Disruption And The T-Shaped Associate: How Young Lawyers Should Look To Develop In A Transforming Industry

How should a young lawyer approach their career progression?

This legal career thing is rough. Not only is there all that substantive knowledge to acquire, but everyone says the business is in throes of “disruption”. How should a young lawyer approach their career progression? Let me offer one view, starting with a framing of what disruption is, and then use this framing to draw out implications for lawyers at law school, choosing their first firms, and growing in the early years at their chosen firm.

To understand disruption, it’s best to start with an articulation of client needs and how they are met. In elite law, client needs can be thought of as layers of increasing complexity and subtlety that overlay each other in a stack. The table below presents these layers: at the bottom is basic data gathering and framing; at the top is assurance—clients’ comfort from feeling their matter is being addressed in the best possible way. Meeting the need of each layer requires having met the needs in the layers below.

Need Description
Assurance Emotional comfort—feeling that their issue is being addressed in the best possible way.
Business judgment Guidance they trust on business decisions and priorities.
Adversarial interaction Outperforming opposing counsel in negotiations or in court.
Legal judgment Trustworthy guidance on legal issues.
Legal analysis Comprehensible succinct framing of legal issues.
Norms Knowledge of current deal norms, how particular judges approached comparable matters, how regulators pursued comparable issues.
Forms Efficient handling of standard issues that are contiguous to the heart of the matter
Laws and regulations Current, in-depth, understanding of the law and how it’s been interpreted and applied.
Facts Comprehensive, well-ordered, assembly of relevant facts and documents.

 

In the past, the full stack of client needs on a particular matter was met by a single firm that bundled together the various layers into one offering. Disruption is changing this. Individual layers are being unbundled from the whole and made available to clients separately. This new flexibility presents compelling opportunities to clients for lower-cost (and often better) service. Hence, clients will increasingly source separately the different layers of the stack. The upper layers will remain the province of elite law firms; the lower layers will increasingly be provided separately by new-breed competitors.

The loss of these lower layers presents a profound challenge to the elite law firm business model. However, this shouldn’t be conflated with a threat to the existence of elite law firms. Rather, as the lower layers of the stack transition to other players, elite firms will concentrate on the upper levels and will adapt their people development and pricing models accordingly. Indeed, the shift to the upper levels of the stack is good news for the best young lawyers as it means less time paying one’s dues doing document review and due diligence.

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The implication for young lawyers is that they should eschew the typical advice to develop a singular deep expertise (i.e. an I-shaped profile) and instead look to combine a legal expertise with a broader skill set (i.e. a T-shaped profile). The broader skill set (the top of the T) includes effective interpersonal and negotiation skills, business understanding and judgment, and empathizing with and understanding client’s psychological needs. What might you do to help develop this breath earlier and in-full?  Here are some ideas:

At law school:

Law school is an important time to learn about more than the substance of law.  Young lawyers should seize the opportunity to learn particularly about business and interpersonal dynamics.

  • On business: While studying for your JD, take courses outside of the law school that focus on business—strategy and marketing are probably the most useful. If you don’t have a firm grasp of technology, take a survey course that exposes you to database structures, expert systems and artificial intelligence—technology will be a strong driver of the legal landscape, it’s important to have enough of an understanding to be able to track developments. If you didn’t work between college and law school, consider taking a year or two off to work in a business, any business.
  • On interpersonal dynamics: seek out courses that focus on interactions with people—negotiations, small group dynamics, skills, communications and presentation skills. Focus on courses that require working in groups—this can be exasperating, but it teaches essential collaboration and leadership skills. Look to TA a course or to find volunteer opportunities that expose you to situations where you advise people. Bottom line: less time at a computer; more time talking with people.

Choosing a firm:

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Look for a firm with progressive views on attorney development. For example, look for firms:

  • That have moved beyond a one-size-fits-all 9-year partner track to firms who encourage a broader range of development experiences along the way.
  • Where people in leadership have followed non-traditional career paths—have they been on secondment with a client, worked in more than one office, spent time at a government agency?
  • Whose training programs feature multiple options for soft skills training—leading teams of lawyers, communicating effectively with clients, persuasive skills.
  • With low leverage (i.e. low numbers of non-partners per partner)—lower leverage creates more opportunities for learning directly from partners and is also an indicator that the mix of work biases toward the top end of the client needs stack.
  • Who can tell you specifics of their development process. What’s the frequency of development reviews, who provides them, how direct are people in them?

Once at a firm:

Make time to attend training classes focused on softer skills. Take annual review sessions seriously—they’re opportunities to learn, not just a time when you are graded. Consider a client secondment—there’s no better way to realize what it is clients are, and are not, looking. Find a way to work in an overseas office. Use pro bono assignments as a way to be the lead advisor to someone. Volunteer to be a beta tester for any new technology being deployed. Ask for feedback, often.

Despite the changes, the coming decades are going to be a great time to be a lawyer at an elite law firm. A little thought now on where to place the emphasis in your development will pay handsome dividends in the years ahead.

Hugh A. Simons Ph.D. is formerly a senior partner at The Boston Consulting Group and chief operating officer at Ropes & Gray. He welcomes your feedback at hugh@simonsadvisors.org