Top Lawyers: Sally Sanderson On The 5 Things You Need To Become A Top Lawyer In Your Specific Field of Law

Ability to adapt to different personalities: you need to be able to bring out the best in different team members. Too often I have seen lawyers rely on just a couple of favorites who are easy to work with because they are like them; it limits what they can achieve. Diversity makes a team strong and top lawyers know not to recruit in their own image — to avoid doubling strengths and doubling weaknesses, to benefit from different perspectives.

The legal field is known to be extremely competitive. Lawyers are often smart, ambitious, and highly educated. That being said, what does it take to stand out and become a “Top Lawyer” in your specific field of law? In this interview series called “5 Things You Need To Become A Top Lawyer In Your Specific Field of Law”, we are talking to top lawyers who share what it takes to excel and stand out in your industry.

As a part of this interview series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Sally Sanderson.

Sally Sanderson is a multi-award-winning consultant to law firms. For over 25 years she has developed and coached lawyers (in private practice and in-house), using personality profiling to increase self-awareness and help lawyers be the best they can be. She specializes in leadership, people and project management;, her clients include global firms and niche practices and she is the author of Leading Lawyers: www.profexconsulting.com

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series. Before we dig in, our readers would love to get to know you a bit more. What is the “backstory” that brought you to this particular career path in Law? Did you want to be an attorney “when you grew up”?

First let’s clarify one thing — I’m not an attorney. I read English literature at Oxford and although many of my close friends were studying law, I never imagined that I would spend 25 years working with lawyers. On graduating I taught for a couple of years — but I wanted to work in a more commercial environment. I had a fantastic opportunity with Arthur Andersen when recruited to set up their European Tax and Legal Training function from scratch. I was concerned about my lack of commercial experience but the partner interviewing me told me that what I had learned as a teacher would stand me in good stead: instead of reading comics under the table, partners would be trying to read the Financial Times; instead of looking forward to playtime, they would be impatient to call clients in the break.

I spent 5 months in Chicago learning about instructional design. Coming from the UK, what Arthur Andersen was doing to help adults learn in the workplace was cutting edge. I also studied management and organizational development and project management. It was a superb secondment and started my development as an expert in my field. After 6 years I wanted a new challenge and moved to set up a Learning and Development function in an international law firm in London. I was the first non-lawyer in the City to lead such a function. In the 1990s law firms were changing rapidly and realizing that technical expertise was insufficient for success. I was brought in to develop lawyers’ skills in working efficiently, leading teams and winning clients. Working inside a law firm for 7 years, showed me what it would take to for lawyers to get to the top of their field and what could stop them. In 2001, I was again looking for a new challenge and decided it was the right time to set up my own consultancy. By then I had won some awards and had a great network, so when people knew about my plans, they quickly sought me out. So, I ended up as a niche consultant to law firms.

Can you tell us a bit about the nature of your practice and what you focus on?

I describe my practice as helping lawyers to deliver better results through others. At the start of a law career the focus is on what you personally produce. As you progress, it is what you enable others to deliver. I focus on team leadership, people management and project management. I run tailored development programs for firms and coach lawyers to be better leaders or people managers. In most of my work I use psychometric profiling to help lawyers play to their strengths and bring out the best in the different personalities in their teams.

You are a successful attorney. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? What unique qualities do you have that others may not? Can you please share a story or example for each?

Although not a lawyer, I think these traits which have helped me be successful are relevant to getting to the top in any field.

I’ve learned to question and listen closely; this has been important for understanding the context for success — whether for advice, a development program, or coaching. It’s not just listening to what is said, but the tone, the nuances of the language used and what is not said that is so insightful and helps me tailor how I respond.

Clients tell me that I’m very good at quietly challenging. Lawyers at the top of their game are self-confident and can develop an immunity to the need to change even when something is undermining their success. Too direct a challenge and they argue defensively or retreat. I find it works to listen empathetically to their perspective and then help them to see the impact they may be having on others by looking at it from other perspectives.

I’m an optimist with a plan — I believe that we can all grow and develop and make things happen if we plan and focus. It may take time, but it’s worth starting rather than giving up because it looks too difficult. It’s what helped me when setting up two departments from scratch, my consultancy and my book. I’m often told — ‘We can’t do that: the partners will never buy it!’ but find what they will accept which gets you one step nearer to the goal and then go from there.

Do you think you have had luck in your success? Can you explain what you mean?

Yes and no. I have had some great opportunities, but it is also about creating them and being brave enough to seize them when they come along. When at 25 I was asked to set up a new function, I grasped the opportunity. It required huge personal investment in learning, but it set me on a path that unlocked other future opportunities. I have also been lucky in having some great mentors and clients along the way who believed in me — I learned different things from each of them.

Do you think where you went to school has any bearing on your success? How important is it for a lawyer to go to a top-tier school?

Yes, going to Oxford University has been a door opener for me. The law is an academic profession and full of very bright, well-educated people. Having a rigorous education behind me and the ability to reason with opinionated people has helped.

Based on the lessons you have learned from your experience, if you could go back in time and speak to your twenty-year-old self, what would you say? Would you do anything differently?

Don’t fret about career choices — do what you feel passionate about and your career will find you. The job in which you excel might not even yet exist.

This is not easy work. What is your primary motivation and drive behind the work that you do?

Early on I noticed the wastage of talent, the frustration, anxiety, desperation that some professionals experience when poorly lead or managed. Equally I know the challenges of leading can be career limiting or cause huge stress — so my motivation is in helping people have a better life at work. Recently I have written a book, Leading Lawyers, to share what I have learned — my motivation for this was that most lawyers do not have access to the leadership development or coaching opportunities in large firms, so I wanted lawyers across the globe to benefit from insights that make leading easier and that help you bring out the best in people. I see it as pay back for the privileged career I have had.

What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now?

Helping leaders to lead in the hybrid world. This is a critical time for team leaders to step up and ensure their teams do more than survive the next few months — yet many are even more exhausted than their team members. The fallout from the crisis has shown us that a new type of leadership is required. We saw glimpses of what was needed during lockdown, but not everything. We will need leaders who are strategic, proactive, who value and prioritize leadership activities (some still describe them to me as ‘admin’) including making time for people, not just when forced to, but because that is the only way to ensure that teams thrive. In the war for talent and to cope with the pace of change in the profession they will also need to be inclusive, collaborative and able to initiate and manage change. Quite a long and challenging list especially when you consider that so little time is devoted to leadership development in the profession.

Where do you go from here? Where do you aim to be in the next chapter of your career?

I’ll be building on the book but I’m also spending a lot of time on a new passion which is leading a voluntary organization. I’m the Chair of a community interest company which protects, promotes and enhances our local park, including leading a group of gardening volunteers each week. I mention this because I have learned so much about leadership and motivation from this experience. I am leading people who are more expert than me (eg in horticulture, campaigning, politics, conservation, biodiversity, climate change) and who also give huge amounts of time and expertise for free. I’m using insights from this experience in my work with leaders in law firms.

Without sharing anything confidential, can you please share your most successful “war story”? Can you share the funniest?

One war story that stands out for me is when I was coaching a partner who was struggling to lead. His position as group leader related to his being the most expert in his field, not to his ability to inspire. He was finding it difficult to get some of the partners on side to make changes to the strategic direction of the practice. The more he explained, the more resistance he met, and this was often passive: many of them said nothing but then took no action. We were discussing the need to listen more and explain less and then moved on looking for non-verbal reactions. After a couple of minutes he said, ‘Sally, it’s like you’re talking French — I don’t understand what you’re saying.’ It became very apparent that although extremely bright and strategic, he lacked emotional intelligence. After a while, we found a solution. In his social life he relied on his wife to build rapport and relationships with others. At work he needed an equivalent. In fact, to some extent that was already happening. He realized that he relied on a young partner to act as a bridge to the associates in the group — she was brilliant at listening to them and building trust. He asked her to consult on his behalf — to talk to the partners and identify their concerns relating to his vision for the future of the practice. She gained vital information that he had missed or blocked — this enabled him to adjust the strategy and get the partners’ buy-in. What I learned from that experience is that self-awareness is the foundation of effective leadership: it helps you play to your strengths, change behaviours where you can and importantly recruit others to fill any gaping holes. The practice today is market-leading — together they make a formidable leadership team.

There are lots of funny moments, but fewer funny war stories. In one leadership workshop, we were discussing motivation and the difference between appreciation and praise. A partner kicked off by saying: appreciation is silent, but praise is when you tell someone they have done well. I asked, ‘How does the person know you appreciate what they have done?’ ‘Oh, I give them more work!’ This only makes sense in law firms and only half the room laughed.

Ok, fantastic. Let’s now shift to discussing some advice for aspiring lawyers. Do you work remotely? Onsite? Or Hybrid? What do you think will be the future of how law offices operate? What do you prefer? Can you please explain what you mean?

Many of my clients are embracing hybrid working — when there are no COVID restrictions. It seems to be common for firms to be saying — be in the office a minimum of 2 or 3 days, but you choose and collaborate on when. Practice groups will often agree on a specific day when everyone needs to be in for team meetings and plan around that. Firms are realizing that they can reduce the cost of their second biggest overhead — buildings — by hot-desking. The pandemic has pushed firms much faster into embracing new ways of working — not just where but also how — and now they know it works, there is no going back. However, they need to manage the impact on things that are lost when you are not in the office together all the time — learning for inexperienced lawyers is top of the list, as well as team culture, workload management, wellbeing and retention.

How has the legal world changed since COVID? How do you think it might change in the near future? Can you explain what you mean?

Over the last decade I’ve seen the legal profession increasingly embrace the use of technology to deliver. The pandemic exacerbated this trend — not just virtual meetings but the need for software to help manage and improve processes and productivity. For example, I work with a team of lawyers who have moved into full time project management, and they work with peers who are non-lawyers too: IT, continuous improvement and logistics specialists. This is just one example of the different careers that are opening up within law firms. In many large firms, over half the personnel are not lawyers but are critical for the delivery of service and winning business.

We often hear about the importance of networking and getting referrals. Is this still true today? Has the nature of networking changed or has its importance changed? Can you explain what you mean?

Law firms are built on relationships — internal and external. But we all build them in different ways. Some lawyers are extrovert and find it fun and stimulating to meet new people. For them the challenge can be to invest in maintaining the relationship and converting it into instructions. Others are more introverted and very reluctant to network. For them it is best to win business by raising their profile as an expert — writing articles, running seminars, providing insights. Building relationships around ‘content’ rather than social chat feels more authentic for them. In both cases though, I find lawyers win more work if they have a personal business development plan that is focused and links with that of their practice group and firm. The plan needs to break down into actions that can go on their to do list. If it’s not on the list alongside client work, it won’t get done. In my experience, far too many have no plan, and some don’t even have a to do list!

Based on your experience, how can attorneys effectively leverage social media to build their practice?

I’m certainly not the best to advise on this as I haven’t done this myself. In my coaching work I have been impressed by those who have built a practice in this way. Again, you need a plan about what you are going to share that will be of interest to your audience, what you won’t do and how to connect in a personal way. It’s a massive time investment to do it well and consistently, so you need to be sure that it is the best way for you to build a profile.

Excellent. Here is the main question of our interview. What are your “5 Things You Need To Become A Top Lawyer In Your Specific Field of Law?” Please share a story or an example for each.

1. Self-awareness: develop self-awareness at an early stage since your personality will have a huge impact on the way you interact with others in your firm and with clients. This affects your reputation and so the type of work you will get — which in turn affects your ability to build expertise. It also affects the style of advice and service you provide eg commercial, strategic, collaborative. Unfortunately, typically lawyers aren’t given sufficient feedback, so self-reflection is needed.
2. A niche that plays to your strengths: I have coached too many lawyers who aren’t doing this and are dissatisfied with their work. You have to find what you love. Not just the field of law you like, but within that the sectors or clients or types of assignment and roles that make you want to jump out of bed in the morning. Are you best at highly complex, detailed work or at managing large projects? Again, an understanding of personal style helps here. Once you’ve identified what you love, position yourself to get as much of that type of work as you can.
3. Trust and delegation skills: too many brilliant lawyers struggle with delegation. Perfectionists struggle to trust others to deliver to the quality required; highly driven lawyers struggle to trust others to deliver on time. This can carry through to partner level and prevent someone reaching the top of their field as they end up stuck in the detail or on tasks that should be done by others. The consequence is they don’t do enough business development and so don’t win the work they need to get to the top.
4. A team on which you can rely: behind every top lawyer will be a team who can progress things when you are not available. You need to invest time in training up team members and in helping them progress their careers too so that they want to stay with you. I have worked with many partners who can’t keep a team because they haven’t invested time in this: it leads to huge stress and frustration because their capacity is so limited.
5. Ability to adapt to different personalities: you need to be able to bring out the best in different team members. Too often I have seen lawyers rely on just a couple of favorites who are easy to work with because they are like them; it limits what they can achieve. Diversity makes a team strong and top lawyers know not to recruit in their own image — to avoid doubling strengths and doubling weaknesses, to benefit from different perspectives.

We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might see this. :-)

I’d be fascinated to meet Dr David Rock. He has made the findings of neuroscience so accessible — it has added a whole new dimension to our understanding of effective leadership behaviours. I often recommend ‘Your Brain at Work’ as a great read for learning how to be more focused and working smarter — insightful for anyone wanting to get to the top of their field.

This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for the time you spent with this. We wish you continued success and good health!