A Note from Shireen Hilal
We have seen a real corporate culture erosion since the pandemic, and firms continue to struggle with how to maintain it without dragging everyone into the office. My answer to most of my clients is that you can make almost any model work, but the question is how much work you’re willing to put into making that happen.
Pizza parties don’t guarantee great cultures, but being physically together can make connection, mentoring, and information-sharing easier. That said, any firm benefits from focusing on better communication standards, training, management, and knowledge-sharing.
In the article, I focus on two areas firms need to stop leaving to chance: how people stay connected to the firm and each other, and how they learn, grow, and find the knowledge they need to do good work.
To build better culture and connection:
- Share substantive information: Better town halls, transparent survey follow-up, and regular communication help people understand where the firm is going instead of relying on rumor, hallway conversations, or word of mouth.
- Let people help build the culture: Give associates and staff ownership over events, internal CLEs, innovation ideas, and practical improvements so they feel like participants, not just recipients.
To build better development and knowledge-sharing:
- Manage and train people more deliberately: Remote and hybrid teams need clearer reporting lines, more frequent feedback, practical bite-size trainings, and mentoring that goes beyond a check-the-box assignment.
- Make knowledge easier to find and pass on: Better onboarding, practice guides, knowledge hubs, and communication standards help institutional knowledge survive beyond hallway osmosis.
We help law firm leaders build stronger teams for better results. If your firm is looking to understand how to better engage your workforce, I’m happy to be a sounding board. Meanwhile, the full Law360 article is below.
As Published in Law360
The Issue
Law firms acknowledge the necessity of a new approach in the era of hybrid and remote work. However, many are struggling to move beyond the conventional solutions of mandatory office days and perks like free lunch.
The initial pandemic-driven shift to remote work demonstrated that client service and team collaboration could be maintained from home, and many firms thrived with unusually low attrition and newfound cost savings, from lower entertainment expenses to unused office supplies.
But as we moved past the crisis management phase, it became clear that the legal sector, like others, was largely coasting on prepandemic systems, processes and connections. Attrition increased, old relationships weakened, and new employees — ranging from first year associates to lateral partners and staff — joined without the benefit of embedded institutional knowledge.
This shift revealed a critical truth: Relying passively on past strengths is unsustainable.
Moreover, the new generation of professionals entering the workforce, Generation Z, brings a unique set of expectations and values. They prioritize joining organizations that align with their values and support early-career growth, and they seek authentic leadership and an opportunity to be part of something bigger.[1]
So, how can your firm revitalize its culture, provide meaningful mentorship and safeguard its knowledge base in the face of a dispersed and evolving workforce?
The Data
The data validates what many of us know intuitively: Something has to change… but not at the expense of flexibility.
A recent poll by Gallup reveals that employee engagement in the U.S. has dropped to its lowest level in more than a decade — around only 30%, continuing the downward trend reflected in its survey last year, which found that "employees were increasingly detached from their employers, with the workforce reporting less role clarity, lower satisfaction with their organizations and less connection to their companies' mission or purpose."[2]
Law firms overwhelmingly believe the answer to declining employee engagement lies in
more in-office time. A recent survey by CBRE showed that 83% of surveyed firms in the Am Law 100 and 200, and 73% of smaller firms surveyed, said they would prefer their professionals to come to the office more frequently, on the basis that remote work curtails networking, socializing and professional opportunities, pointing specifically to "intangibles ... such as mentorship, new employee onboarding, developing relationships and collaborating on substantive work."[3]
But return-to-office initiatives aren't popular, and most firms already mandate a few days a week in the office and aren't seeing the tide turn. Thomson Reuters' "2024 Law Firm Office Attendance Policies Report" showed that almost 60% of legal professionals are satisfied with their firms' in-office attendance policies, with almost 30% more saying they feel at least neutral.[4]
Importantly, the professionals who said they were dissatisfied were overwhelmingly those at firms that have less flexible policies. And while Gen Z may crave community, they are 17% more likely to apply to remote jobs than other generations given their comfort with remote collaboration.[5]
The bottom line: Flexibility is the bright spot here, and we need to look beyond in-office mandates for the answer.
Practical Ways Your Firm Can Pivot
It is possible to use other levers to strengthen culture, professional development and day to-day collaboration, but quick fixes won't do it. A shift will require proactively designing programs that foster rapport, empowering employees at all levels to contribute to firm culture, and providing real road maps for information, instead of what firms have relied on until now — the mentality that "if they're all together, they'll figure it out."
Below is a road map for getting your firm started, based on a combination of tried-and-true strategies and the expectations of not only Gen Z, but also the other three generations that coexist with them in our workforce, and similarly crave better communication and connection.
Enhancing Firm Culture
The approach outlined below encourages culture co-creation and transparency.
Hold (better) town halls.
No one feels engaged at a firm that operates as a black box. Regularly hold interactive town hall sessions where employees get a front-row seat to the firm's direction and can voice their opinions, ask questions and discuss issues with your firm's leaders.
This also creates a formal touch point so remote workers, who often feel inadequately informed, aren't relying on word of mouth to receive critical information.
Consider opening the stage to employees outside of leadership — for example, ask an associate to highlight a newsworthy deal win, or give your marketing personnel airtime to describe new initiatives to build excitement.
Survey your employees, and be transparent about results.
On the flip side, you should conduct periodic surveys to ensure management is not left filling in the blanks on what associates and staff think, either, and you should be prepared to candidly discuss recurring survey themes in your town halls.
While many firms would rather not address controversial or negative rumblings, don't fool yourself — these topics are being discussed already, so the question is whether you will own the conversation or hope the rumor mill resolves issues in your favor.
Empower employees to cocreate your culture.
Culture should be a collective effort, not a top-down directive. Involve associates in both social and management aspects of the firm. By entrusting them with the planning of regular events, both in-person and remote — such as monthly cocktail parties or internal continuing legal education luncheons — you reinforce their role in shaping firm culture.
Additionally, foster a sense of ownership by encouraging them to suggest improvements, whether it's through innovation challenges or other initiatives, making them active stakeholders in the firm's evolution.
Offer virtual office hours with managers and partners.
Establish virtual office hours where partners and management commit to being available to answer questions or provide guidance. Almost all firms say they have an open-door policy, but this gives a clear path for associates and staff to actually make use of it, regardless of location.
Adapting Leadership and Management Approaches for Empowerment and Development
The traditional models of law firm management often lack the personal touch and developmental focus necessary for fostering talent in any environment, let alone dispersed work arrangements. Here's how your firm can pivot.
Implement better reporting structures.
The loose reporting structures for associates that still exists in many law firms leaves associates without a clear manager, and that means they get no real guidance on career progression, except what is communicated to the masses or in formal annual reviews.
Establish reporting lines where associates are assigned a specific manager, ensuring consistent feedback and guidance that also teaches senior associates essential management skills beyond simply assigning work.
Recognize success more frequently.
Given that most of our business communication is over email, professional relationships can feel transactional. But don't wait until the end of your fiscal year to recognize and reward associates and staff.
Find ways to highlight successes all year that match your firm's broader people initiatives — e.g., spot bonus programs, recognition at town halls, awards, tickets to a coveted event,
etc.
But more importantly, emphasize to partners and managers the power of frequent, verbal acknowledgment, and find champions within leadership to repeat the message so it sticks.
Introduce practical, bite-size trainings.
In the context of law firm training, the adage "showing, not telling" is paramount, particularly when dealing with client-service concepts that demand nuanced understanding — for example, customizing communication for in-house counsel based on their familiarity with an issue.
Consider implementing training modules in 30-minute meetings, designed to fit within the natural attention span limits of busy professionals. The modules can be structured to include 15 minutes of comparative and example-driven instruction, followed by 15 minutes of interactive Q&A.
This format ensures your professionals know what "good" looks like, and understand how the firm expects service to be delivered in concrete ways.
Provide opportunities to practice in a remote context.
Providing associates with more practical experience is essential for their development and engagement, whether in the office or not. Concrete examples of how you can offer these opportunities include:
- Remote case and deal reviews: Schedule nonbillable review sessions where junior and midlevel associates can present strategies for ongoing matters to a senior lawyer or a group. This not only gives them a platform to showcase their analytical and strategic thinking, but also allows them to receive constructive feedback and understand the bigger picture.
- Lead remote client interactions: Encourage junior associates to take the lead on organizing client calls or virtual meetings under the supervision of a senior lawyer. This could involve creating and circulating meeting agendas and giving routine legal updates, providing them with firsthand experience in managing the basic aspects of client relationships as a starting point.
Provide more effective mentoring.
Ask firms what they do to develop their people, and most will enthusiastically respond that they have a mentoring program.
While these programs are created with good intentions, they usually do little more than check a box. Relationships based on senior professionals being "voluntold" to participate and that offer no mutual benefit will, unsurprisingly, not bring much in the way of tangible results. Instead, you can:
- Create peer circles that go across offices or practice areas. This ensures all circle members benefit from carving out time, and offers a forum for sharing ideas or pain points with contemporaries.
- Make it part of your hiring criteria. Few firms ask lateral partner and management candidates questions such as, "Give me an example of when you sponsored an associate," or "Tell us about junior employees with whom you've had career conversations." If you're truly seeking a culture where mentoring matters, hiring senior personnel who are already believers will, of course, take you there farther and faster than any formal program.
- Ask staff and associates through the surveys you conduct if they feel mentored, and who they turn to for guidance. Make sure those who are going the extra mile when it comes to mentoring know they are recognized and appreciated so they have positive reinforcement to continue making the effort. Meanwhile, word will spread — when senior personnel know the firm is asking pointed questions about who makes the effort to mentor, it starts becoming a priority.
Enhancing Knowledge Management — From Onboarding to Ongoing Needs
Your firm should have a clearly navigable knowledge hub so employees who come and go can quickly and intuitively find key documents, from firm and practice group standards to templates that leverage others' knowledge, and a directory that makes clear who's who. Here are some tips.
Develop better onboarding.
Most onboarding happens over a few-day sprint, and then falls off the edge of a cliff.
Instead, create a list of key stakeholders new employees should meet in their first few weeks. Pair them with an onboarding partner — ideally, someone else who was onboarded recently and can anticipate likely pain points and questions. Have documented practice group guides and meeting cadence calendars. And check in after a week, 30 days and 90 days to make sure new employees feel supported.
Provide early-stage employees with special onboarding.
If you employ first-year associates or paralegals directly from college, don't assume they know how to operate in a business environment, let alone your business environment, especially if a large portion of their time will be spent working alone physically.
Examples of practical advice they seek that comes as a surprise to most firms include: organizing their email inbox for ease of retrievability; communicating with their team prior to paid time off for a stress-free vacation; using methods of communication like email, instant message and phone calls most effectively; and practicing remote and in-person meeting etiquette.
These topics can be taught in three- to five-minute quick-tip videos recorded by more senior personnel at the firm who add in their own personal tips for success.
Implement a data governance framework.
Develop a structured and intuitive approach to manage how case files and relevant documents are stored to (1) ensure consistency in data management, reduce the risk of knowledge loss and help maintain the quality of work, regardless of where employees are located; and (2) to allow self-service in locating key client materials when needed.
Audit your data management, and train employees.
Conduct periodic reviews to ensure adherence to the data management policies described above. Provide training to staff on these protocols to foster a sense of responsibility and ensure compliance.
Importantly, keep iterating your approach to adapt to your workforce and make the ease of finding information increasingly intuitive over time.
Promote a culture of knowledge-sharing.
Emphasize knowledge-sharing as a part of the firm's culture by using messengers that matter — e.g., practice group leaders — and sending continual internal communications with tips and tricks on saving and finding information to highlight its importance.
Conclusion
In speaking with law firm leaders on how they can pivot, some have hesitated at the idea of adopting new programs, often reflecting on their own beginnings, with an "I never needed all this" mentality.
While that perspective is understandable and true, imposing leadership-borne survival tactics on a workforce where only a small percentage aspire to leadership roles, and where values may differ, is fundamentally flawed.
Persisting with "survival of the fittest" conditions risks creating an even more disengaged workforce. And in any industry, but especially in the legal service industry, disengaged employees erode the distinctiveness that sets elite firms apart.
Shireen Hilal is the chief executive officer at Maior Strategic Consulting.
The opinions expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of their employer, its clients, or Portfolio Media Inc., or any of its or their respective affiliates. This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal advice.
[1] https://www.aol.com/finance/ve-worked-thousands-emerging-gen-185610475.html.
[2] https://www.gallup.com/workplace/643286/engagement-hits-11-year low.aspx?version=print.
[3] https://sprcdn-assets.sprinklr.com/2299/aaec1325-c5b1-4221-bba3-256d0e3af7b6- 1635806103.pdf; https://www.globest.com/2024/03/07/law-firms-do-not-like-remote work-arrangements/?slreturn=20240316171720#:~:text=The%20report%20found%20that %20law,work%20could%20harm%20firm%20culture.
[4] https://www.thomsonreuters.com/en-us/posts/legal/law-firm-office-attendance-policies report-2024/.
[5] https://www.pynhq.com/blog/how-different-generations-feel-about-remote-work/.
