Article
Junior lawyers: the sky's the limit
Some junior lawyers are more successful than their peers, which leads to the question of what is holding others back from reaching their full potential. In May 2020, legal management consultancy Kies Consulting published a report following its survey into the barriers to the effectiveness of junior lawyers with ten of the leading law firms in the South West, including Michelmores, Womble Bond Dickinson and Browne Jacobson (respectively, the survey and the report). The participants included managing partners, HR directors, partners, training partners, and learning and development managers.
The transition from the academic to the commercial world can be an uphill struggle for junior lawyers. As explained in the report, the factors that decide which junior lawyers will be high achievers are not just legal excellence and academic success. Practical business skills are vital, and this is something that many new graduates struggle with. It appears that undergraduate law degrees are not effectively teaching the business skills that students need for a successful career in law. The report identifies five factors that are holding law graduates back from becoming high achievers:
- Attention to detail.
- Emotional readiness.
- Commercial awareness.
- Work ethos.
- Mistake culture.
Attention to detail
The need for improved attention to detail among junior lawyers, particularly in business writing, was identified by 92% of participants in the survey. Junior lawyers often try to prove themselves by rushing into pieces of work in order to show quick results. Typically, their focus is on quantity rather than quality, which means that the outcome creates more work, both for the junior lawyer and their senior peers who have to spend an increasing amount of time on quality assurance.
The report indicates that trainees do eventually learn to meet the required quality expectation during the early stages of their careers, suggesting that graduates need to adjust their definition of what “good” looks like when they join the workplace. The challenge is for law firms to catch the issue early and help trainees become aware of their personal effectiveness and how to develop it. The gap between what is considered a good quality of work on a law course, and in a firm’s workplace, needs to be closed.
Emotional readiness
A career in law consistently exposes lawyers to emotional stress. This comes from challenging work and coping with emotionally charged clients, as well as sometimes difficult relationships with colleagues.
Junior lawyers’ lack of emotional intelligence and low levels of emotional resilience and perseverance were highlighted as a barrier to success by 83% of the survey’s participants.
Junior lawyers also need good interpersonal skills in order to build a good rapport with clients and colleagues. The survey found that graduates who joined a law firm with broad experience, beyond just an academic background, were more resilient and had better interpersonal skills. The survey’s participants also agreed that having work experience in other sectors before starting a training contract was an advantage.
Commercial awareness
The survey highlighted junior lawyers’ lack of commercial awareness, in particular that they typically fail to understand that a law firm is a commercial enterprise. There is clearly a need for business development acumen among junior lawyers, as well as an appreciation of how the individual’s performance is being measured in financial terms. Again, the junior lawyers who had experience of other work outside of law were considered to perform better in this area, with a better understanding of the commercial focus of a law firm than their peers.
Commercial awareness needs to be taught both theoretically and through experience. One answer could be for legal education providers to offer guidance or opportunities to gain commercial experience during their courses.
Work ethos
The majority of survey participants agreed that most junior lawyers struggled to establish the necessary work ethos. They identified the need for greater flexibility, better reliability and consistency, as well as for commitment and loyalty. In addition, they noted the need for punctuality and critical self-reflection, and for junior lawyers to proactively offer help, be more transparent about mistakes and offer ideas for process improvement. Shaping the necessary mindset that will drive the required work ethos will help to improve mental health and loyalty and ultimately make junior staff more productive rather than just busy.
Mistake culture
Finally, the survey participants identified the need for a well-balanced mistake culture in a firm. A firm’s culture determines whether mistakes are seen as the starting point for a learning opportunity or something shameful and damaging to an individual’s personal brand. Getting this right avoids stifling junior lawyers’ talents and disengaging high performers.
Practice-orientated learning
The generosity of the survey participants to share their insights and experiences has provided a good understanding of the barriers holding back junior lawyers. The main conclusion is that although students will be offered a training contract because they are smart and capable, the deciding factor of who will push ahead of their peers to become high achievers is not just down to legal excellence.
The issues that the survey identified are practical business skills, which are key to help modern law firms deliver excellent technical work as well as excellent client service. Hopefully, this will spark discussion among law firms and law schools on how to address the root causes of the issues that are holding back junior lawyers. Irrespective of whether universities or law firms pick up the baton to resolve these issues, the feedback to the survey suggests that unstructured learning by observation and imitation during a training contract is not enough. It seems unlikely that the introduction of the Solicitors Qualifying Exam in 2021 will resolve these issues as it will focus on technical issues. Instead, learning programmes that are practice orientated will reduce the burden on senior staff who are coaching junior talent and will speed up the return on investment on a firm’s training contract. (see box “Junior Lawyer Career Programme").
Learn more about Thomson Reuters’ Sweet & Maxwell legal resources.
This article was originally published in the September 2020 issue of PLC Magazine.
Michael Schauer is a director of Kies Consulting.
Remain an industry leader in your field with the latest legal resources