Critical Skills Law Partners Need to Guide Associates

Managing people, leading a team, and being a good mentor are essential skills of an effective law firm partner. And they’re also on the long list of things lawyers don’t learn in law school.

That’s a real problem, because without strong management and leadership among its partnership, law firms will continue to struggle to attract and retain talented associates.

In our experiences consulting with and recruiting for law firms, a lack of training and mentorship is an important issue for associate satisfaction that often outranks compensation or prestige. And recent feedback from associates backs up this assertion.

According to a recent survey, which drew responses from more than 4,000 associates, just 17% indicated that money was their top priority. The results indicated that a commitment to helping associates in their career, specific action to help develop a career path, access to training, and good mentoring are more important indicators of job satisfaction.

There are many facets to management and leadership, but let’s focus on one of the most important: helping associates gain more mastery of the day-to-day work they perform for clients.

Guiding Associates to Success

Experts of all types, including law firm partners, suffer from the “curse of knowledge.” This is a cognitive bias that occurs when one person communicating with another individual assumes that individual has the background knowledge to understand the communication. Unfortunately, if they don’t, the information goes right over their head.

What this leads to, in practical terms, is partners assigning projects to associates by forwarding emails with directives such as “please handle.” The lack of clarity then leads to confusion and work product that misses the mark, resulting in a subsequent email missive to “please fix.” And the cycle repeats.

With this approach associates become increasingly dissatisfied until they ultimately leave. And from a partner’s perspective, it’s a big impediment to their own progress, because it prevents them from building a cohesive team that can help them grow a legal practice.

A better approach is to focus on three essential elements of effective management. From initial delegation to completion of a project, make interactions with members of your team experiential, actionable, and detailed.

Experiential

Whenever possible, sit down in person, or at least via video conference or phone call, for a conversation with an associate when assigning work or providing feedback on a project.

During delegation, keep it conversational, and don’t make it one-sided. Explain the objectives of the project and ask questions of the associate. What do you think the next steps should be? What are some of the issues we need to consider?

This approach will not only engage the associate to think more deeply about the issues, but also make them more invested in the outcome and lead them to take more ownership of the project. Close out by creating space for the associate to ask questions of their own.

The same experiential principles apply when providing feedback on work. When a partner sends a redline of their changes to an associate, they may get back the final work product they desire, but the associate will learn little from the experience.

A better approach is to walk through the changes so the associate can better understand the why—and not just the what— behind the changes, which will help them improve their performance on the next project.

Pressed for time? A few helpful comment bubbles explaining your changes can help tremendously and take very little additional time.

Actionable

Effective management and leadership is all about setting clear objectives and expectations. When team members are unclear about their roles and responsibilities, results suffer, motivation wanes, and attrition inevitably follows.

When meeting one-on-one, or especially when a project team meets as a group, it’s the lead partner’s job to ensure everyone is on the same page about their next action steps.

For example, many project teams will hold weekly status meetings to discuss progress and upcoming priorities. The result of such meetings should be a checklist of actionable steps and corresponding roles, responsibilities, and deadlines to avoid confusion and enhance effectiveness.

Detailed

When assigning tasks or providing feedback, avoid generalities (another symptom of the curse of knowledge).

When working with a junior lawyer, try to remember what it was like to stand in their shoes, and help them gain an understanding of the key areas to focus on in their work. For example, when assigning work, make sure to dig into the details of when (the deadline), who (the audience), what (the format), and why (the objective).

Also, make it clear if your expectation is that it’s the associate’s responsibility to ensure they’re clear on these issues for future projects. Creating a sense of accountability is another key component of management and leadership.

When providing feedback, rather than “this needs work” or “please fix,” focus on specific examples of what needs work or what needs to be fixed. Focus detailed feedback on the work—e.g., change this sentence from passive to active voice—not the individual—e.g., you’re not a strong writer—so members of your team don’t start harboring limiting beliefs about their potential.

Management and leadership behaviors are skills, not innate traits, which means that if you lack these skills you can develop them. They’re critical for growing your team and practice. And, just as importantly, they will help you to help those who work with and for you find purpose and gain mastery in their work.

This article does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg Industry Group, Inc., the publisher of Bloomberg Law and Bloomberg Tax, or its owners.

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Author Information

Rachael Bosch is managing director and founder at Fringe Professional Development, which provides workshops, coaching, and organizational development support for professionals at all levels.

Dareth Finn is the managing director of VOYlegal, an innovative search firm that places legal talent with law firms and corporations nationwide.