Counsel to Counsel - Career Advice for Lawyers Stephen Seckler: attorney career, marketing and leadership coach

As the baby boomer generation of lawyers approaches retirement, many firms are facing the looming challenge of ensuring a seamless transition for their clients. This process is not just about maintaining business continuity but also about safeguarding the firm's legacy and client relationships. Unfortunately, many firms are not adequately addressing these issues, which can lead to significant disruptions.
In this episode, I speak with a consultant who is working with law firms to change this.
David Wood is a former senior partner with an AmLaw 100 firm, who planned and executed the succession of his entire $6 million practice to talented younger partners before he retired.  Recognizing that many law firms struggle to achieve this outcome, he now advises firms and practice groups on retirement succession issues and strategies.
Key Takeaways
Many law firms struggle with effective succession planning when senior partners retire Transitioning client relationships and revenue streams to younger partners is crucial Open communication about retirement plans and identifying successors is key Retiring partners need a vision for their post-law life to ease the transition

For many lawyers in private practice, going in-house is the ultimate goal. For transactional lawyers and for some specialties like employment law, the path to a corporate role is more obvious. For litigators, less so.  Most companies outsource a lot of their litigation because the need tends to fluctuate.
But litigators can bring valuable skills to a corporate environment. And there are many examples of litigators who have gone on to have successful in-house careers.
In this episode I speak with Matt Campobasso, a litigator who has built a solid in-house legal career after having a successful career in private practice and public service.
Matt Campobasso is the General Counsel and Corporate Secretary of Enfusion, Inc., a publicly traded fintech company headquartered in Chicago.  He joined the company in 2020 as Deputy General Counsel and helped take the company public.  Prior to that, he served as in-house counsel to two other companies.
He began his career as a prosecutor and then spent ten years litigating with a major firm in Chicago.
In addition to discussing his path to in-house and why he thinks litigators make good in-house counsel, Matt shares his philosophy about leadership and how he has grown the legal function and the legal team at Enfusion.

I was beginning to think that live conferences were in my rear view mirror...until I attended the Annual Education Conference of the National Association for Law Placement.  It was my first live conference in over four years.  And I was like a kid in a candy shop.
While I've made a point of going to an occasional live event, especially in the last two years (including speaking at live events), I had pretty much give up on conferences.
Attending the NALP conference changed that for me.  The quality of the networking and the quality of the workshops convinced me that going to live conferences is still an important part of marketing and professional development.  Listen in to hear my story.
Additional Resources
Checklist for Networking Functions (before, during, and after) Active Listening-Do I Really Need to Say This?

We’ve talked a lot on this show about sales and marketing and how selling legal services is different than selling a product.  That’s good news for those of us in the legal industry because many of us don’t like the thought of being a salesperson.
Selling legal services is about relationships building.
The challenge, however, is that clients generally don’t need your services all the time. You don’t know when a client, potential client, or referral source will have a need or hear of a need.
That’s why it is important to stay top of mind over a long period of time.  But how do you do that?  How can you make yourself memorable whether you are delivering a pitch, giving a presentation, or simply building relationships in the community.
In this episode, Merry Neitlich talks about that.
I’ve know about Merry for years, but we only met more recently through the ProVisors business network.  Back in the early 1990s when legal marketing was starting to take off, Merry was one of the pioneers in the legal marketing community.
Merry Neitlich  has over 25 years of experience in law firm marketing, business development, and strategic planning. She provides attorneys and law firms with tools to grow their business and to successfully identify, court, and convert targets into clients.
She has conducted hundreds of client feedback interviews and has a lot of experience helping firms with branding,
Merry has been an active member of the Legal Marketing Association. She is a frequent national speaker and author.   In 2017, she was inducted into the Legal Marketing Association Hall of Fame.
She is also an accomplished nationally ranked adult competitive figure skater.
Additional Resources
If You Are Not Memorable, Don’t Expect to Be Remembered

I've had a number of guests on this show speaking about leadership. A large part of this is that I'm very interested in the subject. But I also feel that this is a skill set that is often neglected in the legal profession.
As lawyers, we learn a lot about our craft in law school and even more once we are in practice.  As professionals, we are taught to analyze the law and help our clients to identify legal risks.
Our job is to be skeptical and to apply dispassionate reasoning to the situation so that our clients can protect themselves from legal exposure and comply with the law.  We work to get our clients the best possible outcome whether it is in a litigation matter or in a corporate or real estate deal.  We help our clients to achieve their personal or business objectives in a way that avoids legal risk or accomplishes their legal objectives.
But the same skills that we cultivate in practicing law can interfere with our ability to be an effective leader.
Whether you are a managing partner, a practice group leader, running your own law firm, serving as a general counsel, or managing other members of the legal team as an assistant general counsel, you need a different skill set to be successful.
In particular, emotional intelligence is one skill that you need to cultivate in order to be successful in a leadership role.
In this episode, Susan Schwartz provides great insights on that subject.
Susan Schwartz is a leadership coach and management consultant. She equips technical experts and teams with the skills they need to become excellent leaders.  Her tagline is :  Transforming expert professionals into emotionally intelligent leaders.
Additional Resources
Episode 129-Law Firm Leadership with Kristi Royse 15 Tips For Leadership Success  Episode 121-John Buckley on Building Your Executive  Presence    Episode 103-Ben Sachs on Building High-Performance Legal Teams  Episode 80-Leadership for Lawyers-Moving Up in Your Law Firm or Corporate Law Department

The practice of law has evolved a lot in the three decades since I graduated from law school. Technology has replace many monotonous functions and computers have replaced paper.  The internet has revolutionized how legal research is done and how law firms market themselves.  It has enabled remote work and interaction in a way that was unimaginable in the 1980s.
At the same time, there are some fundamental things that have not changed.  The practice of law is still a service business that requires a lot of human interaction.
Law firms are still challenging places to work. Clients can be demanding, the stakes can be high, and the billable hour can create unwanted incentives.
In addition, lawyers like their autonomy.  Managing a group of lawyers is not for the faint of heart and takes a skill set that is very different than the skill set needed to practice law.
So what do you need to know to be an effective law firm leader?  How can you inspire partners, associates, paralegals, and administrative staff to give it their all?
Kristi Royse joins me in this episode to answer those questions.
Kristi Royse is the CEO of KLR Consulting.  She is a nationally recognized speaker, facilitator, management consultant, executive coach, and trainer. Since 1987, Kristi has been coaching executives to be stronger leaders and helping organizations optimize their most vital resource - their people. Kristi works with law firms and other organizations to help their leaders build the skills they need to thrive in rapidly changing circumstances. She helps leaders, teams, and leaders-to-be tap their potential, improve their leadership abilities, and strategically shift their perspective.