[1] Sara Thorpe & Jackie Clifford, The Coaching Handbook: An Action Kit for Trainers & Managers (London: Kogan Page Limited, 2003), p. 1.

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.[2]

[1] Mike Leibling & Robin Prior, Coaching Made Easy: Step-by-Step Techniques that Get Results (London: Kogan Page Limited, 2003), p. 1

[2] Peter M. Senge, The Fifth Discipline. The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization (London: Random House, 1990), p. 3.

They are also exploring the feasibility of establishing a Law Practice Succession Registry where attorneys might voluntarily submit the identity and relevant information as to a lawyer whom clients may contact in the event the designating lawyers dies, becomes incapacitated or is otherwise unavailable to serve the needs of clients.

Best Feature Article
Rethinking Retirement: Understanding the War for Legal Talent in the Changing Marketplace
Stephen P. Gallagher
December 2007

President, LeadershipCoach.us

www.leadershipcoach.us

The future of every law firm rests on increasing the capacities and productivity of its workforce. Law firms are therefore looking for better ways to retain top talent. In recent months, a number of the leading law firms have expanded their use of “executive coaching” as a strategy for developing key individuals. Marshall Goldsmith, a world-renown executive coach, describes the most effective form of executive coaching as being both person-centered and system-centered. [1] It is no coincidence that bringing in outside coaches enables a firm to gain a broader perspective in dealing with the constant struggle to balance the needs of the individual with those of the law firm.

David H. Maister, one of the world's leading authorities on management of professional service firms, has been for years advising firms about how coaching can be an extremely effective tool in improving firm profitability. [2] In David H. Maister’s book, Practice What you Preach, he reported on research he completed on the relationship between employee attitudes and financial success of an organization. Maister’s research findings showed, “that the most financially successful businesses do better than the rest on virtually every aspect of employee attitudes, and those that do best on employee attitudes are measurably more profitable.” [3] It is no wonder that law firms are increasingly turning to executive coaching to help sustain an ongoing dialogue to help key attorneys improve business performance.

Developmental Coaching as a Strategy

Lawyers are familiar with using consultants as an objective party to “diagnose” a condition and “treat” a problem. In consulting, it is generally assumed that the consultant is the “expert” who decides what is and is not working within the organization and then recommends “treatment” (training, downsizing, restructuring, team-building, information technology update, etc.) [4] Coaching on the other hand is more of a partnership, a relationship between a coach and a client than an advice-giving “expert” situation such as one might find in a consulting intervention.

In a law firm, mentoring is another developmental tool by which more experienced practitioners share their wisdom with younger attorneys on a one-to-one basis. Mentoring typically takes place between a more senior/experienced partner and a younger/less-experienced attorney to demonstrate how substantive knowledge can be applied. Mentoring frequently includes issues of enculturation, career growth, political savvy, and personal networking in an organization. Like mentoring, coaching presents clients with an opportunity to engage in a “dialogue of development.”

Coaching is by its nature an inherently reflective process that encourages clients to look back at how they think, feel, and behave. [5] Coaching will establish a climate within which vital, though seemingly intransigent, issues may be brought to the surface, confronted, and then dealt with. In order to be successful, executive coaching must achieve positive change for both the individual and the systems that make-up the law firm culture. This aspect of executive coaching is generally best handled through a mutually defined set of goals to improve the client’s personal goals and professional performance as well as the mission and business plan of the firm.

Business Coaching

Business Coaching is a one-to-one interactive relationship that creates a trusting and collaborative environment in which personal development and performance improvement occur. The goal of Business Coaching should never be in fixing what is broken, but in discovering new talents and new ways to use old talents that lead to far greater effectiveness. For Business Coaching to be effective, the law firm culture needs to provide a supporting environment to allow this growth to take place. Since coaching, by its nature is person-centered and system-centered, successful coaching must achieve positive change for both the individual and the systems that make-up the law firm culture.

Career Coaching

The reasons for initiating any type of coaching relationship can certainly vary from firm to firm, but, frequently, key attorneys are identified for their unique leadership potential. The firm invites these valuable employees to work with a Career Coach to help them master specific skills needed for them to move on to the next level of development.

Most workforce experts agree that the costs to attract, train, and retain a new employee with experience and skills similar to those of the one being replaced is at least twice the former employee’s average salary. Authors, Cathleen Benko, Deloitte’s Managing Principal of Talent and Anne Weisberg, Senior Advisor to Deloitte’s Women’s Initiative write that, “These costs range as high as five times the former employee’s annual salary in organizations that complete primarily on the knowledge and analytical skills of their employees.” [6]

Career Coaching is being seen as an extension of a firm’s life-long commitment to attracting, training, and retaining talent. This form of coaching focuses on helping individuals find greater meaning and purpose in their current duties and responsibilities, while supporting these same individuals in assuming responsibility for their own career development. This type of coaching generally combines group training with personalized coaching to better serve selected groups of attorneys.

Assessing the Success of Coaching

Assessment of coaching outcomes in any organization is difficult, but it is particularly difficult in a law firm setting, because professionals have so much discretion and autonomy. According to Bruce Peltier, Ph.D. author of The Psychology of Executive Coaching: Theory and Application, “Assessment is important because people in the workplace tend to avoid frankness when they deal with each other, especially when they interact with people to whom they report—those who formally evaluate them. The higher leaders get in an organization, the less frank feedback they get. Leaders at the top of organizations rarely get any “negative” feedback at all, and sometimes, because of flattery, they have a distorted sense of their strengths, weaknesses, and abilities.” [7]

In a typical law firm, partners rarely answer to anyone, because quite frequently they have their own unique areas of expertise. This type of law firm governance does not only limit the feedback partners receive, but it also does not support or encourage “dialogue of development” to take place between partners and associates. This is one of the reasons law firms are turning to outside coaches. It is still too early to determine how coaching affects profitability, but aligning coaching client’s personal and professional goals with the firm’s desired business goals appears to be a good place to start.

Stephen P. Gallagher is a developmental coach who works exclusively with attorneys and groups of attorneys. Mr. Gallagher contracts with law firms to coach individual attorneys on an as-needed basis. He also conducts strategic planning retreats for law firms. Stephen lives with his wife of thirty-six years, Nancy in Narberth, PA.

[1] See Goldsmith, M., Lyons, L. & Freas, A. (2000). Coaching for leadership: How the world’s greatest coaches help leaders learn. San Francisco: Josset-Bass/Pfeiffer, p. 62.

[2] See Maister, D. H. (1993). Managing the professional service firm; New York: Free Press; Maister, D. H. (1997) True professionalism. New York: Free Press. Maister, D. H. (co-author, 2000). The trusted advisor. New York: Free Press; Maister, D. H. (co-author, 2001), First among equals. New York: Free Press; Maister, D. H. (2001) Practice what you preach: What managers must do to create a high achievement culture. New York: Free Press .

[3] Maister, D. H. (2001). Practice what you preach. New York: Free Press, p. 1.

[4] Kleinberg, J. A. (2001). A scholar-practitioner model for executive coaching: Applying theory and application within the emerging field of executive coaching. (Doctoral dissertation, The Fielding Institute, 2001), Dissertation Abstracts International, 52(4-A), p. 9.

[5] See Starr, J. (2003). The coaching manual. London: Prentice Hall; Whitworth, L., Kimsey-House, H. and Sandahl, P. (1998), Co-active coaching: new skills for coaching people towards success in work and life, Palo Alto CA: Davis-Black Publishing.

[6] Benko, C, Weisberg, A (2007) Mass career customization: Aligning the workplace with today’s nontraditional workforce. Boston : Harvard Business School Press, p. 23.

[7] Peltier, B. (2001). The psychology of executive coaching: Theory and application. Ann Arbor, MI.: Sheridan Books, p. 2.

ABA Law Practice Management Section Magazine
January/February 2007

By K. William Gibson

Dear Readers: I am departing from the usual question-and-answer format for this column to share Uri Feiner's story with you.
Bill

What happens when you are too ill to serve your clients? Here's the real story of a son faced with selling his father's firm.

Uri Feiner is not a lawyer, but he learned a great deal about running a small law office during his father's recent illness. Uri's father, Michael Feiner, was a New York immigration lawyer who had experienced serious health problems for several years, but those problems appeared to be under control with regular medical treatment. Michael had expected to get some warning before things got worse, but as it turned out, he didn't get any warning at all before becoming severely ill and unable to work.

The crisis came when Michael developed an infection following one of his frequent medical treatments. He had worked all day on the day before the infection began and was feeling fine, but after the infection set in, he had to be hospitalized. Uri rushed to his father's side. His first concern was for his father's health, but it soon became clear to Uri that he would have to do something to keep Michael's practice going until he got out of the hospital.

As Uri tells it, before becoming hospitalized, Michael had been working on a retirement plan with ABA LPM Section member Steve Gallagher (http://www.leadershipcoach.us/), a consultant and coach who formerly headed the New York State Bar Association's law practice management office. As part of his retirement plan, Michael had hired an associate, hoping that having another lawyer would allow him to spend less time in the office. The associate quit when Michael became ill, leaving several dedicated paralegals but no lawyers in the office.

Uri hadn't met Steve Gallagher, but one night at the hospital Michael's cell phone rang and it was Steve calling. Steve says he didn't know that Michael was ill and in the hospital at the time, but, as Uri puts it, Steve appeared like a "guide with a flashlight." Uri was confident that Steve would help him find the resources he would need to get through the crisis.

During the first week in the hospital as Michael Feiner lay unconscious in the intensive care unit, Uri was immediately concerned that he would need a guardianship in order to handle his father's affairs. Fortunately, Michael had put his son on as a signer on his business checking account. Uri was able to write checks to pay the staff and "keep things moving in the office," he says. Not only that, but Michael had given Uri all his important passwords and PIN numbers. Uri could handle the business end of things, but he knew that he needed a lawyer to handle client matters, so he contacted the local bar association for a referral.

Uri and Steve met with Allen Charne, the director of Legal Referral Services at the Association of the Bar of the City of New York. Steve says that Allen helped them connect with several immigration attorneys, and later helped Uri find an attorney to represent him in selling the practice. At that point, their main concern was maintaining ongoing representation by qualified counsel for Michael's clients. With the help of another NYC attorney, James Siegel, they found a lawyer to handle Michael's practice on an interim basis.

While his father was "fighting for his life" in those first few weeks, Uri carried Michael's laptop computer between the hospital and his father's office and was able to log on to the office computer system. Uri says he had personally designed his father's computer system so that Michael could work from home and access his files, and on previous occasions when he had to be in the hospital overnight for treatments, Michael was able to log on and work on client matters from his hospital bed. This capability allowed Uri to do the same thing while he was sitting at his father's bedside during those first weeks of Michael's illness. Uri credits his father's having a computerized case management system with having made "all the difference" during this period.

Fortunately, Michael began to improve and regained consciousness within a few weeks. According to Uri, he got to the point where he could review client files from the ICU, although he acknowledged that it was "tedious and difficult" for him. Uri says that "since my father was barely able to move or breathe, we had to be really efficient" in taking questions about cases to him. Uri had the paralegals prepare daily file notes and questions that could only be answered by Michael.

During this time of improvement, they talked about Michael's health and his need to bring on another lawyer or merge his practice with another firm. Also, Michael signed a power of attorney form "just in case," as Uri puts it, any complications happened during his recovery. Even though he seemed to be getting better, Michael realized that he would need some help, so Uri contacted the New York State Bar Association in hopes of finding a lawyer who knew about transferring law firms. "It is not easy to find such a person, even in New York City," Uri says. Steve Gallagher recommended the NYSBA's "Planning Ahead: Establish an Advanced Exit Plan to Protect Your Clients' Interests in the Event of Your Disability, Retirement or Death," which proved valuable to them.

But just as he was preparing to leave the hospital, Michael Feiner lapsed into a coma and never recovered.

After his father's death, it fell upon Uri to make permanent arrangements for his father's practice, to make sure that his staff was taken care of, and that his clients had new representation. On the evening of Michael's death, James Siegel (Uri's contact at the New York Bar Association), went to Michael's office and worked with Uri until late in the night getting things in order so that Uri could leave for Israel for his father's funeral.

The arrangement with the interim lawyer worked out well enough that it allowed them to keep the office open until they were able to merge with another small immigration law firm. A lawyer from what Uri describes as a "new, dynamic, small firm" moved into his father's office and "essentially continued our practice while merging his existing cases into our system." The new lawyer, Yaniv Lavy, was someone with whom Michael Feiner had previously considered teaming up. Uri says that Yaniv Lavy initiated the contact while Michael was still in the hospital after he heard about the situation. "He called because he appreciated my father's role in immigration law, especially among the Israeli community, and was interested in collaborating in some way." He adds that it turned out to be a "perfect match" and the transition has gone "smoothly, better than I had expected."

Uri agreed to stay on with Yaniv as office administrator and reports that he has been able to guide the transition because of his relationships with his father's clients as well as his staff.

Uri says that in addition to giving someone power of attorney, check-signing authority, information about accounts and PIN numbers, he "would absolutely recommend that all lawyers designate someone in advance to take over business operations" in case of a situation such as his father's. "Ideally, when someone has the luxury of planning for something like this, it would be wise to choose someone trustworthy, yet not immediate family, if possible."

About the Author

 K. William Gibson works to help lawyers avoid malpractice claims as Director of practicePRO at LawPRO (http://www.lawpro.ca/), a malpractice carrier for Ontario lawyers.

Send a Question to Bill

I have worked with literally hundreds of senior lawyers in developing Exit or Retirement Plans to help them tackle fresh assignments designed to offer variety and challenge and to stimulate new skills development. Coaching can also help law firms develop new approaches to retirement -- gaining renewed purpose in their lives.

In order to more effectively participate in this journey, retirees will need to learn new skills and competencies well before they begin any type of retirement or transition experience.

Over the past twenty years, I have worked as a Practice Management Advisor and Transition/Retirement Coach with hundreds of senior attorneys in developing Exit or Retirement Plans for themselves and for groups of senior lawyers. I have grown to realize that pre-retirees are not looking to withdraw from anything. On the contrary, the lawyers I have been working with are actually approaching retirement as a way of gaining renewed purpose in their lives. They want something new, something different, perhaps something novel, and certainly something interesting at deep personal levels.

The Tipping Point

1) Contagious

2) The fact that little cause can have big effects and

3) That changes happen not gradually but at one dramatic moment

Off the three, the third trait – the idea that epidemics can rise or fall in one dramatic moment - is the most important, because it is the principle that makes sense of the first two and that permits the greatest insight into why modern change happens the way it does. The name given to that one dramatic moment.

The book has very good examples of historical/recent events and does a good job is explaining how the three rules are key to each tipping point.

Coert Visser is a consultant, coach and trainer who uses a positive change approach. This approach is focused on simply helping individuals, teams and organizations to make progress in the direction of their own choice. Coert interviewed David about how many professionals don’t seem to pay much attention to marketing.

David talks about how the better you are at marketing, the more control you have over your career. If you are really good at developing business, then you can work for only the clients you find interesting and can care about, and only on the type of work that you find fulfilling and challenging.