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Soft Skills Still Matter For Attorneys

Many law school students and new attorneys overlook the value of soft skills in the market.

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businessman lawyer helping handshake shaking handsQuantitative skills from math and data analysis to computer programming and business acumen are becoming an important part of many careers, including the law. A brief look at any of the surveys done in the market show that the attorneys with the best career prospects are those who demonstrate quantitative skills as law firms are increasingly finding that type of work is critical to clients. Without detracting from the importance of “hard” skills, it is equally important to remember that soft skills still count.

Soft skills, from the ability to negotiate deals to “presence” in front of a room, all still make a big difference in business and the law. Any of these skills related to people and interpersonal interactions all can help attorneys to build relationships with clients and colleagues. A recent study cited the ten most important soft skills for employees as integrity, communication, courtesy, responsibility, social skills, positive attitude, professionalism, flexibility, teamwork, and work ethic.

Soft skills are important in business in general, but they are particularly important for attorneys. The role of an attorney is fundamentally that of an advisor.  Attorneys help clients to understand and mitigate risks, and in some cases to take action to correct adverse consequences from risks that have been shifted to a client. As advisors, attorneys need the ability to connect with the client and inspire confidence.

Studies have found that personal characteristics like height and physical fitness impact career success, but in same vein the less tangible soft skills have similar value as well. Unfortunately, many law school students and new attorneys today overlook the value such skills have in the market. Large law firms can help to bridge this skills gap through training and emphasizing the importance of creating a connection with the client rather than treating client relationships as purely transactional in nature.

This is a lesson that is becoming all too familiar in other areas of the business world, such as finance. For a long time, financial advisors viewed their roles as largely being about helping clients to “beat” the market by picking stocks or providing financial advice that would lead to superior investment portfolio returns. The reality is that very few financial advisors were able to meet that standard, and even fewer could do so consistently. That inability to meet the standard that financial advisors set for themselves is part of what has driven the move from active management to passive management in investments and led to the rise of robo-investors and ultra-cheap ETFs.

Modern financial advisors instead focus on helping to keep investors balanced and stable when crisis strikes. Investors have a tendency to dump stocks when markets crash, for instance – financial advisors can help to soothe those fears and keep investors on a rational, pre-planned asset allocation track.

Attorneys can learn a lot from looking at the trials of the financial field. Just as advisors set themselves an impossible task by making their job about “beating the market,” attorneys risk similar issues if they set themselves up as being a transactional solution to a litigation need. The risk is that new software and document eDiscovery options may increasingly eliminate the need for attorneys to be involved in many legal settings.

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Instead attorneys should think about how they can position themselves as advisors to help clients before litigation ever enters the picture. From hedge funds and corporations to individuals considering divorce or bankruptcy, attorneys can offer insight and guidance on the possible paths ahead for a client.

Moreover, just as fee-only financial advisory services are not as lucrative as trading for clients, legal advisory work is not as lucrative on a per-hour basis as litigation is – but it is more consistent and less volatile. In that respect, big law firms might take a page out of the book of big financial firms like Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs that have increasingly moved out of the business of generating revenue through one-off trading and into the business of wealth management and its lower but stable associated revenue. Such a shift starts with honing soft skills.

Michael McDonald is an assistant professor of finance at Fairfield University in Connecticut. He holds a PhD in finance. Michael consults extensively through Morning Investments Consulting and writes for Litigation Finance Journal. Michael has served as an expert witness in legal disputes, and is an arbitrator with the Financial Industry National Regulatory Authority (FINRA). Michael can be reached at [email protected].

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