Injecting Humanity (Back) into Talent Development

Many clients buy legal expertise, but often they demand more. Clients want their lawyer, in providing legal services, to understand their broader personal or business issues, of which legal issues constitute only one part. Some of these attributes fall under the general rubric of complex problem-solving, such as problem-assessment, strategic/systemic thinking, judgment, commercial/business acumen, judgment, etc. These skills are critical to enable lawyers to understand the context of their clients’ broader problems, in order to supply not just correct, but useful, advice. It is not coincidental that many of these described skills are similar or the same as those identified in multiple studies about future workforce skills that will both be in demand and less subject to automation.

Anecdotes and surveys, however, suggest that surprisingly few lawyers have these skills associated with complex problem-solving (beyond legal problem-solving). At the same time, law firms and corporate legal departments continue to spend significant amounts on talent development, with limited returns on those investments.

This chapter explores why current approaches in legal training and education, focused primarily on developing technical expertise, is incomplete, inefficient or ineffective in developing complex problem-solving skills. To help re-examine traditional legal training and education, the author articulates two different problem-solving schemas. The first correlates to the legal training or specialist training currently dominant in law schools pedagogy and in professional training. The second problem-solving schema examines “wicked” problems—the more complex problems that clients and lawyers face in real life, and one that is not taught systematically in the legal profession.

By deconstructing the elements of “wicked” problems and associated problem-solving skills, the profession and legal industry can be more intentional in developing new training tools and methodologies for those skills and mindsets that clients demand. The author offers an example of such approach in transactional lawyering, to illustrate how complex problem-solving skills can be incorporated into traditional pedagogy. Doing so enables lawyers to better understand and assess of the root causes of a problem before applying legal expertise and delivering legal services—which goes to the heart of the humanization of law—to deliver services grounded in deeper understanding of the clients and their problems.