idealawg

Lawyers, celebrate your strengths: How do your innate abilities affect your practice and your career?

Knowing your hard-wired aptitudes can assist you in the practice of law and in the decisions you make about your career. This morning I realized I had not yet posted for you an article I wrote a while back entitled "Lawyers Celebrate Your Strengths." It begins . . .

Have you ever shoved and squeezed and stuffed your feet into a pair of shoes that were the wrong size and yet you wore them for what seemed the right reasons? Maybe they were the only footwear available to you at the time and barefoot would not suit the situation. Perhaps they looked fashionable so you were willing to tolerate the misfit. Possibly someone gave them to you expecting your gratitude and pleasure, someone you chose not to disappoint. You wore the shoes. The blister developed. You threw the shoes away. The blister healed.

A misfit hurts; it hurts a lot. We have known that since we were children. In our fairy tales, we learned the importance of choosing the right fit. Goldilocks did not eat the porridge that was too hot for her or sleep in the bed that was too hard; she chose the meal and the resting place that were just right. No matter how they tried, the stepsisters could not jam their feet into Cinderella's slipper; her foot easily slid into it and she lived happily ever after.

And many childhood games are based on knowing how things fit together. We quickly learn that a jigsaw puzzle piece has only one place where its shape is welcome in the big picture. Ramming and jamming will not work. It makes an ugly mess and destroys the whole overarching scheme.

As adults, we more fully understand the pain of those things that do not fit and the elegance and ease of those that do.

Except for sometimes.

In our professional lives, some of us tolerate situations and ways of doing and being that are as much a mismatch as a tight shoe or scalding porridge. The resulting blisters injure our health, decrease our satisfaction, and defeat our chances for optimum success. Ill-fitting parts of practicing law do not have to be tolerated. They do not have to grind us down. And we do not have to wear the parts of our role that do not fit. Finding that just-right fit for us can be almost as easily discovered as measuring our foot to see what size shoe we need.

Read the rest of "Lawyers, Celebrate Your Strengths."

Most lawyers can be good team members: Just depends on how you define team

Lawyers vary greatly in how each best likes to be a member of a team, and how each best can contribute to a team. When reading an article today about lawyer teams, I was reminded of this heterogeneity.

The article was one written by Janet Raasch: "Divide To Conquer: Law Firms Use Strategic Teams To Master The Marketplace." In the article, Raasch does  her usual fine job of reporting on and summarizing the presentations given at the monthly meetings of the Rocky Mountain Chapter of the Legal Marketing Association. In this article, she was writing about a presentation given last month by Linda Hazelton, chief marketing officer of Jones, Walker, Waechter, Poitevent, Carrere & Denegre. I did not attend the presentation but, from reading the article, it sounds like it was very informative and helpful. I comment on only one small part.

Raasch writes . . .

Teams can be a hard sell.  “Many lawyers are solitary thinkers who prefer to work alone rather than as a member of a team,” said Hazelton
 
“Among studies of college-educated individuals, lawyers tend to score on the extreme high end for characteristics like autonomy, skepticism and urgency (feeling pressed for time),” said Hazelton.  “They tend to score on the low end for traits like sociability.”  (Hazelton credited these results to the research of Dr. Larry Richard of Hildebrandt, who tested thousands of lawyers in order to reach these conclusions.)
 
As a personality type, lawyers are comforted by structure.  “Providing reports and meetings in the ‘right’ amount – not too little, not too much – can help your team initiative succeed,” said Hazelton.  “They are also impressed by successful precedent.  If you can use a team to accomplish an important goal, showcase your success.”

I have recently posted my thoughts about these categorical statements about lawyers. Many lawyers are not as described above. In the case of lawyer teams, we have some good information from the Highlands Ability Battery about how lawyers are different from each other.

Highlands is based on the assessment designed and refined by the Johnson O'Connor Research Foundation which was founded in 1922. The Foundation has been testing individuals in about 11 cities around the country for many decades.

Both of these assessments have shown that about 75% of the population are specialists (subjectives in Johnson O'Connor terminology) and 25% are generalists (Johnson O'Connor calls these people objectives). Here is a very brief, general overview of each.

FIVE MINDS FOR THE FUTURE: Essential tools for the 21st century

"People who are simply doing routine things in routine ways will have less and less of a place in the world of tomorrow."
-Howard Gardner

Through the miracle of technology, you may listen to Howard Gardner's guided tour of his newest book Five Minds for the Future. I listened this morning and heard Gardner say things that might best be noted by lawyers of this new century — if they want to be effective, influential, and valued. Below are some notes I took while listening but I urge you to listen yourself. You also may read "Mental building blocks for the next century," a Financial Times article about the new book.

My notes of what Gardner said (opinions expressed are, of course, his) . . .

The first of the five is the disciplined mind. It is not only concentrating and learning steadily until one becomes an expert, but also learning to think within at least one discipline. For example, as a scientist, you learn such things as not to confuse correlation with causation; you learn to think within the discipline of science. (I have posted here before about learning to think within the discipline of law.)

A problem is created when you use your discipline to look at the whole world. Gardner gives an example of a lawyer using his legal discipline with his small child, similar to this chocolate milk offense.

Second is the synthesizing mind, taking information from unrelated sources and melding it, thus creating a synthesis. We desperately need this kind of mind in these days of so much information, yet we know little about how to help people learn to synthesize. The synthesizing mind is both important and rare. It knows what to pay attention to and what to ignore. Synthesizing involves putting the information together in a way that works for you and also in a way that can be communicated to others. Gardner believes the synthesizing mind is the most important mind for the 21st century.

Third is the creating mind. You can't simply start to create; you must first master a discipline, which usually takes up to a decade.  The creating mind goes beyond what's known. It is is more and more important to go outside the box because what is in the box will be handled in the future by a computer. This mind focuses on new questions, new methods, new combinations,and new disciplinary nexuses.

With the creating mind, it is important to consider your personality and temperament. The creating mind is never satisfied and likes taking risks. It does not quit, regards a defeat as an opportunity, and is energized by criticism.

These first three minds are focused on cognition. The last two are related to policy.

A Sweet Break: Attorneys at Chocolate

I recently read stories of two lawyers turning from legal careers to chocolate making. Steve Wallace was written about in Legal Blog Watch and in JD Bliss. He had some practical, perceptive advice for some lawyers not sure if they wanted to leave the legal profession.

Wallace was asked by J D Bliss:

Based on your success at establishing a new company and business concept, what advice would you give to attorneys who would like to become entrepreneurs but are reluctant to consider such a major change?

Wallace's words of advice:

What I’d suggest to someone who isn’t 100% sure about pushing ahead to something new and giving up what they have, is to look for ways to expand the scope of what you’re doing now.  The lawyers I’ve always admired most are the generalists – the older partners whose clients love them because they are always there and are able to tackle anything.  Young lawyers are trained to be specialists, and I think that can be inherently unsatisfying.  Try recapturing a little of the generalist spirit, perhaps through pro bono work.  The satisfaction that I get in everything from working in a warehouse to negotiating a trade agreement is a reflection of that generalist spirit.  I think it can bring greater satisfaction to more lawyers if they pursue it.

When I read those words, I suspected that Steve Wallace might be a RSer. I e-mailed him to ask and he confirmed my suspicion. Steve feels fortunate because his work with his chocolate company uses so many of his talents and interests. The article I am writing for The Complete Lawyer features Renaissance Souls remaining happily in the legal profession and includes tips from them on how the RSer stays satisfied and engaged in the practice of law.

Cheryl Schneider also left the law and entered the world of chocolate. Her company in Maryland is Penny Chocolates. Read her life-after-law story.

I recall someone wise once telling me that because the word "attorney" means a person "appointed to represent another person's interest," one could be an attorney at other things besides law. Perhaps a physician could be an attorney at health and a priest could be an attorney at soul? May I appoint Wallace and Schneider as my attorneys at chocolate?

To market, to market, to buy a fat [blog];
Home again, home again, jiggety-jog. Mother Goose (mostly)

Note (added October 22, 2006, 9 PM Mountain): Here are a couple of articles about a Stanford Law School grad doing something other than practicing law. From "Choreographer Has Line On Lively Steps" in SFGate.com:

During the day, Palo Alto resident Hedy McAdams negotiates domestic crises in her job as a family law mediator.

But at night, she guides enthusiastic dancers through the steps of country line dances . . .  .

"I'm the only Stanford Law School graduate that I know of who is teaching country western dancing,'' she says.

A recent article from Palo Alto Online "Rhapsody in boots: Local lawyer brings elegance to country line dancing" tells more of McAdams's story, including her promoting and researching line dancing as a way to keep the aging brain active.