Law firms that build a well-defined training curriculum around these business-of-law topics will position their lawyers to succeed in developing and cultivating successful client relationships. This training should be viewed as a journey with defined stages that starts the moment a new associate walks in the door and runs in parallel to, and in concert with other training and development programs offered by the firm.

Stage 1: Junior associates

Lawyers just starting their career are sponges ready to absorb whatever information is thrown at them. There are few preconceptions to overcome, and it is a rare opportunity to mold mindsets from the outset. This is the stage of lawyer development where the ground is most fertile, yet many law firms choose to focus their junior training curriculum almost exclusively on imparting substantive legal skills.

As new lawyers begin their careers, firms should provide a strong foundation through a law firm economics course that covers basic business and financial concepts, and starts to introduce the client perspective on value. This should be followed by a Legal pricing & project management 101 course that teaches basic concepts around scoping, budgeting, pricing models (including alternative fee arrangements), and communication.

In addition, exposing junior associates to some on-the-job basic project management tasks will help crystalize some of the concepts covered in the basic training sessions. An easy way to provide this experience is to ask junior associates to provide some basic assistance with developing budgets and project plans. This exercise forces them to grapple with the interconnectivity of staffing, scoping, and budgeting. This first exposure often leads to an “Aha!” moment in which a junior associate realizes that pricing and budgeting legal work involves much more than just picking a number.

Stage 2: Mid-level associates

For mid-level associates, continued development requires moving from introductory lectures to more on-the-job training. It is important for firms to build a culture where associates are encouraged to take a meaningful role in core pricing and project management tasks, such as building and managing budgets.

Although the emphasis shifts to more doing for mid-level associates, formal education and training should not stop. This is a perfect time to introduce more advanced courses on project management and pricing models. One of the best ways to make these concepts come to life is a half-day budgeting and pricing workshop at which associates work in teams and are provided scenarios from which they need to develop a project scope, staffing plan, and budget.

Such workshops not only provide the opportunity to apply learned concepts, but they help build confidence, which significantly reduces the anxiety that often strikes when an associate is first asked by a partner to handle these tasks.

Stage 3: Senior associates

As associates advance to the senior level, they are expected to take a more holistic role in pricing and project management, including some client-facing responsibilities. This requires being able to understand client goals and expectations, while working collaboratively with clients on defining scope, assumptions, and staffing.

Client panels are a great way to drive home the importance of collaboration throughout the pricing and project management lifecycle. Not only do these sessions allow associates to learn directly from clients in a safer, more relaxed setting, but these sessions also reinforce the importance that clients place on budget management, efficiency, and value. In short, they help dispel any last doubts a skeptical associate may have about whether “this stuff really matters.” As a bonus, clients generally welcome the opportunity to take part in these sessions and view the firm’s investment in this type of training as an added value to their business.

In addition, people management — including delegation and staffing — takes on increasing importance at this stage of a lawyer’s development. A training session covering how to effectively delegate work, supervise more junior associates and paralegals, and spot inefficiencies early in a project is a good first step.

Equally important, managing up becomes an essential skill when taking on more advanced project management tasks. Associates need to feel empowered to share their views with partners in several key areas, including anticipating the effort required to complete tasks, the expected duration of a project, and core assumptions and exclusions.

Stage 4: New partners

The transition to partner brings a host of new responsibilities and expectations related to client management. For many lawyers, this is the first time they are exposed to the billing and collections processes. These topics alone deserve a dedicated training session that covers both the nuts and bolts (billing deadlines, how to access and edit pre-bills, year-end forecasting, and collections, etc.) and the subtler arts of handling time write-downs and discussing invoices with clients. The faculty for this training should include both the leader of the firm’s billing team as well as one or more senior partners who can add examples and experiences around client communication.

In addition, new partners must learn more advanced profitability concepts in order to build a successful book of business. If the firm tracks profitability metrics, this is an ideal time for an in-depth training session covering the key drivers of profitability for the firm. For most new partners, some profitability drivers, such as rates and utilization, will likely be familiar concepts; however, concepts such as leverage and realization may be less familiar and are important to cover in greater depth.

Finally, new partners require guidance on how to take a lead role on pricing and service delivery. This includes learning how to interpret client requests, creating and selling value, negotiating price when required, articulating and defending the value of the firm’s services, and dealing with scope changes and client pushback on fees. Many of these skills will develop over time with practice and experience, but giving new partners a solid foundation will shorten the learning curve. An advanced course on these topics that includes role playing and small group exercises is an ideal way to both teach the key concepts and provide an opportunity for new partners to give these new skills and techniques a test run.

In her book, Richardson offers a clear and actionable blueprint of how to achieve the kind of professional success that is personally meaningful and adds value to the people and organizations you touch. The book is replete with stories and lessons that bring the habits and their impact to life; and Richardson offers her insights to a broad audience: those about to enter the workforce, mid-level professionals seeking to reach the next rung in their career, and emerging leaders.

The habits

Richardson digs deep in showing why these six habits are “essential” for those who want to be strategic and effective in creating opportunities that move their career forward without losing touch of their most deeply held values. These essential six habits are:

1. 1. 1. Take Stock — the practice of assessing where you are against where you want to go, identifying the gaps, and taking steps to close them.
      2. Take Risks — the practice of stepping out of your comfort zone to try something new.
      3. Take Credit — the practice of clearly communicating the value that you bring to the table and acknowledging the contributions of others.
      4. Take a Hand — the two-fold practice of asking others for guidance and assistance and paying it forward by doing the same for others.
      5. Take Command — the practice of leading in a manner authentic to who you are and doing so with authority and confidence.
      6. Take a Stand — the practice of using your voice to express your values — in spite of the risks — to correct what needs fixing.

Some of the career-changing habits Richardson recommends may, at first blush, appear simple and easy to implement, but they are neither. By sharing stories from her own experience and those of her mentees, friends, and colleagues, Richardson illustrates how much time and effort it takes to utilize these practices well.��For example, she candidly shares how�� she morphed from being a shy and insecure networker who “stumbled” in conversations into a “serial” connector and confident conversationalist.

You can read a transcript of the interview with Veta T. Richardson here.

“Today, you can drop me into a room filled with strangers anywhere in the world… but it didn’t happen on its own,” she states. “It was the result of a careful analysis of where my networking skills were compared with where they needed to be, followed by equally careful��planning of the steps and actions required to close the gap, combined with consistent practice��to perfect the skill.”

To practice taking a stand, Richardson advises using your voice to speak out at work when you personally experience or witness “any form of microaggression, belittling, bullying, bias, or discrimination.” She shares the story of when, years ago, the company she worked for sent her an invitation from the CEO’s office to a minstrel show put on by a theater group for the holidays. She details how she not only declined the invitation but made it clear why she was deeply offended. Soon after that, she accepted another invitation from the office of the CEO to a black-tie fundraiser.

Richardson’s action brought to light an issue that needed to be acknowledged and corrected. Voicing her objection in a professional yet unequivocal manner was bold and — and, as she notes — an exercise in practicing another one of her six habits, that of taking risks. “When you Take a Stand rather than let others demean your values, beliefs, or heritage, you are being authentic… and that builds trust,” Richardson explains.

The risk Richardson took in that example was significant. As she acknowledges, however, there are varying levels of risk in applying each of the habits. Her advice: get in the habit of taking small risks to strengthen your risk-taking muscle. Why? Because, as Richardson rightly asserts, “success lies at the intersection of risk and opportunity.”

Final thoughts

At its core, Richardson’s��Take Six is about exercising personal leadership in a manner that nurtures your innate and learned skills, safeguards your values, and adds measurably to the success and well-being of the people and organizations that you touch.

Internally at Mintz, Berson is also known as an über-mentoring champion, an informal mentor to dozens of attorneys, and one of the key players in most of the firm’s mentoring programs.

Before going to law school, Berson never saw herself as a lawyer and originally planned on working in the healthcare industry. She only went to law school because her parents stressed getting as much education as possible as a first-generation American family. However, the universe had different plans.

After graduating from law school and before joining Mintz, Berson worked at a boutique law firm and was given the opportunity to gain expertise in . She became known as the go-to attorney in reviewing transactions in the healthcare industry and the resident expert on anti-kickback laws. This expertise gave her access to healthcare companies through the firm’s private equity clients.

As the healthcare regulatory marketplace evolved, Berson found it an easy path to continue to develop her expertise, particularly in pharmacy benefits which also helped accelerate her career.

‘It can be done’

Berson holds two other key leadership roles at Mintz, sitting on the policy and compensation committee and the women’s initiative steering committee. She credits her ability to garner the skill and influence to serve in these roles to being action-oriented and a problem solver with a “can-do” attitude in whatever capacity she was leading or serving.

She adopted the mantra, “It can be done” unconsciously from a named partner at the first firm at which she worked. “As my career advanced, I think that the saying helped me,” she explains. “And I’ve given it out to people that work with me.” For example, when a client would come to her with a less-than-stellar or risky idea, Berson diplomatically steered the client away from their idea by asking questions about the overall goal behind the idea. From there, she and the client would come up with a strategic and creative way to achieve the goal.

Indeed, Berson’s secret weapon is her passion for the business side of the law and her ability to communicate in the language of the client and find alternate ways to solve problems.

Berson has been closely involved in most of the firm’s mentoring programs. Mintz employs several distinct programs based on the audience — one for junior associates, patent agents, and new lateral associates; one for senior associates; one attorneys of color; and an informal one for women called the “the 66 Supper Club,” which is named after the year the first woman made partner at Mintz in 1966. The women-focused program features a small group of associates meeting with two partners over dinner to get to know each other better on a personal level.

“Our sponsor program really is intended to ensure that associates of color are fully integrated and are retained through the membership (partnership) ranks,” she notes. “This program exists to assist them with any gaps in experience, goal setting, and career planning. The program also makes sure that the participants are introduced to influential individuals at the firm and have access to networking opportunities outside the firm.”

The firm’s program for senior associates, called the Adviser program, “helps with professional development, providing guidance relating to goal setting and career planning for the path to partner and helping to increase visibility both within the firm and externally” as senior associates plan their path to partner, she adds.

Let the mentor get to know you

With her expertise in being a mentor and matching mentor and mentee pairs, Berson understands how to maximize the investment of people’s time spent administering the program and individually for both the mentor and mentee. She says that mentors should have at least a minimum of two years seniority above the mentee, and says this has enhanced her ability to connect with attorneys across generational differences and from diverse backgrounds.

Berson also advises that a firm should take the mentee’s unique situation and goals into consideration when being paired with a mentor. For example, if the mentee is a working parent or has a reduced-time work schedule, that should be a consideration. Other career factors, including how many people of influence the mentee knows or doesn’t know, whether the mentee wants to move to another office or wants to gain unique experience in their practice are also important and should be considered. “For a lateral attorney, we want the mentor to focus on firm resources, really help the lateral understand the firm’s culture and what’s important to us in addition to making introductions to others in the firm,” she says. In this case, the mentee would need someone well-connected in the firm.

For mentees, taking initiative to own the relationship with the mentor and drive the agenda for meetings is the best way to maximize their own efforts as well as those of the mentor and others involved in managing the program. “Setting up regular meetings, showing your mentor that you’re proactive, and checking in with your mentor pays dividends,” Berson states. “Showing that positive, proactive attitude will pay off.”

Mentees also need to share who they are as a person, Berson adds. “Mentees shouldn’t just be coming to the mentor and saying all the matters they’re working on and how many associates they’re overseeing, or how many partners they’re getting to work with,” she says, adding that it is crucial that mentees let mentors get to know them. “Let them know what is important to you, how you think you can succeed in the law firm, and what are your fears about not succeeding.”

The best relationships evolve based on a personal connection and by building trust through showing some vulnerability, Berson says.

Women are only half as likely as men to have a sponsor, according to Sylvia Ann Hewitt, author of the book (Forget a Mentor) Find a Sponsor, leaving many women without one of the key components of a successful legal career and one which is critical for the development of a strong network and support system.

We wanted to look deeper into this sponsor-gap and see why building a personal “board of directors” of both sponsors and mentors is vital for a successful legal career.

Differences between a sponsor & a mentor

The simplest way to describe the difference between a mentor and sponsor is that a mentor provides advice and guidance to his or her mentee, while a sponsor advocates for the sponsee when she is not in the room and to promote advancement opportunities. Both mentors and sponsors take a particular interest in an attorney and her career development.

It is vital for all attorneys to have mentors, but it is especially crucial in the beginning of an attorney’s career, when she is learning the ropes of practicing law and navigating a new law firm or company. In this context, an attorney who is a few years senior and working at the same firm or company may become someone with whom a junior lawyer feels she can communicate with openly and honestly.

As an attorney’s career develops, so will her network of mentors. While it is possible to have one mentor, it is more likely that a young attorney will build a list — a personal board of directors, of sorts — to provide guidance on the different aspects of her career. A mentor can be helpful in navigating smaller issues such as feedback on assignments, as well as larger ones that typically come with career advancement, such as whether and when to change law firms or go in-house.

A sponsor is typically someone more senior in the organization who has a seat at the table within the power structure of the firm or company. The sponsor has seen qualities in the junior lawyer that make him or her comfortable advocating on the junior lawyer’s behalf. However, a sponsor relationship will likely take time to cultivate because sponsors have to put his or her own reputation on the line by providing support for the advancement of a junior attorney.

In some instances, the same person could serve as a mentor and a sponsor. It is more likely, however, that over the course of her career an attorney will develop many a network that consists of both mentors and sponsors, some of whom will remain consistent and some of whom will last for just a short period of time.

How to find sponsors & mentors

There are several ways to identify those individuals within your firm or company or outside of it that would be good sponsors and mentors, including:

Build relationships organically — When a young attorney begins practicing, she assumes that she will be assigned a mentor or be able to pick one, but the process for finding meaningful mentors and sponsors is much more organic. Lawyers are busy and are more likely to take the time to advocate for another attorney if they are personally interested in that attorney’s development. A good way to develop these relationships is by spending time getting to know your colleagues at networking events.

Look for them at your employer — Mentor and sponsor relationships are more likely to form naturally with senior attorneys who work for the same employer. For example, senior attorneys typically need to assign work to a junior attorney, and the easiest way to grow these relationships is to do a good job on assignments and show eagerness to learn from the senior attorney. Taking initiative and volunteering to help the senior attorney with other assignments will increase the likelihood that a lasting relationship will develop.

Schedule time to develop relationships — Set aside a few hours each week to focus on and cultivate relationships to make the practice of building connections part of your weekly routine.

Cultivating meaningful connections during the pandemic

Typically, developing quality relationships involves attending company- or firm-sponsored events and inviting prospective mentors and sponsors to lunch or coffee, but now, social distancing requires a change in tactics:

Attend virtual events — The current pandemic requires a modified approach to relationship building while social distancing measures are in place. An attorney can plan virtual coffee dates, workout sessions, or happy hours in an effort to maintain relationships and create those meaningful connections. To make an even greater impact, pass along links to articles or webinars to prospective mentors or sponsors, and simply make an effort to check in with people.

Make post-event follow-up efforts — With in-person events cancelled or postponed, many networking groups are hosting virtual seminars, panels, and other social events, which create opportunities to network with existing contacts and forge new connections. Junior attorneys should seek out these virtual events and make an effort to connect with speakers or other attendees via LinkedIn or email after the event is over.

Build expertise in new legal issues — The COVID-19 pandemic is forcing changes to the legal landscape, and junior attorneys have to adjust to these changes. However, the crisis also offers junior lawyers the opportunity to develop expertise in emerging areas and issues. If she takes initiative to become a subject matter expert during this time, she could use this learned expertise on developing new projects, writing client alerts, or taking on additional responsibility within an organization — none of which require in-person interactions. Adding value in this way can forge new connections with co-workers and clients, and develop existing mentor and sponsor relationships.

Finding sponsors and mentors is critical to a female attorney’s development and success throughout her career. The two relationships serve different roles in developing and promoting the attorney, and both will serve as her sounding board as she rises through the ranks.

While it takes time to develop and maintain these relationships, the benefits are tenfold, and every attorney should make this a priority in her practice.

This article was co-authored by , Counsel with Lowenstein Sandler’s Employee Benefits & Executive Compensation practice; and , Vice President and Assistant General Counsel in the Business Unit Support group at QBE North America.

Indeed, one of the greatest benefits of coaching is that the methodology is scalable and can be deployed to meet various needs of many individuals.

Coaching, historically, has been viewed as a signal for a performance issue and therefore, was not an essential component of a talent development strategy in Corporate America. Fortunately, that myth is fading quickly within the private sector and within the legal industry. In fact, Costigan says she spends about 5% of her time working with lawyers who “need immediate attention.”

Costigan says she spends the majority of her time working with partners on business development and with associates on career planning. Depending on the individual, coaching takes many different forms, she explains. For example:

• • • She works with junior partners who want to take their business development efforts to the next level and aspiring partner candidates who seek help for creating a strategy plan to earn the promotion.
    • She works with practice leaders and supervisors on effective ways to manage teams, with the leaders’ goal of helping their attorneys hone business development skills or to free up their own time as leader to dedicate more time to business development.
    • Finally, she runs a few group coaching programs, one of which is dedicated to partners that are part of a under-represented racial or ethnic group, to help them build their books of business.

Role of Coaching for Lawyers of Color

A full-time coach within a law firm offers a level of individualized support and a space of non-judgment for attorneys who identify as a racial or ethnic minority. “One of the common challenges across this group when working on business development is that operating in a mostly homogenous environment is more taxing energetically, both from the mental and physical standpoints,” observes Costigan. The energy invested in dealing with the pressure to be perfect, for example, and the behaviors it leads to — the double- and triple-checking of assignments or being overly cautious in deciding when to speak up — erodes endurance and exacerbates the mental strain in an already stressful, hypercompetitive environment.

These diverse attorneys often describe this situation as a “double-edged sword of having to be perfect and not being able to make mistakes,” Costigan says, adding that the reasons behind this “energy tax” for lawyers of color can vary.

For example, lawyers of color who are striving to become partners and who may have grown up in a culture that operates with norms of respect and being deferential to elders and authority, may find themselves having to act outside of their cultural norm in a professional context and then in another way within their community — sometimes referred to as code-switching. This code-switching takes a toll on the individual.

This could result in a situation where an associate of color — who may also be the youngest or most junior person in the room — may see himself being respectful and deferential to other speakers in his own culture’s context; but in a big law firm environment, waiting or not speaking up at all could be career-diminishing.

Coaching Helps to Manage a Diverse Team

Costigan also notes that coaching produces positive results in helping a partner in managing a group of people from different backgrounds. In her one-on-one coaching sessions, she works with the partner to look at each individual team member to ascertain if the partner is guiding each person differently based on what each person brings to the table.

If, for example, a partner is reluctant to give constructive feedback to a woman, Costigan asks open-ended questions to help the partner understand what his role was in the woman not meeting expectations:

1. 1. 1. What expectations were communicated about the work product at the beginning of the assignment?
      2. What about the deliverable did not meet expectations?
      3. Describe the gap between the expectations and the state of the deliverable when it was submitted.
      4. What do you think, if you were going to put yourself in that person’s shoes, might explain the difference?
      5. What do you expect to change about this situation if you do not communicate your expectation or your feedback?

The process of asking these questions empowers the partner to realize that he has to give the feedback, even if there is some discomfort about the act of giving feedback. When this occurs, Costigan works with the partner to rehearse the act of delivering feedback to help him explore what language feels best and most authentic.

Open-Ended Questions Hone Empathy & Perspective

The method of asking open-ended questions also helps increase the understanding of what another person is experiencing or going through. As Costigan used open-ended questions to resolve interpersonal conflicts between two individuals across generations, she says it was very common to hear, “Oh, I have never thought of that in this way.”

The process has also been successful in building more effective work relationships. In a situation between a more senior white male partner who is supervising work assigned to a second-year African American, LGBTQ female associate, for example, Costigan, as the coach, will literally reverse roles with the senior partner. Using the two chairs in her office, Costigan will have the senior partner sit in the chair across from her to give him the perspective of literally sitting in the shoes of the African American associate. Costigan then proceeds to ask a series of open-ended questions, starting with, “What do you know about that may be going on with her?” The most common answer from the senior partner is usually, “Well, I really don’t know.”

In response, Costigan will ask, “Well, how could you know?” and the partner then arrives at his own answer of the next needed action, “Well, I could spend more time understanding what it might be like to be this person… .”

In order to expand the benefits of these sessions across the firm, Costigan is partnering with Winston & Strawn’s chief talent officer and director of learning and development to create a leadership curriculum to broaden the use of coaching skills and the use of open-ended questions firmwide.

Costigan says she knows it will not be easy for seasoned lawyers to learn, simply because coaching is a completely different method from the typical way lawyers operate — answering questions rather than asking them. In the long run, however, Costigan recognizes the overall potential positive impact. “Using a coaching approach often takes things off of your to-do list because it’s always meant to empower the associate or whoever you’re coaching,” she explains. “It will free up our leaders to allow them to engage more in the actual relationship.”

Differing World Experiences Between Associates

For Abrahams, the conversation brought into clear view the idea “that people experience the world in different ways — and it was one of the reasons why I got involved in diversity and inclusion.” Some of the ways in which the two associates’ experiences differed were stark, and included:

Work assignments — The associates’ experiences around what work they were assigned varied greatly. “The White associate was talking about the matters that he had been working on and the skills that he was attaining through the work, while the African-American associate explained, ‘I can’t even make my hours. I’m not getting this type of work. I’m not growing my skills,’” Abrahams explains.

Abrahams knows from her time doing exit interviews that the Black associate’s experiences were not occurring in isolation.

Indeed, not meeting billable hours requirements was only part of the story. The quality of the work was also an issue for the Black associate, and this also impacts retention, she notes. “If a person is stuck on a document review for the first three years of their career, when another third-year associate is already doing work — such as drafting documents on the transactional side and doing depositions on the litigation side — the skill trajectory is completely different.”

Contrasting accounts in mentoring — The ideal mentoring experience for a lawyer is having someone to help them learn what the rules — both written and unwritten — are in the practice and teaching her or him how to differentiate themselves to get the good work assignments. Sometimes, firms put people who are alike together — the White associate gets a White mentor and the Black associates get a Black mentor. If the Black mentor doesn’t know the unwritten rules, such as how to build a reputation, or how to keep your plate of work full, then they can’t pass that along to the new associate.

Different experiences in sponsorship — Another challenge that Abrahams has seen between White and Black associates is sponsorship, with the White associate having a champion and the lawyer of color lacking a sponsor.

This was the case of the Black associate in A Tale of Two Associates, Abrahams states. “In my exit interviews, I cannot tell you how many diverse attorneys say to me, ‘I had no champion,’ — someone who was using their clout to help me move forward and get the great cases.”

Solutions to Bridge the Gap between White & Black Associates

In Abrahams’ talk at the conference, she expands on the varied encounters that this Black and White associate had in order to introduce structural solutions that law firms can implement to improve the experiences of lawyers of color at the firm. Some of these structural solutions include:

Formal mentoring programs must have a check-in process after pairs are assigned — The first solution Abrahams cited to help Black associates improve their experiences is for the law firm to go beyond simply assigning a mentor. The firm must do check-ins to see how the relationship is going; and the formalized mentoring program must be well managed with follow-up times built in.

In particular, mentoring across racial, gender, or ethnic differences must be carefully managed. Abrahams cited another example of an African-American female associate paired with a 65-year-old boomer partner. The Black female associate told Abrahams that “the first three years of her practice, she had to fight to get work. She had to beat doors and make phone calls.” After three years she left the firm because she was exhausted. “Her mentor was a wonderful, kind, generous person, and tried to help her the best that he could,” Abrahams says. “But he couldn’t be in her shoes.”

Participating in RFPs and in pitches — Including lawyers of color in an RFP — and if the firm wins the work, giving the associate work on the matter — is a crucial step in building confidence. Inviting lawyers of color to participate in pitches is a critical learning opportunity because they get to see how a pitch unfolds, what comprises a pitch, and how the process operates. “A classroom pitch 101 is great and wonderful,” Abrahams says. “But until you actually see it demonstrated live, you don’t really know.”

Monitoring work assignments — Many law firms have an informal work assignment system, also known as a free market system. The free market system assumes that all lawyers start out on an equal playing field and know how to operate in that environment. Many lawyers of color are the first in their family to go to law school and don’t have access to the connections from family and friends to those in white-collar professions to teach them how to navigate an organization. Many times, these associates are not learning these skills in law school.

Remember the Black associate from A Tale of Two Associates? For him, the free market system was an absolute failure, Abrahams notes. To level the playing field around work assignments, a formal system that includes monitoring is key — and it could be as simple as the playground rule of taking turns.

“One attorney gets a certain type of work to expand the breadth of his experiences and then his peer gets this work the next time ensuring equal opportunity to receive quality work,” Abrahams explains.

Moreover, it may have become a model for how the entire legal industry should approach talent because even though the industry depends almost entirely on human talent, it historically has not invested in developing the emotional intelligence required for effective leadership.

Miller says she was drawn to the law and public service because she wanted to make an impact “for the purpose of something just or good.” For her, it was never a question that she would be a litigator because of her love for language and the challenge of working with “words and their meaning to inspire people, to impact people, and to effect change.” Miller’s legal career evolved by going back and forth between the private sector and government service — from Capitol Hill, to a large defense firm, to the Attorney General’s office in Washington, D.C., and finally to the plaintiff-side powerhouse law firm, Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll.

Nugent’s path to the law was different but at its core, was very similar. After college, she joined Public Citizen, a national consumer advocacy group, finding that her work as a lawyer was an incredible privilege and a way to “have a meaningful impact, aligning with my values and something that I’m proud of.”

One of the most notable similarities that Miller and Nugent share is their passion for problem-solving. Miller sees the art of inquiry and the ability to hold multiple perspectives as crucial to crafting the most elegant solution, and Nugent sees their public client practice as a problem-solving exercise writ-large. “Litigation is the tool that we use to solve problems, and there is no shortage of them in the world,” Nugent explains.

For example, both Nugent and Miller are heavily involved in litigation around the nation’s opioid crisis. “This is the most complex litigation and multi-party negotiation that this country has ever seen because of the number of government entities involved in prosecuting it and the vastness of the problem we are trying to address,” Miller says, adding that they are finding purpose and meaning in doing good and are also challenged in a way that they have never experienced because of the intricacy of the legal and public health issues to be resolved.

Leadership & Talent Development

Miller and Nugent’s strategy for leadership has been heavily influenced by several factors: i) collaboration in support of innovation; ii) prioritizing talent development; iii) coaching their people; iv) risk-taking; and v) dynamic equilibrium.

Collaboration is the cornerstone of their success — Collaboration has informed the way Miller and Nugent run the practice as co-chairs. Because they lead by example on partnership, it has filtered throughout their team and been something that the other members of the group have embraced. The complete trust Miller and Nugent have in one another allows them to think creatively and to encourage their team to do the same.

Going all in on developing talent — Both Nugent and Miller have an unwavering commitment to developing their team. Their (not so) secret sauce is the execution of a “regular process for providing feedback, guidance, and skill development to our team members in conjunction with recognizing that we are giving each individual a mix of things to do that both play to their strengths and help them develop in areas where they either haven’t had the opportunity to develop skills or where they haven’t really performed that well, but through experience, modeling and training can do better and then take great pride in that success,” Nugent explains.

Likewise, Miller sees her main strength (and passion) as a leader as having the ability to “learn something new, practice it as a stakeholder, and then teach and share it with others,” moving smoothly back and forth between a learner’s and a teacher’s mindset. This flexibility is essential to maintaining curiosity and openness to new ideas, Miller adds, and this is something they both cultivate on their team.

Coaching — Through coaching, Miller has been able to let go of the mindset that she had to have all the answers for her clients and her team. The coaching paradigm allowed her “the freedom to focus more on asking powerful questions and on giving people the space to find their own answers,” she explains.

Risk-taking through Personal Enrichment — Nugent started a personal style blog, , after her husband encouraged her make time for a creative outlet and to learn something new. As a fan of fashion, she enjoys putting unique combinations of fabric, prints, and hardware together, “In my next life, I will be a textile designer,” she jokes. What fascinates Nugent about the whole endeavor is the risk-taking part of it; “it is important to put yourself out there to see what kind of response you get.”

Nugent’s fashion blog also brings a joy to the office and has a positive impact on morale, Miller observes. “Our clients are very serious people. Our cases are very serious cases. [To balance that], we’ve got to maintain a certain level of not just levity, but also joy.”

“Dynamic Equilibrium” — Finally, the pair’s understanding of “holding the tension between needing stability and transformation” is where they both thrive as leaders. Miller describes this leadership capability as “dynamic equilibrium” and says it allows leaders “to prepare their teams for continuous evolution.” Both Miller and Nugent “support individuals’ growth to step up and learn new skills, while helping them adapt and move beyond the loss of outdated skills or business systems, so they can embrace new ones.”

Further, leaders with this capability must have the resilience to shepherd their teams through challenging transitions, using a growth mindset. “Evolution is inevitable and should be embraced,” Miller explains. “At its core, this means constantly weighing which values and habits the profession should keep and which it should shed to make room for change.”

Today’s leaders owe a duty to the next generation of legal professionals to teach them how to be successful navigating the system as it exists now and empower them to pioneer something different, Miller says. “That is what we must do to thrive.”

In a new white paper, , by Natalie Runyon, Director of Enterprise Content �������� Legal Executive Institute, and Alyson Carrel, Clinical Associate Professor of Law and Assistant Director for the Center on Negotiation and Mediation at the Pritzker School of Law at Northwestern University, we examine the Delta Model and what it shows about 21st century skill competencies for lawyers.

The Delta Model builds upon the great body of research and work that has been produced on these skill competencies and seeks to provide an adaptive vehicle for comprehensive lawyer competence. The Model also works to provide a framework backed by rigorous empirical research that views these skills from the perspective of current clients and can adapt to their future evolution as well.

You can download a copy of the new white paper, , here.

As a baseline, the Delta Model was created as a concept and then tested against the perspectives of 45 professionals composed primarily of hiring managers of in-house counsel, hiring managers of outside counsel, and hiring managers of new law school graduates.

As the white paper demonstrates, the area of Personal Effectiveness competencies is critical to the success of the 21st century lawyers, but with variability. Within that larger category, the competencies of Entrepreneurial Mindset and Adaptability topped the list, based on survey respondents. Emotional Intelligence remains in the Top 3 of attributes cited, according to interview feedback and survey respondents; but was a far second to Entrepreneurial Mindset.

Business Fundamentals and Project Management & Workflow were the top competencies in the Business & Operations category.

As the white paper explains, the Delta Model likely has applications in other allied professional career paths, such as information professionals, because in the completed by the American Association of Law Libraries, revealed several skills gaps across all three sides of the Delta Model. They included teaching and instruction, emotional intelligence, verbal communication and presentation skills, legal research, and data management and analytics. Based on these gaps, here is how the Delta Model might be adapted based on these skill gaps.

As next steps, we are exploring the next areas and phases of the research. Potential areas include the development of metrics to measure effectiveness of each side of the competency model and partnering with a law firm and in-house counsel function to implement the Delta model to develop lessons learned in implementation. Contact us to partner with us!