"If you do not know where you are going, every road will get you nowhere."
                       — Henry Kissinger
Executive Coaching: Career Planning

The career path for lawyers has historically been something like this — go to a good law school and get good grades, join a major firm to get practical training, “sink or swim” through the first 5-8 years of your career, and make partner. What many have failed to realize, however, is that this traditional path has not been available to most lawyers for many years. In addition, even if navigated successfully, lawyers often wake up, mid-way through their careers, asking themselves: How did I get here and where am I going?

Lawyers who want to take charge of their careers must therefore take the time to consciously and clearly articulate their goals — in relation to their careers as well as their lives. This requires that they stop and pay attention to where they are going in their lives — no easy task for hard-charging, high-performing lawyers who have little time to even consider the questions.

Executive coaching is designed to provide the time and space that a lawyer needs to formulate the questions and seek the answers that are right for him. In working with our clients in relation to their career plans, The Executive Lawyer LLC will:
  • identify the lawyer’s strengths and weaknesses, his values, his
    primary motivators and his personal interests;


  • assist him to articulate his own career and life goals over the
    short, medium and long term;


  • work with him to determine how his strengths and interests can
    be leveraged for his benefit and the strategic benefit of his firm,
    and how his weaknesses can be overcome or developed;


  • develop a written plan that includes manageable and measurable
    stretch goals to be achieved within defined time periods;


  • periodically monitor and assess his progress in relation to his goals; and


  • coach him with regard to essential executive skills he will need in
    order to succeed.
Having written goals for one’s career and life is a powerful tool, and lawyers at all levels will benefit from having a customized career development plan. Lawyers who are just setting out on their career path or who have just a few years of experience feel more confident about their career paths when they know where they are heading, and they feel more empowered to make the decisions necessary to keep their careers on track. Likewise, senior lawyers can better navigate their professional lives by identifying the directions that they wish to pursue, the talents that they most enjoy using, and the types of responsibilities that they are willing to take on when they have a clear sense of direction, together with an awareness of their strengths and weaknesses, their values and their interests.

The Executive Lawyer LLC advocates that all lawyers have individual career development plans and that law firms invest in programs that support them in developing their plans. To download a copy of Kathleen Bradley’s article, “Career Planning for Lawyers: Why It Is Important, What It Looks Like, and Why Law Firms Should Invest In It,” click here.

For an example of our work with clients in the area of career planning, see our
Case Studies.