The law has a well-earned reputation as a staid and stable industry. Attorneys, whether at a law firm or working in-house, are taught to revere and live by precedent — and not just in their practices. In many ways, the delivery of legal services — from fee arrangements to research practices to administrative tasks — has barely changed in decades, a monument to the fixed mind-set that often prevails among lawyers, even as disruptive change swirls all around them.
It’s time to uproot a mindset that often breeds fear and stasis in lawyers. Those with a fixed mind-set see each task as “a challenge to their self-image,” Stanford University psychology professor Carol Dweck says, “and each setback becomes a person threat. So they pursue only activities at which they’re sure to shine — and avoid the sorts of experiences necessary to grow and flourish in any endeavor.”
The fixed mind-set has become the biggest threat. For the first time in memory, the legal market is a buyer’s market: Corporate leaders are pushing their in-house teams to reduce their legal spend, and those general counsels are passing the demand to do more with less to their outside counsel. And if those law firms can’t or won’t adapt, their clients are taking their business elsewhere — to legal outsources, technologically-savvy and nimble law firms, and in-house. Facing those formidable obstacles requires fearlessness. Luckily — even though they might not know it — most lawyers have what it takes to go fearless.
Going fearless doesn’t mean attacking problems with reckless abandon. “There are lots of distinct components of one’s personality that can affect the overall quality we’re referring to as ‘fearlessness,’ such as flexibility, assertiveness and resilience,” LawyerBrain founder and leading expert on the psychology of lawyers Larry Richard says. “In that way, there are an infinite number of roads — meaning, a combination of these traits — that can get you there.”
Fearlessness means trading a fixed mind-set for a growth mind-set. “People with a growth mind-sets see outcomes not as evidence of who they are but as evidence of what they could improve upon in the future and what challenges they could overcome,” the Harvard Business Review notes. The failure of a specific alternative fee arrangement thus doesn’t doom the lawyer with a growth mind-set to abandon the idea of AFAs, but encourages her to use the opportunity to strengthen a relationship and refine the practice.
Take the example of your law firm’s website. If it’s like most, it looks like a lawyer designed it, broken down into practice areas and organized the way an attorney would organize it — rather than with clients in mind. Jeff Berardi, the chief marketing officer at K&L Gates, noticed this. “A lot of what law firms offer is very inward-looking and self-focused,” he says. “But clients don’t see the world along practice group lines. They don’t say, ‘I am in the M&A industry or in the IP industry. They would say, ‘I am in the construction field or in the technology sector.’”
Berardi — whose undergraduate degree is in psychology — took that insight to heart when he redesigned the firm’s client platform. The resulting K&L Gates HUB offers clients access to valuable and relevant proprietary content in an intuitive package. “We got a lot of overwhelming positive feedback directly from clients about how this is a valuable tool,” he says. “They really like the idea of receiving this in a way that doesn’t feel like we’re trying to sell them something or be promotional.” And yet, K&L Gates HUB has helped the firm do just that: The firm has noticed an increase in client work from the most active users of the platform.
“It’s crucial to believe in yourself, and to be confident about where you see the market going, and how the firm can change to adapt to that,” Berardi says. “It might take years, but to have some sort of influence and to be a change agent, and do it for the greater good of the organization rather than personal credit — that’s being a leader.”
Fearlessly leading doesn’t mean leading alone. Fearless confidence comes only from trusted answers. Thomson Reuters can help you find them. From Westlaw to Practical Law, from eDiscovery Point to Firm Central, from Legal Tracker to FindLaw Lawyer Marketing Services, Thomson Reuters has an unparalleled suite of solutions to help turn a growth mind-set into meaningful growth across the whole spectrum of the legal industry. It all starts with Thomson Reuters’s Solutions Finder. Learn more here.
