Law Practice Today

A couple of months ago, some of my friends asked if I would write a short article on legal administration and its professional nature. Rather than just sharing my personal opinions (or making it up:), I asked fellow members of the Association of Legal Administrators (ALA) for their help in answering 8 different questions which were of interest to me, and hopefully you.

The questions when reviewed and combined into related groupings help us answer: Who are we? How did we get here? Are we challenged by our career? Where are we going? How do we manage? This discussion will answer those questions and provide some tips and commentary along the way. The questions were:

1. How do you plan and organize your day, any specific tips or practices or do you just react to the issues?
2. What is your education background and are there any courses/seminars that you would highly recommend for the legal administration career?
3. How would you describe your feelings about your career, Firm/Company and the people you work with?
4. How do you "balance life?"
5. As you look in your crystal ball over the next 3-5 years, what are the top 2 challenges that you see impacting our lives or industry and how should we prepare for them?
6. If you have worked previously in an industry different from legal, what is the biggest difference or challenge in our legal industry?
7. What book has influenced you most in your career (and for extra credit--recommend a book for fun reading)?
8. How long have you worked in the legal environment and what is your current position?

I received a total of 18 responses (thank you very much), 16 or about 89% were from the local St. Louis metropolitan area ALA Chapter and two were from firm peers of mine from other locations. In the next sections, I will move back and forth between summarizing the answers received along with my experiences and conclusions.

Who are we? Legal administrators cover a wide range of responsibilities. I worked for a four person management committee in my first administrator role. One of the partners told me to make sure that the light bulbs were changed, that nobody made popcorn in the microwave and that the elevator took him up and down promptly. Another of the committee partners expected me to provide a strategic plan along with the operating budget. I undertook all of those tasks, and everything in between, as I began growing into my position. Since that date, in 1990, the general administrator position has expanded from an office manager role to one with an expanded and higher level of responsibility dealing with external clients, representing our firms in the community as well as internal roles.

We work closely with our managing partners and we are the business managers, leaders and planners of our offices and firms. We handle the operational details so that our attorneys can provide legal services to our clients and obtain new clients. Our position titles are: administrator (or director of administration); chief, director or manager of Human Resources; chief information officer; or director of finance. There are many more titles and positions in our industry but those are the titles of the respondents for this article.

How did we get here? We are a group with a significant amount of formal education and on the job experience. 16 of us have college degrees and at least 5 of us have Masters degrees. Accounting, Business and Human Resources are the most common degrees. We also have a lot of experience in our current or previous law firms, collectively an average of 18 years per person. The range in years of experience is 4.5 years to 30 years.

Several of us came from other careers or industries such as: railroad, corporate, other service, medical, manufacturing and military. There was no consensus as to the major differences between other industries that we came from, but a couple of examples deserve mention:

• “Unions are the biggest difference, they kept things “equal” for all employees in the same craft, regardless of ‘circumstance’. That’s something that legal administrators try to do on a daily basis without being governed by a hard/fast set of ‘rules’.
• “The most challenging is the matrix management. In the corporate world you have an organization chart which helps with the approval and flow of information. In a Partnership, there is a very flat structure; communication and approvals flow from many directions.”
• “Business continuity--firms share resources but each partner is their own little business--and each run differently. Changing the structure of compensation may alleviate some of the ‘owner run’ business within the firm and allow more business sense to prevail.”

Books that have influenced us along the way or in our development include: the Bible; The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey; The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell, Growing Up Digital by Don Tapscott; The One Minute Manager by Kenneth Blanchard and Spencer Johnson; Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff by Richard Carlson; Good to Great by Jim Collins; and any of the Dale Carnegie books. ALA publications received praise for timely value and responsiveness.

I am one of the proponents of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and highly recommend it. It’s a challenging read with some difficult concepts to grasp, so two other administrators and I formed a study group to push through and better utilize its lessons. I used the same study group process with Covey’s The Eighth Habit. That approach brought about a synergy within the study group that positively improved our understanding and also provided a greater awareness about others in our profession.

I’ve expanded the 7 Habits teachings beyond work, identifying annual goals and objectives each year in the following areas: Personal, Physical/Health, Professional, Spiritual/Religion/Charity, Family, Financial, Self Improvement, Social and Recreational. This outline provides me focus filters to assist with decision making on a daily basis.

Regarding our background education and recommended courses/seminars, all who have had business, accounting, management, computer science and human resources degrees/certificates praise their importance and relevance. Several recommended adding psychology or social work courses, to include a “Patience” sub-course to assist with team building and conflict resolution. A “Sense of Urgency” course should also be on the curriculum.

A few of the following are excellent examples of how we stay current:
“I stay current with peer groups and serve on strategic advisory boards.”
“I honestly believe that ALA offers the best educational sessions for continued development.”
“I attend seminars in HR laws and legal ethics.”

My conclusion from reviewing the background of survey respondents is that their education, range of responsibilities and years of experience make them a highly credible resource group. They are trusted advisors and have excellent advice for us to evaluate for our future career development.

Are we challenged by our career? An overwhelming majority said they “loved/liked/enjoyed” their work as a whole. Several noted that there were some days and circumstances that were problematic. Only two indicated that they had “mixed” feelings about their position or that the job was “very difficult”.

Key factors listed by those who enjoyed and found fulfillment with their careers were: the challenges of each day, whether they were in a slightly narrower, in scope, functional area, e.g. Human Resources, Information or Finance, or the broad “do everything” spectrum of administration. Several mentioned that their support, management or functional team members made the work day terrific and a few noted that they had recruited and built out that team. The conclusion here is obvious: be extremely selective in the recruiting process of your staff--they are not only key to job completion but also very important to a cohesive and satisfying work environment.

One excellent and representative quote in this regard follows, “I love the diversity of what I do and the challenge of learning something new while trying to keep the wheels on the bus…” Another notes, “I like my job because of the wide variety of responsibilities I have--HR, Marketing, Facilities, Finance. There are no two days alike. Some days when I’m knee deep in HR issues, it’s nice to be able to close my door and work on a spreadsheet with numbers where the answers are black and white…”

For me the responses above are right on the mark. This profession allows us to work with highly educated and motivated individuals--attorneys, paralegals, legal secretaries and staff who are providing important services to clients. This “mission” (providing first rate legal services to our clients) is valid and required in our society. We must continue our efforts to succeed.

Where are we going? It’s clear from all of the responses that the global and national economy are driving change to the legal industry and us as we deal with it. We are merging, consolidating, growing or shrinking as we search for the optimum size best suited for our operation. We are re-thinking every expense line on the budget for possible refinement while ensuring that revenues can be increased. We are consolidating attorneys and staff, combining positions or functions, to be sure that the infrastructure is the right size to support our lawyers.

We are also dealing with a large group of our staff and attorneys who are retiring or getting ready to retire and leave our firms. We must improve our succession planning. Additionally, we see challenges with recruiting younger and diverse resources, training new personnel and generations regarding our culture and work habits and providing the flexibility to retain them. We are concerned about the transportation costs facing our employees and the environmental foot print we are making on a daily basis. We constantly must be evaluating training, benefits and health insurance to provide needed coverage while examining budget impact.

How do we manage? It is clear that none of us completes every task before we leave our office at night, there is always one more project, call, meeting or conversation to have. That’s just the nature of the profession. So how do we deal with leaving work behind, or do we leave it?

Every single one of us plans ahead in a pro-active way, many will frequently look a month or week ahead. Most of us review those plans at night before we leave work for the next day, and fewer of us wait until we get to work, early, the next day. At least 10 of us use the software on our computers. Generally, we are using Outlook, Groupwise and one with Lotus Notes. Additionally, many of us still utilize hand written “to do” lists to assist with our efficiencies. While there are many more technologically advanced ways of planning, many of us employ old school techniques. Some other individual planning and organizing techniques include:

• Use of a monthly/1-31 drawer in my desk and file the materials in those daily folders for the tasks placed on the calendar.
• Use color coded folders in an organizer on my desk. Bright, different colored folders for different events or projects, and a red folder for items that need immediate attention the following day. Also, use a hanging file system by the month to place items in appropriate month due.
• Use of a Franklin Covey planner that is kept by my side 80% of the time. Use this planner to keep daily list of events and 1-2 times per week transfers items to a monthly to do list.
• I use Outlook Tasks and Calendars to track suspense dates and deadlines. I have also carried a steno pad with me (almost 100%) of the time to make notes wherever I am. The steno pad augments my memory--I review my notes frequently and number and date each pad. Currently, I’m using pad numbered 140, having started my first pad with this firm, approximately 10 years ago.

For all of the planning this group does, a large part of each day is spent with “putting out fires”, reacting to issues, challenges, absences, accidents, emergencies. We also troubleshoot issues or problem solve. In this regard, we must be calm, flexible and responsive to our clients, whether external or internal (our attorneys and staff).

The second question that fits well here is, how do we balance life? More than 50% of us said it was “forced”, “difficult”, “hard to very hard”. We struggle, not wanting to leave work undone, but realizing that there just aren’t enough hours to complete it all.

The majority of us work at home, in the evenings and/or on weekends, using the excellent technology that provides us remote access. A few individuals cursed the technology but also recognized the time saving features in that we can accomplish weekend work at lunch, dinner or home, saving the commute back to the office. Some of us stay at the office long hours during the week and then try to stay away from work items for all or most of the weekend. Others find themselves working every week day and some on the weekends, too. Two of us leave work at the office and respond only to serious emergencies on the weekends.

Spending time with spouses, children and family members are key to our life balance. We also schedule our off work time with horses, pets, exercise and reading. Some fun books mentioned were: Blink, The Dream Manager, The Shack and The Firm. Finally, faith-based activities and volunteering are other activities that provide balance. Following are some of the statements that are representative here:

• “…On weekends I do as much as I can outdoors including spending time with my horses and spouse. This clears my head and helps keep things in perspective, plus give me lots of fresh air and exercise.”
• Another, “…I try to leave close to 5 each night to have relaxed evening time with my family, I work some on weekends but usually not if family commitments, I enjoy reading books and I work out 3-5 times per week to relieve stress…”
• One of our senior respondents stated the following, “…I find myself more cognizant of reality--most things can wait without causing major disasters or inconvenience for others. Therefore, I find myself putting things away and leaving tasks not quite finished that I would have previously stayed at the office until midnight to get done. None of us are guaranteed a certain number of days and I want to enjoy my days. I didn’t get that concept for a long time… And, while I can’t do everything, I sure want to do as much as possible.”
• “Delegation with the proper mentoring and supervision is often overlooked as one of the most important tools a legal administrator has. Guiding another staff person through a difficult project develops and improves the overall skill set of the office.”

In summary, this article, using survey input from 18 current administrators, primarily in the St. Louis area, provides discussion about:

Who are we? We are leaders and managers of dynamic, fast paced professional service organizations that provide important services to a demanding client base.

How did we get here? We got here from other careers/industries or rose up through the legal career field, we have a strong education background and continue to learn.

Are we challenged by our career? We like the challenges and stresses of our jobs. The people we work with bring us fulfillment and satisfaction.

Where are we going? We are traveling a more difficult road through a troubled economy that will re-shape our firms and offices. Our work forces are changing. Our roles as key leaders and change agents in our firms will continue to grow as the industry faces new challenges.

How do we manage? We recognize the need to pro-actively plan for the very important strategic and tactical aspects of our firms and refine our skills to reach that level. In this regard we use technology and planning tools to block the time needed for this effort. At the same time, we spend an immense amount of time reacting to minute by minute demands and crises. Finally, we are sensitive to the needs to keep our lives balanced and healthy.