Influencing society: Why you should become a leader outside of the law

Leadership is an elusive character, hard to find and even harder to describe, particularly when it applies to the law and the role of lawyers. However, once you see it, you recognise it.

Leadership shows itself through many lenses. Legal leadership is seen at law school, in private practice and in industry, as well as in social, political and ?economic spheres.

Non-legal leadership is also evident in many places, not least in the business world and in the non-profit sector. It is used to develop policies and regulations, create solutions and fix problems. These days, a lack of leadership can also be noted in all of these areas.

There is a real opportunity for leaders to lead. Leadership in this context takes many different possible forms. Being an expert lawyer, finding solutions for clients and legitimately pushing the boundaries of how the law is applied is leadership. Managing a practice group or law firm is leadership. Serving as a general counsel and facilitating business, regardless of the size of the team or whether the GC sits on the board, is leadership. Moving from being a legal practitioner to being a business leader and/or non-executive director is leadership.

This is not a definitive list, but leadership carries many different definitions and applications dependant upon the situation and the lawyer’s own views and behaviours. It does not necessarily matter what the lawyer’s business card says, but it does matter how the lawyer thinks, acts and behaves.

The opportunity to lead is built upon the need for lawyers to lead. This is no longer just about what the profession thinks, or how it perceives itself. It is very much about how other stakeholders and opinion formers perceive the profession.

Ben Heineman, who has held senior positions in business, law and government and is a senior fellow at Harvard Law School, calls for lawyers to lead in the private, public and non-profit sectors. He urges graduates of law schools to aspire not just to have positions where they advise, but where they decide. Lawyers need to step up and lead, not just to dispense practical wisdom but to be practical visionaries and tackle current societal problems.

In addition, Heineman points out that it is in times like these that lawyers are not being fulfilled in their current roles and want to give something back, rather than being buried at their desks in paperwork. As we make our way through the age ?of anxiety, it is clear that the tides are?turning and employees are looking ?towards quality of work environment, quality of life, professional development and respect of one’s peers. It is time to ?do something about this.

Transferrable skills

Lawyers can lead and have developed skills that are readily transferable to the business world.

Lawyers are equipped with the knowledge of how to be decisive, set strategies, execute results, work in teams and challenge and motivate others, all within their chosen legal context. They were taught as students to think on their feet, to challenge the status quo and change outcomes. Lawyers have the ability to communicate and persuade, both verbally and in writing.

From a business perspective, law firms have worked hard to better understand their clients’ businesses and successfully run major businesses of their own. Law firms have become significant enterprises, some on a global scale, and have carefully crafted their market positioning and hiring decisions. You cannot run a big business or professional services firm without making big decisions on returns and capital investments, or without developing communication and people strategies.

General counsel have become well established at the top table and their role is increasingly well positioned at the heart of business. They understand risk, sometimes to the point where they over-elaborate the technical details as they try to find every risk applicable to a scenario.

But, this is where training and behaviours come to the fore – the need, for example, to take the ‘risk list’ and apply it to business in a way that they can do better than any. Risk is clearly one of the key issues that keep CEOs awake at night. So, why shouldn’t lawyers become CEOs, since lawyers can understand and deal with the application of risk better than those around them?

The key to risk is to appreciate and be able to articulate enterprise risk. Enterprise risk is different to how a lot of lawyers approach risk because it is about linking the risk analysis and risk management tactics to the enterprise and working it all out in context.

Also key to risk is the ability to make decisions based on risk inputs. In this way, one understands that risk is about many dynamics, which include the metrics and risk register, the legal and other risks of doing business, and also the costs and culture of risk.

To lead, lawyers need to view risk is a more holistic way and to realise that dealing with risk is not solely about damage limitation or mitigation, but can actually become a competitive advantage for a business.

But it does not end there. Leaders of the future need to appreciate what skills will be required to be effective and trusted. They need to recognise that we live in a time of increasing volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity and be able to respond accordingly.

Put concisely, leaders have to be agile. Being an agile leader means moving, changing and evolving the organisation proficiently and implementing greater learning. It means being a creative thinker with a sense of purpose who thrives on solving difficult problems. It means being happy to jump into the deep end of the worst problems. If this doesn’t embody ?the qualities of many lawyers throughout the world, I don’t know what does.

Creating leaders

For the legal profession to develop leaders who will either lead within the law or beyond, their leadership skills must be developed earlier in their careers. In the business world, those coming up through the ranks are often much more management and leadership attuned than their lawyer counterparts.

Law firms have sophisticated learning and development programmes for trainee solicitors through to partners – these are great foundations to be built upon. Law firms’ management teams must recognise this, empower their L&D functions and bring in more business skills training. It is part of their investment in their own future as much as anything else.

The successful law firms of the future will be those that have a greater business culture and have business skills as part of their DNA. Their key ingredients will be lawyers who are great at the law, excellent at applying this to enterprise risk and reward, and are well connected both ?within the law and outside of the law with key stakeholders.

It is not sufficient just to know your clients well. Successful leaders tend to ?be well connected on the way up, when they get there and in creating an environment for others to be better connected. It is not a skill that can be easily trained or learned, but it is a skill that is necessary and, until lawyers ?grasp its importance, leadership may remain elusive.

At the same time, lawyers should not make the mistake of thinking that a connection is principally a client or potential client. Leaders have great relationships – often up, down and sideways – and do not categorise connections in one basket or another.

Of course, being a great business-person is not mutually exclusive with ?being a great lawyer. It has happened ?with striking effect with general counsel, whose role has changed and moved much more closely to that of commercial peers.

General counsel are still very much their company’s lawyer, but they understand the strategy, financials and business tactics and have become ?part of that decision making process, knowing that their own L&D matches that skills requirement.

Coaching and mentoring is important to enable leaders to grow, develop and achieve their objectives. The emotional and social intelligence skills learned and practiced can be an enormous benefit in business development, creating a win-win for everyone.

More lawyers need to step forward, ?act as role models and provide coaching and mentoring. Lawyers and other stakeholders who have achieved success need to come together and be committed to a programme that will deliver results and expectation for the next generation.

However, is important to keep in mind is the maxim ‘correlation does not imply causation’. Do not assume that the best lawyers make the best leaders, just as the best salesperson is not necessarily the best fit to become the sales director.

For lawyers to succeed as leaders, whether within the law or beyond, they need to create and increase their personal brands. For decades, lawyers have worked hard to establish and grow the reputation of their firms, their practice areas and themselves. This has led to significant success: general counsel have moved through the ranks of industry to the top table and law firms have built very successful businesses.

However, it is now time for ?lawyers to move from focusing on ?their personal reputation to focusing ?on their personal brand. They are not ?the same: a brand is so much bigger and has resonance in many different ways. Reputation is a key contributor to brand, but is not the only one.

Lawyers have been boxed into the legal sector for too long. They need to develop the skills, knowledge and abilities to become leaders in the current global economy. There is a place for lawyers at the table, and not just behind clients.

Deepak Malhotra is an international business adviser and former general counsel (deepak.marinedrive@gmail.com)