New BFAB Program: Soft Skills for Lawyers

Posted on June 6, 2018

Soft skills are essential for success in business.  So, what are these soft skills and why should law firms and young lawyers care?

Soft skills are interpersonal and communication skills that are not taught in law school.  They are unlike the hard skills like black letter law, legal analysis, and persuasive writing that are taught in law school.

Soft skills are critically important to success as a lawyer.  In fact, statistics show that 80% of success in business depends on proficiency with soft skills.

The good news is that it’s possible to coach new lawyers on soft skills, and I have developed a new CLE-eligible interactive program to do just that.  So, there is no excuse not to make a program like this available to all the young lawyers in your law firm — who have not had this kind of training before and will need it to advance in the firm.

They will learn about:

  • Meeting skills, including effective communication skills and how to make group presentations;
  • Networking and business promotion skills;
  • Negotiation skills;
  • Relationship building skills; and
  • Skills for dealing with supervisors and managers.

Contact me at [email protected] to learn more and get your law firm or law organization on my speaking schedule.  I look forward to hearing from you!

Spotlight | Comment

New BFAB Program to Support Women’s Initiatives

Posted on April 11, 2016

career-adviceThe new BFAB Multi-Session Program for Law Firm Women’s Initiatives has launched!  This new CLE-eligible program will continue the effort to extend my programs to more lawyers, including global audiences, and the applications are very exciting.  The program sessions include the following and can be tailored to meet the individual law firm needs:

  • Developing Effective Leaders to Meet the Special Challenges for Women Lawyers;
  • Owning Your Own Career;
  • Achieving Commitment to Career and Work-Life Balance;
  • The Importance of Networking and Client Development; and
  • Looking Back and Moving Forward to Successful and Satisfying Careers.

I look forward to working with your law firm to make your Women’s Initiative everything it should be to retain and advance women lawyers —- for the benefit of the women lawyers, the law firm and the law profession.

Career Counselors, Spotlight | Comment

Ms. JD — An Organization For You and About You

Posted on March 26, 2015

Spotlight! is being expanded.  It is time that Best Friends at the Bar spotlighted organizations that are promoting women lawyers as well as the women lawyers themselves.  With this new platform in mind, there could not be a better group to spotlight than Ms. JD, a group with the official description of “Women of the legal profession standing together, rising together.”

I am wild about this group of young women lawyers and law students and the success and visibility it has gained in a relatively short time.  I support this group through my permission to reprint my blogs on the Ms. JD website, and I attend and contribute to many of the valuable programs that Ms. JD sponsors around the country.

In the interest of full disclosure, I also was the recipient of the Ms. JD Sharing Her Passion Award at the 2015 Annual Conference in San Francisco.  The picture is of me giving acceptance remarks at the awards ceremony.  I am so proud to have Ms. JD recognize the value of the Best Friends at the Bar program to its members and all young women lawyers.

Here’s the Ms. JD story from the website:

Ms. JD is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to the success of aspiring and early career women lawyers. Ms. JD is governed by a volunteer Board of Directors comprised of law students and recent graduates and supported by a small group of independent contractors. Founded at Stanford Law School in 2006 by a group of female law students from Boalt Hall (UC Berkeley), Cornell, Georgetown, Harvard, NYU, Stanford, UCLA, UT Austin, the University of Chicago, the University of Michigan, the University of Virginia, and Yale, Ms. JD is a 501(c)(3) incorporated in California.

Serving as a unique nexus between the profession and the pipeline of diverse attorneys, Ms. JD’s online community provides a forum for dialogue and networking among women lawyers and law students. With campus chapters throughout the nation, Ms. JD is also home to the National Women Law Students’ Organization. Ms. JD celebrates women’s achievements, addresses remaining challenges, and facilitates continued progress by bringing legal practitioners and law students together to share in an ongoing conversation about gender issues in law school and the profession.

I am also proud that my law school, Georgetown Law, was one of the schools that helped launch Ms. JD.  Go Hoya Women Lawyers!

So, hat’s off to Ms. JD and all the wonderful work it is doing here and across the globe with its new international programs.  Read about it on the Ms. JD website.

 

Career Counselors, Spotlight | Comment