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Lawyers must enhance their adaptive capacity during COVID-19
Bolstering one’s ability to acclimate to the unprecedented circumstances of a global pandemic will help lawyers better serve clients, at a time when such service is most needed.
Jerome Doraisamy
The ways in which legal professionals adapt to any challenging situation – most notably, during the current global coronavirus pandemic – will ultimately impact, positively or negatively, upon the quality and the nature of the delivery of the service being provided.
Moreover, it will have a flow-on effect for the workplace environment in which professionals build up their teams, the culture and – ultimately – safeguard the future of the legal profession.
That is the view of Lara Wentworth, a former law firm partner turned performance and wellness coach for lawyers, who said that the “adaptive capacity” of lawyers can be enhanced with tools, resources, knowledge and skills “that will increase our ability to adjust to the inevitable changing legal landscape that this pandemic is producing”.
“It involves our growth and our development as individual lawyers and as a profession,” she told Lawyers Weekly.
“Being adaptive is about really appreciating the changes or the potential changes that this situation has presented and continues to present, economic changes, technological changes, social changes and even changes to our mindset and working with those changes creatively and resourcefully to allow us to survive and even thrive.”
Steps to take
Leadership during difficult times, Ms Wentworth mused, can be incredibly challenging but also extremely rewarding – no less so than during COVID-19.
“Leadership skills now are more important than ever. Invest in your leadership skills and expand your toolbox and resources,” she outlined. These skills allow us to communicate effectively with our team and our clients to motivate them and keep them inspired and go first as a leader when it comes to trust and accountability and really lead from the front.
“This is not a time to ‘do as I say’ but a time to model the behaviour that we expect our teams, colleagues and clients to exhibit.”
COVID-19 is also a time to show compassion and care for those who are more vulnerable and less resilient, in particular one’s clients, Ms Wentworth continued.
“Offsetting their vulnerability with our resilience is an admirable leadership skill that can also enhance their adaptive capacity,” she advised.
“Stay curious, creative and open to learning as we navigate the ever-changing framework that this pandemic is creating around how we work and provide our services. The challenge here may be that we may have to let go of certain assumptions and beliefs about ourselves as lawyers and the profession as a whole, so we can explore different ways of working that allow us to cope and even thrive during this time. Embrace change and reframe the situation to one of opportunity and learning.”
Moreover, lawyers should engage in collaborative leadership with colleagues who are navigating the same framework and working towards the same goals.
“Ultimately, our adaptive capacity is best enhanced when we work together to address issues and changes that are affecting more than just our own individual interests. This may challenge the competitive nature of lawyers and the business of legal services, which has not traditionally valued collaborative leadership or leadership in general,” she suggested.
“Use this time to reflect and build awareness of yourself, your emotions, your values and your thought patterns and challenge unresourceful narratives about yourself, your colleagues and the legal profession.”
Hurdles to overcome
That all said, the uncertainty and the risks that COVID-19 presents may be challenging for lawyers to think around and adapt to, Ms Wentworth ceded.
“The inevitable changes themselves are unknown and our fear of change may push our thinking below the line of choice where we may revert to our instinctual fear mechanism causing us to be stuck in old ways that may not be adaptive,” she reflected.
“This pandemic may change what is important to us individually and collectively, and for some, lack of awareness of their values may be a challenge. Our blind attachment to the status quo and the ‘way we do things’ may hold us back from practicing within our changing value system and enhancing our adaptive capacity.”
The reality for many people in the world during this pandemic, Ms Wentworth noted, has been an increase in poor mental health.
“Lawyers do not get a head start in this department which may lead to a spike in anxiety and depression as many lawyers have been stood down or are facing uncertainty with their careers, their practices and their future,” she said.
“Our competitive and adversarial nature may present a natural challenge to enhancing our collective adaptive capacity through collaborative leadership. Working towards a common goal to allow the profession to adapt may be a challenge to the [lawyer’s] personality and our reluctance to share. The reality is that this pandemic is not just affecting a particular area of practice or a specific sector but the whole world, and as such we need to adapt as a group.
“For some lawyers, pessimistic patterns of thinking that can be a by-product of our legal training, could present as a challenge to enhancing their adaptive capacity. Resilience has a lot to do with optimism and positive change which may be difficult to see with a pessimistic lens.”
Inherent opportunities
However, despite such challenges to one’s wellness, the “most profound change” that this pandemic could result in is an increase in resilience and a growth mindset among lawyers, Ms Wentworth hypothesised.
“Having had change thrust upon us is really taking lawyers out of their comfort zone as they are not given the opportunity to plan, test and evaluate before carefully taking action!”
“Many lawyers have reported that they are experiencing the human side of their colleagues and are relating to each other more as friends rather than adversaries. This change in mindset is a great opportunity to shift the culture and archaic traditions of the profession that do not serve our humanity, our mental health or our communities. This is an opportunity to explore the human side of legal practice as we find that we have more in common now as this pandemic has affected us all indiscriminately,” she submitted.
With remote work becoming more the norm than the exception, Ms Wentworth continued, there is “now a unique opportunity to examine the way we measure productivity and performance than just the traditional billable unit, to cater for and promote our people’s diverse strengths and skill sets”, she said.
“This is also fertile ground to provide more psychologically safe work environments for our people whether remote or not, in order to reduce the rates of ill mental health, increase productivity and efficiency. Never before have we heard and seen law firms say “the safety and wellbeing of our staff and our clients is our first priority” as much as we have as a result of this pandemic!” she said.
“Lastly, and in short, we have the opportunity to kickstart the evolution of the legal profession which has been long overdue!”
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Jerome Doraisamy
Jerome Doraisamy is the editor of Lawyers Weekly. A former lawyer, he has worked at Momentum Media as a journalist on Lawyers Weekly since February 2018, and has served as editor since March 2022. He is also the host of all five shows under The Lawyers Weekly Podcast Network, and has overseen the brand's audio medium growth from 4,000 downloads per month to over 60,000 downloads per month, making The Lawyers Weekly Show the most popular industry-specific podcast in Australia. Jerome is also the author of The Wellness Doctrines book series, an admitted solicitor in NSW, and a board director of Minds Count.
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