Perspectives on Innovative Leadership

 
In the bar association business, and from the seat I occupy, this year has had one particularly inspiring and distinguishing feature: The 2005 president of the American Bar Association (ABA) and the 2005 chairman of the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) are both people of color.

Robert J. Grey, Jr. of the ABA and partner of the Richmond, Va. office of Hunton & Williams, and Jim Jenkins of ACC and senior vice president and general counsel of Deere & Company, are both men of action and leadership in their respective organizations, and men who have had a significant impact on their work environments, the lives of so many of our peers, and the profession. Their legacy of action is still growing with their announcement at the ABA's annual meeting in August of a new joint initiative between our organizations that will focus on increasing the number of men and women of color who will be the primary relationship partners in law firms representing significant corporate clients.

Much focus is rightly placed on hiring more lawyers of color in law firms at the entry level, where they represent much of the future leadership of those firms and our profession. And many important advances have been made in increasing law firms' focus on more senior-level, minority, lateral placements to help drive changes in leadership more quickly. But change and advancement in both of these arenas is still deplorably slow. Indeed, not much has changed in terms of minority retention and promotion in firms at the very time that is most crucial to the determination of a lawyer's future career success: when senior associates are either about to become new partners, or when new partners are trying to find their footing and prove their future value to the firm as contributors and rainmakers. While many firms have been making stronger and more concerted efforts in focusing on the years surrounding early partnership, the empirical evidence suggests that a larger stream of minority talent chooses to leave at this crucial juncture rather than stay.

Viewing this issue as a critical one, Jenkins and Grey, inspired by the work of a number of their peers, collaborated and devised a project to address it. They envisioned a project that would allow law departments that are interested in cultivating senior associates/junior partners of color to have more responsibility to partner with law firms that want to improve their retention rates and increase career and business development opportunities for minority lawyers. The result is an initiative tentatively titled, "Outside In: A Corporate Legal Relationship-Building Project."

Here's the concept: Are you familiar with the term "secondment?" It's a management practice whereby an employee from one entity is "seconded" or loaned to another organization with whom the first entity is working. Usually the motivation is to fill a temporary staffing need, or alternatively, to gain critical experience about that second organization that will benefit both parties when the seconded employee returns to the original job. The Jenkins-Grey initiative is conceived to help law departments and law firms place a senior associate or junior partner of color in the client law department for a significant period of time—for example, three to six months—or even, when it would benefit the partners, to second a new law department manager of color to a firm to gain experience about the firm's method of practice. Upon return to her original employer, the seconded lawyer is better able to act as a relationship manager for the client, thus benefiting the company and the firm that wishes to see more minority talent advance within the ranks of their respective organizations.

But every great idea has a few challenges to overcome before execution. Here are some of the issues we're grappling with on the way to making the initiative a reality.

1. What happens to the law firm's current relationship partners? Does the seconded lawyer replace them? Or does the seconded lawyer join them and complement their work? Can relationship partners who are nearing retirement be identified? Can we find clients who are willing to expand their work if the firm makes this commitment, so that the "pie" gets bigger and no one has to take a smaller "slice?"

2. How will firms and departments deal with the sensitive issues that arise when law departments ask for input in law firm attribution systems? Most departments interested in this project will want to make sure that the seconded lawyer has more than just a relationship position, but will receive a portion of the client's attribution. It's also important to receive credit for the work and the monetary recognition that accompanies such credit.

3. What happens if the seconded relationship doesn't work? How do the parties ensure that there are no casualties amongst those whom this program was intended to support?

4. How can we avoid the possibility of participation becoming a detriment to the career of the seconded lawyer? How will we balance existing clients and workloads? It is hard to imagine how a lawyer could afford to disappear for six months and then return to her previous professional life without some sense that other opportunities may have permanently passed her by. How can we avoid making seconded lawyers feel they are "pigeonholed" into a relationship that may require them to forgo other career possibilities at the firm? Will others at the firm react with hostility to this opportunity, and will potential jealousy damage the lawyer's ability to enjoy the secondment, as well as his general practice, upon his return?

5. How will the financial and employment logistics be handled? Who pays for the seconded lawyer's time, and how will the partners ensure that benefits continue? One possibility is for the law firm and department engaged in the project to each send one employee to the other and solve this problem by calling it a swap. This arrangement will allow the seconded lawyers to continue to perform their regular work, but simply from different quarters while getting to know the other entity better. However, a swap suggests that immersion can be accomplished by osmosis, rather than by jumping into the pool and getting all wet. Yet, if we try to find a level of both continuing and new work for the seconded lawyer, will the result be a 200-hour week? Should the parties establish guidelines regarding the kinds of projects that the seconded lawyer is asked to work on?

These are all significant challenges, and we've been working hard to develop a proposal and pilot projects to ensure that we have the necessary expertise, training, project expectations, and resources for identifying participants. While the challenges to this project's successes are great, they are nothing that most readers of Diversity & the Bar® do not already encounter on a daily basis—making it all the more important that we do not use these complications as an excuse for inaction. Furthermore, the word "failure" is not in Robert's or Jim's personal or workplace vocabularies. However, the phrase "find out what will work for people and make the idea better" is entirely consistent with their philosophies and their wishes for this project.

The ACC and ABA are interested in identifying volunteers to help this project come to fruition. In addition to volunteering your law firm or legal department as a potential participant, we also invite you to help us make the project succeed at the outset in another important way: While we have consulted with a number of great leaders in firms and departments for their thoughts and ideas already, and tried to incorporate them into the resources we are developing to support such projects, we welcome your advice and ideas to help ensure this initiative's success. Toward that end, feel free to contact me at hackett@acca.com, or the project's staff leader at the ABA, Cie Armstead, at armsteadc@staff.abanet.org.

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From the November/December 2005 issue of Diversity & The Bar^®