3 ways lawyers can get quality feedback to advance their legal career

Lawyers, how good is your partner at giving you feedback? I’m sure some of you work with partners

Lawyers, how good is your partner at giving you feedback?

I’m sure some of you work with partners who take an active interest in your development. But… I suspect many of you don’t.

I’ve heard partners often say they got into law to be lawyers, not managers and that, anyway, no news is good news. Well, that’s great if you trust you’ll absorb the skills and knowledge you need to succeed in your career by some sort of osmosis.

So let’s turn the question around: How good are you at getting feedback out of partners? Learn how to do that and you’ll be able to get the input you need to develop your career.

Here are my top 3 tips:

Ask focused questions: “How specifically can I be clearer in my communications?”

Ask ahead. Prompt your partner to look out for things to feed back to you: “After the closing can you tell me one thing I did well and one thing you would recommend I work on.” Then they’re not flailing around in their memory of the event when they’ve already moved on to the next deal.

Link your request to the partner’s business need: “I want to make sure I’m working in line with how you want to manage this client/transaction.”

You’ll need to be persistent and consistent. You both need to develop new habits and these take several iterations to embed.

Categories: Career planning