Speaking on a recent episode of the Lawyers Weekly Show, produced in partnership with Evolve Resolve, he discussed the transition from technical proficiency as a lawyer to being a leader in a professional services environment; something Van Brunschot said is not very well taught for emerging leaders today.

Van Brunschot was formerly the managing partner of DWF Australia and said that he learnt a lot about himself while in a leadership position and picked up a few qualities and capabilities along the way.

“I think largely a lot of people learn it on the job and it really depends on your own mindset and curiosity. And for me, particularly in the start-up phase of a business, I had to learn reasonably quickly that my success was very much contingent on a team environment. And I really grappled with that on the job and that’s why I’m in this space, because I think we could do a lot more to transition people,” he said.

“We spend so much time focusing on the technical client proficiency skills, and yet we get to a point where we’re just capped out as lawyers unless we develop that broader leadership base. But it was very much self-directed in my case, and I think for a lot of people in law of my era, it was pretty much self-directed.”

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Being a good leader in the profession is not something that is necessarily covered early on in a lawyer’s career or studies, said Van Brunschot.

“We’ve got a blind spot in the sense that we do law degrees. We work out how to be academically sound, we work out how to solve legal problems, and we think at some level that that’s the end of the game or that. But that’s really just a ticket to play. A law degree, legal proficiency is a ticket to play, because law is a business. And if you want to be a purist lawyer, go to the bar. But if you want to become a partner in a law firm, it is,” he said.

“Your business is capped unless you develop leadership and team skills, and that will be how you build a business. But I think there’s a lot of work still to do to help people make this transition, and I think it’s because of the training bias. We’ve all very much been trained in our own academic qualifications, standing out among the crowd, being successful at solving problems, perhaps some client building skills. But the leadership skill is just perceived to be something that you’ll hopefully pick up. And if you don’t, well, there’s very limited interventions at times, and people are often capped out in their career, which is unfortunate, in my view.”

Despite many firms having leadership programs and pathways in place, there is still somewhat of a blind spot in terms of developing legal leaders – something Van Brunschot said exists because of a bottleneck in lawyers becoming partners.

“Traditionally what happened with partners was that it was basically a club that people were invited to join. Certainly, when I started [to] practise, that was the case. And we ended up hiring in our own image, at times in the partner space. So, that’s been our tradition only 30 years ago. And now, of course, it’s a great thing that we’ve moved on from that and we’re looking at how we develop people, leaders and technical proficiency,” he said.

“But if you think of law as a broad profession over its history, it’s actually a pretty recent story. So, we are still playing catch-up. Yes, there are limited numbers of people that can become partners in law firms and we lose a lot of good talent before we get to that point. But I think we lose a lot of talent as well because we don’t invest early enough in a career about helping people understand and make the transition from proficiency to a level of leadership that they need.”

This lack of investment has also had a number of flow-on consequences on issues that are already prevalent in the profession.

“For example, law has been particularly a slow learner around dealing with mental health issues because it’s been a sense of a high-stakes profession. You’ve got to keep it all together. And we don’t mind if you self-medicate on the side with excessive use of alcohol, which has kind of been often a story in the law, which brings all sorts of other problems to the forefront, of course. So, I’m very passionate about mindful, resilient leadership,” Van Brunschot said.

“We’re catching up again, but it has been a real issue, and there’s a great disconnect between generations in the law, a generation of myself and above who said, suck it up, you just have to turn up every day. We’re not here to talk about vulnerability, and that’s obviously unacceptable in a modern environment. And sadly, we’ve lost a lot of good people who voted with their feet. Until we are able to make this transition and really understand well what makes a healthy workplace, what makes resilient leadership.”

This issue also has ongoing effects on the next generation of lawyers, according to Van Brunschot.

“There’s a level of disengagement that is definitely created. I think if you look at, say, law now, I think it’s curious that we’re pumping out more graduates than we ever have. Law schools are cheap to run and they operate extensively, but we have a paucity of talent in the zero-to-five-year market already. Law is now a generalist humanities degree to begin with, so understandably, some people won’t practise, but they were losing a lot of people to the practice very early in their careers,” he said.

“The journey to become technically proficient is a difficult journey, and it’s not for everyone. But I think it’s not just that journey, that it’s the impediment. It’s at times been the culture. The culture of not being accepting of difference, at times a culture of high performance, a culture of probably a lack of insight into the broader human condition and how to bring people with you. I think lawyers have traditionally really struggled in that space, and we’re just losing talent.”

More to come.

The transcript of this podcast episode was slightly edited for publishing purposes. To listen to the full conversation with Damien Van Brunschot, click below: