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We cannot solve problems with the same level of consciousness that created them.
— Albert Einstein

This is one of my favorite quotes.  It is, at least for me, a truism that I must change my perspective, my way of thinking, my approach to a problem before I can possibly solve the problem.  Another great quote on this topic is, If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.  I understand that many 12-step programs use that statement to explain “insanity” in the context of the program.

What does the mean in the context of practicing law?  Plenty.  With regard to career advancement, if you’ve been taking the approach of being a reliable, industrious, somewhat reserved workerbee and you notice that you keep getting passed over for the big cases you’d like to work on, the answer probably isn’t to do more of the same and hope for a different result.  If you’re constantly running ragged, wondering how you can connect with your spouse and/or children in an hour or so at the beginning or end of each day, it’s a safe bet that you won’t shift your actions until and unless you shift your perspective.  Want a new job?  You’ll have to pull some time and attention away from what you’re doing now to make the time to launch a job search.  And if you believe that client development is something that you’ll begin “later,” you likely won’t recognize client development opportunities that may come your way — because chance favors the prepared mind.

To make a change requires stepping outside the situation long enough to identify a problem and then to make a mental shift that will help in solving that problem.  How the shift happens is individual to each person.  But creating and then using a shift relies on several basic principles.

1.  The shift must be authentic.  If your partner, your supervisor, your doctor, or anybody else tells you to make a change and you don’t buy into it, there will be no shift.  Remember the punchline to the joke asking how many psychiatrists are needed to change a lightbulb?  One, but the lightbulb has to really, really want to change.  No psychiatry here, but if you don’t really, really want to change (or at least really, really believe you need to change), chances are good that you’ll keep on doing the same old, same old.

2.  Maintaining the shift means keeping it in the forefront of your mind.  If you’re trying to make a habit of arranging lunch with one potential client a week, put that on your calendar where you see it daily.  If you’re trying to incorporate some stretching into your day so you don’t feel like you’re 90 years old when you hobble away from your desk at the end of the day, set an alarm that go off periodically.  If you’re wanting to improve your efficiency in the office, use time management tools that keep your eye on efficiency.  Holding onto a shift in perspective means keeping it in front of you visually and/or aurally, because it’s often all too easy to slide back to the old, familiar approach.

3.  Reaping the benefit of the shift requires action.  While it’s important to recognize a problem or a situation that can be improved, that’s empty if it’s a recognition without follow-through.  If you want more balance in your life, take some action, even if it’s small.  Claiming a 15-minute walk for yourself in the afternoon will not only provide some balance but also will remind you that you’re seeking balance.  (Put it in your calendar and keep that commitment, too!)

4.  It’s easier to maintain a shift, and to design and implement the actions that the shift calls for, with support.  Tell your spouse that you need to set aside 3 hours on Saturday morning to catch up on work.  Tell your secretary that you plan to eat lunch away from your desk one day this week.  Work with a coach to provide accountability as you set out on your client development plans.  If you decide you’re going to make a change, you probably have about a 40% chance of succeeding.  If you decide to make a change, tell someone what you’re going to do, and commit to doing it by a certain deadline, you have about a 95% chance of succeeding.

What shift do you need to improve your practice and your life?

Associates want communication from law firms; who’s responsible for professional development?

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A recent survey by the American Lawyer (no longer available) indicates that law firm associates are frustrated by the perceived lack of communication from law firm partners and management.  Problem topics include everything from finances to an associate’s development and advancement to the context for assignments.

Clearly, some firms have more problems with communication than others, as indicated by one associate’s plea just to be notified when new lawyers join the firm, something that is routine at most firms.

Three paragraphs stuck out to me:

If partners are too busy to critique the day-to-day work of their younger colleagues, then they’re even less likely to offer advice on career development, associates say. Associates who aggressively seek out this advice can find an unreceptive audience. One Proskauer Rose midlevel brought to her last semiannual review a wish list that included requests for more writing and deposition experience and a mentor for business development skills.

“They kind of laughed and said, ‘You shouldn’t be worried about [these things]’ at my level. It was frustrating: It was like talking to dead air,” she says.

That kind of response seems to exacerbate the us-versus-them mentality at firms. “Partners don’t care about our development as long as we keep billing the hours expected; much like the printers and the computers, the associates just serve a function,” grumbles another Proskauer associate. Proskauer chairman Fagin says he’s aware of and concerned about these complaints: “The fact that any of our associates feel that way is something that is troublesome to us,” he says.

This thread is partially a return to some topics I’ve recently discussed, so I won’t harp on those.  But a new thread emerges: who’s responsible for an associate’s professional development?

I had a conversation with a 2nd year associate recently, in which he conveyed his concern that other associates at his level were advancing more quickly than he was.  We explored that worry, and I agreed that it seemed to be true based on the facts he told me.  So I asked how he would like to develop his practice.  “Practice?”   He laughed.  “I don’t need to develop a practice, I already work in a law firm!”  Although perhaps that way of thinking would have carried the day in years past (perhaps), it certainly won’t suffice now.  Whereas firms used to hire associates and provide mentoring, expecting to grow them into partners, today’s partners are (for the most part) simply too busy to take new lawyers under their wing.

The path of least resistance now is to accept the work that comes, maybe to ask for work in a particular area, but essentially to be a worker bee.  That doesn’t cut it.  Instead, young associates need to focus on collecting the skills they need to develop the practice they want.  I hope this will seem so obvious as to be silly to many readers, but a lawyer has his own practice whether he’s an associate with the largest firm or a sole pracitioner.  It’s the lawyer’s responsibility to ensure that his practice is developing as he wants it to (i.e., don’t sit quietly by and take real estate matter after real estate matter if you really want to do securities work) and to go after the experiences and skills that will permit that development to continue.

How does a young associate manage to accomplish this?  She needs a mentor, a collaborator, someone who can provide guidance and request accountability.  A professional mentor is ideal, as is a coach who is experienced in practice.  (While coaches who are not lawyers can serve well for certain needs, it’s my bias — perhaps as a former practitioner myself — that a non-lawyer coach is less useful for this kind of task.  Your mileage may vary.)

Who’s working to help you succeed in your professional development?

What do I want for lawyers? And how does coaching help with that?

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I was having a conversation with a friend yesterday, and she asked why I’m coaching and what I want for lawyers.  Ok, actually, she asked if I want lawyers to leave the profession and seek happiness in some other field!  No, that isn’t what I want for lawers — unless, of course, that’s what some lawyer wants for him- or herself.  I also don’t want to turn lawyers into a group of navel-gazing serenity gurus who disengage from the struggle and basic needs of law.

What I want is for every lawyer to lead a life that works.  I want lawyers to win.  I believe that law is a wonderful field, full of possibilities and opportunities, and I believe that just about everyone who wants to practice can find a niche that’s suitable for them.  I believe everyone can win in their practice — and I don’t mean that in the litigation sense.  I mean to get the personal win, whatever that signifies for each person.

To win, we first have to define the game.  Do you want to make partner within the next 2 years?  Do you want to develop a $1M book of business?  Do you want to be home for dinner with your family every night, almost every night, three times a week?  Do you want to be the “go to” expert in your field?  If we want to win a game, the first key step is to know what game you’re playing and to know how we’ll be able to tell we’ve won.  That’s an exciting phase, because that’s where we get to dream big, to envision the practice and the life you want to lead, or to envision some smaller component that’s important to you and one that’s measurable.  Maybe you know right now what you want.  If not, if you’ve been working to keep moving forward on a path you didn’t consciously choose, then there’s a little extra work to do.  When you’re playing a game you decided to play, it feels right — even the hard times — and you know you’re heading in the right direction.

After you know what game you’re playing, it’s time to refine your skills and develop strategies for that game.  After all, if you’re the greatest 3-point shooter in history but your game is football, you need to be working on kicking that extra point, not on your 3-point skills.  You need to identify and develop the skills that will allow you to win your game.  You need a game plan and a practice routine.  And then, it’s time to play the game!

So what is it that I do?  I help people identify the game they want to play (not the game their spouse or a parent expects or the game everybody else was playing in law school), I help them develop the skills and strategies they’ll need to win the game, and then I encourage, push, and support them as they play their hearts out.  We’ll evaluate, we’ll see whether we need to adjust the strategy or get additional skills, and at the end of the game (a point we’ll define) we’ll celebrate their wins and learn from your losses.  And then it’s time to define the next game and go through the cycle again.

Perspective and options

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It doesn’t hurt to take a hard look at yourself from time to time, and this should help get you started.

During a visit to the mental asylum, a visitor asked the Director what criterion defines whether or not a patient should be institutionalized.

“Well,” said the Director, “we fill up a bathtub, then we offer a
teaspoon, a teacup and a bucket to the patient and ask him or her to empty the bathtub.”

“Oh, I understand,” said the visitor. “A normal person would use the
bucket because it’s bigger than the spoon or the teacup.

“No.” said the Director, “A normal person would pull the plug. Do you want a bed near the window?”

So why, you might ask, is this joke featured on a legal (ish) blog?  Because as lawyers, we so often develop tunnel vision.  We may be creative when it comes to case work — ready to dream up new and inventive legal theories to help our clients achieve their goals.  But when it comes to our own lives, we often fall into a rut.  Of course I have to be at the office from early til late; that’s how it’s always been.  Of course I have to continue practicing a particular kind of law; that’s my specialty.  Of course I went to work at the biggest and best law firm in town; that’s the goal everybody worked for in law school.

And the truth is, there’s nothing wrong with any of those “ruts” unless they don’t fit.  If I hate practicing criminal defense work but I’ve been doing it for 10 years, the point of decision comes when I realize that I could switch to a different specialty that might be more within my area of interest, or one that better complements the personal life I want to lead.  Not to say that there are no costs involved in making a change, because there may well be enormous costs.  But the highest cost of all lies in failing to see the options.

If we feel stuck, without options, in an uncomfortable practice (or in a firm that isn’t a good fit, or in a relationship that doesn’t meet our needs, or anything along those lines), chances are good that we’ll fight for a little while but eventually give up the struggle, succumb to the familiar even if it’s uncomfortable.  But if we see options, the struggle may be more intense because we’re struggling with the situation as well as the options we’ve identified, but eventually we’ll have the ability to make a choice.  The choice may demand a huge investment from us, but we avoid the impotent sense of surrender.  Choice provides power.

Sometimes the answer is both as clear and as obscure as pulling the bathtub plug when presented with the options of a bucket, teacup, or a spoon to use to empty the tub.   Alternatives that may be obvious to someone standing outside the situation may be invisible to the person facing it.

What challenges are you facing?  What options do you have?  Can you identify all of the options (including those hidden in plain view) and the results of each?  That’s the moment of decision and the moment of power.