Legal Skills
Acquire necessary skills that you won't learn in law school
As a lawyer today, being proactive and taking charge of your own professional development is imperative regardless of where you currently are in your career. Many law firms, corporations and other organizations provide training and professional development as well as conduct periodic performance reviews. Nevertheless, your career and how it fares is ultimately your responsibility, just like your health and your personal finances.
Being a successful lawyer is about having more than just legal knowledge and legal skills. There are other attributes, such as client skills, leadership, communication, work flow management, staff management, self management and self motivation, that contribute to your success.
Employers generally refer to these attributes as "competencies."
Now that you are practicing, you may find the actual legal work to be less challenging than supervising your staff, counseling your clients, or organizing your day. That is because your role as a lawyer often means finding effective ways to work with people who either have competing interests or just no incentive to cooperate.
You spent at least three years in law school learning the "law." Once on the job, you began an apprenticeship to learn how to apply that knowledge in a real practice setting. As long as you practice law, the learning will continue with on the job training and CLE classes, at the minimum.
What you typically are not taught are the other competencies, such as client and people skills, leadership and work management, all of which often represent the difference between first place success and that of a runner-up. It is up to you to take charge of your career, whatever you envision that to be.
What would you need to know if ...
Go ahead, complete the sentence. What would you need to know if you become a federal district court judge, or CEO of the start-up company that just completed its second round of venture capital financing? What would you need to know if you wanted to start a non-governmental organization (NGO) to focus on climate control initiatives?
Now take inventory of the competencies that you have. What are you missing? What needs work?
Back to basics
Maintain a thirst for knowledge. Be curious. Keep learning. Being a lawyer requires constant learning, if only to keep up because laws, clients, and clients' needs change.
Know your clients. Understand your clients' businesses and business models. What do they sell? Who are their customers? What are their distribution channels? Who are their competitors?
Be interested. For example, if your work involves financials but numbers were never your forte, learn how to read financial statements. Doing so will increase your confidence, which can only help you become a better lawyer.
If your clients are individuals, ascertain what it is that they truly want to accomplish. Start by listening to what they say as well as what they do not say. Ask the right questions with empathy and without judgment. If you are working with non-native English speaking clients, try connecting with them by learning a few words or phrases in their native language. Your efforts, if sincere, will be received with appreciation, and often, with an eagerness to teach you additional vocabulary.
Find a mentor, be a mentor
Avail yourself of any formal mentoring arrangements that your employer has. If there is no formal program within your organization, find one yourself. Identify a lawyer with whom you have worked and who you admire. Ask whether he or she would consider being your mentor. If you would rather not ask, then try to get as much work from your would-be mentor as you can, either by being formally assigned to that particular lawyer or by just volunteering for additional work from that person.
Once you have a mentor inside the workplace, consider finding a mentor outside, preferably one that is in another field altogether.
For example, if you are interested in working with nonprofits, consider finding a mentor who works in that sector or is heavily involved with nonprofits.
Finding a mentor outside the legal industry enables you to accomplish two different goals. Connecting with your mentor expands your network, and it increases your knowledge about the nonprofit sector. This knowledge may include legal opportunities in nonprofits and information on how they are managed, as well as access to the people who run them.
Lastly, consider sharing your experiences; donate your time and skills to mentor someone else.
Two excellent guides on mentoring and working with a mentor, by Ida O. Abbott, are "Being an Effective Mentor: 101 Practical Strategies for Success" (NALP, 2006) and "Working with a Mentor: 50 Practical Suggestions for Success" (NALP, 2006).
Break out of your circle
If you are a lawyer, chances are, many, if not most, of your friends and acquaintances are lawyers. Break out of your circle of lawyer friends and establish connections with people who are not lawyers. Strive for diversity in occupation.
Doing this will increase your knowledge base as well as your network and may lead to getting clients and developing business. Even if you are not interested in generating business now, having connections outside the legal field can facilitate your next job search, particularly if you become interested in launching a new career.
Build new relationships by simply selecting an endeavor or an activity in which you are interested, and get involved! One great resource on the topic of harnessing the power of building sincere relationships is Ari Kaplan's "The Opportunity Maker: Strategies for Inspiring Your Legal Career Through Creative Networking and Business Development" (Thomson-West, 2008).
Relationships matter
As you progress in your career, your interpersonal skills, those oft-mentioned "people skills," will become increasingly important. At some point, you may be supervising junior lawyers and support staff, negotiating with opposing counsel, advising clients on various options and strategies.
Communicate with purpose and clarity. Be confident and aggressive without offending. Practice active listening. Be empathetic and strive to anticipate what people want (or do not want) by putting yourself in their shoes. Your ability to accurately "read" a situation is often helpful in your endeavors to get things done, whether it is to achieve a consensus or get support staff to work overtime.
Finally, try always to be a resource for others.
Beware of labels
There are sub-specialties within specialties today. Yesterday's counsel to companies in the transportation industry becomes the lawyer for the airlines sector.
That is great if it is what you want. However, if you are consistently getting similar clients or the same kind of work for different clients, and it is not the kind of work you want to do, beware that you may be tagged with a label that does not fit with your goals.
You must be proactive in getting the kind of work and the type of experience that aligns with what you want for your professional growth. Speak with your mentor(s), volunteer for additional work in areas that interest you, do pro bono work to expand your knowledge and to enhance your skills.
You are the office
In an environment of ever evolving technology, expectations are that you will be the one typing your own briefs, memoranda and correspondence, regardless of the employer you have, be it large or small, government agency, nonprofit or law firm.
Save yourself time and grief by learning what you need to know to function as "your office." Allot adequate time to learn all the software and operating systems your employer uses for its e-mail, administration, time-keeping, bookkeeping and other back-office functions.
In this era of 24/7 connectivity, you are the office.
Work with strengths and weaknesses
Focus on both. You have innate abilities for certain things that you do well, learn quickly, often without much effort. Demonstrate and use those abilities to build your confidence while you also work on areas in which you are not a natural.
For example, if you are shy, nudge yourself to make connections by finding a mentor, being a mentor, or doing volunteer work.
Whether the markets are up, down or sideways, and the economy is good or bad, your goal is to have your own professional development plan to acquire or hone the competencies that are critical to your continued success, allowing you to move forward continually.
Having a plan will illuminate roads and paths you might not have seen had you simply let someone else do the driving. You also acquire leverage, and avoid becoming redundant or easily replaced.
By incorporating the above elements into your professional development plan, you provide a hedge against becoming irrelevant.
(Published by Law.com – August 3, 2010)