Law careers are changing. The pace and nature of client work, the impact of new technology, global markets, diversity targets and changing career aspirations are leading to changes both in opportunity and expectation for UK lawyers. We know from our work with law firms that retaining good lawyers and providing a stimulating and satisfying work environment is challenging. Turnover rates can be high in competitive markets and time needed to induct new lawyers into complex and fast moving client work inevitably impacts performance.

Over the past five years we have looked specifically at these areas, tapping into the experiences of a number of UK lawyers at differing levels of experience and in varying law firm sizes. In a forthcoming series of short articles we assess the key challenges of retention, performance, well-being and gender diversity, and offer some solutions.

​Here, we look at retention.

In the second of our series of short articles examining law careers, we look at performance and in particular how lawyers may best be enabled to do their best work.

In our report we asked 336 UK lawyers what they most wanted from their careers. In common with most professional knowledge workers they consistently indicated that they wanted:

• to be fairly paid
• to be valued and recognised for their contribution and value
• to have interesting, meaningful and challenging work to do
• a degree of autonomy and control over what they do and how they do it
• development opportunities

Where these indicators were perceived to be lacking, the reported intention to stay was correspondingly reduced (e.g. 50% of lawyers describing their work as "not challenging" intended to leave their firm within one year). It is to be expected that work performance was also impacted. Most people simply do not want to turn in sub-optimal performance. Enabling performance requires action from both line managers and each individual. 

For line managers (and these may be team leaders, partners, etc) much of this focuses on clarity of thought and effective communication:

• Role and goal clarity. How clear is each team member on their specific accountabilities, role boundaries, expectations, delivery targets? In our experience it is not uncommon that team members are not clear about these things to a sufficient degree - and sometimes their line managers aren't either.
• Alignment with team plans and overall firm strategy. Each team member's efforts must be directed to the wider strategy if it is to be commercially successful and personally satisfying. This is self-evident but it doesn't always happen: there need to be team plans, goals and strategies in existence to begin with, and they should be clear, comprehensible and well communicated. In our survey just 36% of non-partners reported that they understood their firm's strategic direction very well (and within that group one-quarter considered that they didn't understand the firm's strategic direction "very well" or "at all"). How well-directed and purposeful could their efforts be?
• The psychological mindset to perform well. In other words to feel sufficiently skilled, confident, valued and supported. In our experience many companies do not look to assess these features and yet if we prefix "un-" to each of those attributes we would all readily accept that this would be problematic. As before, much of this centres on the line manager's focus, intent and communication. Many line managers in our experience are not engaging with these areas at all and are not having these conversations with their teams. We can all understand a situation where our time, effort and contribution goes unnoticed, is taken for granted and is under valued, and how that would make us feel. Very few people would continue to perform highly in such circumstances. In our survey, 22% of men and 50% of female lawyers considered that they felt "poorly" valued by their firm. 

For team members there is a clear need for them to be accountable and responsible for their own performance. This requires a level of development, maturity and "rounded-ness". 

The potential to be able to develop these attributes should be assessed during the initial selection and recruitment  process. In our experience, robust methods to assess these attributes (including through the use of psychometric assessment and assessment centres) is often not consistently applied, if at all.

Line managers need more support from HR than they are often given to facilitate this process, so that they are not left to deal with the management problems which arise from poor selection processes. ​
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For both managers and team members to perform optimally they must be suitably developed and supported. For line managers this requires having:

• the appropriate skills (e.g. in managing people, communication, goal setting, giving feedback, etc)
• the aptitude to do it (many senior managers and partners firmly resist line management responsibility preferring to focus instead on their legal work)
  

and finally, and importantly

• the capacity - the time - to carry this out. A consistent theme in our development programmes in law firms of all sizes is the simple lack of time that well skilled, engaged and committed line managers have available to carry out their people management responsibilities. For many we speak to, this is a constant cause of frustration and dissatisfaction.

We provide organisational consultancy and development expertise to help our clients make effective selection decisions, and develop their people at all seniority levels to perform at their best. If you'd like to discuss how we can help you, do get in touch. e: sarah.jaggers@managingchange.org.uk t: 01223 655667

Next week we are launching our report into law careers in 2017.  Our in-depth survey has heard from over 300 lawyers based throughout the UK and asked them about their experiences at different stages in their careers. It has looked at their career needs, aspirations and expectations. 

​Results were mixed with some consistently positive reports from lawyers particularly around support for career and professional development, well-being and support. Areas of concern included job satisfaction among non-partners, perceived recognition and value, and understanding of the firm's strategic direction. 
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Ahead of the full report, here is a preview of some of the findings.

Our Lawyer Survey questioned lawyers at all levels in UK law firms to throw light on the key features that affect their retention, development and career satisfaction. This brief update focuses on partnerships and in particular gender diversity.

Within most UK law firms, women and men are fairly evenly represented in lawyer roles (SRA figures from 2015 indicate 47% of lawyers are women). In larger law firms this figure is lower (c. 27%) and there are further differences in the type of work practiced. In criminal law for example women make up 39% of lawyers, while in private client work they make up 57%. At partnership level across the UK, women comprise around a third of the partner population.

In our survey, 57% of lawyers indicated that they aspired to become partner, with a further 32% reporting that they were unsure (11% did not aspire to partnership). Interestingly, slightly more women (57%) than men (54%) aspired to partnership with more men (15%) indicating that they didn't want partnership compared with just 7% of women. Among this group, the women therefore appear to be more aspirational.

​Just over 23% of lawyers in our survey indicated that they expected to remain within their current firm for between 3 and 5 years.  This included nearly 40% of senior associates with a further 10% of them intending to leave within the next 1 to 2 years.  A further 33% of lawyers indicated that they didn't know how long they intended to stay.

The challenge for all businesses to be able to attract and retain the best people they can is well known and much talked about. Many firms turn to their relatively low staff turnover or the number of applicants to their recruitment initiatives and conclude that all is well. But is this right?

Not infrequently we work with people on development programmes and workshops who, to put it charitably, are not exactly 'on fire' with enthusiasm for their job or their firm. Most of them are not doing a poor job but they are not performing anywhere near as well as they could be - meaning that both firm and lawyer suffer. They frequently feel stuck and undervalued in the role and would prefer to be doing something different – or differently. This is not where optimal performance or job satisfaction comes from. From the wider business perspective this also creates vulnerability; the risk of good people being poached by other firms - always a concern - becomes greater.
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What does it take to attract and retain good people who are committed and perform well? 

​Legal careers are changing. The pace and nature of client work, the impact of new technology, global markets/Brexit, diversity targets and career aspirations are leading to changes both in opportunity and expectation for lawyers.