Episode 22: Sheila Murphy
Former in-house counsel; owner and career and business development coach at Focus Forward Consulting
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Show Notes
Some of us are satisfied with where our professional careers are. But for those who wish to push their boundaries, career development is an option to get where they want to go. MC Sungaila discusses the ins and outs of improving and developing your skills with President, CEO and General Counsel of Focus Forward Consulting, Sheila Murphy. As a certified coach and career and business consultant, Sheila Murphy helps lawyers, leaders and legal organizations build fulfilling and thriving careers, practices and businesses by helping them develop skills that bring their game to the next level. Tune in and learn more as Sheila Murphy lays out the things you need to develop if you want to chase success.
This episode is powered by Clearbrief, Trellis, BriefCatch, and CSBA.
Sheila Murphy
For over 20 years, as a former senior legal officer for a Fortune 50 company, Sheila Murphy successfully developed, coached, and transformed talent in corporate America, and law firms. I understand what clients are seeking in the lawyers, leaders, and law firms they hire, retain and promote.
Now, as a certified coach and career and business consultant, she partners with lawyers, leaders and legal organizations to build fulfilling and thriving careers, practices and businesses.
Transcript
I'm very happy to welcome Sheila Murphy to the show. Full disclosure, we serve on the Board of the National Association of Women Lawyers together and have had a good time working in that capacity. Sheila has very broad experience in the law. She'll have a lot of good advice for folks. Welcome, Sheila.
I'm thrilled to be here. It's going to be a lot of fun.
I want to go through all your various experiences, but I want to start first with the fundamental question which is, how did you decide that you wanted to have a career in law? What interested you in that, to begin with?
I'm like every person who read To Kill a Mockingbird, but mine went back even further. I watched Adam's Rib with Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. It’s an old movie. For those who haven't seen it, it's a team of married lawyers. She is a defense counsel and he's a DA. This was many years ago. The whole trial becomes the role of men and women, and so it’s the battle of the sexes in terms of how she presents the case. It was such a remarkable movie that stuck with me on how I would love to do that. The funny thing is I was a true introvert. My career plan in the law was never to be in the trial world.
Katharine Hepburn is a force of nature, and the two of them together are amazing. I can completely understand that movie. She's admirable in so many ways. It looked like fun.
It looks fun and exciting. You get to be smart. As a woman, you got to have a career and have this husband who adored you when he wasn't ready to kill you.
You said you were interested but you didn't necessarily think litigation because you're a little introverted. What did you end up doing in terms of practice?
I wasn't a little introverted. I was off-the-charts introverted. I was one of those people who didn't want to cancel reservations at a restaurant for fear of hurting people's feelings. I always made someone else do it. Speaking in public was the thing I dreaded the most. My plan was to be a corporate attorney, and not just any corporate one, but one that did a lot of deal documents in a basement and never had to talk to anyone.
On my first day at the law firm, the managing partner comes up to me and says, "We have too many corporate lawyers. We need a litigator. The litigators thought you would be a great choice." My heart dropped. I was like, "How am I going to do this? My mother just finished paying for law school. She'll kill me if I don't." I went in and became a litigator because of that.
When you’re at a company, you're really trying to grow the business, you feel like you’re part of it and growing the business takes a lot of different parts to it.
That says a lot about you in terms of taking on challenges and going for it. That's a great attitude to have in general.
I felt like I didn't have a choice but I kept going with it. It was only when I got into in-house that I started to develop more of a persona where I felt comfortable getting out there and doing the things you have to do to have a great legal career.
You have a lot of great advice in that regard and some lessons learned from that particular role. You started doing litigation when you hadn't planned to do it. Did you stick with it in the law firm?
I stuck with it. First, I had to do at least six months, then it was a year. I liked litigation, minus the fact you had to speak in public. I like putting together the puzzle and the strategy. I was good at it. I just had a dread of public speaking at that point.
Before I focused on Appellate Law, I did trials at work. I had a trial as a young associate, I remember thinking that I was probably cut off a different cloth when the trial lawyers and the litigators enjoyed cross-examination. I felt bad about it because I felt empathy for the people who are going through it. I didn't want to do that to someone. I’m like, "That's terrible." Even if they are a cooperating witness and a felon, I couldn't do it to someone. I thought, "Maybe I should look for something else because I can't quite do this."
That's the great thing about the legal profession. There are so many different things you can do. I'm still learning about all these people who do these interesting things within the practice of law that I had never heard of.
There's such a wide array. There were a lot of things in law school that seemed like a very narrow path. There are certain things you can do, working at a law firm and doing litigation or some kind of transactional work. That's largely the path that you see. There are so many other options and different things to do with legal training. You can provide strong analytical skills to board positions or help make business decisions. There are a lot of different things that you can do with a Law degree. It makes it an interesting career because you can have many careers but still be associated with the law to some degree.
You had mentioned before that there weren't many women in litigation at your firm when you started and carried on. There still wasn't a lot. I want to put that timing in focus because we think that maybe those things would have happened in the late ‘70s, early ‘80s or something like that, but that isn't always true.
I graduated from law school in '88. I was in the second class of women to be in litigation at my firm. They had smaller litigation. It was mostly known for its corporate department, and the litigation department at that point had mostly grown out of its admiralty. Even now, there are not a lot of women in Admiralty Law. A lot of people would say the law is a little bit of an old boys' network. Even within that subset, admiralty is a little bit dated. It was interesting going to some of the admiralty conferences being a young woman because it was a lot of older White gentlemen. It was a very interesting dynamic.
How did you decide to go in-house?
People think of all the changes that have happened to women over the years. I had my first child and I wanted to come back part-time. Part-time at the law firm at that point was 8:00 to 6:00, five days a week. When I tell people that was my part-time deal, plus whenever I needed to be there, what I realized was it was limiting like I was there, but I was getting a little pigeonholed. I wasn't going to get on the growth cases. I decided I wanted to go in-house. I started to explore that. Luckily, in my network was someone who was a recruiter who knew my work well. She found me a great position at the company that I ended up going to and stayed at for many years. It was a good fit.
That's a good fit because, as with law firms, in-house people will move around quite a bit. That's amazing that you stayed with one company.
I loved the company and it afforded me so much. I will be honest a little bit. I had a defined benefit plan so in the end, you're staying there.
To grow in that position, benefit plan aside, you have to be growing and learning different things to have stayed with the company for that long.
That's why I love the company. It’s because they had such much diverse work, but I also love being in-house for that reason. Rather than being put on five cases sometimes, which happens at our law firm, I was put on a lot more cases and exposed to a lot more strategic thinking. I know you're an excellent brief writer being an appellate lawyer. I was free from all that writing. You could only work on a few matters to work on many matters and focus on strategy, which was my first love, as well as getting closer to a business and being able to advise to prevent things from happening in the future. It was a great education when I went in-house.
You do have one client at that point in terms of multiple clients, and those are a lot of internal stakeholders, so there's that. You are aligned and worked alongside the business in a way that a lawyer in a law firm doesn't with their clients.
It's a different way of operating. The other thing that I enjoyed about being in-house was trying to grow something. I know people try to grow law firms, but when you're at a company, you're trying to grow the business. You feel like you are part of it. Growing the business takes a lot of different parts to it. How do you do process improvements? How do you grow talent? You're hitting on other functions. That was appealing to me.
I've heard that from general counsels. They are a hub sometimes for non-legal things because they have a sense that a lot of things are going on in different departments within the company, and can work on a larger strategy that may involve some legal questions. Also, business questions and to be a sounding board for that, which is certainly something that you wouldn't work on as a law firm lawyer.
We really need to focus on being solution-oriented. Not just spotting the issues, but spotting away and helping people navigate a way through them.
I love talent development. That was something else I found out when I was in-house. Depending on the year, 20% to 40% of my bonus could depend on the talent I developed. It’s not on what I came in with my legal skills and things, but how I develop people. It's a different way of bringing value to an organization.
That's definitely a challenge in the law firm environment. It's important for the next generation to develop the department and the skills of people in your department. It's not viewed the same way as it would be in other businesses in the law firm environment because they're not looking at it the same way in terms of a long-term investment in the company overall.
Law firms, to a certain point, are trying to generate revenue from bringing in clients. They reward rainmakers and people who are bringing in business. The companies are trying to reward different behaviors, whether it's talent development or process improvement. Your legal skills get you so far in a company, and then it turns over to your leadership skills to get to those higher levels. That can be a hard adjustment for certain lawyers to make. We so value our legal education and training, “What do you mean that’s not what's needed to get to the next level?” It can be a pivot that is not easy for everyone.
It's certainly not something that you're prepared for if you come from a law firm to an in-house environment because it isn't measured in the same way. Ultimately, it's measured in terms of if you have a strong team that's able to attract a lot of clients because of its strength. What it takes to get to a strong team is not viewed in the same way or even the thought in terms of leadership development. It would be nice if there were a little bit more of that within the law firms, but they don't tend to see it that way. It's interesting to come to a corporate environment where that is a focus.
As I explained to some people, I've been to more feedback training, not because I'm bad at it. I spent three days at five different times going through how to do feedback. We were trained on it. I did three days on how to say no without saying no and multiple other things. There was this investment in how to build different skills. I don't know if law firms always have that ability to do it. Similar to in-house, when you're at a law firm, and you know this better than most people, it's not just your lawyering skills that are going to get you to where you need to be. You have to have extremely strong people skills and build a great profile out there. For both, it's developing skills outside of those that we were traditionally taught at law schools and bringing that into your practice as part of your business.
You have to start with the building blocks and be good at what you do. That's essential when you talk about all of the other aspects, aside from the substantive knowledge and expertise. Those are important too because you're still building relationships with clients and with many people internally and externally in the firm. What do you think are maybe some of the best takeaways in terms of leadership and development that you learned from being in-house? I'm thinking, for example, how do you say no without saying no?
I always say the most important skill you can have is to be a good listener because a good listener will get you so far in this world. It's listening skills and listening to what the person wants, so you can figure out how you can get them there. I remember having a peer who did not share in this and just saying no. If someone pushes against you, other people push back, and it ends up in this stalemate. We ended up having 4 or 5 meetings for something that we could have resolved if we would just take a different path.
He got mad because I started taking a different path. It’s like trying to understand why they wanted to do what they did. The business doesn't want to do something illegal or questionable. They just want to run the business. It was understanding those goals and asking deeper open-ended questions. Sometimes they realize, “This could be a problem if we went down that, so let's think about it.”
It wasn't saying, “No.” It was coming to this conclusion together that, “Let's look for a different path,” and then we have ownership. People accept it a lot more. To me, it all starts with listening and then being curious and asking prerogative questions. It’s asking them, "Have you thought about how you would handle this or how this might play out with a regulator if they came in because they're looking at this.” They're like, “No.” If it's not accusatory, people accept it so much more. I do believe most people are trying to do the right thing.
It can be hard for them to hear you if you're pushing a certain thing. They're not going to hear anything else that you're saying. To walk someone through it so that they're thinking about it themselves going, “That's a risk I'm willing to take or I'm not willing to take. That's an issue but we still want to get this thing done for the business. How do we do that?” I asked about how to say no because that's so often what I hear from my friends in-house which is, “We don't want to be the department of no. Do not go to legal because they'll tell you not to do it.” You don't get to vet the legal questions and make business decisions, and it snowballs.
It happens later when you don't have the ability to pivot. The no becomes more impactful. If I'm at the table earlier and start hearing it, I can start thinking creatively about what we could do and what we can't. The no isn't as important if you're doing it at the last second if you’re brought in. It becomes this huge thing. They have invested time and money. It's also trying to make sure that you can be at that table at the right time to ask those questions. You don't want to be the land of no because they tune you out. It takes more time and it's not being creative. Lawyers do have this problem with risk. We were rewarded in law school for issue spotting.
That's what we do. We need to focus on being solution-oriented. It’s not just spotting the issues but spotting and helping them navigate a way through them. I've seen a lot of mid-year in-house people get stuck because early on, even they're rewarded in-house for spotting issues. There becomes a point where to get to the senior business tables, you can't just be an issue spotter. You have to be a solutions partner and try to figure it out. It's switching that mindset and understanding that there is no such thing as zero risk.
That's cultural. We're taught to find every potential risk and identify it because if we don't, that's a problem. People expect us to do that, but then it may get a little too nitpicky at times.
In-house, they don't like all the caveats that we'd like to put on memos so that we're covered. This isn't hitting on everything that could go wrong but these are the big banks. They don't have the time and they want recommendations from you because they trust your judgment. At least you want to be in a place where they trust your judgment.
Many of us became lawyers so that we could solve problems. How do you help solve problems? That's finding a way through. You are now involved in providing guidance and coaching to women lawyers both in law firms and outside, and also in companies. That's relatively new for you in the last few years.
I had one full year before the pandemic. I love talent development. When I was in-house, I got a strong reputation for developing talents. My teams, whether they stayed at the company or they went someplace else, they were growing up the corporate ladder. Some of them went into other fields that they loved. I enjoyed it. I got a lot of pleasure out of it. When I started to think about what my next chapter was going to look like after the company, I said, "I want to do something where I can leverage this talent that I've developed."
I launched a coaching consultant, which is mostly women lawyers, though I do have some men and non-lawyers. I have a woman in Paris who was launching an M&A practice and it's non-legal. One of my clients had recommended me to her. It is a ton of fun helping people solve their problems, raise their profile and get to that next level. It has been an interesting journey for a few years.
That's one where you learn that you have a strong skillset and enjoy doing that talent development being in-house. If you hadn't had that experience, you wouldn't know, "I liked this. I'm good at it. I've had a lot of training and done a lot of it. I can help people."
Getting people outside their comfort zone, doing things that they didn't believe that they could do really makes you feel warm all over.
I won't say that I jumped into this right away. I knew I wanted to do something else back in my 30s or so and do a different career. I did a lot of soul searching and the exercises. I talked to a ton of people about different options. It's the thing of having that great strategic mind that comes from being a lawyer and how we're trained. That does provide a lot of options at different points in your career.
Sometimes we are so programmed as lawyers that this is the path, “I'm going to go in this path, big law firm, become a partner,” or “I’m going to go in-house and try to become general counsel.” There are a lot of other different paths. You can do a mixture of those things. We become a little too stuck in how we view our careers. There are a lot more options out there than you think.
Just because you're in one setting or one part, it doesn't mean that you can't do something else at some other point. You've chosen that and that's the path. It's not true.
The possibilities are endless. Especially in this economy that we find ourselves in, there are going to be even more possibilities for people and jobs that did not exist. I know some women are doing fractional GC jobs where they're working for a couple of different companies. One of my friends quit the law and is a playwright right now. It's an interesting world. You can take a leap and do something totally different or build something very close.
What's the biggest difference, if there is one, between the advice or consulting that you provide to women who are in practice as opposed to women who are in-house at a company?
For in-house, a lot of the focus is on leadership development, getting those experiences, creating a leadership profile, and sometimes tweaking some behaviors and how you're perceived. For example, being a naysayer. It’s not just women but men too. Lawyers tend to be a little bit cynical. Every time a corporate initiative comes up, "We've done this before. I can't believe we had this." It's trying to be someone who might be a little bit more enthusiastic. It may be how you're viewed by the team or a strategic partner making those decisions. Sometimes it's tweaking the behaviors, but it's probably a deeper focus on the leadership in terms of getting to that next level, then it comes into how you network, where you network and the profile.
That's the same on the business side. You need to have a tremendous network and great profile, but on that side, it's more about getting to the ask, how to convert contacts into clients and client service. The networking and the profiling are similar. There may be some differences in how you do it, but the difference is leadership versus how to build that business and convert people into clients.
It's still a lot of people skills and things like that, but you’re ultimately ending up wanting to have different things. You want to turn it into an ask and a sale or persuading or getting your initiatives internally in a company moving forward as well.
It's also being perceived as someone who has initiatives and strategic ideas. It’s not all reactive. You're being proactive in terms of how you approach the issues. One general counsel I know asked every year his middle managers for the initiatives that he should come up with. Some people didn't submit them. This is a test to see if they're thinking about the law department as a business and how they could improve. For him, if you couldn't see those things, he didn't think you were next-level material.
It was more of a vision test like, “Do you have a broader vision for the department?” That would mean that you were thinking beyond your department.
That’s what they are looking for. It's that ownership mentality.
That's similar to what I'm thinking in terms of newer associates who are working in a law firm. You don't want someone just turning out the specific project that you asked without seeking to have an understanding of how does this fits in and trying to think beyond that. To me, that says, "I want you to own this. I don't want you to just own the little piece of the project that you might have because you're learning. I want you to own the entire project and maybe contributes to something bigger than just the task you were given." To me, that is another indicator of whether someone is ready for a more senior associate position or even has the right frame of mind for what you prefer when you have someone on your team.
You don't want someone who just wants to execute your edits. You're looking for someone who after seeing your edits was thinking about, “Maybe we should change one more thing. Have you thought about this?” You're looking for that next level of strategic thinking.
It says the same thing, which is ownership. It’s owning the whole thing, not just, "I did this one particular task. I'm going to turn it in. Whatever happens to that, I'm onto the next task." We're not widget makers. We're doing other things.
What we're selling is our thinking. Sometimes people don't realize that. It's a great profession because you can have such an impact. We're not looking at you to be task-oriented or a widget maker. I like that.
It’s like, "Where does this go? You want to think about something. Where is it fitting? If you're going to make a widget, where's it going? Maybe I'd need to think about some other things when I'm doing this." I'm very interested in talent development and training newer lawyers. It’s the future of the firm and the department. I enjoy it as well. I don't think I'm as experienced or as good as you are at it, but one day I hope to do that.
Even from economics, the more times that you have to retrain somebody, it doesn't make sense. A lot of it is showing an interest in the person as an individual, which I know sounds very simple. It's a big thing when you treat people differently based on their talents.
I see certain skills or possibilities in people. To give them the opportunities to grow in that way and discover for themselves that they can do things that you see in them that they didn't know they could do like, "Try this," and to see them blossom is great.
If you've done something and it's not working, then at some point you need to experiment with doing something different.
Getting people outside their comfort zone, doing things that they didn't believe they could do makes you feel warm all over.
It's rewarding to see somebody be the most that they can be and even more than they thought they could. It's great that you get to do that full-time now with different people at different stages of their careers.
It keeps you connected to a lot of what's going on in the legal profession. It's interesting to hear the different perspectives of people on what's available.
That’s a good point because you're not in any one organization. You're working with people in a range of organizations and across the profession. You're probably able to see more big-picture trends or common things that organizations and individuals are going through. That's a cool bird's eye catbird seat to have.
It is very interesting. I have people who are in Fortune 50 tech companies and people in startups. I am now able to talk to people if they're thinking of doing a switch about what it's like to be at a startup company or a PE company, how life may differ from law firm to law firm, and some of the key things to understand about compensation and cross-selling opportunities. Even with some of my assumptions, I have found, were incorrect when you start to talk to people.
Many firms have unique structures that should impact how people sell. Understanding that and what your strengths are. You don't have to go into a firm assuming you're going to be able to cross-sell and that's going to be beneficial to you, or not assuming that it's going to be a nice discussion about how to share your credit. One firm has this system which is like the Mel Gibson movie, Thunderdome. It's almost like a Thunderdome experience fighting over credit. It seems antiquated in this day and age. If you find yourself in one of those systems, how do you navigate it? Try to find out some of those answers may be before you decide to try a different organization.
It can be hard to find that out, even if people describe how that's done. Maybe that's how it's done on paper but in reality, this is the following that happens. You can't know that until you're in there.
I try to get people to talk to other people other than the ones that they have to get a sense of. Sometimes you don't know until you're there. Sometimes finding someone who has left an organization is a good way of maybe having a different view as to how it is to live and operate. This is whether it's a firm or a company. Everyone has their own culture. Not everyone is meant to be in every culture. I've seen people miserable in certain cultures, and they go to a different one and thrive. Sometimes it's being brave enough to maybe try to take that next step and go someplace where you're a better fit. It's nothing against you. It's just that you and that culture don't work, but you could be something special someplace else.
That's a good point to think about because sometimes people think, "If I'm going to make a change, do I want to do the work that I'm doing somewhere else? Do I want to go into government work or in-house if I'm in a law firm, or a smaller firm if I'm in a big firm?" The culture and your fit in it are important. Maybe you don't like in-house at a particular company because that's not a good fit for you, but you might thrive at another company in a similar role. That's an important factor that sometimes people don't think about in the same way. I think some of the law firms will just assume that they are the same. It's different offices and things like that, but it's going to be the same.
There are real differences. As someone who operates in a lot of different companies and firms, I can tell you there are differences. It's not abandoning what you may love because it might not be a cultural fit. Sometimes there's that knee-jerk reaction, “I'm going to go in-house,” or “I'm going to do this,” and explore the possibilities. Remember, when you're doing an interview, you're interviewing that place as much as they're interviewing you.
Somehow, we all feel like, "It's got to be a great fit." Sometimes it's not a great fit for a reason. It's not a place that you're going to do well in because it doesn't align with your values or how you approach life. I have seen it happen time and time again where people go somewhere else, and then they start getting incredible opportunities. Sometimes it's finding almost your home, for lack of a better word.
Before you were in the consulting business, did you think that there was so much variety? You couldn't have known all of the different array of differences that there would be.
I know more now than I did a few years ago, but I had a sense. I used to do a lot of mentoring both internally and externally. I did have those conversations with people like, "You're too miserable. We work too hard. You're in the organization. It's time for you to find a place where you can be happier. People doubted that. They would make that change and they would be happier. It is still work for a reason. They call it work but you don't have to be miserable. There are a lot of different organizations out there.
There's a place where you are going to thrive. It's just trying to find it and not get a little discouraged in the process. I knew that people could be happier at other places because I had seen it happen. I'm lucky enough that I have a lot of former colleagues and mentees who have kept me grounded in what's going on. I know that you can find a place. Some of them were very happy where they were and continued to grow. Some of them left and have found so many other wonderful things.
What would be your top 1 or 2 tips for women who are looking to build their book of business in a private law firm?
My first tip is to understand who your ideal client is because we take on so much. Understand who you're trying to sell and attract. Once you understand who that is on a deep level, it makes it easier to find them and spend the time doing focused selling. I'm a general litigator. I know corporate and I do everything. If you start giving presentations and writing on everything, it's a little ho-hum and boring, and you don't stand out. If you realize, looking at your book of business, that you have a lot of biotech or people who are manufacturing in the Northeast or whatever it is, you can start focusing on where you hang out and what you write about in those areas.
It's not saying that you're not going to say no to other litigation, but it gives you an idea of leaving some breadcrumbs for people to find you. Having this more focused approach helps you to not waste so much time. A lot of times, we're like, "This is a new shiny thing. I'm going to go to this conference and that conference, then we're going to switch this up.” It’s having a focused plan.
The other thing I would say, and this is counter-intuitive to people, is having a written down specific plan for what you're going to do in your business development. What are you actually going to do? “I'm going to go to these three conferences. I am going to meet with these people. I am going to propose to the firm these five webinars which I know my ideal clients will like because I've talked to my clients and asked them, ‘What are the topics you want to hear about?’”
Time is our most valuable commodity and you can't get more of it. You can outsource other things but you can't outsource time.
It's specific as to how you're going to do it, “I'm going to ask these clients for recommendations. For these people who are my good clients, this is how I'm keeping them on my side,” because clients leave. As we all know, either because some are retired, change of management or maybe for some reason, they feel neglected. I’ve had that conversation with someone who said to me, "Someone is poaching my clients." I was like, "They're not poaching. They're developing business." I talked to her and dug in and said, "When was the last time you went out and visited your clients?" This is pre-pandemic. "It's been a few years.” “How often do you talk to them?" That plan also includes keeping those people and keeping the generation behind because there are retirement and reorganizations. It’s thinking very strategically about how you're going to do it and revisiting it if something doesn't seem to be working.
That second part is important too. Sometimes people feel when they write things down in a concrete way that they're committed to doing those exact things. I've definitely had the experience where I've thought, “This is perfect. These are the issues that people want to hear about. This is going to be the most amazing thing. The clients are going to love this,” then they don't work out quite the way I thought it would. You have to readjust. Keep moving but adjust and listen to be attuned to that, so you don't keep marching forward with your perfect idea that turned out to be not so perfect.
I even recommend to people calendaring days to look at their plan and evaluate it. Whether it's once a quarter or every other month, just sitting down and saying, "Where are you against the plan? Is it working?" At the beginning of the year, if you've done it once, maybe you can rinse and repeat, but you have to play with it. Are you spending a lot of time in an organization and it's not giving you what you need? Maybe it's time to switch it up after you've tried it for a while. You don't go to an organization on day one and everyone is flocking to you with opportunities. If you've done something and it's not working, at some point, you need to maybe experiment with doing something different.
Sometimes too, you become involved with an organization and then you stay with that organization. You add a bunch of other organizations, and maybe it's time for some fresh blood in that first one that you joined. You can't do all of them. Everything in its time and sometimes that means not everything all at once.
At some point in your career, you were trying to up your profile by having the articles and the speaking. That organization was full of other law firm people who were thought leaders that might have helped you at that point. Later on, that might not be where you need to spend time. It may be adjusting it because time is our most valuable commodity. You can't get more of it. You can get a lot of other things. You can outsource things but you can’t outsource time.
We have full lives, hopefully, beyond the professional as well. You've got family time, friends, and whatever other interests you also have. You want to make sure there's time for that too.
If you don't have those, you're going to be unsuccessful in-house or outside because you need to rejuvenate and be an interesting person. When we spend so much time with people, we want them to be interesting. We want to enjoy that. If you don't focus on having your own personal life, you won't achieve that.
You want to make sure that you have room for all of that as well. Maybe not all at the same time sometimes, but you allow for all of that. I have a question in terms of skill development, both in terms of partners in law firms, how they can best expand their own skills into some of the soft leadership skills, and also in terms of helping to facilitate skill-building by those they supervise and work with. Those are two questions. How would a partner best focus on expanding their skills and then expanding their team skills?
It's funny that you asked that because I always tell people when they are coming with their business development plan to look for those skills that they should be building. Some of them are technical. Maybe you need to do more appellate arguments or trials or take more depositions. Sometimes the skills are the softer skills, how to sell, how to build real relationships or public speaking for some people.
You don't have to be the best public speaker, but you have to be able to speak publicly. I have told law firm friends when I've heard them speak, "I think you need this," and gave them names of coaches I had for presentations at one point. It’s understanding the skills that you need and how to get there. It could be a mentor, coach or working with a board of directors. I call it personal board of directors. It’s finding out the best way to expand those skills.
There are companies out there that will also come in and train you as an individual or train your team. When I was trained on influencing, my team was trained on how to influence people and how to have those conversations. I brought in trainers on a lot of skills for my team, feedback, delegation, how to speak to people to get them to move towards a vision. I did some lobbying for a not-for-profit organization. They asked me to do some training in cases where people were up against a legislator who was not onboard, and how to deal with someone who was not on your side.
I had a law firm friend with me and she was like, "How did you learn to do that?" I said, "I've been trained on how to take people who we may disagree with but we have common ground, even if we don't agree at the endpoint to get to that right spot." There are a lot of organizations that will help you train. Once you get good at something, you become the model for everyone below you.
You become that beacon that can make a huge difference, a thousand points of light, and tell people that it's valuable. One of the things I heard a lot when people came in-house was that they didn't have time to go to the in-house training that we offered. I said, "You don't understand this isn't like a law firm. You're being viewed by the fact whether or not you show up for these training." We're at a law firm now and then people say, "No, you got to work on the legal stuff. This is what we're getting paid for."
In-house, there was this, “You better be there.” I went to one training and if you were not there because you had to take a phone call, the CEO will call you up and say, "You were told to commit to this training." People only had to hear that story once. I can assure you no one wanted to get that phone call, but it's setting the expectation also that training and development are important. Not just saying it but creating a culture is probably better than landing a phone call, but setting it up so that people can understand that this is important. That's how you change teams and cultures.
That's true in getting that message across. I was thinking about the skill question. I think of it in terms of my team. I have a grid of things at each level that each associate, if they're doing appellate work, should have these skills this year, and the next year, they should have these skills so that they have a clear expectation of where they should be at. If they don't have it, ask for opportunities or look for opportunities. It reminds me also, "This is the year when they need to get an oral argument. I need to figure out a way to make that happen and to also make sure that they're prepared for that opportunity."
That's one way I try to handle that internally for training. For my own, even if it's super hard, I always go back and look at things. I'll re-review briefs or check everything. Every oral argument I have, I watched the tape or video recording or audio and critique the heck out of myself even now. I figured out like, “That wasn't good,” and different and better ways to answer. Even if it's incredibly painful to do this, I still do it. That process was one that led me to outside-of-the-box thinking that I needed some consulting on, which was a voice expert and how you modulate your voice and speak. I thought, "I'm good on the substance but I need to focus on something." I didn't know what it was until somebody said, "That's a voice person." That's what I ended up doing. It’s thinking outside the box for different things of how you can improve.
My presentation coach did a lot on voice modulation, up and down, and hand gestures. This was someone who my company paid for years ago. I had a great sponsor. I said, "I wanted to get to the next level on this." She was like, "We'll figure it out." The same thing that you talked about with your technical skills is some of the stuff I do with people on leadership skills. What are the conversations that went badly? What do you learn from it and how do you rewrite it so that you can come in and approach it differently?
It was great advice and brave to go back and listen, and go through all those things. On the other side of the house, whether it's business development or leadership, do that same exercise. Not just the ones that didn't go well but sometimes the successes. What went well with something so that you can emulate it again? A lot of times, people will ask for feedback if they don't get the business. What they really say is, "Why did you select us?"
Why didn't you get selected? You don't usually ask that. You're just like, "Great."
You can learn from everything, both success and failure.
Asking when you get something, especially if this is the type of client you want to represent, can help you hone in on what you did right, double down on that and think about it. You can learn from everything, both success and failure. Sometimes we think of learning from the things that didn't go as well as we had liked rather than what we're good at and our strengths.
Sometimes what you think is pivotal to a client's decision might have been, but it wasn't the only thing. You overlook that.
I've talked to some clients and said, "You put this stuff in the appendix. This is not in the pitch material." We've gone through that whole process where it's helpful and informative, but it might go in the appendix. They did start talking to people, "Is this right? Is this wrong?" People do want to help people. People want people to be successful. Most in-house counsel will give you that feedback and help you get to that next level.
That's a good reminder. Most people think, "When things don't go well, what lesson am I going to learn?" There are other lessons from the successes that are equally helpful. Also, to ask for some help or to have people look at things, even if it's the in-house counsel in a particular situation like, “What do you want to see? What's the most important for you to see?” Sometimes in the written submissions, law firms put why is it important to the law firm, but not necessarily what's important to the company. It's something relationship-oriented to the person who's reading this as opposed to, "You wouldn't be in the room if we didn't know your firm was good and you knew basically what you were doing in this area. Now, we're refining the inquiry."
Also, not to make assumptions. Whenever I had clients or managers change, I always talk to them about what they wanted, then I checked in a couple of months later because sometimes people say, "I'm not a micromanager." Evidently, they may not think they are but they might be. Getting that gauge where I can be helpful and also asking an inside counsel what is important is meaningful. I moderated a panel in general counsel. One of the women was saying that what struck her was one of the outside counsel came in knowing their values.
They had spent a lot of time redoing the company values. She said that made such an impression because it also changed a little bit about how they approach the pitch because of the values. It's not just what you put in the pitch but how the team interacts and what you might say that she found impactful in her decision as to who to hire.
That's an example of framing it in a way that the client is receptive to. The client is like, "We recognize your values. Here's how we're exemplifying them or fulfilling them in our work with you." It says client-centric because you're focused on their values and what they're doing.
The law firms think we just put it on websites, but clients care about these things often.
There are a lot of meetings, training and things like that. A lot of them have to do with values and culture within the company. That's important to pay attention to yourself when you're going to work with them. I learned quite a bit from you and I hope that others have in terms of how they approach their own skill-building, business development, and the cultures in their companies and firms. I wanted to close with some more lightning round, rapid-fire questions. The first question is, what talent would you most like to have that you don't have?
I'd love to be able to sing.
What is the trait you most deplore in yourself and also in others?
Self-deprecation. It's a deflection and it doesn't serve you well.
Who are your favorite writers?
I read everything. I read a lot of Scandinavian murder authors. I do have this thing for murders, both true life and murder mysteries. I've read a lot about serial killers, which I don't know what that says about me.
You're interested in people of all types, learning about human nature. For what in your life do you feel most grateful?
My family and friends. I'm truly blessed that way.
Who is your hero in real life?
I would probably go with Mother Teresa. I admire someone who could be so selfless and still make such a tremendous impact on the world.
Given the choice of anyone in the world, who would you invite as a dinner guest?
No matter what you're going through at that moment, there's always something better if you focus on what you want and forget some of the other nonsense.
I know this is going to age me, Joan Rivers. I might say in that regard, Jean Smart, because she's playing a similar character. I am fascinated by people who reinvent themselves and get through tough challenges and periods of their lives, and come through it even stronger, maybe too strong. I find that trait of perseverance and being able to find optimism when things are dark. I find that appealing and interesting.
People who are younger may not realize that Joan Rivers had been given this opportunity to do her own late-night talk show. Johnny Carson, who was her mentor in NBC, would not speak to her for 30 years after that. The show did not do well. Her husband who was her producer ended up killing himself. When you're a comedian, people don't necessarily want to see you after something like that. There is with this whole thing of having to start over, reinvent and through something horrible, find a path forward that I found appealing. Yet at the same time, she would be funny, amusing, and have some great stories.
I like that explanation of what you're intrigued by as well. That's interesting. There's a lot of depth to that. The last question is, what is your motto if you have one?
We used to have a family motto, “Suck it up,” but it's so inappropriate. It's why I came up with the name of the company, which is called Focus Forward. That's probably my motto. It's something I've used as a mantra for myself when I doubt myself or I'm thinking what do I want to do next or is this the right decision? I try to focus on going forward. That might be my motto. No matter what you're going through at that moment, there's always something better if you focus on what you want and your strengths, and forget some of the other nonsense.
That's a perfect ending on a perfect bow in our discussion. Thank you so much. I appreciate it, Sheila. Thank you for joining the show.
Thank you for having me. It was a lot of fun. I learned a little bit about you also, which I'm fascinated by.