28 Jun Introducing the O Shaped Lawyer
What first came to mind when you glanced at the heading above? Chances are you were imagining a rather rotund legal practitioner, reclined in their office chair, tucking into a steaming meat pie or a bucket of KFC – their desk, keyboard and files covered in a layer of eating detritus and empty coffee mugs.
Let’s start by saying that I won’t be referencing, or commenting on, personal eating habits in this article. Instead, I would like to highlight a relatively new organisation called the “The O Shaped Lawyer” – formed in early 2019 when Dan Kayne (General Counsel, Network Rail UK) noticed a worrying trend whilst hiring lawyers into his legal team.
“I was recruiting into my team and found that there was an abundance of highly skilled technical lawyers, but a real shortage of well-rounded ones.”
Dan found that technical and academic excellence came at the expense of those equally important commercial skills, necessary for the modern-day lawyer. His subsequent research discovered that these shortcomings were affecting both in-house teams and private practice firms. What his team needed were more all-rounders – hence the “O”.
One key to the process of creating more well-rounded lawyers is a fuller understanding of that recurrent phrase “commercial awareness”. It is a phrase that is frequently misunderstood. Many are mistaken in believing it means reading news websites, keeping an eye on the latest business deals, and being able to talk profusely to clients about the current risks to the economy. Sadly, this is not what your clients are looking for. Being “commercially aware” means recognising that a firm is a business and being able to identify what it is you can do to help that business flourish.
If you want to impress your current (or future) employer or client, then having a legal qualification is the minimum requirement – it’s everything else that rounds you out which will set you apart. For those of you relatively new to law, having this skill means that you will be able to talk to clients in a more confident manner, to think outside the box and to know when you should and shouldn’t ask for help. Your law degree will, mostly, not help you do this. Both your employer, and their clients, will expect you to have the required legal knowledge as a bare minimum. It will be your understanding of everything around and outside of that which will enable you to provide exceptional client service as well as boosting your future career prospects.
So, all is not lost if you are one of those members of the profession who qualified later than most. It turns out that some of the best lawyers are those who have had varied work and life experience before they entered the profession. Those additional roles and experiences enabled the acquisition of valuable commercial awareness and some of the attributes required to become an “O-shaped” lawyer. Having previously worked outside of law, being a member of a society or volunteering are not just fillers on your CV – they provide you with the actual experience, skills and, most importantly, confidence which will help not only you, but your employer and their clients succeed.