Law360 (June 30, 2021, 10:46 AM EDT) — After the coronavirus pandemic halted their in-person training and coaching last year, attorneys Tea Hoffmann and Aileen Leventon launched Law Strategy Coach in April to offer on-demand “soft skills” courses that can be remotely accessed by legal professionals no matter where they are in their careers — or whether they’re working from home.
Law Strategy Coach courses are designed to help attorneys and other legal professionals shore up skills that aren’t typically taught in law school, from managing a business and using social media to becoming a rainmaker. Hoffmann and Leventon say their platform combines online learning and traditional live classes with coaching and downloadable resources and homework, with all courses taught by seasoned instructors and legal consultants.
Hoffmann and Leventon met as fellows in the Wisconsin-based College of Law Practice Management. Sponsored by legal tech companies and other businesses, the invitation-only nonprofit educational and honorary association promotes the improvement of law practice management. The pair spoke to Law360 Pulse about why they launched the program, the importance of soft skills training and how attorneys and other legal professionals can adapt to the changing industry.
This interview was conducted on June 21 and has been edited for length and clarity.
What is the Law Strategy Coach program and what was your goal in launching it?
Hoffmann: Our goal was to provide online, on-demand training for lawyers that would be not necessarily your plain, substantive and boring continuing legal education courses like “how to do a deposition,” “how to do a brief.” Not that they’re all boring, but there are a lot of them that are. And they do have some of those that are online and on demand. But we felt that lawyers really miss out on what we call soft skills. And soft skills include things like project management, time management, organizational skills, how to go out and get clients, how to retain clients once you get them. There’s also specific needs for different groups. For example, associates need different types of soft skills training than maybe senior partners need. And we have a female rainmakers course, for example. We had been doing a lot of in-person training and coaching for years. With the pandemic, it seemed like the perfect time to convert that content to an online format. We really want to be the go-to place for these professional development directors and lawyers.
What makes Law Strategy Coach different from traditional career development for legal professionals?
Leventon: We’re dealing with a trillion-dollar industry worldwide that has radically changed. The consequence is that in addition to the substantive knowledge of the law, an effective legal professional needs to also have strong business skills and business orientation and also needs soft skills. I operate on the premise that in order to be an effective lawyer, you need to understand what your client’s opportunity or problem is. Clients don’t have legal problems or legal issues. They have people problems or business problems or business opportunities. Lawyers are trained to look at everything through the lens of the law. We believe that lawyers are people dealing with other people and that you have to focus on what does it take to be effective as a person developing trust and delivering a service. There are two things that people who are delivering legal services need: the first one is to understand themselves as a whole person, which requires knowledge of all those soft skills. What’s my personality style? What’s my social style? You also need to understand what does it take to be credible, what does a client value? They value business things, but they also want to look good. And understanding what makes your client look good may have nothing to do with lawyer skills that they teach you in law school. So if I’ve got a client whose compensation is based on closing a deal by the end of the month, that’s more important to that client than whether I spot every single legal risk issue and paper it to death. Our professional development training master plan is to continue to build out the curriculum to help close those gaps as people recognize they need to be closed. The ones we started with in our course are the ones we had heard about the most frequently through our face-toface work, and we’re anticipating that we’ll be building out other courses.
You’ve mentioned soft skills. Why do they matter for legal professionals?
Hoffmann: Soft skills make you the most successful, in my opinion, as a lawyer. If you can’t manage your time or organize your day or organize your client files, you are never going to be successful as a lawyer. If you can’t go out and get clients or have no ability to network, or you don’t know what to do to start building relationships with individuals that could either be referral sources for you or prospective clients, then you’re not going to be able to have a successful practice.
What are the most popular subjects on the platform so far?
Leventon: Time management is a really big one. I also have a course on how to have more productive meetings. If you don’t know what kind of meeting you’re in, it’s going to wander all over the place. There’s a fair amount of demand for that one.
Hoffmann: We’ve gotten a ton of traction on a long course called the Proactive Practice. Networking Tactics Everyone Can Use has become a popular course. It’s kind of intimidating — you get on the site and see there are 55 lessons, but all of them are 20 minutes or less and we offer bundles. We also offer blended learning. So after a webinar, there are resources you can also download, because what we know is that there are people who are tactile, there are people who are visual learners, everybody learns in a different way.
Why might soft skills development or training be difficult for adults in the legal field?
Leventon: Not only are there different learning styles, there’s a big difference between adult learners where it’s discretionary and children where it’s mandatory. For effective adult learning there has to be a need and a motivation. What we’ve tried to do is to make sure our materials zero in on what’s in it for them. We also want to inspire and engage. One of the problems is that, to keep your license in a lot of states, you have to take mandatory CLE and check the box. That mindset has meant that there’s a bunch of faculty who are also just checking the box and reading their outlines and delivering material in the driest possible way. We’re working on getting CLE credit for our courses by the fall. Our system also measures engagement. It has a back end that enables us to see how much people have completed and, if we want, create assignments or engage in forums or other formats.
How can programs like yours prepare attorneys for the changing legal market?
Leventon: Soft skills aren’t taught in law school. But understanding the business of law is increasingly important to lawyers. Just as they have to go find clients, they also have to make sure that for every hour that they put in, they collect as much on the dollar. I can bill 2,000 hours a year, but my clients will only pay for 1,000 hours a year. Some of these soft skills are pretty hard. I have a whole section on how law firms make money and another course on how companies budget for legal work. So for lawyers to understand what clients are willing to pay for based on their billing guidelines, based on what the staffing structure is, that comes out of my course on project management.
Hoffmann: For 16 months, people have not really gotten out and developed business in a way that’s been as effective as it was in the past. Because we were all used to getting out and developing business in a face-to-face way. But you can network without going out and leaving your office.
What advice would you give an attorney or legal professional who is looking to shore up their skill set or invigorate their career, outside of the program?
Hoffmann: I always tell my coaching clients if you’re not learning you’re losing, and what I mean by that is you’ve got to be continuous learners, whether it’s about your clients, the industries you work in, your competition — you’ve got to be learning new ways to do business, you’ve got to be learning about how to conduct yourself. Many lawyers get complacent. We’re all task-oriented because we have our to-do list, and very rarely on our to-do list are things to do to improve ourselves.
Leventon: We both believe in curiosity and continuous learning. Learning for learning’s sake is fine, but it comes back to setting goals and going out and getting it. But you also have to go out and fail a little too. One of the biggest problems lawyers have is because of the way they’re trained, everything is zero sum. Like, you only get one chance in front of that judge. When it comes to learning and honing your skills, you’ve got to give yourself the right to be good enough. Because everything is a step forward as you’re moving toward your goals.
–Editing by Marygrace Murphy.
Original publication: https://www.law360.com/pulse/articles/1387530
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Anna Sanders graduated from New York University with honors in journalism and a degree in environmental studies. Her work has been published in Law360, the New York Daily News, the New York Post, the Staten Island Advance, Metro New York, MailOnline, amNew York, The Huffington Post, Audubon Magazine, The New York Observer, New York Press (RIP), the Evanston RoundTable and Washington Square News, the NYU campus daily. She has also done social media for The Chief-Leader and interned at former Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer’s press office.
