Articles Posted in Talent

Valentine’s day deserved a heart-warming, feel-good hug of an item – but look what turned up.

On the internet, “general counsel” and “love,” produced a heart-stopping 803,000 hits. Too much love. So I tried “general counsel” and “valentine,” which dropped the hits to 106,000. Still overcome by emotion, I narrowed the search to “general counsel” and valentine’s day, with 36,900 hits, although “valentine’s day” lopped some off to 33,800.

In the end, unsatisfied in my quest for a romantic piece on CLOve (sorry), I shot Cupid’s arrow at “general counsel” and “valentine’s day” and “love.” The 2,270 hits seduced me into scanning several pages, but my search was unrequited. No warm and fuzzies, no tearful affection, no nothing.

Bonuses in law departments are not a sure thing. When recruiting lawyers, those who do so owe it to candidates to accurately describe the likelihood of the new lawyer receiving various bonus amounts. After all, sometimes bonuses dry up. This boom-or-bust uncertainty is not the only lash of bonuses.

A second drawback needs some history. For a number of years, I (and others) have thought the trend was to move more in-house compensation toward bonus and away from base. Many applauded that at-risk orientation as a prod to more productivity.

A counter to that shift – the undue influence problem of bonuses – is that linking a lawyer’s pocketbook to business outcomes can erode that lawyer’s professional objectivity. To the degree that the law department is a risk control function, you hardly want to encourage bonus-seeking lawyers to wink at legally-risky business ventures. (See my post of Nov. 24, 2005 on weighting the determinants of bonuses.)

In declining order, no less. What do you think? Doesn’t this provoke you to respond: write Rees!

1. Mismanage the people in the law department.

2. Not model the behavior they expect from their staff.

A consulting group, having reviewed a municipal Office of the Corporate Counsel, recommended that the OCC transform the existing evaluation system for attorneys and support staff into a performance management system with the following parameters:

1. based on a core-competency model;

2. aligned with the OCC’s strategic objectives;

In at least a half dozen ways, those lawyers who are a company’s only in-house counsel avoid many of the management challenges of larger departments.

1. Vestigial need for knowledge management processes,

2. Non-existent delegation and work assignment issues (See my post of Aug. 26, 2005 about delegation to paralegals.)

I propose the term “cognitive lawyering” to cover such concerns as

1. neuroscience,

2. rationality,

Research has shown that optimists often believe they have much more control over events than they actually do. “They tend to underestimate (often by orders of magnitude) the costs and effort needed to accomplish longer-term objectives.” (Wilson Quarterly, Vol. 30, Winter 2006 at 21, citing Daniel Kahneman and Martin Seligman)

Optimistic corporate lawyers – can they exist? – need to discipline themselves to pour a hefty bucket of reality water on their flaming visions. If you budget tightly, if you devise an aggressive project plan, if you tell clients something will be done quickly, if you predict victory in a lawsuit, if you favorably assess the outcome of a negotiation – hoist the bucket (See my post of Oct. 18, 2005 on risk-averse lawyers.).

An article by Jean Greaves, Ph.D., author, consultant and promoter of emotional intelligence (EI), states the value of EQ boldly (Complete Lawyer, Vol. 1, No. 1 .

EI involves four core skills: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management. The most important, self-awareness, depends on your recognizing what is happening to you as it happens. You then need to control yourself, the second core skill. Social awareness means recognizing accurately how another person feels. You are high EQ if you are skilled in those three abilities, and can also form solid relationships with others. (See my post of Nov. 13, 2005 on EQ and three other attributes of lawyers.)

Greaves maintains that “emotional intelligence explains 58% of job performance. That means of all the factors that a lawyer brings to the table (intellect, experience, personality and knowledge) emotional intelligence accounts for almost two-thirds of career success.”

An Assistant General Counsel with Cox Communications, speaking at ACC’s 2004 Annual Meeting (Course 309), said that they have put in place a method that encourages people in the law department to get to know each other better.

Called the “Buddy System,” it pairs people for six-month periods. During that time, they are expected to have lunch together at least three times. The Buddy System mixes lawyers, paralegals, and administrative assistants. (Meta-post on morale. See my posts of April 14, 2005 on brown bag lunches, Oct. 20, 2005 on low-cost mood boosters, Oct. 29, 2005 on underlying causes, Nov. 19, 2005 on satisfaction compared to “engagement,” and Nov. 19, 2005 on Reuters’ efforts.)

An Assistant General Counsel with Cox Communications, speaking at ACC’s 2004 Annual Meeting (Course 309), explained a personnel tool they use in her law department. It asks people to rate themselves from 1 to 7 on 36 questions of a “Values Assessment Tool.” All the questions begin with, “As a manager, how often do you … [“come up with creative ideas” is one example.]

Based on the ratings they give themselves, the psychometric tool places each person into one of six categories, such as “Director,” “Coordinator,” or “Producer.”

The speaker said that the assessment tool and categories helps them identify values and preferred approaches to problem solving. It also, I would add, gives everyone a shared vocabulary for describing each other.