Executive Coaching and the Practice of Law

Posted on April 26, 2016 by Maria Fernanda Guzman Favela, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.

In the context of today’s rapidly changing environment it is crucial that attorneys be prepared to be adaptable and versatile in order to assume ownership for their own continuous professional development. The challenges that have long existed in the practice of law are increasing due to globalization, technological evolution and the accelerated growth and demand of emerging legal services.

When do forward thinking lawyers need executive coaching?

As indicated by Peter M. Senge in “The Fifth Discipline” the organizations that will exceed expectations in the future will be the organizations that discover how to tap people’s dedication and ability to learn at all levels. Integrating coaching into law firm professional development programs will give lawyers, new and senior, the tools and support they need to develop behavior and strategies to lead them to higher levels of success. As for “solo” and small firm practitioners, relying on individual intelligence to run and grow a business can be overwhelming, bringing in expert help might result in a tremendous increase in business/marketing acumen that will not only alleviate the pressure but will be sustainable in the future.

Coaching is about actions and results focused on specific developmental targets. “When there is a “coaching culture” within the organization – one in which there is no tolerance for mediocre performance and where asking for and offering coaching is encouraged – remarkable results can be accomplished.” The integration of coaching provides change and opportunity for ongoing improvement of a lawyer’s execution. It must include timely delivery for constructive feedback, support for learning and development and assisting all partners and associates alike, with mindfulness and self-assessment.

Law schools do not teach courses on how to manage people, time or cash flow, and certainly do not train law students in business and marketing. Law graduates face several additional challenges to their practice such as personal branding, leadership skills, organizational development and business management.

Law firm culture creates a system for achievements and performance evaluations as well as ways in which members of the firm relate to one another, their clients and counterparties. Firms that are incorporating coaching into their firm culture have a greater chance of changing human behavior for an overall benefit. Legal organizations that prepare their attorneys and professionals with coaching skills may have a greater rate of success. “If a firm is unable to integrate one-on-one coaching into their professional development program, learning will continue to be sporadic at best. If a senior partner takes an interest in a younger protégé, the mentoring/coaching relationship will work well. Learning will flourish. On the other hand, too many young lawyers only see their mentors as senior attorneys whose job it is to make sure billable hours are turned in on time.”

“One size fits all” training programs and online continuing education requirements are not enough nowadays; law firms need to acknowledge that in this fast-paced global marketplace the business environment is turbulent. Lawyers need to learn new skills in order to be successful; to excel as a jurist may not be equivalent to excelling as a professional.

Although high performance has always been the cornerstone of an effective attorney, circumstances have changed and high performance is no longer enough. Coaching comes in when building self-reliance, self-awareness and dedication need to be acknowledged. Law firms worldwide are finding ways to build more comprehensive mentoring and coaching relations in order to attract and develop talent.

In this high-risk culture, there is a need to create a more tolerant of dissent, supportive of experimentation environment that might lead to unexpected success and overall wellbeing of both attorneys and law firms. This approach contradicts the “one-size-fits-all” world where the firm’s training manual is “updated” every decade by mainly focusing on billable hours.

What is Coaching?

Business coaching is a fast-emerging field that combines the best of industrial and organizational psychology, management consulting, organizational development, and business consulting to provide a different paradigm of how people function in an organization and how the organization itself functions. Professional coaching is for individuals who want to elevate their performance, increase their personal and professional happiness, and acquire missing skills that are necessary for success.

Why Attorney Coaching?

Attorneys are ideal candidates for coaching in light of the fact that they are results-oriented and are constantly working on a tight schedule. While frequently preparing deliverables on a deadline, lawyers find it difficult to focus on things that are important but not urgent. Billable work turns into the main priority in an attorney´s day so that personal satisfaction, career guidance and professional development become a minor issue, often ignored.
Cynthia Pladziewicz, author of a chapter on coaching in “The Art and Science of Strategic Talent Management in Law Firms”, explains that attorneys are good candidates for coaching because they score high on personality traits such as skepticism and autonomy and low on traits such as sociability. Because coaching is generally one-on-one and not a “one-size-fits-all” solution, coaching gives lawyers the chance to take the lead on finding their own solutions by asking in-depth, individualized questions. This helps them to get past their own skepticism and not waste time on issues they don’t find relevant. The coaching relationship is then centered on the attorney’s core values, alignment with the firm’s vision and business development objectives as well as achievement of a healthy lifestyle.

Lawyer satisfaction is still a hot button issue. Fortune magazine reported that as many as 40% of actively practicing lawyers have admitted that they’d rather be doing something else. Some find that the demands of their practice are not worth the sacrifice of a balanced life. Professionally trained coaches use their knowledge to help lawyers figure out how to reach the career and life that they envision for themselves, often times working outside the lawyer’s comfort zone.

Many lawyers want their coaches to be unbiased sounding boards. As explained in “What an Executive Coach Can Do for You” professionals want their executive coaches to be “truth speakers”. Many professionals seek coaching in moments of transition or pressure, to get one-on-one dedicated attention from a neutral, unprejudiced expert because it is difficult for the professional to get unbiased feedback from family, friends or colleagues. Being a “truth speaker” may require coaches to deliver tough news. The support of a trusted advisor can bring guidance and support during difficult times.

Coaching has some similar traits to consulting and mentoring. Basic, technical and fundamental differences are present in these three practices with clear, different options and characteristics. In a typical consulting relationship, a consultant will identify ways to achieve the client’s desired objective. The end product is often a report detailing the steps that are necessary to achieve the desired outcome. Mentoring focuses on informal advice giving, guidance and support in regards to legal technical matters. Coaching provides on-going feedback regarding developmental goals aiming to aid attorneys in teamwork enhancement, leadership skills, personal development and alignment with firm-wide goals while engaging in organizational change and facilitating succession.

Law firms that integrate coaching with mentoring should be able to use their own internal professional development experts to complement the use of senior attorneys in their roles as mentors. This use should enable firms to set and better monitor their own performance standards while providing support to help their associates and partners meet their own performance and learning objectives. While a mentor is frequently more experienced and qualified than the ‘mentee’ in a specific area of practice, a coach need not be trained as a lawyer to coach lawyers.

Depending on the particular situation, it may be more effective to hire an external coach to work with firm leadership and linking individual’s thoughts, needs and actions to create a balance between personal and professional goals. External coaches bring new perspectives that may be particularly helpful in leading firms under today’s incessantly changing conditions.

In this economy, law firms are shifting towards becoming learning organizations, where “longer-term human development is seen as a continual and integrated part of daily life.” According to Peter M. Senge, “learning organizations are organizations where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning to see ’ the whole’ together”. David A. KoIb, PhD and Donald A. Schön were among the first to argue that professional education should be centered on enhancing the practitioner’s ability for “reflection-in-action”. By learning while performing, individuals develop the ability to learn continuously and are prepared to become problem-solvers throughout their professional career.

Top ten skills that can be targeted through coaching:

Time-Management Skills.

Focus-Management Skills.

Team-Building Skills.

Marketing Skills.

Moneymaking Skills.

Adaptability Skills.

Goal-Setting Skills.

Future-Planning Skills.

Accountability Skills

Living Proactively, Not Reactively

Plus, the benefit of having a partner to discuss ideas, issues, feelings and needs.

What should be expected from the coaching relationship?
Executive coaching is a process of change and action. The right coach can help develop potential and provide an informed sounding board so that the client can discuss fears, challenges and ideas confidentially. Coaching involves skilled questioning and creating the space for both the client and the coach to articulate clearly what the client wants to achieve. The coach works together with the client as an equal partnership. The coach’s role is to help develop the client’s resourcefulness and independence so that it has the skills, knowledge and tools to adjust moving forward on its own.

Latin American lawyers and coaching

International lawyers hire coaches to help them exceed their prior performance, develop more clients globally, make partner, get promoted, or become leaders within their law firms or field. Frequently, international lawyers seek coaching to specifically target client development, branding and marketing in order to attract clients in the United States.

Janet H. Moore, JD, founder of International Lawyer Coach, Inc. has extensive experience coaching international lawyers and has a deep understanding of Latin American legal practice culture. When asked about the existence of an executive coaching practice for Latin American attorneys she expressed that there is an actual coaching practice happening; latin lawyers are currently seeking coaching in regards to business and client development. Understanding the culture is key in order to be a successful and helpful coach. According to Moore, latin lawyers are more relationship based than fast paced American attorneys, therefore latin lawyers need to learn how to “make the ask”. They need to learn how to directly and confidentially ask for the business when dealing with attorneys and clients from other countries and cultures. This is a clear example of a particular circumstance where executive international coaching is needed.

Although still scarcely explored, there is a wonderful market yet to be developed in Latin America that will continue to happen as latin attorneys learn about the benefits of coaching.

Benefits of coaching for law firms: Leadership

There are a number of strong moments where firms can benefit from executive and leadership coaching. Creating leadership skills where none exist at the moment is a clear example. When senior associates and young partners show significant promise as future leaders, how can they best be prepared to take on leadership responsibilities when they are needed?

Leadership becomes more and more important as lawyers move forward. The demand for leadership skills begins when a new lawyer moves on to start supervising other lawyers, and sizes when that lawyer becomes a partner, supervises more lawyers at a higher level, and begins to pay attention to business development and law firm governance. As a partner becomes more senior, these responsibilities increase and intensify, and at the highest level, the challenge of creating a vision for the firm’s future is crucial.

Coaching also gets new partners up to speed faster and decreases the time needed for recently promoted lawyers to understand the implications and subtleties of their new position. Successful partners do not always make successful practice leaders. A lawyer heading a practice group can have a profound impact on the energy level and morale of the lawyers he or she leads. Without leadership skills, the impact can be negative and expensive to the firm. Coaching in this case centers on effective decision-making and holds the potential for shaping successful leaders out of apparently unlikely candidates.

Winning a significant case or bringing a large client to the firm is just as likely to thrust a lawyer into a leadership role, as is promotion through hard work. Coaching can bridge this leadership gap. Retention of talent is a main priority for forward thinking law firms. Most firms replace lawyers who fail to live up to expectations without asking whether their poor performance really shows a basic inability to do the work or is due to something else. Because coaching focuses on the effectiveness of individuals and their relationships, it is a useful way to determine whether a poor performer can be rescued.

Given that law firm succession planning is commonly built around a partnership path, coaching can be a smart way to develop leadership strength at key positions resulting in smooth succession transitions. Becoming an excellent lawyer builds experience, wisdom and judgment; unfortunately it does not always prepare partners for leadership, sustaining good client relations, developing business, or managing a firm. Defying the difficulties and requirements of partnership without proper training may be one reason that lawyers of all ages and experience levels consider the idea of giving up their practice.

Modern lawyers are expected to be business savvy. The costs of practicing law are becoming higher considering liability insurance, increasing income expectations and technology requirements, in addition to traditional expenses. While coaching cannot address these problems, it can address the question of whether a firm’s leadership is prepared to deal with them.

As a result, it appears that several law firms are beginning to provide coaching services for their lawyers, recognizing that they are facing challenges similar to those that motivate corporations to provide coaching. Employee satisfaction and overall well-being is also becoming an addressed concern. Happy, well-rounded lawyers become successful assets for the law firm and contribute to law firm growth.

Therefore, coaching is becoming universal. According to a 2012 survey by Manzo Coaching & Consulting, 98 percent of respondents (63 Am Law 200 firm) use coaches — either external or internal ones. The survey finds that 90 percent of firms use coaching for business development, followed by leadership development (61 percent), training (49 percent), and conflict management (24 percent).

Though coaching is not new (35 percent of the responding firms say they’ve used coaches for seven to 10 years), the latest twist is that firms are grooming their own coaches.

The executive coaching model may be approached reluctantly by tradition minded lawyers, but approach it they must if they want to survive and excel in this fast paced, highly competitive world and practice.