Helping Lawyers Learn From Their Mistakes
By Kathy Morris –
I led a program for people in large firm lawyer training on recovering from mistakes resiliently, one of six skills attorney respondents to a practice-readiness survey identified as important yet “not teachable.” The program addressed:
(A) what lawyers should do [face and fess up to a mistake; bring solutions to the assigning attorney and client; gain guidance from the past mistakes of others and how they were handled; and avoid making the same mistake twice]
(B) and think [change their internal script from negativity about their own blunder to more positive thoughts about the learning opportunity; acknowledge to themselves that mistakes are common and in fact inevitable in the practice of law; and avoid catastrophic worst-case scenario thoughts that will detract from resolving the current and even future errors]
(C) to recover from mistakes resiliently.
A telling aspect of the program involved the reaction to a mock coaching session with a summer associate who had made a mistake. The scenario: the student had spelled the client’s name inconsistently in a document; in the unrehearsed role play, the student offered to talk with the assigning lawyer about ways to better proofread all aspects of a document and expressed a willingness to apologize to the client.
Pretty straightforward stuff. Yet part of the audience of lawyer training professionals erupted–with an outcry of “pain and agony”–because, they exclaimed, this conversation would never happen in their firm. I then asked for volunteers to simulate their version of a more realistic scenario between a partner and a new associate who had made the same mistake.
What ensued depicted an irate partner warning the junior lawyer about how serious the misstep was, actually pointing a finger while posing a not-so-veiled threat regarding career ending mistakes, and an insolent associate who was doodling and interrupting the partner to blame everyone else for the error.
What was the partner teaching and what was the associate learning in that scenario? In a culture where mistakes are magnified, where partners forget their prior missteps but shame and insult their junior colleagues, where little trust is built and even less personal responsibility for professionalism is taken on either side of the table, associates can’t recover from mistakes resiliently.
This was not my experience in firms I worked in for over two decades. Still, where unconstructive responses to mistakes are either inadvertent or modeled on mean-spirited behavior of some of the partners, those in professional development roles can have a positive impact on many of those who need to do better in such classic, truly teachable moments.
If “Associate Training Goes From Ad Hoc to All-In” [the caption of a recent article published in The Recorder] but does not address this skill–or the ability of partners to deal effectively with associates’ mistakes and to create a meaningful learning culture–then training is not yet all-in in law firms and the lawyer training chiefs and directors have an important role to play in continuing to push the parameters of professional development.
How?
– Structure a short program around a video depicting the scenario above and intermittently pause the video to lead discussion on the interactions, attitudes, and the chilling effects on the junior lawyer learning curve for dealing well with a mistake, from a client service and professional development perspective.
– Encourage partners in the firm to recall a mistake from early in their career, and how they were helped to deal with, resolve, and rebound from it; record these vignettes in writing or audio and post them on the firm intranet as a learning tool to model the skill of handling mistakes and to promote a culture of resiliency…components of training for associates and partners.
– Help the lawyers learn from their clients’ organizations and approaches. Circulate a short article on constructive corporate communication about mistakes and the cost of an atmosphere unsupportive of inevitable errors. Invite clients to firm training programs to discuss their own approaches to handling and teaching others about addressing mistakes and their expectations of the lawyers they hire and pay to do the same.
Generate your own preferred approaches as you go all-in to help lawyers recover from their mistakes, resiliently.
Blog Author
Kathy Morris founded Under Advisement, Ltd. in 1988 to assist lawyers in their job searches and to help them manage their careers.
Ms. Morris has been an attorney since 1975. She has tried cases in courtrooms from Hawaii to Massachusetts. In 1985, she became the Director of Placement and Career Counseling for Northwestern University School of Law, and has decades of experience guiding law students, lawyers, and law firms.
In addition, she has directed in-house lawyer training and career development at the national law firms of Katten Muchin & Zavis (now Katten Muchin Rosenman), Gardner, Carton & Douglas (now Drinker Biddle & Reath), and Sidley Austin. She also launched the Chicago Law Firm Training Consortium, composed of over twenty of Chicago’s largest firms and was a charter board member of the national Professional Development Consortium. In 1996, the American Bar Association selected Ms. Morris to head their Continuing Legal Education Center and to maximize the technological delivery of CLE. In 2000, she also created and directed the Career Resource Center of the ABA, publishing three career manuals for lawyers. Her monthly column, “Career Question,” ran in the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin for over fifteen years.
Expanding the technological reach of Under Advisement, Ltd., adding video counseling to the array of available avenues, Ms. Morris makes job search advice, career counseling, and consulting services for law firms and legal departments accessible, affordable, and effective.
Ms. Morris is also the featured career counselor of the Chicago Bar Association’s multi-faceted Career Advancement Program and the moderator of the American Bar Association’s monthly CareerAdvice web programs on a wide array of job search and practice-readiness matters. She is the founder of the Legal Profession PREP Class project, an impact initiative to inform law schools of practicing lawyers’ views on skills graduates need to learn in law school in order to be truly work-ready.
Click here to view the resume of Kathy Morris.