I just finished reading an interesting book called Invisible Influence: The Hidden Forces That Shape Behavior by Jonah Berger (Simon & Schuster, 2017). Professor Berger is a marketing professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. In this book, he explores two human tendencies that seem to be at odds with each other—the…
Where to Find Good News — and Why You Should Look for It
by Dr. Larry Richard, LawyerBrain LLC — Monday, April 20, 2020
This morning I joined Cecilia B. Loving as a presenter in a webinar that we presented as part of the NYC Bar Association’s Mindful Mondays series. We called our session Tips…
Hello to all my readers. I haven’t posted on this blog site for a couple of years because I’ve been so busy with consulting. The CoronaVirus crisis has given me some breathing room. Here’s an article about how you as a leader can incorporate some important psychological principles into the way you respond to the…
More advice has been written about leadership than just about any other topic in the social sciences. My clients often ask me if I can distill this leadership wisdom into a very short synopsis that’s tailored to lawyers in senior leadership roles. I’ve resisted doing this because there are so many good books on leadership (although very few of them address leadership in law firms). If you want to dig into that literature, start with The Leadership Challenge by Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner, which in my view is the best and most well written evidence-based summary of the practical principles of how to successfully lead others. For those with less time on their hands, here is my attempt to reduce what we know to a “one-pager”.
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Continue Reading The Essence of Leadership for Lawyers
This blog post was originally published at the Legal Executive Institute website, a ThomsonReuters site, on December 19, 2016 (http://tinyurl.com/futurelawyer):
We in the legal profession — especially those of us in Big Law — have always been very clear about our criteria for what kind of lawyer we’d like to hire. Indeed, there’s nearly universal agreement that we want someone who’s smart; and then we look for the indicia of a strong analytical ability, a bristling intelligence, a powerful intellect — all demonstrated by top grades, high LSAT scores, membership in a Law Review, Order of the Coif, graduate of a top law school, etc.…
These two podcasts were originally published at the Legal Executive Institute website, a ThomsonReuters site. Podcast #1 discusses why change is hard for lawyers, and Podcast #2 discusses what you can do about it.
I was recently interviewed by Gregg Wirth, the Content Manager for the LEI blog site. On July 18th, 2016, he interviewed me about the psychological consequences of incessant change on lawyers and their performance. Here is the introductory blurb from the LEI website for this interview:
“Change is never easy, especially the type of systemic and dramatic change the legal industry is experience in the current market. And lawyers — not known for being open to change to begin with — are sometimes having a very difficult time with how their profession is evolving and how to envision what the lawyer and law firm of the future may look like.…
Continue Reading Podcasts: The Stress of Change . . . and What To Do About It
This article first appeared on Tuesday May 17, 2016, on the Legal Executive Institute blog site, which is curated by Thomson Reuters.
One of my favorite leadership books is The Extraordinary Leader by John Zenger and Joe Folkman. In this book, the authors offer a number of findings from their own empirical research about what makes leaders effective, i.e., what makes constituents actual follow leaders.
One of their principal conclusions is that constituents follow leaders who consistently demonstrate three to five strengths, particularly when their mastery of those strengths is so formidable that observers rate them in the top 10%. For example, a leader who is a really crisp decision-maker, who also is very patient even under stress, and who is also a superb listener, will gain a large following.
Their research reveals an important corollary as well: When a leader consistently demonstrates this kind of mastery of strengths, constituents will overlook a leader’s weaknesses.…
Continue Reading Toward Better Leadership: Self-Development, Focusing on Strengths & Accepting Flaws
This post was originally published at the Legal Executive Institute website, a ThomsonReuters site, on September 16, 2015:
In my conversations with law firm leaders, I am hearing more and more concern expressed about their partners failing to meet expectations. Here are some examples:…
This post was originally published at the Legal Executive Institute website, a ThomsonReuters site, on July 29, 2015:
Amidst the head-spinning change and the increased competition that all law firms face today, there is an increased emphasis on—some say a frenzy to—hire the best people. The cost of making a hiring mistake is growing, and the consequences of doing so take effect even sooner than before.
Many law firms are re-examining their approach to talent acquisition, seeking more efficient, accurate and successful methods.
One topic that always comes up, but raises great anxiety in most lawyers, is the use of psychological testing as a pre-employment selection tool. There are a lot of myths and misunderstandings about this topic, and in this post, I’d like to clear things up and explain why testing should be a part of your hiring strategy.…
Continue Reading Tea Reading or Testing—What’s the Best Way to Hire?