Editor’s Note
Welcome to the Professional Development Issue
“Good, better, best. Never let it rest. Get your good better and
your better best.” –George Burns
Quick, who are the top five lawyers in your practice specialty in
your market? We all can name them. Dedication to professional
development is their hallmark. They exceed MCLE standards and
set the bar higher in their practice area. Top lawyers pride themselves on being lifelong learners and strive to become even better
litigators, negotiators, drafters of persuasive briefs and crafters of
precise contract provisions. Are we also on this road to excellence?
One signpost on this road is whether we are growing our
book of business despite competition from other attorneys for
the same work. Can we become the compelling choice to our
clients or managing partners and get the business? Do we know
how to maximize our performance? Or have we grown complacent about ever living the professional life we dreamed of as
ambitious, idealistic law students? It may be time to reinvent or
reimagine ourselves, and this Professional Development Issue
may help us do so.
I thank our issue team, led by Marcia Watson Wasserman
and Cynthia Thomas, who worked closely with fellow members
of the LP editorial board Jocelyn Frazer and Vedia Jones-Richardson, along with our visiting professional development
expert, Jeanne Picht, who is the director of strategic talent management at Lawyer Metrics LLC. I’m sure you will share my
enthusiasm for what’s in store for you with this issue.
In our lead article, “Accelerated Strengths Development,” Scott
Westfahl, director of professional development at Goodwin
Procter and author of You Get What You Measure: Lawyer
Development Frameworks and Effective Performance Evaluations,
teams up with Carrie Fletcher, director of content–profes-
sional development at the Fullbridge Program, to share a vision
of a new model for attorney training and convince us that the
next frontier should be strengths-based training for deliver-
ing higher returns on training-related investments. Grover
Cleveland, a Seattle attorney and author of Swimming Lessons for
Baby Sharks: The Essential Guide to Thriving as a New Lawyer,
demystifies developing new law grads in “Helping New Grads
a certified professional coach, gives us “Can We Talk?” and
Margaret Suender, director of professional development and
recruitment in the Philadelphia office of Pepper Hamilton,
shows ways for “Alternatives to the Partnership Track.” In
“Millennials: What Other Generations Say About You,” Lauren
Stiller Rikleen, author of Ending the Gauntlet: Removing Barriers
to Women’s Success in the Law, shares important career advice
about what Millennials can do about others’ misperceptions
of them in the workforce. And if there are problems with your
lineup, read about a solution in “Solving the Multimillion-Dollar
C Player Problem” by Caren Ulrich Stacy, a principal and presi-
dent of Lawyer Metrics and co-author of Loyalty by Design, and
Jeanne Picht. And any lovers of well-crafted writing or the New
York Times bestseller Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea will enjoy
a quick lesson from its author, Gary Kinder, in his article, “The
Secret to Writing Persuasively.”
And your favorite columns are just a page or two away. Issue
after issue, we count on our columnists to inform us about the
best practices for handling client matters, as in Laura Calloway’s
Simple Steps column, “Repack Your Parachute,” which takes
you through a safety check to ensure that the workflow systems
in your law office have been reviewed and are ready to be relied
upon, and in Marian Rice’s Ethics column, “Engagement Letters:
Beginning a Beautiful Relationship.”
Lastly, I want to welcome Jim Calloway to our stalwart crew
of columnists as our new contributor of Practice Management
Advice. Welcome, Jim, and thanks for sharing great insight for
“Future-Proofing Your Law Firm.”
Speaking for everyone who contributed to this Professional
Development Issue, may you enjoy these articles and pass them
along to that new lawyer who just might become one of the top
five in the field in the near future.
Collegially yours,
Sheila M. Blackford, Editor-in-Chief
BY SHEILA M. BLACKFORD
sheilab@osbplf.org
Sheila M. Blackford is an attorney and practice management advisor for the
Oregon State Bar Professional Liability Fund. She is also a member of the adjunct
faculty at University of Oregon School of Law.
