RECLAIM: M Is for Meaning

This is the final article in my series on RECLAIM, a cultural operating system for law firms. Having worked through Respect, Equity, Clarity, Learning, Autonomy and Inclusion, I finish on the element the rest of them point toward: M for Meaning. (You can find full list of articles here.)

I hear from lawyers all the time that the greatest satisfaction comes from using their knowledge and judgment to solve a client’s problem or get a client the result they wanted. This is meaning.

Meaning is what people reach for once the essentials are covered. Martin Seligman and his colleagues in the field of Positive Psychology place it at the centre of what makes work sustaining rather than depleting, and they pair it with a second idea worth knowing. Mattering is the belief that you are needed, that your contribution makes a difference to somebody. It shows up in the research on job satisfaction and on whether people stay.

When Meaning is paired with Autonomy it will turn a group of competent people into a team. To illustrate I will share a fictional story about a lacklustre legal team and how it was turned around.

Team Drops the Ball

Martine walked into a client meeting last week unprepared.

Half an hour earlier she had put the question to her team. “Why is this meeting in my calendar, and what does this client want to talk about?” Her assistant’s first answer was that she had not booked it. Her paralegal said the client had emailed asking for a time. Martine asked whether there was anything else she needed to know.

She was told no.

The client arrived ten minutes late and was shown into the boardroom. As Martine walked down the hall to the meeting, the same paralegal hurried towards her with a set of draft documents.

Martine read them standing in a hallway with the client sitting in a boardroom just around the corner.

She got through the meeting. She always does.

Martine is a highly experienced lawyer with a capable team, but she told me she often feels she has no support at all. She described feeling like she was caught in a hamster wheel of asking “mature professionals whether they have put their socks on.”

Nobody on that team is lazy. Each of them is doing the job as they understand it, which is to provide support to Martine.

That is the problem.

Why Meaning and Autonomy Travel Together

Meaning is the why. It is how we help, and why that help matters.

Autonomy is about control. It is knowing which part of producing that meaningful outcome is yours, and having genuine control over it.

When people have both a meaningful role and autonomy they are motivated to take ownership of their work.

David Rock’s work on social threat and reward puts autonomy among the handful of signals the brain is most alert to. Martin Seligman places meaning at the centre of what makes work sustaining rather than depleting. Put the two together in a law firm and you have a driver of performance.

Align the role to meaning

In many law firms, assistants, clerks and coordinators define their work by reference to somebody else. They support the lawyers. They help the partners. The role is defined by whose work it orbits.

Martine’s team has no shortage of autonomy. Nobody stands over her assistant telling her how to do her job. What the team does not have is any share in the meaning. They see the meaningful delivery of the work as Martine’s. They are there to support her as best they can.

That framing does two things. The work becomes reactive, because help is something you provide when it is requested. And it becomes negotiable, because the amount of help to provide is a matter of judgment, and ultimately the responsibility falls on the lawyer.

There can be a perceived a status cost as well. Some support staff may think: “the lawyer is the one doing the meaningful work, and I just handle the admin tasks they don’t want to do.”

To turn this around, spotlight how everyone serves the same meaningful objective, each from a different seat. The lawyer serves it with legal judgment. The paralegal serves it with drafting. The assistant serves it by coordinating with the client, gathering information, and ensuring the legal machinery is operating smoothly. Each role matters. A strong argument missing key facts from an unfiled letter is not a partial success.

Operationalizing Ownership

Here are some ideas about how you can begin to weave meaning into the fabric of your legal team. The aim is to clarify how each person’s role serves the meaningful client outcome.

• In a meeting with your team name the meaningful outcomes the team delivers for clients. For example: “With care and compassion, we help our clients successfully transition out of their broken marriages to a new beginning.” Tell some client stories that bring the outcomes to life. Talk about how each person plays a role in delivering that outcome.
• Have each team member reflect and make notes about their role. Engage in some group discussion about the roles and how they work together to deliver that valuable outcome to the client.
• Following the meeting have every team member write up a full job description. Meet with them individually to discuss the role and its connection to client outcomes. Ask them to consider what full ownership of that role would look like? What would they need to do differently to take full responsibility? What constraints could hinder their ability to follow through?
• Ask if they are ready to take ownership. If not, when can they be ready. Next week? Two weeks? Make it clear that this is the necessary step for them to take. Have them develop a plan for how they will own the role, including how they will respond to the anticipated problems and hurdles.
• Celebrate the small positive milestones and successes. Debrief the misses, for what can be learned and applied going forward.
• Build the rituals that keep the meaning of the work in focus. Celebrate as a group when a client is well-served. Name the many contributions that made it possible. Build in a continuous exploration of how can we, as a team, work together more smoothly?

A couple of caveats:

It may be tempting to tell a team member what their role is, and how it connects to the bigger objective, but please resist. The effortful thinking must be done by the team member.

Do ensure each recurring piece of work has one owner by name, because work owned by two people is owned by nobody.

And the standard is that the task gets done, or the team is told early that it is in danger and help is needed. Questions are welcome. Asking for help is welcome. Staying silent and dropping a ball is a failure.

When Ownership Does Not Come

Not everyone will take full responsibility for their role. Sometimes the work does not suit their skills. Sometimes they do not care enough, or simply don’t have the capacity to put in the effort required.

What no lawyer can carry indefinitely is the monitoring. Did the letter go out? Did the date get scheduled? That work never ends and it drains the person doing it. If a role cannot be owned by the person in it once the standard is clear and the support is there, that person is in the wrong seat. Sometimes that means a different seat at the firm. Sometimes it means somewhere else.

What It Looks Like When It Works

Picture what this turnround looks like for Martine.

Every meeting in her calendar carries a line about what it is for, because the person who books it asks before booking it. The file is open and the intake questionnaire is in it before anything is scheduled, and one person owns that step by name. Documents reach her the day before her client meetings. When something will not be ready, she hears it two days out rather than in a hallway right before the meeting.

What changed was the burden of being the one carrying it all. Martine walks into the meeting thinking about her client rather than about whether she has what she needs. Her assistant begins each week knowing what she is responsible for and how she will handle it. She is part of a team doing work that matters, rather than a servant to a partner. She takes pride in her work.

That is what autonomy and meaning return to a legal team.