Managing The Firm's Culture - Graduate School Of Law

December 16, 2019

5 min read

University-level legal education in Nigeria equips undergraduates with knowledge about the law and knowledge about the sources of the law. Certainly, all law faculties in Nigeria have moot courts that train students in courtroom practice and even hold mock trial competitions but this does not form a part of the core curriculum of the faculties and participation is neither compulsory nor is non-participation punished, typically. At the university level, there is next to no training on commercial or transactional practice. It gets better at the Law School though. There, in addition to further equipping the now university graduate with more advanced technical legal and commercial knowledge as well as advanced knowledge about the sources of legal and commercial knowledge, the student is exposed to aspects of practice primarily the drafting and understanding of court processes and documents used in property transactions, and the inner workings of business organizations. There is a mock trial competition there too but again, it neither forms part of the core Law School curriculum nor is participation in the process mandatory. The Law School does send the student on an externship program; she is attached to a court and law firm and enjoined to observe activities there and learn.

Lawyers working in a law firm have been described as “the inventory that goes home at night” and it often said that a law firm’s most valuable asset is its intellectual capital. This is the knowledge and skills of its professionals and the output of their utilization of these—their work product. A law firm’s ability to store these work product, disseminate them within the firm and reuse them in serving other firm clients also forms part of its intellectual capital and contributes to its competitive advantage. Creating and nurturing formal and informal programs to systemically develop the skills and knowledge of its professionals, capture and reuse the product of their use of these skills and knowledge and ensure that its processes are always up-to-date must be a focal aspect of the firm's attempts to separate itself from its competitors and increase its competitive advantage.

Management’s efforts to ensure development will focus on three main area; skills, knowledge and processes.

Skills Development.

Skills as used here refers to the behavioral attributes of the firm’s professionals. These include the professionals’ aptitude at interpersonal and client communication, presentation and negotiation. The firm’s skills development program should be structured to build significant levels of legal and commercial skills like critical analysis, networking and business development, business management, client communication, negotiation and court room decorum and softer skills like people development, leadership, interpersonal communication, professionalism, marketing, public relations, and social media usage for modernity's sake. This training can be effected formally and informally through formal learning sessions or classroom training, role-playing exercises, coaching, mentorship, on-the-job activities. It can also be effected experientially—having the younger professionals accompany the older professionals to meetings, engagements, and court sessions for example. To build client communication skills, entry-level associates and lateral hires can be required to extensively study the email communication of older associates before they are allowed to communicate directly with clients via that channel.

Knowledge Development

The firm’s practice areas will naturally determine what areas of legal and commercial knowledge it deems important but there are overlapping and universal aspects of legal and commercial knowledge that the firm should develop frameworks for instilling in its professionals. These include substantive technical legal and commercial knowledge, knowledge of the sources of legal and commercial knowledge, legal writing, commercial savviness, business nous, real-world application of academic concepts and the firm’s service methodologies. Training to support knowledge development can be formal or informal and can be effected through formal learning or classroom sessions, open online courses, Continuing Legal Education programs, coaching, mentorships, self-paced courses, briefings and debriefings, on-the-job activities, experientially, and through certificate oriented academic programs. The firm’s leadership can also develop a formal curriculum and allocate time to host training programs for its professional and or non-professional staff. 

Process Development

The firm’s processes are the systems, structures, or standardized operating procedures that its management sets up to control day-to-day operations. These can be internal operations like documenting new matters, receiving and disbursing cash, bookkeeping, running conflict checks or external operations like contacting clients or prospective clients, using customer relationship management (CRM) systems or using the firm’s vehicles to attend meetings, engagements, or court sessions. These are often very simple affairs that only need occasional tweaks to ensure continued efficiency. Attending industry workshops and conferences to learn about developments and trends, paying attention to industry standards, and internal reviews are good practices to obtain the training necessary to ensure continuous process development.

Creating or facilitating these training programs is great but is only the first step. Yes, lawyers are smart, ambitious, and self-motivated, but the firm cannot leave career development to chance or to the individual lawyers concerned. The firm’s leadership should at the time of creating the training and mentoring programs, detail the competency and performance expectations required of participants in the program and communicate these to the participants. The benefits of firm-organized talent development goes beyond its utility as a tool for enhancing competitive advantage. As I already pointed out, lawyers are smart, ambitious and self-motivated people that love to gain more knowledge. Where better opportunities arise, they will not hesitate to vote with their feet and leave the firm’s employment if they feel stagnated in their inherent quest to know and be more. Firm-organized training is a powerful way to keep professionals who inherently enjoy learning absorbed and involved. Investing time and resources to provide continuous learning opportunities for both professional and non-professional staff should be an incontrovertible part of the firm’s culture. In the legal business like in other professional services businesses, it is important that the professional and non-professional staff alike continuously strive to learn, upgrade, and develop new skills and knowledge.

These training programs should not be limited to entry level associates. Training focus and intensity should be scaled alongside a professional’s career curve.

Culled from "A Millennial's Guide To Building A Law Firm." My new book on law firm management.