By Adam Carvalho – Career Coach at the Carvalho Consultancy and former partner at Farrer & Co.
Senior Associate is an unusual role. You are in a hybrid position – you might not have official responsibility for cases and management, but you may well in reality have growing responsibilities in these areas. And it is often that time when people look around, take stock and ask how they want their legal career to look in the next ‘phase’.
It’s an important time of great possibility and a good juncture for lawyers to clarify what they so that they can set off on the next part of their career with enthusiasm and drive. Below are ten things to think about if you’re grappling with these issues.
First, what are the common issues?
- FAQs. The most typical questions for senior associates are:
- “Having got to this position, how do I make my career work for me?” This might involve getting more balance; it might also involve, for example, starting to emerge from a fairly hidden position into showing more of yourself, or asking “if I spend so much of my life at work, how can I bring my values and beliefs more into what I do?”
- “Where am I going with all of this?” This might involve asking whether you really want to push for partnership and, if so, exploring how you can go about getting it; it might also mean asking “if I push for partnership, what type of partner do I want to be and how do I want that next phase of my life to look?”
- Life all comes at once. Senior Associates are often emerging fully into ‘adulting’ as members of the sandwich generation. It’s when many of us are buying homes, starting families, or trying to do so, and dealing with issues in other areas such as ageing parents at a time of increasing demands at work. In many ways, the challenges faced by current senior associates are different to senior generations of lawyers – these issues need intelligent solutions for the 2020s.
Next, some ideas for addressing those issues…
- Control. One of the things I hear most frequently is that people feel stuck in a particular way of coping with day-to-day demands, and/or that they are being carried forwards towards a role which they are unenthusiastic about. The road to partnership can feel like a bit of a conveyor belt. Having worked with many people in these situations, I can say with confidence that, when you are able to find some distance and objectivity, you start to see that there are always options. If you’ve felt stuck or on a treadmill that you’re not 100% convinced about, are there ways that you can explore all the options in an objective way to grasp hold of the issue?
- Can I make my career work for me? This is often the nub of coaching conversations. And it often involves looking at (a) current challenges and areas of growth, (b) the longer-term vision of how you would like life to look and (c) the actions flowing from points (a) and (b).
- What’s your growing edge? We all have growing edges – areas where we may feel some resistance or unease. Either we avoid them, and they nibble away at us, or we embrace the challenge to work on them. Common growing edges for senior associates are:
- Delegation: getting to a position where you can delegate regularly and putting in place measures to allow you to cross the delegated tasks off your mental list in the confidence that they will be done.
- Management: keeping on top of the mushrooming inbox and finding time and headspace for complicated tasks. Simple things like ‘Do it, Defer it, Delegate it’ and creating new files can really improve the experience of the work.
- ‘Eating frogs’: tackling difficult, unpleasant or challenging issues and tasks rather than avoiding them and the discomfort they cause.
- Getting the right level of supervision to develop: avoiding (a) micromanagement and (b) feeling there is nobody to chat over strategic or client management issues with.
- Raising profile: feeling entitled to do this and thinking about how to do it in a way that fits in with your area and networks.
- Networking: with so many firms now encouraging active social media engagement and BD targets becoming the norm, it’s crucial for lawyers to find an approach to BD that works for them. This will be the subject of a future blog.
Are there areas here which you need to work on? If so, what resources can you call upon?
- Mindset. Is this a growing edge too? The transition from a junior who is told what to do into a position of more responsibility and power can seem daunting – but it could be reframed as an opportunity to learn new skills, develop new links and discover new aspects of the work. This is something I experienced recently in a different context – moving into a new profession has involved a steep learning curve but actually, if you have the right resources and support, it’s a lot of fun and very rewarding. Is there a challenge you could reframe in this way?
- Can you make a change? So many clients come to sessions wanting to find different ways of working. That might be reducing working hours, finding a (new) niche or making a big change. It might also be finding new ways of being a senior lawyer.
On this latter point, I think it’s fair to say that the job spec of senior lawyers is changing. Leadership abilities, strategy, modern management, mentoring and technology are now so much more important than simply black letter law knowledge. Firms can be conservative in nature, but there is an opportunity for the current generation to work out what a modern lawyer will look like and invest in any areas where need further skills are needed.
The key point is this. Making changes – whether they relate to how you work, what you do or the wider aspects of your role – requires some investment of time, but it is so often the way to a more fulfilling career and life.
- Five years. Often people say they can’t decide whether they want to be partners or not. Reaching a landing involves looking at their values and broader goals for life, and then seeing what the options are and how they match those criteria. One of the parts of the process I enjoy a lot is looking forward five years – looking in depth at what the options are and what the experience of each option would be. It’s a bit like winding the video forward of your life and experiencing in advance what each option would actually feel like.
- Opportunity Costs and Benefits. We know that whichever path is taken there is a cost and there are other options which then come off the table. However, once you’ve clarified your direction of travel and made peace with the potential costs, you can find genuine motivation and excitement about the future vision.
- Embracing the process. I think that sometimes people need to know that they’re not just on a conveyor belt – they have options, and they can make an active choice – but also that reaching that decision doesn’t have to be done all at once. It’s fine not to know the answers immediately. The key is simply to begin the process of working through the issues, taking incremental steps to explore them and keep clarifying in an iterative way what you really want. Are there small steps you could start to take now to start the process?
- Health and boundaries. Many of the people I see say that know they should exercise more / drink less / check their phone less frequently etc [delete as appropriate]. The trick is finding the motivation, creating accountability and sticking to the plan. Health and boundaries in a modern professional setting will be the subject of another article so I won’t spoil it now…!
- Support. Many lawyers can be very assertive in their work but passive in their own careers, and often the partners they work with can be vague in discussions about career progression. The result is senior associates can end up in a sort of limbo waiting for a tap on the shoulder but feeling uncertain about whether it will come. One of my mentors once gave me the good advice that ‘if you don’t take control of your career, someone else will’. If you are in this position, is there someone you can speak with to work towards some clarity as a first step?
I hope you’ve found some useful food for thought here. I’ve worked with many people who have felt in a state of drift, stuck, or lacking in enthusiasm, who have managed to take control, find motivation and momentum and create the type of career they want – it can be done!
About us
The Carvalho Consultancy is an award-winning therapy, coaching and training agency. We support lawyers with the ups and downs of life and the job, providing practical, insightful support. And we should know – we’re lawyers ourselves! Visit Our Website
Connect with us on LinkedIn: search for Adam Carvalho – coach for lawyers
This article was originally published on LexisNexis as part of a mini-series on lawyers’ mental health.
