AttorneyMentoring.com Senior Attorneys

Develop business

Successful attorneys focus on business
development, including some form of marketing.
Focusing on developing new business takes time
and it requires patience and persistence. Here are
some ways to start:

Become an expert and find a legal niche
where you can market your services, both
within your firm or company, and to outside
clients. Make yourself into the "go to" lawyer
for this area of the law.
Spend some time on marketing activities.
Seek out opportunities to develop
complementary legal services to the firm’s
existing services.
Target new industries with your existing
legal services.
Take an inventory of the firm’s client base
and seek out opportunities for cross selling
your services.

Click here for promotional and marketing tips

Time Management Tips

Probably the single most frequent complaint heard
from lawyers is that they do not have enough time to
do it all. Some suffer from genuine over-work and
others from poor time management. In both cases,
there are some useful tips to help you better
manage your time. Many ideas and suggestions
have been developed to improve time management
skills but we decided to focus on those that could be
easily implemented in a busy law practice:

Make use of your assistant and ask him or
her to actively keep track of your time and
visitors. Have him or her screen your calls
and your visitors so you are not interrupted
as often.

Create a short to do list of your priorities
for the next day. Make sure the list is not
impossible to complete. Keep it short and
manageable, three items at most. (You can
always create a new list once you have
completed this one.) The following day, start
work on that list, one project at a time.

Treat yourself to a break when you have
accomplished a particularly difficult task.
Even short 10 or 15 minute breaks to take a
walk around the block or look out the window
can clear your mind. Perhaps schedule an
exercise session at lunch. You will return
refreshed and in better shape to continue
your work. Along these lines, make sure you
get enough rest. Although that isn’t often
possible on certain projects, sometimes
going home and getting a good night’s rest
can help your mind work through a
particularly complex problem or assignment.
When there isn’t time for a break, breathe
deeply for a few minutes – this gets more
oxygen to the brain and actually improves
your mental function.

Catch yourself procrastinating and keep
tabs on the triggers. Is it a particular type of
project or task that sets you off? Is it a
particular time of day? Is it a particular client?
Is it an overly chatty colleague who interrupts
you? Does perfectionism paralyze you?
Have you worked on the same paragraph for
half an hour? Understanding how you
spend your time each day can help you
manage your time better. Enlist your
assistant to help you keep track of your
hours. Again, reward yourself for
overcoming the urge to procrastinate … but
only after you have completed the project. If
at all possible, delegate more mundane
tasks to others.

Clear your desk and office space at regular
intervals. You will feel less overwhelmed if
you clear out old files and projects that no
longer require your attention. If you do not
have the time to do so, engage an assistant,
paralegal or file clerk to help you. Schedule
a time to do it and make it a periodic event.

Better Communications

Whatever area of law you practice, your communication skills
impact your delivery of legal services, your advocacy on behalf of
clients, your relations with your colleagues and superiors, and
your client development skills among other aspects of your life.
As with any skill, practice improves your ability to communicate
clearly and effectively. Some basic tips to improving your
communication skills include:

Understand your audience and their business. Place
yourself in their shoes so to speak and anticipate their
needs and expectations. Then, try and meet them. Click
here for an article on improving your communications by
understanding different personality types.

Listen carefully. Listening is a skill and it is not often a
skill that attorneys know how to perform. Communication
is a two way street. Being in your own legal world does not
serve your clients or your audience. Listen to them
carefully and you will invariably provide them with a better
advice and service.

Communicate with the Team. Communicate up and
communicate down. Do not assume that the Partner or
senior attorney has shared all material information with
you and do not assume that the junior attorney knows all
the facts either. Most importantly, do not assume that you
have all the facts you need from the client. Check in every
so often with all team members.

Make the message clear. Lawyers have a very bad habit
of speaking in complex language that is often
meaningless to clients or they just repeat the issues ad
infinitum without a clear plan to solving any of the issues.
Deliver a clear message each time. Articulate the issue
as you understand it, describe the applicable law,
regulation or policy, summarize your analysis and
conclude. Make sure your choice of words cannot be
misinterpreted. Do not equivocate to the point of
senselessness. Set up the problem and then solve it.
Test the arguments out with colleagues or tape your
presentation and listen to it. Practice oral presentations in
front of a mirror first or maybe another colleague.

Make the communication relevant, practical and worth
the audience's time. Stick to the practical, the relevant
and the possible.

Choose the right medium to communicate your
message. These days, we too often email client advice
that perhaps could be better communicated via other
means. Choose your communication medium carefully.
Check in with your senior attorney and/or the client to
determine whether and how certain advice should be
communicated.

Prepare for Questions. Be prepared for likely questions
from the communication. How you answer those
questions is just as important, if not more important, than
the speech itself since that is the last impression you
make on the subject.

If you feel that you need more personalized help with your
communication skills, consider hiring a coach for more important
presentations or to help you develop a client pitch presentation or
courtroom argument.

Stay informed and well-trained

The most successful lawyers are always on top of
the latest legal news and trends. They are voracious
consumers of continuing legal education and avid
readers of legal news. Make sure that you make an
investment in yourself each year and subscribe to
key online or offline legal resources to support your
practice. Take as many continuing legal education
courses as you can from the best providers. Avoid
easy and cheap CLE that yields little new practical
legal information for you. Attend the conferences, or
if your resources are limited, order the tapes
following the conference. If you cannot afford to
subscribe to certain key resources on your own,
contact your Bar Association's library.

Managing and Motivating Junior Attorneys

The good news is that as a mid-level attorney you will likely be
assigned junior attorneys to assist you in certain projects.
Having the responsibility for the work of others, requires some
basic management skills. Supervising takes time, effort and
patience. As an attorney, supervising other attorneys also has
ethical and legal implications.

Make Introductions. On the first day, introduce the junior
attorney to the team, including the staff with whom they
will be working. Explain who the players are and be
specific about whom she or he should contact with
questions ... namely, you.

Share Information. "Inadequate information is the major
cause of more than half of all problems with human
performance." according to Joseph Boyett and Jimmie
Boyett, authors of "The Guru Guide", a compendium of the
best ideas of top management thinkers. "By improving
the quality and timeliness of the information people
receive, you can improve performance by as much as
20% to 50%." Orient the junior attorney on the facts and
background of the project and be clear about the nature
and scope of the assignment, the type and format of the
deliverable (e.g., a memo, an oral answer, a brief, a draft
agreement) and the time frame (giving them adequate
time to complete the project, and allowing for their
inexperience; build into the schedule review and revision
time before the client's deadline).

Provide training. Explain any complex theories or fact
patterns. Show them templates and direct them to
research sources. Do not micromanage but give them
enough information that they can find their own way.

Be available. Keep an open door policy. Meet with the
junior attorney on a regular basis to provide positive
reinforcement and ensure the assignment is on track.

Motivate. Try and motivate the junior attorney by inviting
them to meetings and participating in strategy sessions.
Make it interesting for them. Take them out to lunch every
so often.

Evaluate. Evaluate the junior attorney’s performance and
provide constructive feedback.The Boyetts further suggest
that positive reinforcement should be built into the
performance of the task as a natural and immediate by-
product, rather than added" on at the end. "The most
effective positive reinforcers are immediate, individualized,
contingent on the behavior, and occur frequently. Ideally,
people should never have to compete with others for
reinforcement, and the reinforcement should never be
paired with instruction, as in "That was a good job, but
you should have ...."