Many lawyers practicing at law firms hope to move in-house in the coming year. “Practical Tips for Young Lawyers Going In-House“, published by the ABA, provides helpful tips for all lawyers (not just young ones) who will be making that transition.
When I moved in-house after seven years of practicing with a large law firm, I learned to implement the strategies that this article mentions, including: learn the business, add value, and try to get involved in projects early before problems arise.
The article also notes the importance of communicating well with clients and not using legalese. To that I would stress the importance of learning–and using–any industry or company-specific jargon. Regularly and appropriately using such terminology will help you to seem like a member of the team and help to integrate you into corporate culture.
As fellow law blogger Tom Kane discusses, now is the time to think about getting client feedback. Ask your clients for feedback in early 2007; they probably won’t volunteer the information otherwise. And, what better way to jumpstart a new year than with some feedback about what’s right–and what’s not?
This can be very helpful with clients from different cultures. If you have inadvertently committed a cultural gaffe and a foreign client has been offended, he or she may be too polite to let you know. By graciously asking for feedback in early 2007, and explaining that you are soliciting advice to improve service and client communication, you may uncover some otherwise hidden discontent. Then take the feedback and read between the lines, given the client’s cultural perspective. Again, the client may express discontent more subtly and indirectly than an American client would. Better to discover a problem and remedy it than to lose a client.
Today the Harvard Business Review published an article titled Extreme Jobs: The Dangerous Allure of the 70-Hour Workweek by Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Carolyn Buck Luce. (For a free excerpt, click here.) The authors discuss various characteristics of extreme jobs including: being available to clients 24/7, regularly working 60-70 hours per week, and working across time zones and cultures.
The article’s title correctly highlights the “allure” of these positions; it’s heady stuff to handle fast paced projects across cultures, and to be well compensated for it. And, as the authors note, no longer are glamorously global and rigorous jobs reserved for senior staff. Younger workers are also gravitating towards and getting these positions.
The “extreme” jobs described in the article mirror many international law positions: interesting, demanding, global–and taking a heavy personal toll. For example, 58% of the respondents to the article’s study felt that their extreme jobs hindered good relationships with their children, and 68% felt that they would be healthier working at less extreme positions.
Many international lawyers have long grappled with these issues. The difference is that now, thanks to globalization and other trends, the number of extreme global jobs is rising in all sectors; as a result, extreme jobs are becoming normalized and culturally acceptable.
So, international lawyers must monitor themselves and their own career demands, taking steps to reduce stress whenever possible, and perhaps, to make career changes away from the “extreme”.
Law firm attorneys take note: your general counsel clients are highly dissatisfied.
Today’s ABA Journal E-report quotes the BTI Consulting Group’s study titled How Clients Hire, Fire and Spend: Landing the World’s Best Clients. Seventy percent of the 200 corporate counsels surveyed (mostly from Fortune 1000 companies) were unhappy with the performance of their outside counsel–and the general counsels have demoted or fired many of these firms.
The reasons? Not keeping up with and being responsive to changes in the client’s organization. Not communicating well enough with the clients. And, in particular, not communicating to the client the value that the law firm delivered.
The remedy? Realize that EVERY client communication is a critical client development opportunity. Law firm lawyers must regularly listen to their clients, act responsively, and let the client know–in ways that the particular client can understand and appreciate–just how responsive the outside lawyer has been, and how much value has been provided.
Please join me on September 14 when I present an interactive and energetic CLE titled The Effective Advisor: Improving Attorney-Client Communication to the Corporate Counsel Section of the Houston Bar Association; 12-1 pm at the offices of Akin Gump Strauss Haur & Feld, 1111 Louisiana, Suite 4400. No charge. Approved for 1 hour of CLE by the State Bar of Texas.
International lawyers will particularly be interested in the tips for communicating with foreign clients.
