Tracy LaLonde provides law firm leaders with a common sense approach to improving relationships with her more than 30 years of training, consulting and professional development. She emphasizes the role that trust has in a client-attorney relationship, and how cultivating trust daily might make an attorney the “trusted advisor” for a client. However, LaLonde also cautions that firm leaders also need to cultivate trust at internal settings within the firm. Building trust with colleagues and younger employees at the firm will help contribute to a stronger bottom line. 

Lee Rudy, partner at Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check, has been seeing a clear generational shift in the way younger lawyers think about careers in the legal profession. Law school graduates are saying they are seeking a sense of purpose in their work, driven by social awareness and a desire to make a difference in the world. This next generation of attorneys is going over to plaintiff-side work instead of jobs in corporate law firms.

It is not uncommon for junior transactional attorneys to often feel lost when they first land at a firm. Kenneth Ling is a transactional attorney at Greenberg Traurig, and is the first lawyer in his family. He writes that his previous understanding of the legal profession was shaped by law school, summer internships and television shows like “Law and Order.” The culture shock of his first firm job was a difficult transition since it felt so different from law school.