AttorneyMentoring.com Employment Matters

Overview

Lawyers find themselves facing the same work-related issues that
everyone else does. Whether they work at a law firm, company,
governmental agency or a not-for-profit entity, lawyers struggle to
assert their rights while preserving their career options. We have
divided employment-related issues into two categories: issues facing
lawyers and issues facing their employers. If you are a human
resource professional at a law firm or company, AM's HR Corner is
designed to support your needs. If you are a lawyer, stay right here.

Understanding and Meeting
Expectations

Once you have been hired it is important for
you to understand what your employer expects
of you. It is also important to realize that
employer expectations change over time.
Since each job or assignment will be a little
different depending upon the assigning partner
and practice group and thereby expectations
will vary, here are some guidelines to keep in
mind as you work to improve your
performance. A significant number of
performance problems can be attributed to
poor communication between senior
lawyers/managers and their junior lawyer and it
is not always advisable to wait until year-end
reviews to confirm that you are meeting your
department or firm's expectations.

There are some basic self management skills
that can help you better understand and meet
your employer’s expectations. These skills
should be used for each assignment or project
as well as for year-end performance reviews.

They include the following skills:

Listening – Listen carefully to the
assigning lawyer's description of the
project and to any comments made
during your performance review.
Questioning - It is very important that
there is a clear understanding of what is
expected for the assignment. If there is
a need to clarify any of the assigning
attorney's instructions, you should take
the time during the meeting to politely
identify those areas that you need more
clarification on. Do not be afraid to ask
questions before starting the work and
to ask for examples and guidance.
Request examples in performance
areas that are unclear. If the
supervising attorney's explanation of a
performance area is not clear for any
reason, ask them to give you examples
of competent performance.
Understanding Priorities - Discuss each
assignment and task and their priority
to meet client or internal deadlines.
Workload, experience, distribution of
work, importance or relevance of the
assignment over other work, and ability
to perform to the expectation are a few
issues that may need to be discussed.
Concentration and Organization -
Focus and take time to think through
the main issues and confirm these with
your assigning attorney/client. Maintain
an organized methodology to competing
each assignment or task.
Self-Assessment - take an inventory of
your skills and continually seek to
improve in all areas.
Follow-Up - ask for feedback on each
assignment once completed - do not
wait until year end reviews.

We recommend that you complete a Self-
Assessment Questionnaire to ascertain how
you believe you currently meet expectations.

We have also developed
a Professional
Development Corner
with content and tools
designed to empower
you to make better
career-related choices.
If you have a work place
issue, contact us at
employmentmatters@attorne
ymentoring.com. We cannot
and do not offer employment
law advice but we will
attempt to steer you in the
right direction. We always
recommend that you first
familiarize yourself with your
employer's employee
handbook and policies as a
starting point. All personal
information will be kept
strictly confidential however
we reserve the right to
reprint excerpts of the
issues involved and our
suggestions on
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the benefit of our other
visitors. Please read our
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AttorneyMentoring.com offers the materials on this Web site for informational purposes only. While we believe that the materials will be
helpful, we do not warrant their accurateness or completeness. These materials are general in nature, and may not apply to particular
circumstances. The information is not offered as consulting, legal or any other advice on a particular matter and should not be relied on
as such. Therefore, if you want legal, career or management consulting advice, please seek out an expert in that field.
AttorneyMentoring.com is not responsible for any third party material that can be accessed through this Web site.

An Associate's Emotional Intelligence Can Be a Better
Predictor of Superior Performance Than Their IQ; How
Lawyers Can Raise Their Emotional Intelligence

A well-known work performance based theory known as
"Emotional Intelligence (EI)" and "Emotional Intelligence
Quotient (EIQ)" has been proven in numerous studies to
distinguish superior performers from average performers.

Lawyers like other highly skilled and educated
professionals, have relatively high IQ's and have attained a
certain level of career success as a result.   However, their
law school training did not address emotional intelligence
competencies. Some would argue, that law school and
some law firm environments may actually repress certain
emotional competencies.    EIQ (also known as EIC) has
been shown to directly impact performance results and
increase interpersonal effectiveness, including influencing
clients, improving management skills, increasing revenue
generating capacity and overall improving employees'
financial performance. This has been shown to be even
more significant in highly skilled professions such as law.

Two types of personal emotional intelligence, intra and inter,
combine to form EIQ.   In his book, “Working with Emotional
Intelligence”, Daniel Goleman described the following five*
clusters to emotional intelligence:

Self-Awareness.
Self-Management.
Self-Motivation.
Social Awareness.
Relationship Management.

(*While the 5-cluster model has since been consolidated
into a 4-cluster model excluding a separate Self-Motivation
cluster that tends to overlap with other clusters, we will use
the original 5-cluster model for the purposes of providing
tips later in this article.)

Low EIQ is one reason that otherwise brilliant Lawyers do
not achieve their potential.   There are countless examples
of Lawyers with the technical know-how and experience who
never achieve Partnership or who are unable to effectively
deal with their colleagues and clients.   With more
awareness of one's emotional competencies and the
correlation between higher EIQ and personal and
professional performance, one can activate certain learned
behavior that directly influences others, improves
performance, attracts more business, and generally reduces
workplace stress.

While individual IQ's are somewhat fixed, the potential for
increasing one's EIQ is open ended and, therefore
implementation of a few key strategies can directly increase
a Lawyer's overall performance relatively easily.

Click here for a table of competencies and action
items for lawyers designed to increase their
emotional intelligence.