Is the modern lawyer a good listener?

Think about the career progression of graduates, associates and partners in law firms (and in-house lawyers in corporate legal departments) over the last 60–70 years. Each of them has had a varied employee experience filled with certain expectations, disappointments, challenges and perhaps a little bit of resignation at times, as they were caregivers, bystanders, activists, idealists, pragmatics, and held many other identities.

Imagine we could go back and interview all these individuals – what we would learn in those conversations? I’m quite sure you might be saying “we have all been there”, but have we really? Long hours and a performance-driven culture, what would we learn if we spoke to their families and friends? We see lawyers increasingly concerned about their obligations to themselves, their families and society as a whole and this shapes their experience of the organisations they work for.

Law firms are (mostly) organised along the lines of a business model that was conceived hundreds of years ago with a partnership model and profit distribution formulas. This structure holds several tensions and potential conflicts – the need to differentiate between partners and everyone else, the partners’ central role in promotions and staffing assignments, complex and often formalised internal decision processes, siloed teams with defined but not necessarily differentiated career paths – all increasing the risk and cost of individuals raising concerns.

For many years that model worked well, employees were prepared to pay the price of long hours and a one-dimensional culture to climb the ladder to partnership. What has changed is how associates and partners are weighing the benefits and disadvantages of their jobs, i.e. the ‘emotional cost’ analysis. Is it really worth it?

Consequently, it has become harder to recruit lawyers since traditional incentives (money, status) don’t seem to motivate employees to the same extent as before and retention has become a real challenge. A recent study by McKinsey across a range of professions and industries illustrates this. The results were surprisingly consistent: more than 40% are somewhat likely to leave their jobs, and the remaining 60% seem to be more inclined to consider other job offers. In the past several months, lawyers have returned to their offices to a greater degree than other office workers, but the possibility of remote working has become a real differentiator for how attractive an employer is. And not only are employees putting pressure on law firms, clients are increasingly requiring evidence of diversity and inclusion before engaging. Building and developing diverse teams is a challenge on multiple levels, from recruitment to retention. There are good reasons for the way law firms are organised, but their structure leaves them quite exposed to a less attractive employee value proposition.

We see lawyers increasingly concerned about their obligations to themselves, their families and society as a whole and this shapes their experience of the organisations they work for.

Ideally, you’d want to pinpoint and remedy these negative experiences right away. Employees would feel safe and empowered to raise concerns, but that’s easier said than done. A large survey found that 75% of sexual harassment cases in law firms were not even reported. These are choices that employees with a serious grievance make, but how about all the other needs and concerns they would not feel comfortable raising? Identifying employee needs and creating a solid speak-up culture have become central to new ways of working

There is an interesting theory about how cohorts and employee needs have been changing over time. In short, traditional diversity and inclusion methodology has focused on a static and very small set of factors – race, gender, sexual orientation.

But we all carry many more identities into the organisation we work for, such as child carer, immigrant, second-language speaker, extrovert, introvert, hidden medical conditions etc. Key is that organisations are able to address employees’ needs during their career journey in the company and we know this will lead to higher retention and more engaged teams.

We know that employees’ expectations of the organisations they work for are changing, but are we really listening?

We need to get better at identifying the right needs at the right times and then provide targeted solutions to improve people’s experiences – it would make both a huge individual and societal difference. These could be basic needs, like creating engagement and awareness around unhealthy team dynamics or lack of trust or build better confidence in the ability to escalate concerns, and other rather straightforward changes such as a less restrictive definition for time off for bereavement, more flexible working hours or even just listening ‘deeply’ to someone’s concerns.  

Do we feel confident that we understand what has changed since we were grads and associates ourselves? Do we think we are getting honest answers to our questions? Do we trust our people surveys and engagement polls?

If the answer to any of those questions is ‘no’ or ‘maybe not’, we need to rethink the way we listen. Rummaging through the HR toolbox might bring some relief, but frankly, increasing pay does not seem to work, the measures seem to require a deeper and more thorough cultural change. The survey from McKinsey illustrates this challenge, as there is a disconnect between employers and employees.

Today’s employees seem to have a much more emotional relationship with the organisations they work for, as “work is no longer a place, it’s an experience”. Key to understanding employees is to ‘sense’ their lived experience.

Experiences shape employees’ views of their career outlook, ability to contribute, outlook for promotions or an organisation’s response to their specific situation. Research has repeatedly shown how negative experiences impact an organisation’s ability to engage and retain its employees. Simply put, if you see someone you can identify with being treated badly, you will assume it could happen to you.

So, how do you start to listen? The challenge is that listening isn’t all that easy. 

We need to begin with the kind of concerns we are attempting to identify. Often the behaviours we are observing are reactions to underlying, more fundamental, problems. Ignoring frustrations over frequent interruptions by more junior employees might allow a more autocratic management culture to grow. Endorsing an aggressive performance culture might leave little room for understanding changing individual needs and even less opportunity to raise concerns. Secondly, we need to take individual and organisational sensitivities into account. We often hear concerns about ‘waking sleeping dogs’ if we start surveying employees, perhaps creating unrealistic expectations, and exaggerated cultural awareness. Experience shows us this is not the case if objectives and outcomes are clearly defined.

So, what are the three main steps we suggest to better understand employee sentiment?

Get strong leadership support. Ensure partners are prepared to deal with potential negative results of your survey. This is important, since you’ll need the partners to accept and own the results and feel they are representative and robust enough to act upon. Ensure there is agreement on what the follow up could and should be.

Create a safe space. This is the most difficult part; employees are generally not prepared to risk their careers to help you with a survey. However, there are a few things you can do:

•          Ensure anonymity – use an outside, independent provider, and use employee interest groups to verify the processing of the results. Ensure transparency around who should see commentary fields (they can give a lot of insight!). Have procedures in place if more serious ethical issues surface.

•         Ensure objectivity – make sure questions are asked in a neutral and non-leading manner. Ensure all participants have the same understanding of what you are asking. You do not want to victimise or be accusatory.

•         Embrace subjectivity – accept you cannot step into someone else’s shoes but give everyone the confidence that you are trying to reflect their reality. How many people can truly confirm the statement “I feel motivated at work” if they are going through mental health problems?

Share the results. This might seem trivial, but you want the data to tell a story and that story needs to involve everyone. Watered-down results or high-level backslapping presentations not reflecting the real sentiments are more damaging than doing nothing – it shows you don’t really care. 

Employees’ needs are shifting, and these shifts go deeper than only increased engagement. It’s about a new view on life priorities and life quality. It seems unlikely these changes will pass by law firms, rather they will shape the way partnerships are evolving.

Dr Hakon Runer (CEO & Co-Founder)

Sources

1       Nancy Gertner, “Sexual harassment and the bench” (2018) 71 Stanford Law Review 88.

2       “‘Great attrition’ or ‘great attraction’”, McKinsey Quarterly, September 2021.

3       “Covid-19 threatens to blow up law firms’ intense office culture – for good”, Wall Street Journal, 6 August 2021.

4       “Clients are choosing law firms that are diverse”, Lawyers Mutual, 20 June 2019.

5       “Us too? Bullying and sexual harassment in the legal profession”, May 2019.

6       BCG, “It’s time to reimagine diversity, equity, and inclusion”, May 2021.

7       BCG, “Inclusive cultures have healthier and happier workers”, September 2021.

8       Iris Bohnet, What works, 2016.