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The Latest Information About Patent Attorney Jobs

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Patent attorney jobs are plentiful if you know where and how to look for them, and if you are trained for this type of legal work. To better understand how to get the best patent attorney jobs it is best to understand what these specialized lawyers do in the first place.

It is no secret that for inventors and developers getting legal protection for their products and inventions is an important step in the process. It is also no secret that this can take a long time, in some cases. The process of getting a patent can be complex and expensive, and there is never a guarantee that the exclusive license will be granted.

In general, this kind of job involve helping those inventors and developers to secure the license that they seek. This might involve helping the client manage his or her way through the process or it may include defending the rights of the inventor or developer on issues of infringement.

In addition to being state-licensed lawyers, those working in patent attorney jobs must also be qualified and admitted to the patent bar.

Patent Attorney Job Description

To work in this highly specialized field, lawyers must spend years learning the intricacies involved in this type of law. By using their experience and knowledge, they can help clients with various patent issues. Some of the patent attorney jobs they do include:

  • Consulting with clients who need to patent inventions.
  • Perform in-depth research in order to learn if there are similar inventions already under licenses.
  • Prepare various types of applications and submit them to the appropriate agencies.
  • Assist with any subsequent legal issues or problems.

To work in patent attorney jobs, lawyers have to be admitted to the legal bar in at least one state. In addition, they must be admitted to the patent law bar, which can only take place after they pass the United States Patent and Trademark Office registration test.

Most of these lawyers are educated in patent-related law as well as in some technical field of study. They may have earned undergraduate degrees in various fields such as physics, engineering, biology, computer science, or mechanical engineering.

In addition, these lawyers must be very well versed in research techniques as this is often a large part of their work. They must know how to research past and current cases as well as research any current or past filings.

These lawyers must also possess a keen attention toward various technical details. They must also be able to convey their findings both orally and in written form.

The Salary of Patent Attorneys

According to experts such as PayScale, the average salary for a new patent attorney comes in between $39,000 and $95,000 for the year 2010. This salary range is for those with one year or less of experience, but it does presume the person has passed the patent test and is qualified in that regard.

Those with more years of experience can expect to make a very good living with some estimates of salary being well above $100,000 per year. This salary will vary, of course, depending on the type of work one does and the size of the law firm one works for.

According to The Bureau of Labor Statistics, demand for these types of lawyers is expected to grow at least as fast as other types of legal professions. It should be noted that because of the added burden of passing the patent test, there may be fewer qualified personnel in this area of the law as many lawyers prefer to not sit for this particular test.

Most experts suggest that the very best patent attorney jobs will be for those who have proven technical backgrounds.

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Categories: Legal jobs - Tags: inventors, patent attorney, patent attorney jobs, patent law, salary of patent attorneys

Entry Level Attorney Salary Information

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According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average entry level attorney salary is about $53,000. However, this number varies considerably depending on several factors. This article looks at those factors in-depth.

The salary of entry level attorneys depends on the following for factors:

  • company
  • location
  • industry
  • education

Let’s see the salary information based on the four factors that you can see above.

Company

The amount of yearly earnings a new lawyer can expect to make will vary considerably with the type of law firm he or she works in. As one might imagine, the larger the law firm, the more earnings one can expect to make. Larger law firms are also able to promote and increase earnings somewhat faster than smaller firms. This is generally due to having more clients and more workload. It should also be noted that while larger firms often pay more for new lawyers, they often require more hours of work per week.

Location

Generally, those who work in larger metro area will be able to make more than those who are working in smaller, rural areas. Again, this is more due to workload than quality of service. In very simple terms, it is a matter of supply and demand. However, it should also be noted that many lawyers who choose to work in smaller communities will make more simply because they are the only lawyers in town. Generally, those working in smaller communities will need to be well versed in a variety of legal issues from wills to articles of incorporation.

Industry

There are some areas of the law that inherently pay more than other areas of the law. For instance, a lawyer who practices general family law is less likely to make as much as a lawyer who practices, and has passed the additional tests, in patent law. Lawyers who are working in high-tech areas of law will often make considerably more than those who are working in the public sector.

Education

As mentioned above, those who have additional education in areas such as patent law, corporate law, or tax law will often be able to make more, even as newly hired lawyers. Education and proven credentials will go a long way in commanding higher salaries in the legal field. Generally speaking, the entry level attorney salary is based on those who have been in practice for three years or less. These numbers also assume the person has passed the state bar examination in the state in which they wish to practice.

According to payscale.com, the entry level attorney salary can range from $53,000 to $59,009. This is the 2009 average range. In 2005, the median average salary for new attorneys was $60,000, according to the BLS for lawyers with less than nine months of on-site experience. According to Salarylist.com, the entry level attorney salary was set at about $59,000 for 2009. But again, it must be stressed that these numbers are median numbers. Half of those entering this field will make more and half will make less.

A more accurate number can be gained by visiting your state bar association and doing research using that as your starting point. It will be important to input the area of the state in which you wish to work. For instance, the entry level attorney salary for those who plan to work in Los Angeles may be much higher than for those who wish to work in Compton, California. This will prove true no matter what state you currently reside in and plan to work in.

It is also important to search for jobs that match your educational assets. If you have already taken and passed the patent law test, you should mention that as this may very well put you into a much higher earning category.

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Categories: Legal jobs - Tags: attorney jobs, attorney salary, entry level attorney jobs, entry level attorney salary, salary of attorneys

Learn Happiness Strategies And Become a Happier Lawyer

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“The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win you’re still a rat.”
- Lily Tomlin

Learning to become happy may sound strange. Many of us think of happiness as a state in which we happen to find ourselves. But as researchers in the emerging field of positive psychology are discovering, we can all adopt strategies to become happy.

Becoming change- and stress-resilient are essential components of happiness, especially for lawyers. Resilience is the ability to persevere and adapt when overcoming obstacles. The secret to the emotional intelligence competency of resilience is accurate thinking. We need to challenge limiting beliefs and negative thoughts. Managing stress and dealing with change allows you to excel in the workplace while maintaining a well-balanced, healthy lifestyle.

Unmanaged Stress Affects Physical Health

The legal profession is full of lawyers who are dissatisfied and abandoning the practice of law for less stressful careers. Increasing billable hour requirements, time pressures, and work/life balance issues are frequently cited as the reason for the high rates of lawyer dissatisfaction. Attorneys complain of little time for themselves or their families. (In contrast, happy people are less self-focused, less hostile, more loving, forgiving, trusting, energetic, decisive, enthusiastic, creative, sociable and helpful.) Contributing factors include anxiety, depression, relationship issues, and questions relating to personal values and the meaning of life.

Unmanaged stress increases anxiety, depression (we all know that there are many depressed lawyers), anger, substance abuse, and feelings of unhappiness, all of which decrease quality of life and workplace productivity. A Johns Hopkins study found that out of 104 occupational groups, lawyers were the most likely to suffer from depression—more than three times more likely than average. Nearly 75% of attorneys report experiencing high levels of stress; 66% of these attorneys report that their physical and emotional health suffers as a result.

The greatest source of stress is the tremendous internal pressure and anxiety that we create for ourselves through:

  • worrying about situations we can’t control
  • the unrealistic expectation that life can be problem-free
  • comparing our achievements, or lack of them, to those of others
  • perfectionism—expecting too much of ourselves or others
  • competition—turning every encounter into a win-lose situation
  • self-criticism—focusing on faults, rather than strengths
  • insecurity—looking to others to provide emotional security rather than ourselves
  • powerlessness—failing to see the choices that are available
  • hurrying—constantly pushing ourselves to perform better and faster
  • pessimism—expecting the worst from life

Take Action To Become Happier

To reduce the stress in your life and experience more happiness, begin by taking one of the steps below. Over the next 21 days, commit yourself to recording, measuring and implementing how this step helped you to successfully change.

Focus on the Positive – Write down your proudest accomplishments. When do you exhibit peak performance?

Get Organized – Put important things first. Learning the skill of self- management involves organizing and managing time and events based on personal priorities.

Do It Now – Procrastination breeds stress. Do your most difficult task at the beginning of the day when you’re fresh; avoid the stress of dreading it all day.

Stop Perfectionism – Perfectionism is often a poor use of time. High priority items require more perfection than low priority items. By demanding perfection of yourself and others, you may be wasting time in unnecessary effort.

Change Attitudes – Think of stressful situations as a challenge to your creative thinking rather than as insurmountable problems. Generate solutions.

Learn to Say “No” – Say “no” when your schedule is full: to responsibilities that aren’t yours; to emotional demands that leave you feeling exhausted; to other people’s problems that you don’t have the power to solve.

Take Care of Your Body - You will have more energy and become stress-hardy when you eat a balanced diet, get sufficient sleep and exercise regularly.

Optimistic Self-Talk – Use positive self-reinforcement: Say to yourself, ”I can handle this one step at a time,” instead of frightening or depressing yourself by coming up with reasons why you can’t cope.

Support – Actively seek support from friends, colleagues, and family. Don’t be a Lone Ranger.

Express Gratitude – Take time to appreciate what you have. Express appreciation to others.

Take Charge – Take responsibility for making your life what you want it to be. It is more empowering to feel a sense of control and to make decisions. Commit to what will bring meaning into your life and take action.

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Categories: Legal coaching - Tags: anxiety, attorneys stress, depressed lawyers, depression, lawyer depression, lawyer stress, practice of law, stressful career, substance abusing lawyers, unmanaged stress

Why Coaching and Mentoring Are Vital To Every Lawyer’s Career Planning

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“I wish I had a mentor.” I have heard that statement uttered by more lawyers over the past 18 years than any other except perhaps, “I hate billable hours!” That lawyers want more mentoring doesn’t surprise me. Mentoring and coaching are critical to every lawyer’s career development. In fact, after education, such support is widely held to be the second most significant factor in becoming a successful lawyer.

Law School Does Not Teach You How To Be A Lawyer

Mentoring is not just for young lawyers, either. The need for mentoring and coaching cuts across all stages of career, all practice areas, all environments, all sizes of law firms, in-house departments, genders, ages, races and geographic areas. From the minute we ventured forth from the halls of law school we heard, “Law school does not teach you how to be a lawyer.” Have you ever had one of those dreams where you show up for a final exam and realize you never attended that class and haven’t a clue about the exam? Starting out stone cold in the practice of law felt like that to me. Okay I’m here, now what do I do?

If mentoring is such a key building block in our professional career development, why do most lawyers report that they never received the mentoring and coaching they felt they needed?

When The Bottom Line Rules, Associates Lose

Simply stated, things are not the way they used to be in the legal profession. The modern practice of law with its current myopic focus on the bottom line leaves little time or incentive for developing truly impactful mentoring relationships among lawyers. This leads to a major gap in the acculturation of the vast majority of associates. The lawyers, the firm and clients suffer.

It was not like that in the “good old days.” When my father graduated from law school in the early 1950′s, he started with a firm and right away had a very experienced, successful mentor who was eager to show him the ropes, share his knowledge, give advice, introduce him to the “right” people, work with him and groom him to be a successful trial lawyer. That was common practice in those days.

This organic mentoring relationship has pretty much gone by the wayside. It exists only rarely, and hardly ever for women and minorities. When my brothers and I got out of law school in the 1980s, we each expected to be mentored as my father was. We were surprised and disappointed when that never happened. A large number of my law school classmates had the same negative experience.

Associates Must Take Matters Into Their Own Hands

What has been done to fix the problem? Law firms started various kinds of formal mentoring programs in the 1980s but these have had only marginal success. According to managers in major law firms I have interviewed, these programs that continue today are not meeting the need (even though the firm proudly touts them!) and associates are still not experiencing the relationship part of mentoring that is so critical to their development. The mentor they are assigned is either not fully invested in the concept of mentoring, or does not have the training to be good at it. In fact mentoring skills run contrary to a lawyer’s strengths. On the other side of the equation, young associates do not know how to look for mentoring experiences and instead wait passively for something that rarely happens.

Is there anything that I could have done differently coming out of law school? Is there anything that lawyers today can be doing for themselves while waiting for firms to implement better mentoring programs? Absolutely! Instead of waiting
for the ideal mentor to show up at your office door, you can take full responsibility for your career and seek out opportunities to be mentored. It’s the approach I share with the lawyers I coach in other aspects of career development – whether finding new jobs, alternative careers, or building bigger client bases.

Take Full Responsibility. Build A Network. Create A Plan

There are excellent mentors to be found, but you have to orient yourself three ways. First, you have to take full responsibility for your career and understand that your career development has always been and always will be up to you. Second, you need to shift from thinking of mentoring as something you get from one person. You need to have more than one mentor and think in terms of building a network of people you can turn to for a variety of things – a mentoring “board of advisors.” Third, you need to create and follow a strategic plan, much as you would when conducting a job search or targeting a new client. This is where the rubber meets the road and it takes time, focus and purpose.

You need to get clear about your personal goals for career and business development and create a career development plan. Temporarily at least, you need to stop thinking like a lawyer. Instead of driving yourself crazy obsessing about all the risks and potential downsides in every situation just try to relax and picture where you want to go with your career. Ask yourself: Who do I want to be in five years? Ten years? What kind of clients do I want to be serving? What kind of practice do I want to have? And what are the qualities and attributes of a successful person with that kind of career and practice?

Once you have a vision for your career, you can break it down into manageable, tactical pieces and set goals to get there. You can identify the steps you need to take at each stage, including the skills you need to have, the people you need to meet, the clients you need to have, and so on.

Find A Mentor Who Fits The Stage Of Your Career

There are some mentoring needs that most lawyers have in common. New lawyers need to focus on developing skills, competencies, professional identity, work/life balance and how to progress on the partnership track if that is what they want, or where to look for alternatives if they don’t want to be a partner. Lawyers who have practiced three to five years also need to learn about leadership, marketing, human resource management, and the financial realities of the law business.

Nor does lawyer development stop when you reach partnership. For experienced lawyers, it is important to find mentoring at transition points – redirecting one’s area of practice, changing employment, or even changing professions. For senior lawyers it can be about many of the same things as well as keeping up with technological changes.

Once you have your career plan in place, you can create a mentoring plan. I don’t mean look for one person to fill all your needs. As I said earlier, the odds of that happening are slim to none. Once you have identified the various areas in which
you need mentoring, you can identify the people who can help you. For example, if you have decided that one of your long-term goals is to be a well-known speaker, then you need to find a mentor who has contacts, influence, and may be able to teach you presentation skills. You would likely choose a different person to mentor you in managing competing work demands; one who is well organized and could show you practical techniques and strategies.

Good Mentoring And The Role Of Coaching

Aside from technical skills, what should you look for in a mentor? What I have found in my personal experiences on both the mentor/coach and protégé sides is that good mentors need to be able to play different roles at different times, depending on the situation. Sometimes they need to instruct and give guidance, sometimes they need to give constructive criticism, and sometimes they need to be more of a coach. Always they need to have patience, to care about the other person’s success, to be supportive, perceptive, a good listener and able to help protégés help themselves.

What I see missing from most formal mentoring relationships in firms is the coaching role, which most lawyers do not know how to play effectively. It requires dramatically different skills from the analytical, directive ones expected from a lawyer. It is more like the Socratic method that is used by first year law professors. The mentor asks the protégé questions that help her discover answers that are inside her already. The coach’s role is that of a sounding board, facilitator, counselor and awareness raiser. Often the coach says little to nothing. Instead, he asks questions to get a clear understanding of what the protégé thinks, wants, and needs. He listens closely to the answers and often asks more questions to help the protégé discover her own answers.

Instead of the mentor telling the protégé how to correct a difficult problem, handle an assignment, or rescuing her from a mistake, he leads her to think through a situation, tap into her own experience and knowledge, and find her own way. By investing a little time on the front end of this ‘coaching conversation’ the partner saves much more time going forward because the associate becomes increasingly more self-reliant, confident and less dependent on the partner. It’s much like the adage, ‘Pay me now or pay me later.’

There are two key reasons why the coaching role is so important to good mentoring. First, it leads to a deeper level of learning both for the person being mentored and for the mentor. Second, it also makes for a higher quality relationship characterized by mutual trust, respect and more open communication. Not a bad payoff for a few extra minutes of attention by the partner!

Since very few lawyers have intuitive coaching skills it may be difficult to find a mentor who also can play the coach role. However coaching skills can be taught and learned, and hopefully one day this type of training will be a regular part of formal mentoring programs. Meanwhile coaching skills can be found in people who may not otherwise be positioned to serve as your mentor. So you can have both, just not in the same person.

Now that you know what you want in a mentor, how are you going to articulate to a potential mentor what you offer? Be ready to talk about your specific goals and explain why this person has the skills and abilities to help you. You don’t even have to use the term mentor – just be precise about what you want him to do and why.

Mentors Come In All Shapes, Sizes And Philosophies

How do you find mentors? You start by networking to identify prospects, both in your firm or company and outside of it. Look at partners, co-workers, ex-bosses, and colleagues in other practices. Business and professional organizations,community groups, and personal interest groups are other sources. For a senior lawyer, a junior partner who is technologically savvy can be a mentor. Don’t assume it has to be someone senior to you – you can find mentoring opportunities everywhere. Talk to friends in the profession and find out who their resources are. Remember, non-lawyers can be great mentors and can teach important practice skills. If your goal is to be a better negotiator, look to business people and mediators as possible mentors. If you need to be better at analyzing complex financial data, seek out an accountant or financial advisor. In return, you can offer your experience and insight as a mentor to them.

Once you identify someone, take the initiative to build a personal relationship. You can take the indirect approach and find opportunities to get to know her better before asking her to assist you. You can also take the direct approach – ask her for ten minutes to talk and lay your cards on the table. Describe your goals, be clear about what you want, and estimate how much of her time it will take. Approach this person with the attitude that you are trying to emulate her, not asking to be taken care of. She is more likely to be willing to share what works for her rather than to help you do your work.

Demonstrate from the outset that you are someone worth investing time in. What I hear most mentors say they want to see in a potential protégé includes: ambition, integrity, determination, a positive attitude, good listening and interpersonal skills, and willingness to take responsibility for her own career. Emphasize your own responsibility in the relationship and be confident about your abilities and how they can help you become a better lawyer.

Lessons That Last A Lifetime

I have to admit that I did not practice what I’m preaching to you here when I entered the profession. Partly because I did not know how, but mainly because I knew early on that the practice of law was not for me. I have, however, followed this approach in my subsequent careers. When I stepped out of the practice in 1991 to start a company placing experienced contract lawyers, I immediately came up with a business plan and determined who I wanted on my personal Board of Advisors. I knew I had a lot to learn about networking, marketing, and all the other aspects of running a business. I began to develop close relationships with a few like-minded, experienced lawyers who believed in what I was doing, who could help pave the way in my networking efforts. I hired a business coach to work with me weekly in all aspects of business skill development.

I have continued to do this in my new career as a professional life coach. When I decided to transition into a coaching career, I sought out coaches I already knew and joined several coaching associations. By doing this I have established
wonderful relationships with coaches more experienced than I, to whom I turn for coaching when I need it. I now have another personal Board of Advisors. As I identify new competencies and situations for which I need mentoring, I seek out new mentors and will continue to do so the rest of my professional life.

About the author of this article: Anne H. Whitaker, vice president of Counsel On Call’s Atlanta office, has more than 20 years of combined experience in coaching, consulting, marketing, law and education. In 1991, she co-founded In-House Counsel, Inc., a pioneering contract attorney placement company in Atlanta. Prior to entering the business world, Ms. Whitaker practiced real estate law in private practice for five years.  She received her J.D., cum laude, from the University of Georgia School of Law in 1986, where she served on the editorial board of the Georgia Law Review.  She is a member of the State Bar of Georgia, the Atlanta Bar Association, Lawyers Club of Atlanta, and Georgia Association of Women Lawyers (GAWL) and has created, chaired and spoken at numerous seminars for lawyers on career development and transition. She provides career development coaching for lawyers, is founding member and co- chair of the Atlanta Bar Career Management Committee, and is a licensed provider of the Highlands Ability Battery and other career-related assessments.  To contact Ms. Whitaker, visit www.counseloncall.com.

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What Are Your Natural Talents and Abilities?

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Knowing what you do best -what your strongest natural talents and abilities are- and then finding the work that best fits those talents are fundamental to finding success and fulfillment

Each Person Is Born With A Unique Set Of Talents

Every person is born with a unique set of talents that gives them a special ability to perform certain kinds of tasks easily and yet also make other tasks seem laborious.   Knowing what you do best–what your strongest natural talents and abilities are and how you are “hard-wired”–and then finding the work that best fits those talents are fundamental to finding success and fulfillment.  This is the basic groundwork of your Personal Vision, and is the information you need at each of your career Turning Points as you start to decide what you will do with your life.

Do You Know What Your Hard-Wired Talents And Abilities Are?

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe said it well:  “The important thing in life is to have a great aim and to possess the aptitude and the perseverance to attain it.”  Do you know what your hard-wired talents and abilities are?  I hear many of you saying: Of course I do!  Peter Drucker, whom Fortune magazine described as the most prescient business trend spotter of our time, said, “Most people think they know what they are good at.  They are usually wrong.”  I have found this to be absolutely true, at least for myself and the people I have coached over the years.

It’s not our fault.  This is not something that we learn in school, and it is certainly not something that we discover in the work place.  It is very hard to know what your abilities are without an objective assessment tool (we’ll talk more about that later).  Furthermore, the focus in our careers is typically on education, skill- building, and training.  While important, they are not your innate abilities or aptitudes.  Often people confuse the concept of abilities with skills and/or intelligence but they are not the same.  Intelligent, highly-motivated people can accomplish many things for which they have little or no natural talent, but they may not be happy or satisfied doing it.  I have known many lawyers who have become successful in their practices through education, training and experience and yet are still very dissatisfied with their careers.  The missing piece of the puzzle for them was in the abilities area; discovering what their natural abilities were gave them invaluable insight into what was and wasn’t working for them.   Some realized they were in roles that did not allow them to use their strong talents, which was the root of their frustration and boredom.  Others learned that they were frustrated and burned-out because their jobs loaded heavily on abilities
they did not have.  The further you get from fully expressing your talents and abilities, the less likely it is that you will enjoy your day at work.

It Is Important To Know How Your Abilities Combine And Work Together To Influence What You Are Naturally Gifted To Do

So what are natural abilities?  They are the inborn talents that are always accessible for you to use, any time and any place.  By the time you are 14 or 15 years old,  your natural abilities have stabilized and, barring any serious disease or physical injury that affects your brain, they will remain with you, unchanging, for your entire life.  You don’t have to practice or even use them regularly to maintain them.

They often drive you into certain kinds of activities.  For some people, it’s a gift for music or design, or a talent for theoretical thought.  Other’s talents are more generalized, such as managing people, or abilities that make writing or teaching easy.  There are certain abilities that are the most powerful and influential talents:  The Driving Abilities.  These are particularly important to know about because they influence, or drive you, whether they are high or low.  In my experience working with lawyers, I have seen many people trace their dissatisfaction at work to having one or more strong Driving Abilities of which they were not aware and for which they had no outlet.  It is also important to know how your abilities combine and work together to influence what you are naturally gifted to do.

Classification: One Of The Driving Abilities

Let’s look at one of the Driving Abilities–Classification.  This ability employs your right brain to solve problems.   Also called inductive reasoning, this type of problem solving consists of your right brain taking unrelated and related facts, observations, and information and arriving at a theory to connect them and explain them.  It’s quick, and those with high Classification love to use it–it’s fun for them.  On the other hand, it also makes it difficult for them to get along easily with those who have other equally valid, but different ways of solving problems.   To give you an example of how abilities affect our lives, let’s take a look at Susan, a person with strong Classification ability.  Susan is a junior partner at a law firm.  She is described by her co-workers as quick and self-assured.

Given a problem to solve, she knows the answer before anyone even has a chance to fully explain the issue.  She often starts responding to what people say before they can finish their sentence, and she has an irritating habit of being right and knowing she is right.  Susan also has little patience with people who are slower than she at seeing the answers.  She often feels she is waiting for others to catch up and see something that is completely obvious to her already.  Susan is happiest when she is fully engaged by problems coming at her fast and furiously, and is very unhappy when she has nothing new to sink her teeth into.   Because she is high in Classification, she doesn’t solve problems logically or in a linear fashion; she solves them with the right hemisphere of her brain–the one that doesn’t put things into language form.  She doesn’t necessarily know how she gets to an answer, but just knows what the right answer is.  Working with Susan, junior associates might notice that when they hand her a brief that they have spent days on to perfect, she scans it briefly, remarking only that “I would change the order of the arguments.”  Susan is using her strong Classification and is quickly able to spot a problem with almost anything.

Classification demands to be used–more than any other strong ability.  If Susan was ever stuck in a menial job that required her to do the same thing over and over, she would be very unhappy.  She might even create problems for herself, seemingly just to have the opportunity to make use of this powerful ability.  On the other hand, people with other problem solving styles must go through a much more laborious process to get to the answer.  Those individuals would not thrive in the same type of fast-paced, rapid-fire problem solving environment that Susan finds so exciting.

Performing In A Way That Works With Your Abilities Will Create More Energy And Leverage Your Talents

Why is it important to know what your abilities are?  First, natural abilities affect the ease or difficulty that you experience with certain types of work activities.  When a particular task requires a set of abilities that are natural for you, you can perform it in less time, with less effort, and use less energy.  On the other hand, when a task requires talents that are not in your make up, you spend more time, put forth more effort, and exert more energy to achieve a similar level of performance.   That explains why certain sets of work activities are relatively easy for one person but not another.   For Susan, her strong Classification ability does not predict how well she will perform as a lawyer necessarily but it gives her critical information.  Of course she needs to know what her other abilities are and how they interact with one another to get a more complete picture.  But she now understands why she enjoys and really needs rapid-fire, fast-paced problem solving and, alternatively, feels drained and frustrated by situations that are more mundane and process-driven.

This does not mean that you should only pursue tasks for which you are naturally gifted.  There are other personal factors–the other 6 Critical Success Factors we haven’t touched on yet–that also cause people to undertake work activities for which they don’t have truly natural talent.  Your values, goals, family influence, interests, and skills also play an important part.   That being said, knowing your talents will help you better manage how you work.  There is more than one way to do a job or accomplish a task, and performing in a way that works with your abilities will create more energy and leverage your talents.     Second, you need to know what your abilities are so you can find activity outlets for them.   Creating outlets, both on and off the job, can make you feel much better about the work that you do.  If Susan was also strong in Idea Productivity– which is a drive to generate a lot of ideas–and she did not get an opportunity to use that at work, she would need to create ways that she could do so outside of the office or she would feel stifled and frustrated.

Lastly, knowing your talents allows you to communicate your preferences to those with whom you work and live.   You are clearer about what is easier and harder for you and you can also appreciate what does and does not come naturally for others.   Susan can now understand why she always feels like she is having to wait for others to “catch up” with her and can develop an appreciation for the fact that others arrive at solutions and decisions in a different but equally valid way.

Frank Was Dissatisfied And Ready For A Change

It should be clear by now that knowing your natural abilities allows you to readjust your career so that you can work with rather than against your hard-wiring.  For an example of this, let’s visit again with Frank, the lawyer we met in
the last article.  Remember that at 41, Frank was dissatisfied and ready for a change.   A success by all standards, he was not only a senior partner at a major law firm with a great book of business, but for several years he had been
managing partner of the firm. He was working most weekends and many nights during the week.  He was generally considered an excellent manager, but felt great stress because he did not enjoy his work anymore.  It took him away from his family even more than his practice ever had, but he didn’t know what he could do about it.

His firm needed him in the managing partner role and his family depended on him to work hard and provide for them.  After taking some time to examine what was important to him, Frank remembered that he had enjoyed
practicing law for a long time after joining the firm but that for the last few years he hadn’t enjoyed his work at all.    As we saw last time, Frank’s first step in developing a Personal Vision was to understand his Stage of Adult Development and that he was at the Midlife Turning Point.   Instead of making a drastic change in his life because he was so unhappy, Frank slowed down and started searching for his own answers to what would make him happy.  In the process of seeking new information about himself, Frank ran across some material about abilities assessments.  On a whim he signed up and went through a battery of tests.  For him, one of the most interesting pieces of objective information he learned was that his pattern of natural abilities was very poorly suited for management.  His talent fitted him superbly for law, but management duties went completely against his grain.

I should note that understanding your natural talents does not equate to whether you can or cannot perform any role.  Because he is intelligent and highly motivated, Frank performed the role of managing partner extremely well.  The problem was that it fell so far outside his pattern of talents that he had to work twice as hard to achieve a result much less satisfying to him personally.

Frank’s Practice Group Became More Productive And He Brought In More New Business Than Ever. He Was Also Much Happier

Even though the role was dissatisfying and made him work against himself, Frank could have continued on as managing partner.  His firm certainly wanted him to.  But when he realized it was a large part of the reason he was so unhappy with his career, he decided to step down from that role–over the protests of the other senior partners.   Frank insisted on the change because he knew objectively he was right.  He also set priorities for his time and set limits on the amount of time he dedicated to his work.  He stopped working late into the evening and every weekend.  He found this was easier to do when he concentrated on the kind of work he loved and for which he was best suited.

At first, Frank’s partners were not wild about this change.  However, Frank’s practice group became more productive over the next several months and he brought in more new business than ever.  Also, he was happier and his practice group was happier.  The firm found another manager better suited to the role.

Of course, Frank’s decisions were more complex and involved more issues than just abilities.  Personality, interests, and family of origin all strongly influenced his actions.  But getting objective information about how he was hard-wired was a first big step.

Whether you are mid-career like Frank or making a first-time choice about a career, it is critical to be absolutely clear about your natural talents when making a career decision.   How do you discover what your natural abilities are?  It is practically impossible to do on your own, and requires an objective assessment that will give you a more complete picture about areas of high, low and intermediate abilities.  Tests for innate abilities are very different from those given for personality and interests.   Those assessments are subjective and based on self-reporting measures.   I know of only one objective, carefully validated measurement tool for natural abilities–the Highlands Ability Battery.  For more information, see Resources below.  The test is available in CD format or online, and you can also arrange to have an individual two-hour feedback session from a specially-trained consultant, which I recommend you do.   This assessment can give you critically valuable information about your talents and is the ideal foundation upon which to build your Personal Vision.

Once you have that information, you will be ready to look at the third and fourth Critical Success Factors that form your Personal Vision:  your skills and interests.  We will tackle these two important areas next time but for now, check out how you are hard-wired.  You may be surprised!

Anne H. Whitaker, vice president of Counsel On Call’s Atlanta office, has more than 20 years of combined experience in coaching, consulting, marketing, law and education. In 1991, she co-founded In-House Counsel, Inc., a pioneering contract attorney placement company in Atlanta. Prior to entering the business world, Ms. Whitaker practiced real estate law in private practice for five years.  She received her J.D., cum laude, from the University of Georgia School of Law in 1986, where she served on the editorial board of the Georgia Law Review.  She is a member of the State Bar of Georgia, the Atlanta Bar Association, Lawyers Club of Atlanta, and Georgia Association of Women Lawyers (GAWL) and has created, chaired and spoken at numerous seminars for lawyers on career development and transition. She provides career development coaching for lawyers, is founding member and co-chair of the Atlanta Bar Career Management Committee, and is a licensed provider of the Highlands Ability Battery and other career-related assessments.

RESOURCES
BOOKS  
1.  McDonald, Bob, Ph.D., and Hutcheson, Don, E., Don’t Waste Your Talent: The
8 Critical Steps to Discovering What You Do Best, The Highlands Company,
2005.
ASSESSMENTS  
The Highlands Ability Battery–By means of objective, hands-on work samples,
this assessment helps individuals to understand their natural talents and
abilities.

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Categories: Law Career Development - Tags: change your life, how to become a successful lawyer, law career, law career development, lawyer, legal career, personal vision

Moving From The Stress Cycle To The Balance Cycle

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It is possible to have a career that you are excited and passionate about. A career that truly fits you and brings you satisfaction and fulfillment – even if you feel overwhelmed, frustrated, burned out, out of time, or you don’t have a clue where to start.  In the first article of this series (See Vol. 2 No. 1)  I explained what a Personal Vision is and why it is crucial to you having a satisfying career.  As Steven Covey said, you can “work harder and harder at climbing the ladder of success only to discover it’s leaning against the wrong wall.”1  When you create a Personal Vision you decide what wall you want to lean your ladder against as well as what ladder you want to use.

The Eight Critical Success Factors

Your Personal Vision needs to take the whole picture of you into account. There are eight factors that need to be considered: natural abilities, skills, interests, personal style, values, family of origin, stage of adult development, vision and goals.   Some of them are objective, such as your natural abilities, and some of them are subjective such as your vision and goals.  In the next article we will focus on the first of those factors, your stage of adult development.  Before we do that, we need to look at something that is closely connected to it – the Stress Cycle.

You know what stress is but probably are not familiar with the Stress Cycle. Yet chances are good that you are caught in it at this very moment.  The Stress Cycle impacts your daily life and will stop you from creating your Personal Vision if you aren’t aware of it and don’t take action to address it.

What is the Stress Cycle?  If you are unhappy with your career and yet find yourself starting to think things like “I don’t have time to think about whether I’m happy or not right now,” or “I’ll get to it when things are not so hectic in my life,”
you are probably caught in its grasp.  Feeling like you don’t have time for yourself or you are too busy is a natural side effect of being in the Stress Cycle.  Most of my clients are caught in this mode when they first come to me.  Their lives feel out of control and they need help stopping the cycle.

The Elements Of The Stress Cycle

  • Relentless Rush – You never stop.  You feel like you are jumping through hoops, are on a treadmill or a runaway train.  You think you only have time to do the next task or project that comes up.  And there is always another.
  • Short Term Focus – You tell yourself things like “I’ll just make partner (or wait until this large case is over or wait until next year) and then I’ll be able to live my life.”  You focus on the task at hand instead of envisioning a bigger picture of your life.
  • Reactive Decision Making -  You respond to everyday events as though they are crises and have a constant sense of urgency even about little things.
  • Status-Driven Goals – You are focused on gaining things such as a new car, new house, second home, making partner, getting somewhere in life, joining the country club, or wanting more responsibility so you can be in charge and can have a life etc.
  • Outer-Directed Priorities – Your main goals are earning a lot of money and gaining a position of power -both worthy goals if they are connected to your Personal Vision but if they aren’t, then they are empty.

The elements of the Stress Cycle relate strongly to each other – one element leads to the next, and then the next.  Once you get into the Stress Cycle it perpetuates itself and is very difficult to escape.  Often, people feel like they are trapped and helpless to change the status quo.

You are not alone in this.  The truth is the majority of people, particularly lawyers, live in the Stress Cycle.  Why?  Because we grow up in systems that set it up that way.   Here is a snapshot of how life goes for most of us:  Start out in our family, move through the school system to college, graduate, go to law school,  get a job, achieve some success, earn more money, buy more things, move up in the organization, make partner or go in-house, win the big case or close the big deal, gain the boss’s attention and approval, become a boss, retire.   We get so caught up in the effort to keep up with what’s going on around us and what the systems (family, schools, firms, companies) want us to achieve that we get out of touch with who we truly are,  what we really want.

It’s especially hard for lawyers not to get caught up in the Stress Cycle. On top of the system’s demands, lawyers often have personal characteristics that contribute to creating the Cycle.  We are competitive, ambitious and typically impose unrealistic demands on ourselves.  Furthermore, the practice of law trains us to focus on facts and have an outward orientation.  Too often we  get used to tuning out the inward messages that give us insight into how we really feel about what’s going on in our lives and careers.

What The Balance Cycle Looks Like

It may sound hopeless and that there is no alternative to the Stress Cycle in today’s fast-paced, competitive and driven workplace.  Contrary to what you may believe,  however, you can move from the Stress Cycle to the Balance Cycle.

What does the Balance Cycle look like?  The elements of the Balance Cycle include:

  • Long Term Focus – you do things that connect to a fundamental value orgoal.
  • Meaning-Driven Goals – what you do every day should contribute to giving your life meaning.  If it doesn’t, why are you doing it?
  • Inner-Directed Priorities – You move toward goals you have chosen, not the system’s goals.
  • Vision-Based Decision Making – You use your Personal Vision as a template or measuring stick that you compare with every opportunity that comes along.  If the opportunity will move you toward your vision, you take it.  If not, you just say no.

As with the Stress Cycle, the elements relate to one another.  Once you get into the Balance Cycle it perpetuates itself.

Moving From The Stress Cycle To The Balance Cycle: Start By Stopping

How do you get out of the Stress Cycle and into the Balance Cycle? You must start by stopping.  The Stress Cycle keeps you in constant motion and keeps your mind constantly occupied.  You must stop the relentless rush and set aside a significant amount of time to devote to yourself and your goals and look within. And not just for 15 minutes.  The Stress Cycle makes stopping seem impossible because it makes it appear that everything is urgent and nothing can be set aside.  However, you don’t have time to NOT do this work – your life is a marathon, not a sprint.  Creating your Personal Vision is not something you can knock out in a day, or even a weekend.  You need to give both your creative mind and logical mind a chance to work together over a period of several weeks or months.  (I’ll explain
what I mean by that later on.)

You also must get outside of your systems.  Your family, friends, colleagues, boss, fellow church, synagogue or club members, no matter how well-intentioned, will not be of much assistance in helping you get new information about yourself.  You need answers that are different from what they can provide because you need to take a fresh look at your own answers and preconceptions.  You need a process that helps you look within and get a more objective and complete view of yourself.

The vehicle for moving from the Stress Cycle to the Balance Cycle is a Personal Vision.  The answers to making your life more balanced and meaningful are not out there somewhere:  they are inside you.  You need to unplug from the
messages that surround you and focus for a period of time on The Eight Critical Success Factors to see what you can learn about yourself that you may have never known or may have simply forgotten.

If you don’t do it for yourself, who will?

One Lawyer’s Story

Frank, age 41, is a partner at a large law firm.  He has worked for the same firm since he graduated from law school.  He is a successful litigator with a great book of business, including some of the firm’s largest clients. He is well-respected by his colleagues and others in the community.

Despite all of his apparent success, Frank is silently miserable.   He is busier than he has ever been before and feels as if everybody is putting more demands on him.  He is constantly putting out fires and dealing with urgent deadlines, and is tired of dealing with so much conflict.  The hours he is working are getting longer, not shorter.  He does not enjoy the work he is doing and is finding that the things he has achieved do not mean much to him anymore.

Although he is unhappy, he feels as if he does not have the time to even think about changing things.  It is all he can do to just keep up with what he has on his plate.  He can’t fathom adding one more thing to his day, even something as positive as creating a Personal Vision for his life.  He believes that he is too busy to stop and just hopes that at some point things will change.

Frank is deep into the Stress Cycle.  He is a prime example of how easy it is to get caught up in the system and become trapped in the cycle of rushing, urgency, and outward focus.  He doesn’t realize that nothing will change until he stops what he is doing and takes time to assess what he really wants out of life and how he can get it.  Otherwise he will continue to be busy meeting the goals that others set up for him.

How Frank handles his situation and whether or not he does something to move out of the Stress Cycle and into the Balance Cycle will be largely affected by where he is in his life:  his Stage Of Adult Development.  The Stage of Adult Development, the first of the eight factors that everyone needs to consider when creating a Personal Vision, will be our focus in the next article.

In the meantime consider giving yourself some time off every week to reflect only about you and what you want.  You may be surprised at the kinds of creative solutions that bubble up!

___________________
1.     The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal
Change, Stephen R. Covey, 1989, Simon and Schuster.
2.     Don’t Waste Your Talent:  The 8 Critical Steps to Discovering What You Do
Best, Bob McDonald, Ph.D. and Don E. Hutcheson, 2000, Longstreet Press.

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Turning Law Students Into Lawyers

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A ccording to the recently published Report from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, “Educating Lawyers—Preparation for the Profession of Law,” it is time for significant reform in legal education.  This report reinforced what many in the legal academy believe about the traditional curriculum in American law schools:  that law schools have focused too much on teaching students to “think like lawyers” and not enough on applying those thinking skills in the complexity of professional practice or on other critical social skills necessary for effective practitioners. The Carnegie Foundation Report emphasized that law schools should attempt to provide “integrated” learning experiences—a form of education that combines the teaching of legal doctrine, lawyering skills and professional identity.

Students are sometimes surprised that what they learn in law school does not seem to include all the aspects of practicing law.  Most of them want to be lawyers so they can have an impact on people’s lives or serve the needs of business or government—to help people in trouble find a way out or to help make their dreams come true.  But the emphasis of the traditional curriculum does not always appear to do that.  Instead, that training sometimes seems distant from the goal of learning how to talk to clients and other lawyers, understand their problems, and generate and implement useful solutions.

Much traditional teaching is done through the study of appellate opinions, a method that helps students learn analytical skills, legal rules and how they develop, but does little to transform students into apprentice practitioners.  Neither does it convey the richness and complexity of a real case.  Mid-way through their first semester, some students feel overwhelmed and disoriented by the lack of a perceived connection between their expectations and the reality of law school.   Some question whether they should continue.  Others seek that connection by obtaining part-time jobs or getting involved in extracurricular activities to bring a dose of reality to their experience.

Clinical Experiences Have Improved Legal Education

Clinical legal education, which has gained more prominence in American law schools over the last 30 years, addresses the problem of how to bring the practice into the academy.  Through in-house and real client clinics and externships, students gain real practice experience in a wide variety of subject matter and practice settings under the watchful eye of committed and experienced supervisors.

However, until they become universal, clinics and externships cannot completely solve the problems described in the
Carnegie Report.   Clinical programs are relatively expensive to operate, and as a result are typically not available to all students in most law schools.  By necessity, they tend to be fairly limited in their subject matter coverage, and students who don’t have interest in those particular areas often do not participate.  Although there has been a dramatic increase in clinical legal education in recent decades, most schools still provide clinics as elective courses and can only serve a portion of their student bodies.

The CaseArc Program Helps Prepare Students To Be Practitioners

After graduating from law school, most students gradually learn what they need to know to become effective practitioners. Those who enrolled in a clinic or an externship are generally better prepared for practice.  But regardless, the process of developing into an effective practitioner can be haphazard.  Students often have to learn on their own not just the business of law, but how to be professionals.

At Case Western Reserve University School of Law, we have dedicated an outstanding doctrinal faculty who provide a superb traditional legal education.  We also have had an excellent real client in-house clinical program (now known as the Milton A. Kramer Law Clinic Center) for over 30 years, as well as several externships.  In the middle 1990’s, however, our clinic advisory committee—consisting of practitioners, educators, judges, social service agency workers and other community activists—questioned how our law school could better prepare our students for the practice demands ahead.  The committee found that even the students who enroll in the clinic or an externship could benefit from more comprehensive preparation for practice.  The solution:  we needed to supply more broad-based practical training earlier in law school.  These discussions eventually led to the adoption of the CaseArc Integrated Lawyering Skills Program.

The CaseArc Program, required for all of our students, trains them in the fundamental skills that all lawyers need to be effective professionals.  Regardless of the practice context or subject matter focus, CaseArc seeks to provide the two overarching skill sets necessary for success:  “legal thinking skills” such as legal analysis, legal research, problem solving, strategic planning and recognizing ethical dilemmas; and “social skills” such as legal writing, interviewing, counseling, negotiation, oral presentation and fact investigation.  The CaseArc program begins with an intensive week-long orientation structured around a simple criminal case.  We address issues of professionalism, have students interview the defendant in the case, review and analyze the relevant law, watch the trial, act as a jury, and hear the appeal all in just a few short days.

The rest of the program develops over the first two years of law school.  Each of the first four semesters, students take one CaseArc course which is integrated with a doctrinal subject.  Each course focuses on different fundamental skills and each builds on previous courses.  By the end of the program students are trained in all of the fundamental skills we have identified.  As a result, we believe our students are better prepared and ready to act as professionals in one of our clinics, externships or labs as well as in their first legal jobs.

CaseArc courses are windows into the way lawyers actually use the law in their work for their clients.  The teaching methodology is a blend of traditional classroom and experiential learning.  The program combines large classes with small group and one-on-one interaction, lecture and discussion with hands-on practice, and legal theory and doctrine with application. We believe that students learn the fundamental lawyering skills best through repeated practice.  Therefore, the program introduces students to these skills at the beginning of law school and provides opportunities to get more practice as their training progresses. Students start out with less demanding situations and move to more complex applications as law school continues.  The most important of these skills—client relations skills, legal analysis and legal writing—receive repeated attention.  All of the training leads to opportunities for students to use their acquired skills in the “reality based” Capstone experiences (electives) later in law school—the real client in-house clinics, externships and labs.

The program relies on team teaching so that our faculty can concentrate on what they do best while providing our students with a holistic approach to learning the law and lawyering skills. We want our students to learn from people with different backgrounds and experience.  Doctrinal teachers focus on legal analysis, theory, policy and the development of the substantive law; lawyering skills teachers (full-time faculty assisted by law librarians and practicing lawyers) concentrate on legal research, analysis and writing and the social skills of interviewing, counseling, negotiating, and oral presentation.

The CaseArc program uses simulations designed to present students with realistic yet controlled experiences to help them develop their competence in the “social process” lawyering skills before they have to represent real clients.  These are the skills that involve people interacting with other people.  They consist primarily of client and witness interviewing, client counseling, negotiation, collaboration and oral presentation in formal, informal, litigation and planning contexts.  These skills are deceptively complex and, as every practitioner knows, extremely important to effective lawyering.  We make use of committed actors to play roles that are carefully designed to present lawyering challenges that will provide excellent vehicles for learning.

First-year students do only segments of an entire exercise, for example, a portion of a client interview.  They then watch their peers do other portions of the exercise and are critiqued as a group by their small group (firm) professors.  Students “learn by doing” and by watching their colleagues perform other segments of the simulation.  In this way, students learn the components of the skill being studied and have the opportunity to practice assigned components.

In subsequent years, students are given more opportunities to practice and perfect these all-important skills.  By the end of their second year, students have practiced doing complete interviews, counseling sessions, negotiations and oral presentations.  Because of this gradual approach to completing the entire exercise, we believe students have learned these skills more thoroughly and with greater understanding.

The Curriculum Integrates Legal Doctrine And Analysis, Lawyering Skills And Professionalism

CaseArc courses (which are experiential in nature) are integrated with or “linked” to a substantive area of law that students are studying at the same time or in which they have interest.  We believe this will enhance the learning of the subject matter and doctrine as well as the particular lawyering skill under consideration because each will be informed by the other, giving added relevance to both.  The design of the program requires that all legal writing problems and simulations arise out of the doctrinal subject with which the CaseArc course is integrated.  Each of the simulations, for example, is closely tied to the students’ writing assignments.  Interviews either lead to research and writing projects, or writing projects lead to the performance of a simulation—perhaps a negotiation or a counseling session.  This integration permits us to develop rich, content-based and life-like situations for students to grapple with in their writing projects and simulations.  It also fosters a deeper understanding of the theory and doctrine of the substantive area.

Both Substantive Learning And Skills Training Can Be Taught Simultaneously

In 2003, after a process of intensive study and collaboration led by our Task Force on Skills and Professionalism, our faculty unanimously adopted the CaseArc program.  The faculty determined that a two-year mandatory program was required to teach fundamental lawyering skills, and that this should be followed by a Capstone program in which students have the opportunity to apply what they have learned in authentic professional settings.  We implemented the program the following fall and graduated our first class in the spring, 2006.

One of the major challenges in garnering support for the program was to engage the faculty in a discussion about the relative importance in the law school curriculum of teaching substantive law and lawyering skills.  This was necessary because the Task Force proposed a mandatory curriculum for all students and, as a result, this would shift the balance between so-called “substance” and training in “skills.”  Not surprisingly, we couldn’t at first agree on the appropriate amount of skills training. However, we did acknowledge that our primary responsibility as a law school is to train professionals who can competently practice law.  We also agreed that in fact, we are all engaged in teaching our students substantive law and lawyering skills, and the differences between the teaching in doctrinal courses versus skills courses relate to emphasis and method more than anything else.  We further agreed that as part of a curriculum to train competent lawyers, both are required.

For example, a traditional doctrinal course (like Contracts or Property) might emphasize how to recognize, formulate, and approach legal issues while also conveying information such as the theory and doctrine of contract law.  Hence, when done well, the lawyering skills being taught might be legal analysis, issue identification, rule synthesis and development, and rule application.  Other skills that might also be taught in such a course (depending upon the instructor’s interests) might include oral advocacy to a court, negotiation with another attorney and counseling of a client.  The traditional doctrinal course typically uses the methods of Socratic dialog, case briefing, and lecture to develop these skills and knowledge.

In contrast, a legal interviewing simulation course, which uses a contract case as the basis for its exercises, might emphasize the skills of determining fact relevance, gathering information and building personal rapport as it teaches the theory and doctrine of breach of contract.  The method used might be to place a student in a lawyering role so she can use her knowledge of contract law to perform a simulated interview with a client to find facts relevant to the breach claim.

Once we viewed the pedagogical issues in this way, the idea of an integrated curriculum made sense.  For example, if our goal is to teach students both the substantive theory and law of contracts as well as how lawyers use that law to draft, negotiate and litigate contract matters, we might best accomplish this by combining the two types of courses, teaching both at the same time.  After all, this is how lawyers learn and apply the law and their skills to serve their clients.

The Program Faces Many Challenges But Integrated Curricula Represent The Future Of Legal Education

Of course, developing the CaseArc program led us to other challenges.   Surprisingly, among these was student acceptance. Although students value a relevant education, they also tend to be fairly conservative about changes to the traditional curriculum.  Some of our students were surprised to learn that such a curriculum was not required at the law schools their friends attended.  They also grumbled about their status as “guinea pigs.”  As a result, we try hard to inform our students about the importance of the skills they are learning and why we are doing it.  As more law schools adopt similar programs in the wake of the recent publication of the Carnegie Foundation Report, our job should get easier.

The cost of the program is also challenging.  We have expanded our full-time faculty to accommodate the increased demand for competent skills teachers.  We also have many practitioners as adjunct professors and actors who help teach lawyering skills in the simulation exercises.  Although these dedicated alumni and others do this important work for minimal stipends, the cumulative cost is substantial.

From a pedagogical point of view, team teaching provides wonderful possibilities and significant advantages, but requires careful coordination and collaboration if it is to be done well.  All team members need to be on “the same page” for a simulation or writing project to achieve its desired goals.

Grading is always a challenge in any law school course.  But the challenges are magnified when different members of the team evaluate different aspects of the course.  These difficulties deepen because the law school uses a grading system requiring that only a certain number of students can be awarded the highest grades.  If one team member is more generous than another, inconsistency and unfairness can result.  It is important to have systems in place to monitor the grading and adjust for any inconsistencies discovered.

Also, as the Carnegie Foundation Report indicates, law schools have been using the same evaluative tools, such as a single essay exam at the end of the course, for many generations to rank students for honors, employment and other purposes. These tools do not provide the necessary feedback for students to improve on the fundamental lawyering skills.  In order to address this problem, we have developed evaluative tools which are designed to give qualitative formative feedback to our students while they can still improve; in other words, they can apply the feedback they receive to their next performance.  In some activities we use a modified pass/no credit form of evaluation to reduce the sense of competition for the highest grades.

Although establishing an integrated curriculum like the CaseArc Integrated Lawyering Skills Program presents many
significant challenges, the rewards for students are substantial.  We believe students who experience an integrated
curriculum are better prepared to enter the world of practice than their peers in a more traditional curriculum.   The clarion call put out by the Carnegie Foundation was long in coming but likely will be heard by law schools around the country.  We are glad to be a part of this movement to improve the training of new lawyers.

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Become A Versatile, Flexible, Nimble And Exceptional International Lawyer

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Exceptional international practitioners realize that remaining versatile, flexible and nimble benefits their practice. This versatility helps them resolve client inquiries even though clear-cut answers across legal systems are often impossible to find. Good international lawyers know how to handle this uncertainty by drawing on their wealth of experience when advising their clients. They are able to notice and analyze important issues in complex international matters, and track down the requisite answers from foreign counsel, original legal sources and other resources.

Law firms are beginning to acknowledge the benefit of such versatility. According to David Morley, Worldwide Managing Partner of the London-based Magic Circle firm Allen & Overy, ” we need to develop versatile lawyers capable of working in more than one discipline. So when a partner has career discussions with an associate who wants to experience other practice areas, we must encourage that where we can.”

Gain Exposure To Different Legal Systems and Jurisdictions

How can international practitioners enhance their versatility? Gaining exposure to legal issues in different geographic areas, under different legal systems (such as Sharia and civil law, as well as common law), and in a variety of legal disciplines, will broaden a lawyer’s experience.

As Gerard Meijer, a partner with the Benelux firm NautaDutilh who specializes in international commercial litigation and arbitration notes, “As a litigator, I have become versatile as I have acted in a wide variety of disputes.”

In fact, Gerard’s international practice has exposed him to clients and issues across the world. “We represent a Dutch insurance company in an investment arbitration against the Republic of Poland regarding the Republic of Poland’s refusal to comply with its commitments to transfer shares in a Polish insurance company to our client. We also act for a UK defense company regarding the setting aside of an arbitral award between our client and the Iranian Ministry of Defense. At the moment, I also sit as arbitrator (inter alia in a matter regarding the distribution of professional skates in Korea).”

Like Gerard, many international practitioners handle matters involving a wide variety of jurisdictions. Looking for opportunities to become familiar with the laws of various jurisdictions, and to get some real world experience in those venues, will increase an international lawyer’s effectiveness and prepare him or her for whatever arises.

Salli Swartz, a partner in the Paris-based firm Phillips Geraud Naud & Swartz, often works on complex border transactions involving multiple jurisdictions. As an American trained attorney who now lives and practices in France, Salli specializes in assisting foreign companies investing or otherwise doing business in France. During one transaction she found herself “drafting and negotiating in the English language when I was the only native English speaker present: the others were from six different countries with six different languages and at least three different legal systems and all of them thought that their English was better than mine!! For one simple sentence there were six different interpretations of the meaning.” Having an understanding of the laws of these different jurisdictions helped Salli handle this situation with aplomb.

Spot Critical Issues

Becoming versatile as an international lawyer does not mean becoming an expert in multiple fields. No practitioner can master and keep up with the countless legal specialties that exist. However, an international practitioner should try to amass enough knowledge to be able to identify critical issues on a client’s behalf.

Sébastien Savage, who practices in the Montreal office of Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg, may face hundreds of different issues in any given month, which makes his work challenging and exciting. “Sure, it is stressful,” he says, “but I firmly believe that staying flexible and versatile as an attorney has enhanced my practice, both in terms of the number of clients and in terms of the quality of services delivered.”

Sébastien also stays informed about his clients’ businesses: “I find that the more I know and the better I understand the businesses of my clients, the better equipped I am to face the requirements of evolving in a global economy.”

Lawyers living and working in foreign offices particularly need to be able to spot issues. Rather than remain isolated from the wealth of knowledge in their home offices, these foreign-based attorneys must sharpen their issue-spotting skills so that they can raise red flags when needed.

Once an international attorney spots an important issue outside of her expertise, she must then know how to resolve it. Sometimes this requires bringing in foreign counsel, and perhaps most important, knowing the right questions to ask in order to get a clear response. For example, asking a civil law lawyer questions while using purely common law concepts and lingo will confuse the situation and may result in an inaccurate or unclear answer. Salli Swartz notes the particular challenge of “trying to explain to American/Anglo Saxon legal systems clients the differences between consequential damages under U.S. law and direct damages under French law ”

Many successful international lawyers improve their understanding by digging into the original legal sources even those written in foreign languages rather than relying on secondary translations. Using a dictionary, and comparing an original legal text with multiple English translations of it, can give a lawyer critical insights about what a foreign law really says and means.

Adjust Your International Practice To Meet Market Demands

Sometimes a lawyer plans to develop a particular international specialty, but client and market demands cause the lawyer’s practice to evolve in a different way. A versatile international lawyer is well positioned to respond to these changes. As Ed Lebow, who practices in Haynes & Boone’s Washington, D.C. office, explains, “My college concentration was in Japanese language, history and culture, and that set me up to handle antidumping cases for Japanese clients into the middle 1990′s. However, with the changes in the Japanese economy and the decreasing number of new US antidumping cases brought each year, particularly against the Japanese, I needed some flexibility. For me, that has meant a subtle shift in both my subject matter and geographic emphasis. While I still do handle antidumping and countervailing duty reviews, much of my newer work is in the much more active area of ITC Section 337 investigations that address imports that allegedly infringe US patents. And my clients are now more likely to be located in India (dumping and countervailing duties) and Taiwan (Section 337) than in Japan.”

Having the flexibility and versatility to respond to market changes, as Ed does, helps an international practice thrive even when the market shifts.

In other words, versatility makes a lawyer more attractive to clients. As Gerard Meijer explains, “I really get the impression that clients appreciate that I have been involved in a variety of disputes, which gives the client the confidence that I can make myself familiar with their case.”

After all, that’s what all lawyers strive for: a client’s confidence and satisfaction.

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Categories: International Law Practice - Tags: civil law, common law, how to be a successful international lawyer, international commercial litigation, international law, international law practice, international lawyer, juristidctions, legal disciplines, legal systems, litigation, litigator

Master Metaphors To Win Judgements

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In medias res: Let’s look at some examples of arguments in which lawyers can use metaphoric re-framing to shift readers’ understanding of their arguments and smooth the way toward conclusions favorable to their clients. First, suppose a lawyer wants to help a client maintain primary custody of Melissa, a child in changed circumstances: the client has a full-time, but low-paying, job, requiring Melissa to be cared for during the day by other caregivers. The more affluent former spouse has remarried and re-formed a “family” the word “family” in this case a metaphor for the traditional “nuclear” family that includes a married husband and wife, one or more children, and a division of responsibility between wage earning and care giving. In contrast, the lawyer’s client and child, a single parent family, will appear to be an incomplete or insufficient “family,” and they will lose the beneath-the-surface contest of images.

To combat this, the lawyer can bring the metaphoric nature of the nuclear “family” to the surface, reminding the decision-maker that the traditional nuclear family is a fiction for a majority of families today. But that’s not enough. The lawyer must also persuade the decision maker that other images of parent-child relationships are more salient for example, that Melissa is growing up within a family network consisting of parent, child, extended family members, friends, and neighbors; and that Melissa’s family is not a closed unit but a living system marked by the length and the strength of the bonds between parent, child, and others in the family network. These symbols and images can be woven implicitly throughout the arguments and testimony:

“Melissa’s mother cares for her family’s needs by working . . . .”

“Melissa’s family cares for Melissa . . . . ”

“Melissa’s family, including her aunt, cousins, and grandmother . . . . .”

“Melissa spends her days with another mother in a home filled with children.”

“Family members and family friends pitch in . . . .”

At another extreme, consider the criminal defendant who is depicted as possessing an object called “free will.” How can the defense lawyer re-frame this metaphor in a way that will keep the jury from inferring that all the defendant’s choices were voluntary? First, it probably will not be helpful to point out the metaphoric nature of this image. Instead, the lawyer can envision another metaphor and use it to shape arguments; for example, free will might be thought of not as an equally sized container that is given to everyone, but as a seed that is planted in a small child and grows only when nurtured. Squashed, uprooted or deprived of water and nutrients, free will shrivels, rots, and eventually dies. Again, this metaphoric image should not be explicitly stated, but used to shape arguments:

“The range of Roger’s choices began to narrow early . . . .”

“While growing up, Roger had very little say about . . . .”

“During Roger’s childhood, his father demanded that he . . . .”

“Among his friends, Roger was required to . . . .”

“As time went on, Roger had fewer opportunities to choose. . . .”

Conceptual metaphors underlie not only our characterizations of the people and objects involved in legal stories; they also are at work in legal rules and processes. It is only metaphorically that we understand such concepts as the “weight of the evidence,” a “balancing test,” and a “slippery slope.” If an advocate can describe the applicable rule as a balancing test, it may seem more attractive simply because of the common-sense yet metaphoric view that when things are in balance, we are all better off. If the lawyer can deride an argument as constituting a slippery slope, the audience may picture the consequences at the bottom of the hill.

Talking about metaphor reminds us of the familiar warning by Justice Cardozo that “metaphors in law are to be narrowly watched, for starting as devices to liberate thought, they end often by enslaving it.”Because metaphor is both powerful and unavoidable and can mislead as well as illuminate we need to study it more rather than use it less.

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FOOTNOTES

1. For more discussion of this concept, see Stephanie A. Gore, “A Rose by Any Other Name”: Judicial Use of Metaphors for New Technologies, 2003 U. Ill. J. L. Tech. & Policy 403; Robert Reilly, Mapping Legal Metaphors in Cyberspace: Evolving the Underlying Paradigm, 16 John Marshall J. Computer & Info. L. 579 (1998).

2. See George Lakoff & Mark Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought (1999) for a comprehensive explanation.

3. George Lakoff, Don’t Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate – The Essential Guide for Progressives (2004).

4. Linda L. Berger, What is the Sound of a Corporation Speaking? How the Cognitive Theory of Metaphor Can Help Lawyers Shape the Law, 2 J. ALWD 169 (2004).5. Berky v. Third Ave. Ry. Co., 155 N.E. 58 (1926)

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Don’t Resist The Rising Tide of Humanism

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When it was over, I felt like Daniel having survived the lion’s den. It wasn’t what I had anticipated at all but in retrospect it makes perfect sense. After all, how are people supposed to react when you challenge their most fundamental assumptions?

Last month, I participated in an old fashioned debate at the annual conference of the Washington State Bar Family Law Section between the proponents and opponents of collaborative law. As I assured the 200+ attendees, I am an unabashed supporter of this process, which essentially commits lawyers and parties to staying out of court. Yet I acknowledge that there are elements of collaborative law that would understandably give lawyers pause—like the agreement that both lawyers will withdraw if either party seeks relief from a judicial officer or the reliance on good faith and the voluntary exchange of all relevant information.

The lawyer speaking for the “cons” (no small irony in the term to me) is an extremely articulate and passionate believer in her own right. Her comments reminded me of political commercials which aim to isolate one sensitive, emotionally resonant point and then repeat it—over and over.

She depicted a horrifying scenario involving the choice not to go to court and get a restraining order against the alcoholic father who proceeds to ram his child-filled car into a wall, killing everyone. Despite the dubious authenticity of this kind of story, her audience gobbled it up so enthusiastically that they were just an eyelash away from intoning, “You tell it sister,” and “Amen to that.”

During the question period, everyone who spoke pointed out the weakness of the collaborative model. A number of people simply dismissed the approach. All the while, the voice inside my head was saying, “How very interesting. Why is the resistance to this approach to dispute resolution, one that certainly has its place on the ADR spectrum, so intense and emotional?”

Quick rewind to September of last year when I attended a symposium at Topeka’s Washburn University Law School on “Humanizing Legal Education.” The keynote speaker was Larry Krieger, a pioneer and leader within the community of law educators. Self-effacing and witty, he provided us with very meaty material on the impact of law school on the well being of students. Yet I was later told that his preeminence is not recognized among the law faculty at Florida State where he teaches. The new AALS section on humanizing legal education, which he has championed, is still considered an upstart.

We Need To Change Our Attitude Toward Change

Whether in practice or in the academy, lawyers appear resistant to the idea of humanizing the institutions of law. Why would this be? We are all humans, after all. Even the resisters can acknowledge in theory that achieving balance between work and personal lives is a valid concern. Few can really dispute, as well, that the adversarial system of dispute resolution has caused us to devote an enormous amount of thought and creativity to thwarting the interests of others, without regard to the merit of their claims or universality of their needs.

What better time to address this question, since fundamentally what we are addressing is our attitude toward change—a very popular word these days. But change isn’t new. We lawyers have been buffeted by forces we can’t control for the past 250 years. Today, concepts that we consider cornerstones in the way we think about ourselves professionally—zealous advocacy, the billable hour, the Socratic case method of legal education and the brass ring of partnership—are showing cracks. Late 20th century values are eroding all around us: wills are outsourced to India; businesses are demanding tight auditing of fees and more flat fee arrangements; aging partners are cut loose if they can’t produce; many states, including Washington, are exploring the feasibility of having non-attorneys perform more legal tasks.

Change Is Inevitable

Other changes are coursing through the legal universe. Many are technical and entirely consistent with the way lawyers are comfortable thinking, like the evolution of intellectual property law. Others go right to the core of how we see ourselves in the world. These are the changes, I believe, that cause the discomfort (or even hostility) among those who seem resistant to making law more humane. The challenge to binary thinking—the concept that the “adversary” is a person or business with valid interests and concerns that need to be addressed—is a challenge to our professional orthodoxy. This shouldn’t be a surprise. Law as an institution is a quintessentially conservative force in society: it resists any change but the incremental and precedented. This is one way lawyers have historically protected society—by supplying a drag to rash revisionism.

Yet the tool many of us employ in the service of conservatism is an unfortunate cynicism. What better target for the professional cynic than humanism? It’s like a perfect storm—the studiously hardheaded vs. the hopeful-hearted. Now there’s a match that may be a wipeout in the courtroom or the conference room. It’s not a barrel of laughs in the conference ballroom either, I can tell you that!

Why are so many attorneys hostile to collaborative approaches to law? Some feel that adversarial lawyers truly believe they are protecting their clients. Others fear that the collaborative approach will lure clients away and impact their bottom line. Still others sensed that collaborative practitioners effect a “holier than thou” attitude. All these objections are valid, to a degree.

Yet I believe we are afraid of change—and that we cannot face the realization that a gathering force will impact all of us. The messengers of change will be the targets of fear. It’s an historical moment, and I was glad I had a front row seat to see how this conflict played out in the microcosm of a family law conference.

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