While talking to a law firm managing partner about a particular candidate for a director of professional development position, I was surprised to hear that the firm preferred to hire a lawyer for that job. In my 15 years following the growth of such positions in law firms, first as a journalist, and more recently as a recruiter, I had presumed that a law degree was not a major qualification for those positions.
As a result of this conversation, I conducted a limited, informal survey of large law firms. I found that while the majority of professional development directors are not lawyers, there is a bit of a trend towards firms hiring attorneys, particularly those who have spent a number of years as associates, or even partners, at big firms. But I also learned of another, and perhaps more important, trend—that firms are beginning to look for experienced corporate training executives, with no prior exposure to the legal profession.
These two apparently conflicting trends are not that surprising when one considers that in today’s legal environment, the stature of professional development directors is increasing. Firms are spending an increasing amount of money on recruiting, both out of the law schools and laterally.
And they find that they are losing some of their best people just at the point that they are beginning to become profitable for the firm. Today’s generation of lawyers put a high value on the training they get (whether they plan to stay in private practice or whether they don’t), and if they sense they aren’t progressing from a professional development point of view, they will look for some option that will provide that training. So firms are looking for new avenues to provide that background.
The emergence of former practicing lawyers in this field is as much a result of legal demographics as anything else. More and more attorneys are looking for options outside traditional law practice. But as Tess Amato, Professional Development Administrator at Latham & Watkins points out, this trend by no means is limited to the professional development area.
“There is a trend of former associates going into a variety of administrative roles, and that would include marketing and recruiting.”
For those who love the law, but aren’t as much enamored by the day-to-day pressures of law practice, professional development is an enticing option. For others, working in a development capacity combines an interest in education generally with their interest in the law. Jane Eiselein, Director of Professional Development at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr in Boston, is an example of that latter trend. Eiselein, a former transactional lawyer at Hale & Dorr in the early 1990s, pursued a Masters in Education while transitioning to a part-time schedule. After spending several years on Capitol Hill working on education policy issues, she decided to return to the firm. She says her legal training “is most helpful for the young associates who know that there is someone who understands what they want
Still, most observers say that while a legal background may be helpful, it has to be combined with some skills in the learning area. James Sandman, Managing Partner of Arnold & Porter, says that “being a lawyer can be a plus, and a lawyer can hit the ground running, but they will have to have other skills. They need to understand the methods, and how people learn.” At Arnold & Porter, Caren Stacy, a nonlawyer who serves as Director of Professional Development & Legal Personnel, coordinates everything, though she works with a designated lawyer on the Professional Development Committee to develop the content.
Similarly, Stephen Armstrong, Director of Career Development at Wilmer Cutler in Washington (and a nonlawyer), says that “the mere fact that someone has a J.D. doesn’t matter. Its value depends on the type of experience that you’ve had.” Armstrong adds that firm managers should ask, before bringing in a former practicing lawyer for this role, why this person wants to make this move. If it’s merely to find an option where he or she may find an easier schedule, that might not be the right answer, he says.
Many of the lawyers who have taken top positions in the Professional Development field are not only lawyers, but remain as partners in their firms. Jane Roberts, who is Senior Counsel for Professional Development at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, notes a distinction between lawyers who have practiced for a few years, and those who “have been through the life cycle” of a major law firm. Roberts, who was an associate and then a partner at Shaw Pittman, notes that someone like her has had the advantage of going through the training process which included an emphasis on writing as a junior associate, an emphasis on supervision as a mid-level and senior associate, and an emphasis on client relations and business development as a partner. It also helped, says Roberts, that she had a background in organizational development, a Masters in Education, and that she had taught at the high school and college level before becoming a lawyer.
Pam Winthrop, a partner at D.C.’s Hogan & Hartson, and Chair of the H&H Academy, agrees that the law degree itself isn’t important, but that the experience of having successfully navigated the route to partnership is important. “It’s a big advantage in terms of understanding the building blocks that young lawyers have to master. And as a partner who’s gone through the process, I’m also better able to evaluate content.” Winthrop, who unlike Roberts has no background in education generally, adds that her status as a partner in the firm helps her in recruiting partners as instructors.
While some firms have been able to utilize partners and other lawyers in professional development roles, other firms have gone in a different direction and have recruited professionals with a strong training and development background either in other professional services firms or in corporations. Eiselein herself notes that based on correspondence she sees through the Professional Development Consortium, she would estimate that a fourth of the people in the field these days have recently entered the legal industry for the first time. While others say that estimate may be a bit high, no one doubts that there’s a trend to bring experienced training executives into law firms these days.
Tracy Lalonde, Associate Development Administrator at Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw in Chicago, spent many years in corporate training, including as a systems integration consultant for a Division of MCI. Lalonde says that her corporate background gives her an appreciation of “how people learn, rather than of the content itself.” As a result, she says, the firm has been migrating from the traditional lecture format to a more interactive approach. For example, she notes that in training in corporate formation issues, she, with the help of lawyers within the firm, developed a spreadsheet summarizing a number of different corporate structures, and then created a number of hypotheticals that the associates could analyze, with the help of the lawyer-instructors.
Sari Fried-Fiori, Chief of Professional Development at Holland & Knight, who works out of the firm’s Los Angeles office, notes a distinction between bringing in training and development people from corporations and professional service firms. Fried-Fiori, whose 20 years of experience includes stints at Accenture and Deloitte & Touche, says “that if you haven’t worked with clients, then it’s tough,” adding that corporate professionals who have served in an internal consulting role would have an easier transition.
At the same time, even those development professionals who have significant experience in professional service firms may find a bit of a culture shock in adjusting to law firm life. Arnold & Porter’s Sandman points out that “there is a credibility issue coming in. Lawyers tend to be elitist, and can have difficulty accepting even the best people coming from outside the profession.”
Lalonde noted that the biggest adjustment was adapting to a partnership model where decisions are made on a consensus-driven basis (and sometimes not quickly), versus the corporate top-down model. Fried-Fiori had an interesting take on the culture shock, indicating that two aspects actually were more positive than she expected.
One was the level of support from the partnership with regard to the ultimate goals of the program. “Partners want lawyers to be very much at the top of their game,” and therefore “anything that can help them get there tends to be supported.” Fried-Fiori also noted that because lawyers “are very smart,” it took less time to “educate” them on the mechanisms that she was suggesting to upgrade the professional development process. On the other hand, she said that because lawyers are so smart, they tend to be “gifted amateurs” and feel that they know how to do things that maybe they’re not yet qualified to do.
The one thing that appears clear is that law firm management has, more so than ever before, embraced alternatives to the traditional “lecture plus on-the-job training” methods that for years characterized law firm professional development. Whether firms are utilizing successful practitioners who have a real-world understanding of what’s it’s like to be an associate trying to master a number of different skills, or whether they are utilizing corporate and professional services experts who understand how professionals learn, new lawyers can only benefit.
Steve Nelson, a former practicing attorney and legal journalist, is Managing Principal at The McCormick Group, an executive search firm based in Arlington, VA, that conducts searches for both lawyers and non-lawyers in law firms nationwide. Steve can be reached at 703.841.1700 or snelson@tmgdc.com.
Reprinted with permission from PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT QUARTERLY. The author of this article is permitted to reproduce and distribute it without limitation, including republication elsewhere. Copyright © 2005 Evelyn Gaye Mara. Address subscriptions and correspondence to Professional Development Services, P.O. Box 150306, Alexandria, VA 22315-9998, 703. 719.7030, maraeg@profdev.com.
