Delegation Skills for Lawyers
Reed Smith LLP is a global law firm headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with more than 1,500 lawyers in 30 offices throughout the United States, Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
Background
We have been working with Reed Smith since 2020 at Senior Associate, Associate, and Trainee levels. This includes activity across the Europe, Middle East and Asia offices.
Need
The specific need for this workshop was to create a workshop that works both virtually and in-person. The event that this case study is based on was in-person.
A group of Associates from the London, Munich and Paris offices, were gathered for a series of sessions. As the role of Associate requires professional delegation, this training is required by many law firms.
Activity
A 2.5 hour workshop style session was created based on the fundamentals of delegation. The content was drafted at the level of Associate who are mostly fairly new to delegating to other lawyers. They may well have delegated to business services, but not to trainees, paralegals etc.
The session was highly interactive right from the start. This involved participants discussing specific questions with their neighbours and then sharing with the group.
The agenda started with the challenges with delegation and the reasons why delegation is so vital for the firm. It then moved onto delegation methods, how personality impacts delegation and practical examples of delegation.
Outcomes
Each Associate was involved in the session. They discussed their approach and challenges with delegating. They explored the impact of their work style on delegation. At the close of the session each person shared their actions on delegation.
The atmosphere in the room was fabulous, with participants sharing their ideas, thoughts and challenges, very openly.
One reflection is that because the group had a few days together in-person there was more trust and openness in the room. A specific benefit over virtual session. I wonder if this will translate into better and faster professional delegation. It was also very clear that having a cohort of similar level lawyers discussing similar challenges was really useful.
Participant Feedback
The participants’ feedback was extremely positive and included the following comments:
“Thank you very much”
“Thanks again for the really great training.”
“Thank you very much for the interesting workshop.”
“It was really helpful and interesting.”
Client Comment
TBA
