This is the first of a three-part series looking at the rise of AI-based tools and several other drivers of change in the way law firms train new lawyers and how some firms are approaching learning and development.

The legal profession finds itself in a new wave of hype about artificial intelligence (AI) due to the popularity of ChatGPT and other forms of generative AI. There’s no question that AI has now made significant inroads in legal practice, with machine learning methods currently at work in eDiscovery, contract review and analysis, document generation, and legal research.

The amazing interest in the public facing ChatGPT, and ongoing discussions about how it might be leveraged in legal work, is largely driven by the fact that anyone can test it out and use it today. Even in its current, fairly primitive form and with all its limitations, it’s easy for lawyers to see how generative AI could take on some of the tasks that are now handled by human lawyers.

The recent Thomson Reuters Institute survey report, , shows how a new generation of AI-based tools is attaining high levels of awareness and interest in a very short time — much more quickly than earlier generations of AI tools. In fact, 80% of the respondents to the survey say that generative AI can already be applied to legal work, while just more than half say it should be. Contrast that with the skepticism that earlier applications for AI had faced, in eDiscovery or contract analysis, for example.

What will AI mean for training & development?

Traditional training of new lawyers in law firms can be described as informal mentoring combined with throwing young associates into routine tasks such as document reviews. However, what happens when technology automates many of those routine tasks?

A 2022 study, the Litera Technology in M&A Report, looked at some of the impacts of AI-based tools on firms’ M&A practice. The survey’s respondents identified both positive and negative impacts of AI on the career development of young associates. On the one hand, most agreed that the use of AI in M&A deals is creating new career paths, and that freeing young associates from menial tasks gives them time to focus on their analytical and advisory skills. Almost as many respondents, however, thought that the use of AI-based tools in document review makes it harder for young lawyers to learn the craft because they don’t get the experience of identifying and extracting contract terms.

It’s an odd paradox that AI tools make legal work more efficient and accurate but might also make it harder for young lawyers to learn their craft. Josh Kubicki, Director of Legal Innovation & Entrepreneurship and Assistant Professor of Legal Practice at the University of Richmond, describes the problem as the removal of cognitive friction from the learning process. In a recent edition of his Brainyacts newsletter, which explores all things generative AI, Kubicki described cognitive friction as “the mental effort, challenges, or obstacles encountered when processing information, solving problems, or learning new tasks.” The struggles that young lawyers have when tossed into a sea of documents that need review, and the realization that they are in over their heads, is a source of that cognitive friction.

Dealing with cognitive friction in legal work provides pathways to learning. It’s a “valuable catalyst for growth, as it encourages critical thinking, creativity, and problem-solving skills by pushing individuals to engage more deeply with the task at hand,” says Kubicki.

Yet, what happens to learning when AI takes the menial, routine, ambiguous, and complex out of a new lawyer’s day-to-day? Where will the learning come from?

Drawbacks of traditional training methods

“To teach associates, we’ve thrown them into the deep end of the pool, let them struggle, and maybe or maybe not, a partner or senior associate will catch them and help them figure things out,” says Kubicki. “But that’s incredibly uneven. It’s not managed properly. And it’s a heavily biased ecosystem.” Indeed, new AI tools may be taking away lawyers’ opportunities to learn by overcoming cognitive friction, but the old way was never applied consistently or effectively either.

The answer, says Kubicki, is a more intentional approach to learning and development. “How can we manufacture cognitive friction in a controlled environment? Well, then you start looking at structured learning programs.” Such programs are more interactive, planned, and just-in-time. They move beyond the legal profession’s preferred model of sitting in a room watching someone narrate a PowerPoint deck, and instead they tie training to the work at hand and vary the pace, medium, and format.

And some firms are already putting that kind of intentionality into practice. However, it’s not just the training challenges presented by AI that are driving them there.

Other drivers of change in professional development

Interestingly, the growth of AI is not the only factor pushing law firms to take a closer look at how they train associates. The pandemic, and the technological accommodations that many law firms had to make to enable remote work, have also had a big impact. In addition, law firms are increasingly influenced by trends and research in learning and development outside of the legal industry.

When the pandemic struck, law firms that were dependent on the older model of in-person mentoring and classroom-based training were suddenly forced to leverage collaboration technology and establish new hybrid working models, in which it was no longer a given that person-to-person training or mentoring would always be possible.

Hybrid work limited spontaneous learning and created uneven experiences for live training sessions in which some lawyers attended in-person, but others only viewed remotely. This also made it more difficult for associates to build social relationships with peers and leaders who were traditional sources of training and mentorship.

Even before the pandemic forced the issue, however, many organizations outside the legal profession were already re-examining their learning and development efforts. Recognizing the importance of training in employee satisfaction and retention, a number of new techniques had become commonplace, including:

• • • Continuous learning, a focus on embedding learning throughout an employee’s experience.
    • Blended learning, where classroom-style learning gives way to training that combines some online portions, which users can access at their convenience, as well as in-person experiences.
    • Gamification has become more common, with competition and rewards built into the training.
    • Increased use of technology to create more engaging and interactive online learning tools that go beyond simply transmitting a canned curriculum of information.
    • Emphasis on soft skills training, including critical thinking, problem-solving, and creativity.

Similar to organizations outside the legal industry, law firms are starting to professionalize the management of their learning activities. Firms have created Directors of Learning & Development and similar roles to better adopt these and other techniques, and they are taking a more strategic view of lawyer training that recognizes its role in building value within the firm.

In the second part of this series, we will look at some of the specific techniques that law firms are using in response to these trends.

At a recent roundtable, leaders from across a variety of sectors, mostly legal and healthcare, came together to discuss their insights on well-being at work, including the importance of employee health and well-being to the organization’s business strategy. One major component of this discussion was the question of what contributes to employee well-being? Many roundtable participants felt the issue largely revolves around employees feeling supported, understanding their position within the organization, and being trusted to work flexibility while taking initiative to balance their own work and life.

Addressing barriers to well-being as a priority

The group also sought to identify the barriers that workplace culture faces to cementing well-being into organizations’ strategic business priorities; and most importantly, how to move the needle in the direction of prioritizing mental health while also meeting business demands.

Many participants agreed that the barriers that keep well-being from being a top organizational priority are somewhat of a moving target. While some may look to managers as a starting point, those in managerial roles traditionally haven’t had to offer the level of mental health support that has become expected of them during the pandemic and since. Managers are rarely hired or promoted based on any soft skills, like empathy for example. In fact, many took on their managerial role to better grow their career and raise their earning power, not necessarily to nurture and develop employees. A cynical view, perhaps, but it’s only recently that a manager’s responsibility has been turned on its head to include an emphasis on employees’ well-being and positive mental state. Even for those managers who are deeply invested in the well-being of their team members, it’s still a heavy burden to carry.

Yet there are some potential steps managers can take. For example, the re-branding of “soft skills” to “human-centered power skills” has been shown to have the power to create a positive multiplier effect around employee satisfaction and build cultures of well-being, belonging, and inclusion.

Many participants agreed that the barriers that keep well-being from being a top organizational priority are somewhat of a moving target.

During the roundtable, participants noted that managers can’t be entirely blamed for low employee well-being, as they’re typically playing the role of the intermediary, passing along the pressure to hit certain key financial metrics from the leaders above them. And while there are leaders who buy into employee well-being as a sound business strategy, that’s not the case for all managers, especially in the legal industry, which is notoriously slow to change. Even for those managers that do fully buy-in, they don’t always know how best to balance business needs with ensuring that employees have strong mental health.

Industry disruptions & diversity needs

So, how have industry leaders successfully convinced the top bosses to embrace, or at least accept, well-being as a critical component of an organization’s talent management? Getting manager and individual contributor buy-in is critical — and having a critical mass showing support for well-being initiatives can get leadership on board, participants said. Another strategy is connecting well-being to financial metrics — showing the high cost that low well-being has on an organization’s productivity and attrition. Indeed, further research, echoed by our roundtable participants, shows how office locations that offer employees strong well-being initiatives actually have reduced medical costs.

To be sure, metrics are key to understanding where an organization sits in the well-being continuum; however, collecting such data is not the only piece of the puzzle, participants explained. A number of organizations have Organizational Health Index (OHI) surveys that can include well-being questions, but how companies approach these surveys will dictate their effectiveness. Those leaders that don’t act on the feedback from the surveys will find that in the future, employees will be less likely to take part if they feel that the survey is waste of their time, and nothing comes from the feedback they provide. Closing that feedback loop, then, is key to a successful well-being measurement program.

The group also broached the subject of disruption in the way we work and how that might affect well-being. Any discussion about the future of work is incomplete without the mention of ChatGPT and generative artificial intelligence (AI) — innovative technologies that certainly have the potential to disrupt a variety of industries, including the legal profession, in ways that we haven’t seen in quite some time. Participants pointed out that AI will likely take over the more routine and less complex tasks that lawyers currently do, leaving them with the more complex, challenging, and therefore rewarding work. While this shift has the potential be a boon to well-being, it all depends on how leadership engages with these technologies and how expectations may shift as a result.

Metrics are key to understanding where an organization sits in the well-being continuum; however, collecting such data is not the only piece of the puzzle.

Given the increased pressure on managers and leaders, many may be unsure of how to judge the potential for AI to transform work, especially legal work, several participants said. While it could lead to lawyers having a stronger sense of purpose at work because they can focus on more complex work that they enjoy, it won’t necessarily lead to a shift in the work/life balance if increased productivity brings the expectation that lawyers will produce exponentially more.

While it is relatively straightforward to identify the components that can lead to healthy employee well-being, how each individual employee can get there for is much more complex. People have diverse needs and challenges, leading many roundtable participants to suggest that establishing a work culture that promotes positive employee well-being is no one size fits all proposition.

In fact, one participant joked at the start of the discussion that he chose to participate in order to find the silver bullet to well-being at work — not surprisingly, the observation was met with laughter ringing throughout the room. Yet in the end, the group acknowledged that the complexity of the topic doesn’t mean it can be ignored — barriers to promoting healthy employee well-being at work should be addressed because the benefits to an organization’s business strategy are too important going forward.

Interested in learning more about well-being and our wider insights? Gain access to the evidence you need to make the best strategic decisions, here.

Today, women in the legal profession find that it is critical to support one another and to collaborate to achieve success. Cullinan’s article further states that her findings show “women are more likely to care for the collective”, and that “women are less likely to carve out time during the workday to focus on their top priorities, because they feel guilty or selfish for doing so. (Research that indicates guilt is typically a female trait supports this finding.) If women do carve out time, they tend to give it away if someone needs them.”

Not surprisingly for many women, law firms’ women’s initiatives have helped to facilitate collaboration and support for women seeking to advance their careers in legal.

Christy Crider, Chair of both the Women’s Initiative and the Healthcare Litigation Group at Baker Donelson as well as a member of the firm’s board of directors, notes the strategic importance Baker Donelson places on advancing women. “The Women’s Initiative has a robust strategic plan honed over the last 10 years and a Women’s Initiative Leadership Team made up of nearly 50 seasoned women and men attorneys and business professionals who are passionate about advancing women,” Crider says.

“In understanding that a large book of business is the quickest way to advance, we developed our groundbreaking and award-winning Women to Equity program six years ago,” she explains. “In the year-long program, we take a class of 14 women income-shareholders who are looking to make equity-shareholder in the next 3-4 years. Throughout the year, we have programming led by equity-shareholders, firm leaders, and coaches on topics related to building a book of business — such as identifying targets, collaborating, selling your expertise across the firm, and how to turn a single matter into a career-long client.”

Many law firms have women’s initiatives as well as diversity, equity & inclusion (DEI) initiatives; and leaders of these groups have discussed the many challenges still faced by individuals including:

• • • compensation models not set up for sharing credit;
    • partners passing on their clients to favored young (and often white male) associates who have been groomed to take over the client;
    • lack of billable time allowance for managing women’s initiatives; and
    • lack of collaboration by those who have succeeded before them.

In other words, while the firm may have the best intentions with establishing these initiatives, until they become part of the strategic fabric of the firms and credit is given to those who spearhead and manage these initiatives, the emphasis will remain on billable time and origination. This dynamic unfortunately results in a loss of the opportunity to create a diverse, inclusive, and collaborative environment that ultimately benefits all members.

Encouraging camaraderie

Still, many firm members find camaraderie among their peers. Brownstein Hyatt Farber & Schreck’s Carrie Johnson, a shareholder and Chair of the firm’s Women’s Leadership Initiative, says that her “professional life is full of smart, dynamic, supportive women who want to see other women succeed. I know some women haven’t had the same experience, but I spend my days surrounded by women who do what they can to lift others up, and I am grateful for it.”

Is it easier to do business with women buyers of legal services? It may be, several suggest. “Women are very often oriented toward solving problems rather than approaching issues as a zero-sum game of winning or losing,” Johnson says.

Baker Donelson’s Crider adds that she’s experienced “no difference in the ease or difficulty of doing business with clients based on their gender. The key in either situation is to listen and continue to ask questions to ensure you are giving the client exactly what they need now and in the future.”

Cullinan’s article discusses other interesting findings. She writes:

Researcher, consultant, and author Pam Heim has studied gender differences and has published her findings in several books. Her research uncovers an important difference in the way men and women view collaboration. She found that women are more likely to agree with the statement ‘Being a good team player means helping all of my colleagues with what they need to get done.’ In contrast, men are more likely to agree with the statement ‘Being a good team player is knowing your position and playing it well.’ In organizations that get work done through informal project teams or that have overlapping accountabilities, this difference in perspective has implications for the way the men and women engage in collaboration.

Some of the challenges women today face with business development include time, of course, which is often everyone’s greatest challenge. “Balance is the goal that eludes women attorneys from the most junior attorney to the most seasoned rainmaker,” Crider says. “There are so many pulls on our time. With the encouragement of a great mentor, women, in my experience, can intuitively develop business.”

Finding the time

The challenge, of course, is finding the time to create those business development opportunities — too often other tasks will grab time jealously while forming business development strategy will not. For all lawyers, it takes intention and ruthless, consistent execution to be successful in developing business — and that can be very difficult with the competing time demands on all of us, she adds.

Other challenges we face, adds Brownstein Hyatt’s Johnson, stem from the fact that “most decision-makers are older men. While many are happy to hire women, there’s still fundamentally a headwind involved in not seeing people like me reflected in the client base.”

Today however, more corporations are aware of their demands of outside counsel for diverse teams and that they themselves need to follow their own advice. “We agree we need to do a better job of i) building our own diverse teams, and ii) hiring more outside counsel who are diverse,” explains a diverse member of Google’s in-house counsel. “We are all working toward collaborating outside the historic norms and being more inclusive of women and minority counsel.”

In fact, some law firms are holding in-house counsel responsible for following through on their often-lengthy RFPs which demand painstaking disclosure about staffing of women and minority counsel. “Change is happening, it’s just very slow,” the in-house team member adds.

And focusing on collaboration certainly helps guide the process. But in order to that, it’s important to recognize that success here is a two-way street. “It is important to seek out the perspectives of both women and men,” says Crider, adding that men have been equally great mentors throughout her career. “The most successful mentoring relationships I have had are reciprocal — in other words, we are in this to help one another. In the relationships where I am in more of a traditional mentoring role to a junior attorney, I appreciate the mentees who take the time to support me as well — those have star power.”

To realize the gains offered by collaboration across diverse teams, it takes leadership and commitment. Creating an environment where everyone matters, and everyone works to support each other’s success will certainly benefit law firms in the long run. And most certainly, those women who support other women will help drive this success.

For those unfamiliar with the term, a secondment is an agreement between a law firm and a client’s law department that sees one or more of the firm’s attorneys work as the client’s in-house counsel for a set period of time. Attorneys working in such arrangements — known as secondees — become the lynchpin of what is really a three-way benefit: the client gets help in managing their higher volume of legal work without incurring the cost of bringing on permanent staff; the law firm builds a deeper relationship with the client that includes vital familiarity with the client’s business needs and internal operations; and the secondee gains invaluable experience to advance their career, either with an eye toward assuming a role as a potential relationship partner for that client or other clients, or perhaps even moving in-house within their own practice someday.

Particularly within law firms with adequate leverage, secondments can prove to be an effective way to utilize associates. Many law firms are facing difficulty today with lawyer productivity, according to the recent 2023 State of the Legal Market report. For associates under secondment, this concern can be significantly alleviated.

Particularly within law firms with adequate leverage, secondments can prove to be an effective way to utilize associates.

First, depending on the fee arranged for the secondment, the law firm may be able to create a guaranteed revenue stream for the associate which is not dependent on fluctuating demand, declining realization, or constant rate pressure. Even if the secondment arrangement is structured to be at no cost to the client, the law firm has created an invaluable training opportunity for the associate that is not otherwise dependent on billable client hours. The associate’s time is being put to valuable use without any direct impact on business development resources.

None of this is to say, however, that there are not potential costs. The law firm will be without the associate’s services during the agreed period, which, depending on the volume of work for the firm, could potentially create a resource gap for the firm. For the client, beyond any agreed fee for the secondment, there is a cost associated with on-boarding the secondee so they can function as a contributing member of the in-house team. If a secondee is inexperienced or requires particularly intensive supervision and training, that cost can grow rapidly. It is, therefore, incumbent on the law firm to ensure that they are careful in selecting the associates they choose to offer up for secondment so as to create the greatest possible value for the client.

Striking the agreement

Details of the secondment can, and should, be included in a secondment agreement. While there are many potential terms to include in such an arrangement, perhaps it makes sense to focus initially on the fee. Some secondments may be arranged on a daily, weekly, or monthly rate; and some may be subject to a fixed fee for a particular project or even for the entire timeframe. Perhaps less frequently, some may be structured on the basis of a significantly reduced hourly rate for the attorney. And in many cases, the law firm may be willing to provide the secondee to the client at no charge, sacrificing short-term revenue for the sake of the long-term relationship with the client and the expectation of future work at the attorney’s anticipated higher future billing rates.

Historically, law firms have been more willing to place associates on secondments during periods when work is slow and less so when the firms are busier.

This latter arrangement may be yet another mutually beneficial outcome of a secondment. The client receives nearly immediate scalability to help manage a surging workload, alleviating a common challenge for today’s corporate law departments. The law firm, in turn, generates a cache of goodwill with the client. And budgets can be structured for the future to provide for the ongoing working relationship between the client and the secondee/law firm.

Historically, law firms have been more willing to place associates on secondments during periods when work is slow and less so when the firms are busier. With this in mind, now may be an ideal time for law firms and clients to be actively discussing secondments. As mentioned, law departments are facing nearly unprecedented pressures, while law firms are experiencing some of the lowest lawyer productivity numbers recorded. Clients are actively looking for ways to increase the value they receive from their outside law firms, while law firms are looking for ways to differentiate themselves in the eyes of clients using some leverage other than simply relying on a pricing advantage.

Secondments are no guarantee of positive results, of course. There are numerous considerations not addressed here that must be taken into account to ensure that both the law firm and the client experience the type of mutually beneficial outcomes that should accompany a successful secondment.

However, the time may be right for secondments to see a surge in popularity, and those law firms that take the best advantage of this strategy may be best positioned to reap the long-term rewards.

This article is excerpted from a practice note titled, Secondment of Outside Counsel to Law Departments.

Feedback is a leader’s tool to improve performance in team members no matter what role they have within the firm. The objective in giving feedback is to enhance performance by supplying information to guide the person towards the level and quality of work which management expects of them.

There are many different levels of feedback that could be given, just as there are many different types of team members who would benefit from a certain type of feedback. Too often leaders fail to determine if they are providing the appropriate level of feedback to a particular individual. For example, it may be enough to tell Paula to “improve her writing” but Paula may not understand what exactly needs to be “improved” — is it the grammar, style, or the content?

Occasionally the leader falls into the trap of providing feedback that’s too general, which may leave the receiver unable to determine what needs to be improved or changed. Words like better, improve, correct and change often are too ambiguous to use when giving feedback. On the other hand, if the feedback is too specific, some individuals may feel insulted. A leader needs to take the individual’s personality and readiness for specific feedback into consideration when offering constructive criticism.

To best fit the appropriate type of feedback to the person, the leader needs to take into account the individual, the task, and the leader’s previous experience with the person. The leader may have identified a problem or error to the team member and only later learned it was not corrected because the team member needed more specific direction in how to correct or improve the situation.

It is important to verify that recipients has received the constructive feedback by asking them to validate their understanding of what was communicated, such as having them paraphrase what they heard. Doing this prevents miscommunication and avoids potential future frustration.

5 types of feedback

The following are five types of feedback that are usually utilized most often:

1. 1. Problem identification — This type of feedback is used when the leader is confident the person can improve, once the person realizes something is wrong. The leader identifies what needs correction and leaves it up to the individual to choose the action or solution necessary. Example: “Jonathan, your financial report does not include the totals for the month of September.”
   2. Corrective recommendations — This type of feedback is used when the recipient needs some specific suggestions or a plan of action to correct the problem. Giving recommendations for what needs to be fixed or improved is the fastest way to have a work product improve, but it can lead to the person relying on others for continuous guidance. Example: “Jonathan, your financial report does not include the totals for September. Perhaps you should pull the file, review the totals, and include those figures.”
   3. Joint problem-solving — This is the most effective, yet time consuming type of feedback. Leaders should use this when there is a need to develop self-confidence in the individual. Meeting with the person and using a joint problem-solving approach will allow time to discuss the issue in detail while facilitating an exchange of ideas. Instruct the individual to formulate an action plan with sufficient follow up. Example: “Jonathan, your financial report does not include the totals for September. Let’s discuss what needs to be included in these reports and where you can find this information.”
   4. Demonstrations or examples — Demonstrations often are the equivalent of on-the-job training. Examples can be simple or very complex and are used when the skill or knowledge level of the person makes it unlikely that they will be able to follow suggestions or recommendations without guidance. Example: “Jonathan, your financial report does not include the totals for September. Let me show you what a final report should look like and how to determine if all the necessary figures are included.”
   5. Training — This type of feedback is used when it is necessary to develop skills and knowledge in others. Training is not a matter of negotiation; once it is decided that this is what the individual needs, then arrange it as soon as possible. Example: “Jonathan, your financial report does not include the totals for September. I’ve made arrangements for you to sit with Bob in accounting so he can teach you how to complete these reports.”

Guidelines for giving feedback

Constructive criticism should be presented in a way so that the receiver perceives the feedback as useful and beneficial without being judgmental. If given correctly, those working with the leader will know where they are and where to go next in terms of expectations and goals. The following are five common mistakes leaders make when providing feedback, along with examples of poor and good interactions.

Avoid insults

Poor: “What’s your problem? Can’t you ever remember to write down the facts when we explain the situation?”

Good: “Sally, remember to bring your computer so you can take notes at the client meeting.”

Avoid conflicting messages

Poor: “Barbara, I’ve received some complaints about missing deadlines. You really need to get your work done. Oh, by the way, the presentation you did was excellent.”

Good: “Barbara, I’ve received some complaints about missing deadlines. If you communicate with others about your workload, we might be better able to get you the proper assistance.”

Avoid overload

Poor: “Edward, you have to meet our deadlines, and you need to proofread your work more carefully. I have also heard that you are rushing the other team members by not scheduling your work ahead of time.”

Good: “Edward, you have to meet our client’s deadlines. Do you have any ideas on how you can work more efficiently within our time frames?”

Avoid ambiguity

Poor: “Derrick, you need to handle last minute requests better.”

Good: “When you get last minute requests, please talk to me about prioritizing your current workload.”

Avoid non-directed comments

Poor: “Some of you are sending too many individual text messages when a detailed e-mail would be more time efficient for the other team members.”

Good: “Jonathan and Sally, you are sending too many individual text messages when a detailed e-mail would be more time efficient for the other team members.”

It is imperative that feedback be given in a way that will improve work as well as maintain or bolster the team member’s self-esteem. Avoiding arguments and confrontations during the feedback session will help maintain constructive relationships and build up the recipient’s morale.

As a leader, it is important to focus on the work product or behavior and not the person. For feedback to be effective, focus the communication on modifying a situation, correcting a behavior, or improving work quality. There should never be statements made that can be interpreted as an attack on character or personality.

After the feedback is clearly communicated, summarize and express support. This should be viewed as a positive experience for both parties — the leader and the team member.

The data-driven report on the ALSP market — published every two years by the Thomson Reuters Institute in partnership with The Center on Ethics and the Legal Profession at Georgetown Law and the Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford — tries to bring quantitative precision to the growth, potential, and challenges of this innovative market. As part of that research, Thomson Reuters conducts interviews with dozens of leaders at different ALSPs, getting a first-hand view into how these organizations are adapting to and driving changes in the legal landscape.

Leaders of ALSPs say their companies are growing strongly — the report found that in the past two years, the field has grown 45%. And that leaves many ALSPs looking to hire. “Today, the talent that is coming to us is extraordinary,” says the founder of one U.S.-based independent ALSP. Some of these legal professionals might otherwise be facing layoffs, but in the wake of the pandemic, others are looking for a different career and style of working than law firms have traditionally offered. Law firm leaders are suddenly finding that they need to sell the partner track to associates, rather than simply assuming that every young lawyer prioritizes a partner slot above all else.

This attitudinal shift in the talent mindset could have impacts across the legal industry, and the full implications of such a transition may not be known for years. But ALSP leaders say the experience and credentials of people looking for a substantial career change is impressive, and it is changing the perception of ALSPs.

Changing legal work landscape

The exact nature of law firm layoffs may work to the advantage of some ALSPs. “Law firms started letting go, not their rain makers, but their service partners, who were their subject matter experts,” says that same ALSP founder about the last rounds of law firm layoffs.

For many of those people, says a U.K. partner who runs their law firm’s internal ALSP, an ALSP may be a better fit for an individual’s strengths and career aspirations. For some of those considering leaving the traditional law firm career path, working at an ALSP may mean “doing what they enjoy, which is doing law,” the U.K. partner notes, adding that not every lawyer relishes business development or is a good manager, and for those, an ALSP might be a better fit.

These subject matter experts could also enable ALSPs to move into new service areas, such as into advisory work. “With more and more AmLaw staff on our bench, we’ve been angling to go more upstream and provide services that law firms provide in terms of expertise and counsel,” says the chief product officer of a U.S.-based independent ALSP. This leader also says they see potential in service categories related to labor & employment, regulatory matters, and privacy. “We’re gaining traction.”

Depending on who, exactly, chooses a career outside of traditional law firms, a movement to ALSPs could also have an impact on firms’ efforts to meet their goals in diversity, equity, and inclusion. It’s not a stretch to think that those who are most interested in an alternative way of working would include an over-representation of those who have traditionally had the hardest time navigating the more stringent law firm career path.

ALSPs say they are already seeing a change in the mindset of their clients, who now have a better understanding of the potential and allure of remote work. They’re also understanding that it doesn’t make sense for a lawyer, necessarily, to be acting as a project manager on a large matter. Further, ALSPs have identified the value of putting non-lawyers into leadership positions — a strategy which is often untenable for law firms — empowering ALSPs to leverage business and operational expertise in both the day-to-day running and strategic direction of the business.

Says one partner at a U.K.-based law firm ALSP:

It always used to be, ‘I need a lawyer who’s an expert in data privacy five days a week to sit next to me in Doncaster’ or some other remote place. Now it’s very much more. ‘I need these skills, for this amount of hours. I don’t know or care where they are, if they can work remotely, as long as I meet them.’ And I think that has opened up the market significantly.

Over the past few years, those clients have gained a better understanding of why lawyers might choose to work differently, and in fact, have gained more experience with remote work themselves. Clients also have seen colleagues make career choices that would have seemed surprising just a few years ago.

“We would hear from our clients all the time, ‘If they’re really that good, why aren’t they at a big law firm or why aren’t they in-house?’” says the general manager of one U.S.-based independent ALSP. Now, he says, clients see that ALSPs can allow them to work with the same attorneys they would have hired from an AmLaw 50 firm. “They were at an AmLaw 50 firm 10 years ago, and they didn’t leave because they weren’t as good,” says the general manager. “They left because they wanted something different.”

More and more, that “something different” is often a way of working that ALSPs are only too happy to provide.

You can download a copy of the Thomson Reuters Institute’s Alternative Legal Services Providers 2023 Report here.

Indeed, some of these conditions are favoring midsize law firms, with these lower-cost firms seeing overall demand increases, particularly in litigation, and more specialized firms seeing better results, according to the recent 2023 Report on the State of the Legal Market.

Talent retention for the most part still remains a priority for many law firm managing partners, although it has decreased in priority from where it was a year ago. However, overall lawyer headcount still remains above where it was two years ago, and turnover is returning to pre-pandemic levels.

The biggest challenge law firms face today is how to evolve their talent strategy and culture to accommodate a wider array of employee preferences on working styles in order to retain talent from varying backgrounds. To achieve this, building agility and transparency within the culture of the workplace is key.

And this the approach that the law firm Levenfeld Pearlstein is taking. To make the firm’s culture agile, all assumptions on how collaboration works, what is deemed professional, and what success looks like must be examined. And this is exactly the environment that Levenfeld Pearlstein has and continues to prioritize, says Kevin Slaughter, an M&A partner at the firm.

Openness — Diversity, equity & inclusion (DEI) has continued to increase in importance in the legal industry over the last few years, but often a key requirement is more conformity rather than more freedom. Slaughter’s exposure to Levenfeld Pearlstein’s open culture started early in the interview process. When he first met the firm’s managing partner at the time, Slaughter bonded with him on how the firm has had to adjust its work practices to adhere to the religious practices of their employees’ faiths — Slaughter as a Muslim Black man and the former managing partner as a Jewish man. “For me to tell the MP that I’m a practicing Muslim, and that turns into an hour-long conversation, a very thoughtful conversation of mutual respect, was huge,” Slaughter states.

Trust-first principle — In many law firms’ cultures, trust must be earned before partners will make introductions to other lawyers. Slaughter experienced the opposite of this early in his tenure at the firm. The partners “trusted me with their clients, and this was huge because in the past, even when I was a partner, I’ve had people looking over my shoulder, checking my work, double-checking. Again, that just drives imposter syndrome. It drives the self-doubt,” he explains.

This “trust-first” principle at Levenfeld Pearlstein also was at the heart of collaboration among partners. They had confidence in him right away, Slaughter adds, and they demonstrated this by opening up their client network, which had never happened before. Slaughter’s peers also gave him the freedom to do what he does best without worrying about having opportunities taken away because he made a mistake.

Code-switching obstructs success & authenticity

For lawyers with underrepresented identities, in particular for attorneys of color, the constant worry about messing up or making errors takes up mental space. “You can’t breathe,” Slaughter describes.

The openness and trust-first elements of Levenfeld Pearlstein’s culture freed up Slaughter’s mental capacity to build business relationships with clients and focus on the work that had previously been dedicated to code-switching — the ways in which members of underrepresented groups adjust their language, behavior, and appearance to fit into the dominant culture. “It takes an enormous amount of energy away from everything you do because you’re constantly worried about, ‘Should I say this?’ ‘Who’s looking at me?’ ‘Can I wear this?’ It’s debilitating,” he explains. “It’s often combined with or leads to imposter syndrome, where you’re trying to be what you think you’re supposed to be or what people expect you to be. The biggest casualty of all this is self-authenticity.”

Small actions help develop junior talent

To scale up Levenfeld Pearlstein’s agile culture to better benefit the firm’s younger talent, Slaughter is helping the firm distill the most meaningful behaviors as it embarks on its first-ever associate class of law school graduates. He highlights two methods that he uses for success:

• • • Take an “other-person-first” mindset — Just like most lawyers, Slaughter puts client needs first, and that’s something he also does with junior lawyers. He takes the practice of focused listening when dealing with clients and applies that method to interactions with his colleagues.
    • Give context for assignments live — Rather than sending an email with an assignment, connect in-person to best communicate the assignment, offer context for it, and explain why it is important to serving the client well. Then, check frequently for agreement and mutual understanding on assignments, as well as an understanding of what is expected.

During a recent roundtable meeting of chief talent officers, the value of both the planned and unplanned check-in meeting remained a primary mechanism to drive lawyer retention. Today, as law firms settle into new ways of working, the check-in has emerged as a pivotal tool to building trust, providing openness on career growth opportunities, setting context for assignments, offering feedback on work product.

These career growth chats, particularly for underrepresented talent, are critical and demonstrate the “other-person-first” mindset that is needed to deliver agile work culture at scale.

As businesses become more human-centered, approaches to collaboration in this time of mixed approaches to work — in-person, remote, or hybrid — are an ongoing question. While some organizations are strongly encouraging a specific number of days in the officer per week, others are still fully remote or leaving it up to the individual needs.

For example, members of the Thomson Reuters Equity, Diversity & Inclusion advisory board recently shared how they are navigating hybrid work, returning to the office desires, and balancing preferences in both in-person and remote work amid very diverse work styles and backgrounds among employees.

With the reality that the legal and tax & accounting industries operate on personal connections, which, generally speaking, are forged more efficiently in-person, two members of the advisory board outlined their firms’ current guidelines to hybrid work. First, they strongly encourage all lawyers to show up in the office on specific days of the week with flexibility in choosing a third day in the office. This has allowed people to maintain their desired flexibility with structure without diluting personal connections and cultural norms.

Second, they allow employees to work where they need to be, based on a descending order of priorities: i) working where the employee needs to in order to meet the client’s needs; ii) working where the business and the team want; and finally, iii) working where the employee wants. The benefit of this approach has helped employees pivot from self-first paradigm during the pandemic to more business need-led decision-making.

As legal and tax & accounting employers work through the right balance between working in the office and elsewhere, it has become evident that remote work does not necessarily mean less engagement, according to a three-year study of knowledge workers by Mike Tolliver, Product Management Director at Vyopta, and research partner Andrew Brodsky, a professor of management at McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin. More specifically, insights from their research revealed that remote meetings appear to be becoming a lot more natural and effective, mostly because meeting length shrunk by 25% and had fewer attendees between 2020 and 2022, with the proportion of remote meetings that are one-on-one increasing from 17% to 42%. Also, remote meetings seem to be mirroring in-person interactions a whole lot more due to their spontaneity and size, the study found.

Getting the most out of meetings

While the approach to work ultimately will vary depending on the needs of the organization, there are key lessons to be learned from the remote work experience over the last three years. Tolliver and Brodsky shared how their clients using these insights, including:

• • • Being intentional about meeting culture — Tactics, such as setting agendas for meetings, create meeting norms among team members and ensure there are opportunities for people to speak up. These have become important elements of productive meeting culture.
    • Analyzing technology fit — Be mindful about collaboration and make sure there is forethought in what technology is being used and for what task. Sometimes certain tasks are better done via e-mail rather than spending time in a meeting.
    • Building trust — For a manager, building trust with your employees, especially among those who work remotely is critical. First and foremost, make work and promotion decisions based on work outcomes and impact, not presence in the office.
    • Experimenting & using data — One of the best tactics organizations can utilize is constantly experimenting in order to try new approaches, whether it’s with employees or clients. During this process, organizations should collect data, adjust, iterate, and experiment again. The right solution won’t occur on the first try, of course, but by using data-driven qualitative and quantitative analysis, organizations can keep working to improve.
    • Being mindful about how time in the office is used — This is particularly important for collaborative reasons. Having employees commute an hour each way, just to sit in the office and perform the exact same tasks that they would do at home is not ideal. Managers should schedule most team meetings on in-office days. For lawyers, this may be harder to control given the nature of client demands, but it is worth making the effort.

As the future of work shakes out, balancing between in-office work and remote work will compel organizations to lean intentionality toward collaboration and more inclusive meetings to better gain an edge in increasing employee satisfaction (and therefore, productivity and retention) going forward.

A panel discussion at Thomson Reuters Institute’s 30th Annual Marketing Partner Forum offered a practical look at strategic success and opportunities within alumni relations programs and offered attendees some key takeaways.

Alumni should be a significant source of revenue, according to panelists. They are huge brand promoters or detractors, including in the world of recruiting talent. It’s important for firms to try to shape what former and current employees say about the culture of the firm — from a summer associate up to the highest revenue-generating lateral partner the firm may be trying to recruit, and everyone in between.

In her previous role at Orrick, panelist Catherine Zinn, Chief Client Officer at Baker Botts, discovered that 17% of clients had at least one firm alum who now worked for the client. Three years later, with staff dedicated to the alumni program, that increased to 30% of clients with at least one firm alum who turned into a client employee, though Zinn suggested this may be due to data cleanup.

“Treat everyone as equals because you just don’t know where your former employees are going to end up.”

At Baker Bots, Zinn dedicates a significant portion of her time to alumni relations. The firm reviewed its top 30 clients and found that more than 50% have at least one alum from her firm working as an employee at a client — and they generate most of the revenue. “We refer to alumni as a business imperative,” Zinn said. “Those are some of the warmest calls you’re ever going to make.”

Zinn cited a survey of more than 400 general counsel who were interviewed about their careers and plans. “More than 50% said they were open to going back to a law firm, which was stunning — yet consistent with what I’m hearing GCs say is their next best move,” Zinn noted. “You will see many go out and leave law completely to start companies or you see people jumping around and then boomerang and come back to your firm [or] they become GC and then come back as a partner.”

Transparency is key when talking to associates, Zinn said. Firm leadership will tell them that their career “may take you in many different places. If you are thinking about [working for] a client, talk to us.”

Moderator Ellen C. Auwarter, Marketing & Business Development Manager at Duane Morris, previously worked at Deloitte. She asked panelist Cheri Husney, Chief Marketing & Business Development Officer at Littler Mendelson, who previously worked in accounting marketing for 20 years at KMPG, what lessons legal marketers could learn from the Big 4 accounting firms.

“Figure out a way to welcome people in and make them feel special when they leave,” Husney said. “Celebrate their accomplishments. Treat everyone as equals because you just don’t know where your former employees are going to end up.”

Littler has an alumni board and even invites its members to serve on mock client pitches. “We’ve all realized that pitches and prepping for them is key,” Husney explained. “If you have sitting board members, influencers, and friends of the firm, it is a safe place for them to be part of a practice session.”

Indeed, because many GCs serve on at least one large company board, it’s critical for firms to focus on placing alums on their clients’ boards, panelists advised.

Helping alumni succeed

When attorneys become chief legal officers or general counsel, how can their former law firms support their professional development and help them to succeed? There are a myriad of ways, panel suggested.

For example, Goodwin Procter provides their departing attorneys with a GC checklist. “They don’t recognize that you now have to be on top of everything,” said panelist Theresa DeLoach, Managing Director of Strategic Alumni Engagement & Client Relations at Goodwin. “We want to make sure you get started on the right foot.” The firm created several resources, with different versions for public and private companies, and a training program for associates looking to go in-house, she added.

On the flip side, Goodwin consistently is looking for ways to pull alumni back into the firm. When hosting events, they ask alum to bring a colleague to start a new relationship with their attorneys. They also focus on helping alum build a community of other in-house peers, offering events for different affinity groups, such as women of color, or by experience level (pairing junior associates with each other, or senior partners together, for example). “People are excited to sit among people they have things in common with,” DeLoach said.

Uncomfortable departures

What can firms do to mitigate potential bad talk or reputational damage when attorneys leave the firm under less-than-optimal circumstances?

Goodwin went through a reduction in force, which was a challenging time, DeLoach explained. “Not everyone who leaves the firm feels great about that departure, but you can find opportunities. It doesn’t mean we lost you in our ecosystem.”

Husney suggested putting a little time between when it happens and when you get in touch with them. “There’s a period of forgiveness,” she noted.

DeLoach agreed, adding that it is advisable to get back in touch people within the first three years. “The bar for non-contact has to be pretty high — to the level of whether the person is suing the law firm — otherwise the firm is taking themselves out of getting business. You can come up with rules, but they shouldn’t be hard and fast.”

In the aftermath of the pandemic, law firm employee expectations have evolved to include the desire for more flexibility, expansion of career mobility options, the willingness to draw boundaries around personal time, and the need to continue the culture of care that began in the immediate days following the sudden work-from-home mandate in March 2020.

Addressing talent challenges

During the most recent chief talent officer (CTO) roundtable, an open discussion with 25 participants from law firms earlier this year, participants described how their law firms are addressing these challenges.

Seek regular feedback

The first action recommended by CTOs is collecting feedback from associates and lawyers regularly through one-on-one meetings. The purpose of these meetings gives the law firm the opportunity to: i) check in with each employee on how they are doing; ii) ask each individual what they need; and iii) explore how each person feels about their career development.

Investing time in meeting one-on-one with each associate enables an “in-depth conversation about how they are doing” to identify priority areas of focus to action improvements, says one CTO roundtable participant, adding that taking the time to “listen to concerns and needs lends itself to engagement.”

Further, the roundtable described how those law firms which initiated efforts to gather feedback proactively used such tactics as stay interviews and enlisting the firm’s associate committee. In fact, using stay interviews rather than exit interviews, can offer firms a proactive way of retaining existing employees to collect data on their current employee experience, as well as their decision to stay at the firm. One CTO participant indicated that she and her firm’s professional development director undertook stay interviews with all 800 lawyers at the firm.

Another CTO, for example, used their firm’s associate committee to identify how comfortable associates feel in bringing up interest in non-partner career tracks.

As the result of initiating these informal conversations with associates, several CTOs re-prioritized their efforts around common themes, such as reframing professional development now as talent management. Indeed, while the term, professional development comes with an outdated paradigm around training, which historically has had lawyers sitting through a seminar consuming information rather than engaging with it actively, talent management has no such rhetorical baggage.

Additionally, this terminology change effectively shifts the paradigm away from training and more toward learning. This further underscores the evolving perspective from professional development that redefines training, transforming it into a new way of thinking regarding learning, which suggests a more active and engaged approach to skills development content.

This process further allows firms to prioritize client development skills earlier in associates’ careers. One firm partnered with the heads of marketing and business development to create learning opportunities for mid-level and senior associates, its CTO said.

Expand career options

The second recommendation from the CTO roundtable is that law firms need to increase the flexibility of career mobility beyond partnership. This process includes transforming approaches to both skills development and learning.

To this end, many law firms are expanding options for career tracks in a number of ways, including expanding some pathways that have been around a while, such as promoting secondments, career mentoring, and of counsel positions, and other, newer tactics such as firm-sponsored coaching. Most CTOs cited success in using secondments and coaching.

The success of using of counsel or special counsel titles as promotions was more mixed, and the adoption of these tracks came down to firm culture. More explicitly, intentional efforts by firm leadership, partners, and the firm’s HR department to elevate these positions was key to instigating stronger buy-in for additional career tracks as viable alternatives to partner.

Two firms even offered greater mobility temporarily to off-ramp the partner track based on the life stage of lawyers. For example, law firm attorneys who were experiencing parenthood indicated that the flexibility does not take the partnership track off of table for good; rather, it shifts the direction and focus of the lawyer to what they are experiencing currently at their stage of life, but it doesn’t mean that this direction will remain that way forever.

Utilize an individualized approach to career learning

Finally, on the learning front, one of the most common ways that law firms are meeting their lawyers’ preference for expanded career mobility is by taking a custom approach to individual skills development both in terms of core and technical competencies and integrating these with individual preference for career tracks.

In addition to individual learning and development career plans, several CTOs highlighted that they created bespoke learning programs based on the unique outcomes from the pandemic and the shift to hybrid work. For example, one CTO found the need to offer “respect in the workplace” training in the aftermath of the pandemic.

Another firm invested in additional skills-building for partners in the areas of leadership, project management, respecting personal time, and how to allocate work effectively, especially when associates communicate that they are not available for urgent work assignments.

Still, young associates whose law school experience was primarily focused on virtual or remote learning in the early years of the pandemic still needed specialized attention on basic communication, executive functions, and learning how to prioritize.

Solutions to continuing hybrid work impediments

One big conundrum with which law firms continue to grapple — and the CTO roundtable discussed — is how to ensure productive work while still providing white-glove client service and meeting the new expectations of hybrid-working employees. A major part of this challenge is the ongoing obstacle of how or whether law firms should strongly encourage lawyers to return to the office. One incentive touted as being successful was to offer jeans-attire workdays so that people could be “as comfortable at the office as they are at home.”

Another major career development barrier is how to replicate mentoring in a hybrid work environment. To meet this challenge, one firm asked associates “how can we better mentor you?” and used testimonials from associates to help partners better understand how to meet these employees’ needs.

Overall, this and past CTO roundtables have suggested two tactics for engaging employees today: i) ask for feedback continuously; and ii) employ regular check-ins. By taking the time to listen to employee concerns, firm leadership can encourage engagement and promote individual well-being. For law firms, these actions can help build an overall positive employee experience and improve valuable lawyer retention.

Learn how an engagement research study can help measure and manage perspectives on the crucial elements of your workplace culture and values today.