Did you know that a recent study showed that when a female entrepreneur is guided by a female mentor, her sales increased by an average of 32 percent? The same study revealed that female entrepreneurs paired with male mentors did not significantly improve their performance. This success of the female mentoring pairs was attributed …
Who interrupts you at work? In my last couple of videos, I talked about how lawyers can prevent interruptions from clients by setting a communications policy and not taking unplanned telephone calls. But what happens when the interruption comes not from clients, but from inside your own organization? Do any of these interruptions sound familiar? …
Are you more focused on an employee’s skill level before you hire them than you are once they are working for you? In my experience, when law and other professional services firms are seeking to hire, they are looking for candidates with a specific set of skills. But with the rapid pace of change in …
Are your best employees leaving because others are being given a free pass on their bad behavior? Poorly behaved or toxic employees: Cause emotional turmoil Damage morale Disrupt work Decrease productivity Spread their bad behavior to others Sometimes toxic employees are easy to identify: they shout at other employees, make snide comments, tell inappropriate jokes, …
Are you risking losing your best performers because you’re taking a one-size-fits-all approach? If you want to retain the best professionals in your firm, you need to treat them as individuals. Everyone doesn’t want the same things. They have different motivations. Their circumstances are different. They have different goals. They are at different stages of …
What kinds of training do you have available at your law firm? When I ask this question of lawyers, I am often told that there is no real training at their firms. New employees are given an orientation of sorts and taught how to use the firm’s systems, but this training is minimal, and there …
What are the consequences when you don’t communicate with the people in your firm about what it takes to move to the next level? In my last video in this series on retaining your best employees, I talked about being transparent about what it takes for them to get to the next level. Today, I’d …
What does it take to get ahead at your law firm? If you want to retain your best employees, you need to be transparent with them about what it takes to get ahead at your firm. What happens if an employee wants a promotion? How does an associate become a partner in the firm? What skills, activities, or behaviors are required for advancement? Employees get restless when they don’t know where they stand. In my experience, law firms are really good at communicating things like how many billable hours are required or conducting performance reviews that talk about past performance, but they’re not necessarily so good at talking about the future and what an employee wants to get out of their career, what opportunities there are for advancement at the firm and what an employee needs to do to get there. Instead of just focusing on billable hours and past performance, talk to your employees about what they want out of their careers. Help them to set goals that will help them to advance in your firm. If becoming a partner means that you have to bring in business, make sure that your associates know that. Encourage them to get involved in their local community or their bar association. If trial experience is required for partnership, make sure that your associates know that as well and help them to find opportunities to get that experience. If you can’t become a partner unless you’ve had a certain number of years as a lawyer, make sure that people in your firm know that as well. Remember, what might be obvious to you isn’t necessarily so obvious to your employees. More articles and videos like this:
Do you know what the total cost of hiring a new employee is? Hiring employees costs money and takes time. Aside from all of the time it takes to review resumes, interview candidates and make hiring decisions, a new employee has to learn all of your office’s procedures and systems, and needs to be able …
Hi, I’m Allison Shields, President of Legal Ease Consulting, where I help lawyers attract the right clients, increase their productivity, and improve their bottom line. As a practicing lawyer, one of the problems I observed with the lawyers around me, and still observe today with my clients and my lawyer friends is that when they …
Every working relationship is different, and it can be frustrating when the work you delegate to others doesn’t get done as well or as quickly as you’d like. Often, whether you’re a law firm partner, a mid-level associate or a brand-new attorney, it’s easy to blame problems on the staff or how they are working. …
Lawyers attend (or host) a lot of meetings. Even solos are involved in bar association committee meetings, networking meetings and client meetings, just to name a few. Meetings can be held in-person, or virtually by video or teleconference. Meetings can be invaluable tools to brainstorm, get input from a number of people at once, develop …
In honor of International Women’s Day, take a look at this infographic LinkedIn put together based on its survey of “What Women Want”: For even more information about the survey, check out LinkedIn’s slideshow presentation on What Women Want at Work.
Dan Hull’s What About Clients blog focuses on increasing the level of service lawyers provide to their clients. Dan’s firm has a performance evaluation system which has recently been re-vamped to include specific focus on client service. (Their system also includes ‘top down’ evaluations, but also ‘bottom up’ evaluations – something missing from many law …
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