Law Consulting Blog : Cordell Parvin's Law Consulting Blog : Coach & Consultant For Lawyers & Law Firms : Business Development, Career Planning

This week we finish the first quarter of 2010. What have you been doing with your non-billable time in the first three months?

In 2008, I posted a blog The Will to Prepare To Win. I noted that most lawyers I know enjoy the opportunities to serve clients and help those clients achieve their goals. I certainly enjoyed that part of my practice. Yet, many lawyers do not have the will to prepare to get those opportunities they enjoy.

On Friday I spoke to 200 young lawyers and mentors here in Dallas. I began as I frequently do by asking: “How many of you have a business plan or development plan and written goals for this year?” About 15 of the 200 raised their hands. How about you? Do you have a written plan for this year?

I am always searching for ways to reach out to lawyers I do not know and share ideas with them on how to prepare a plan. As you likely know, on December 30 I conducted a Planning for Success in 2010 webinar. I think about 500 lawyers participated.

I talked about how I did my plan from the time I was a young lawyer. My plan included my own development and client development. I did it from the top (goals) to the bottom (non-billable hours) and bottom (non-billable hours) to the top (goals). I had to do it both ways because I had to choose among activities I wanted to do to achieve my goals.

For each goal I asked why it was important to achieve it and if I did not have a good answer, I reconsidered the goal. For the goals that survived the why question, I prepared detail actions. Then, each 90 days I would list the actions for that quarter. Finally, I planned the activities I would do each week. 

I converted the webinar into a series of podcasts.  If you would like to listen, click on my Law Consulting Coaching Podcast and look for Planning for Success in 2010, or search for my podcasts on iTunes. 

One more thing: Preparing a plan is part of my career workbook Prepare to Win. Click on the title and you will have a sample of the book.

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Yesterday I wrote about inner motivation and made the point that no one can motivate you for a significant time. You have to motivate yourself.

You might have wondered why motivation is even important. Put simply, to become more successful and more fulfilled, you have to continue growing as a lawyer and a person. That involves change and the problem is that change is incredibly difficult. 

A few years ago Fast Company magazine published a fascinating article Change or Die. Please click and read it to better understand why changing is so difficult. You will learn that fear of dying is not a motivator. Heart patients know exactly what lifestyle changes they need to make to avoid dying, yet they do not make them. On the other hand the joy of living can be a powerful motivator.

Let's see how the joy of living type of motivation might apply to practicing law. I recently listened to  Daniel Pink's new  book titled: Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. If you search you will find that some have criticized the conclusions Pink reaches. I happen to agree with Pink's main points. You can find my similar thoughts in my book Prepare to Win: A Lawyer's Guide to Rainmaking, Career Success and Life Fulfillment. 

One of Pink's main points is that the carrot-stick (change or die) approach only works in limited situations when the work is so boring or lacking creativity that it is about the only tool to motivate the workers. I suppose it might work for the lawyer who is stuck in a warehouse reviewing 1000s of emails a day to determine whether they are relevant and whether they are privileged. Almost nothing a lawyer does could be more boring. So, rewarding the lawyer by the number of hours he or she puts in might be an appropriate incentive.

Pink believes that intrinsic motivation (joy of living) is what is needed in every other circumstance. He believes that intrinsic motivation comes from autonomy, mastery and purpose. When you have autonomy you feel like you can direct your own life. To have autonomy you must take responsibility for your career success and life fulfillment. Mastery means you are constantly striving to become a better lawyer knowing you will never achieve total mastery. Purpose means you are working on client matters that are meaningful, doing them well and doing your work for a purpose greater than yourself.

Pink tells a story about finding purpose.  In 1962, Clare Booth Luce met with President Kennedy about his diffuse priorities. “A great man,” she advised him, “is one sentence.” President Lincoln’s sentence was obvious: “He preserved the union and freed the slaves.” So was FDR’s: “He lifted us out of a great depression and helped us win a world war.” What, Luce challenged President Kennedy, was to be his sentence? 

• Take responsibility for your career,
• Work every day to become a better lawyer and find ways to better serve clients and
• Focus on the journey, not the destination. In other words, focus on the joy that helping clients achieve their goals bring you rather than focusing on pay, bonuses or promotion,
• Finally, decide what is your sentence.

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