Feature

posted 25 May 2006 in Volume 9 Issue 1

Cultivating careers

A once simple career progression from trainee to partner has been replaced by new ambitions and changing career expectations, particularly among the younger generation of lawyers. Berwin Leighton Paisner intends to move with the times.

By Patrick McCann and Valerie Moncur, Berwin Leighton Paisner

When Berwin Leighton Paisner first committed itself to providing a more attractive place to work, not many people sat up and took notice.

Since then, though, a series of moves have made it clear that we are serious about delivering on this promise. In particular, we have succeeded in hitting the headlines recently with a series of HR initiatives. Most recently our tailored LPC+ course, the introduction of a career development manager for 0-3 year PQEs, and the announcement of our introduction of a new alternative to the partner role have all received coverage in the press.

All these initiatives are the result of looking afresh at how to improve career development at every stage of the career ladder, and demonstrate our commitment to invest heavily in our people.

Ensuring the best possible start

Berwin Leighton Paisner’s investment in career development and our willingness to innovate starts from day one, as the development of the firm’s very own LPC (called the LPC+), which will run from September 2006 in conjunction with the College of Law, shows. The new course will mean trainees get a better introduction to the work they will actually be asked to do when they start, enabling them to begin adding value more quickly.

Trainees will also be able to get to know key people from Berwin Leighton Paisner before they join the firm, helping them feel part of the team from the outset.

A proactive mentoring programme maintains this support, with a senior partner taking a personal interest in each trainee and regular meetings ensuring they are getting the support they need.

The supportive approach doesn’t stop when the trainees qualify. The recruitment of an ex-lawyer as an in-house career counsellor, with a specific brief to provide support to the firm’s junior lawyers during the first three years after qualification, is another step that we think shows our commitment to developing our people.

This unique level of support enables lawyers to take greater responsibility for their own development as they go forwards, providing them with many of the tools they can use throughout their careers.

Last year, however, feedback gathered informally and via a satisfaction survey suggested our lawyers would like further guidance from the firm in relation to their career progression.

In particular, they wanted clarity on what represented excellent performance and transparency on what they needed to be doing to progress.

At the same time, the management team recognised the benefits of developing a common set of high standards across the firm and of the enhanced job satisfaction that our lawyers will experience when they achieve the goals set for them.

In response to this, the firm created the Best Lawyer Profile (BLP) Framework, which provides a framework for career progression across the firm.

The BLP Framework

Designed to pinpoint the essence of what makes our lawyers special, the framework includes a suite of documents that guides our lawyers on what they need to do to ensure they deliver consistently outstanding performance. It also helps guide them on which elements of what we offer in support of our lawyers’ career development will be most suitable, and allows them to benchmark their progress against the evolving expectations of their roles as their careers progress.

To create the framework, we consulted with over 100 of our partners and fee earners, in a series of focus groups and interviews.

We asked them to detail the activities they carried out day-to-day, week-to-week and month-to-month, as well as the skills they needed to carry those activities out most effectively. We also asked them to identify the legal understanding and expertise needed to perform at the highest level.

We then took the resulting rich and expansive data and distilled it into a clear set of documents for lawyers, which were checked with a steering group of partners, directors, PSLs and business managers to ensure the final framework was robust, reliable, relevant and realistic.

A wide variety of skills are required at all levels, reflecting our ‘can do’ culture where fee earners are encouraged to be involved in all aspects of the business from the earliest stage. But we have now delivered a suite of documents that outline the activities, skills and practice-group-specific technical legal understanding our lawyers display when working at their best.

The design of the documents allows our lawyers to focus not only on what they should be doing now, but also helps them to anticipate what they will need to master in the next stage of their career. There are three key documents within the framework.

Technical legal capabilities

Each of our 17 practice groups has its own document, setting out the legal knowledge, understanding and experience of our lawyers – reflecting the extent and depth of our legal-service provision. This document allows each of our business areas to itemise the specialist and distinct knowledge requirements of their particular practice – the law, documents, procedures and industry awareness our lawyers need to grasp to perform at an optimum level.

Skills and qualities

This document highlights the skills our lawyers should be demonstrating, developing or aspiring to at each career stage. Our research confirmed that a common thread of qualities runs through all of our lawyers, grouped in ten key areas, including intellectual rigour, focus and communication. Six of the ten skills were considered essential for all Berwin Leighton Paisner lawyers, with a further two being developed at associate level and two part of the partner job role. Experience allows our lawyers to develop all ten skills.

Activities

The focus in this document is on the management and business skills that lawyers need to manage their teams and understand their clients’ businesses. The activities, which are grouped into five key areas, are captured at six distinct career stages, including trainee, junior associate, associate, senior associate, junior equity partner and, finally, senior equity partner.

Together, these three documents provide the basis of a robust, clear and transparent approach to career development, and help individuals focus on what it takes to deliver their very best.

Concentrating on the client and involving our people

Looking at what we do when we are at our best and involving people in creating the solutions they have to work with was also behind our approach to assignment management training.

The firm-wide training programme, which became known as the ‘5 Keys Project’, brought together lawyers from across the firm to review how we work best when dealing with our clients’ matters. Their feedback helped us create a new framework for managing assignments across the firm, and action plans have been developed by each practice area to identify where we can improve.

Alternative career path

Listening to feedback in this way also lies behind many of the other approaches taken by the HR team, and, as our lawyers become more senior, understanding their career goals and helping them fulfil them is a particular area where we have had to look at new ideas. Feedback suggested that partnership is increasingly not the goal for everyone.

So, in response, we developed a new role to provide an alternative that recognises and rewards their contribution to the firm, and allows them to continue to develop their skills and careers.

The role is not seen as yet another step on the road to partnership, but as a valid, and valued, destination in itself. We expect our lawyers will relish the opportunities this new role creates for them to make a significant contribution to the firm while not having to assume the full breadth of responsibilities that partnership entails.

Those promoted into the role will be fulfilling the expectations of a senior associate and will also undertake an operational role in one or more of four key management areas, for example, people development.

The new role will offer our lawyers greater flexibility and choice in their career-management decisions. By creating a role that recognises the significant contribution our senior lawyers can make, and affording those key staff members a status commensurate with the value they bring to the firm, the firm is, we believe, making notable progress to meet the needs of our lawyers. We also anticipate the option for those lawyers to increase their management involvement in one or more areas that they enjoy, and at which they excel, will raise their job satisfaction. Supporting the senior team

But introducing the new role doesn’t mean that we are not continuing to encourage and support those who do aspire to the most senior levels of partnership.

As senior associates are identified as potential partners, mentors are put in place to help guide them through the development they need, and to provide support as they take the step up in responsibility. The mentor ensures any issues are addressed early, making a successful transition much more likely, and helps associates recognise the additional range of skills they will need to be successful in the new role.

An appreciation of the wide-ranging skills now needed to be successful at partnership level is also reflected in the support provided to our leadership team.

Traditionally law firms have promoted on the basis of technical skills, but we have worked with our senior team to deliver a development programme focusing on their leadership skills – designed to ensure that they are able to effectively inspire and motivate their teams. Feedback from the courses has been excellent, and has enabled our senior players to gain greater confidence with their teams. It has also helped bond the team together, and created a greater sense of common purpose.

Innovation with a purpose

By taking these steps, we believe we are providing innovative, effective career-development support across every stage of our lawyers’ careers, encouraging them to grow with us.

But these are not the only innovations we have been making to our HR approaches as a firm. For example, we have also delivered awareness-raising sessions to the whole firm on diversity, something we believe is unique among top-20 UK law firms.

Across all these developments, there is a strong sense of purpose: to make Berwin Leighton Paisner a more attractive place to work than our competitors. To do this we believe we have to continue to invest in better support for all our people, and ensure they receive career-development opportunities that are not available elsewhere.

Delivering this number of new initiatives takes commitment, and not only from those in HR; a supportive, visionary leadership team is also a prerequisite. But the benefits can be substantial. Increasingly we believe law firms will need to work harder to attract the quality of legal support that quality clients require. For Berwin Leighton Paisner, it is all about investing in our people so that they can, and will want to, deliver for our clients.

Top five tips

These are a few things that we have learnt in delivering these changes within Berwin Leighton Paisner:

Involve the right people right at the start – this is critical to a project’s success;
Allow more time than you think you need;
Involving the right people can mean that progress is slower, but it is definitely worth it in the long run;
Lawyers might not be immediately receptive to projects such as these – there might be is a degree of suspicion or scepticism at the start – so the right communication strategy is vital;
Lawyers welcome choices – as long as they are guided through them.

Valerie Moncur is head of personnel and Patrick McCann is head of training and development at Berwin Leighton Paisner LLP. He can be contacted at patrick.mccann@blplaw.com