Coaching for Lawyers: What It Is, What It Isn’t, and Why It Works

Hi, everyone. It's Elise Holtzman here, a former practicing lawyer and the host of The Lawyer's Edge Podcast, where I sit down with successful attorneys, legal marketing specialists, business leaders, and authors to talk about how lawyers and law firms can grow and sustain healthy, profitable businesses.

Hi everyone, and welcome back to another episode of The Lawyer's Edge Podcast. I'm Elise Holtzman, your host, and I'm going solo today to talk to you about coaching for lawyers.

When I founded The Lawyer's Edge at the end of 2008, there were very few executive coaches out there and even fewer working with attorneys. Coaching is now recognized all over the world as a game-changer for people who want to achieve their goals more quickly and with less stress. Many law firms have internal coaches, and many of them pay for external coaches—people like myself—to come in and work with their attorneys.

Having said that, many lawyers haven’t had experience with coaching, so they understandably have questions. My goal today is to answer the most common questions so you'll be able to make an informed decision about whether coaching would be a good fit for you or one of your colleagues.

Before we dive in, today’s episode is—perhaps unsurprisingly—brought to you by the coaching team at The Lawyer’s Edge, a training and coaching firm that has been focused exclusively on lawyers and law firms since 2008. Each member of The Lawyer’s Edge coaching team is a trained, certified, and experienced professional coach and either a former practicing attorney or a former law firm marketing and business development professional. Whatever your professional objectives, our coaches can help you achieve your goals more quickly, more easily, and with significantly less stress.

To get connected with your coach, just email the team at hello@thelawyersedge.com or visit us at thelawyersedge.com and fill out our online contact form.

Let’s start with the obvious question: What is coaching, and what is coaching for lawyers?

Coaching doesn’t necessarily have one definition. Depending on who you’re talking to, you might get a slightly different one. But basically, it’s a process in which the coach and the client partner together to focus on the client’s agenda and help the client achieve his or her full potential.

It’s client-focused. It’s not about what anybody else wants for you—it’s all about what you want for you. The coach’s agenda should only be your agenda as the client. It’s also about identifying your goals and then creating a plan to achieve them.

Some people already know what their goals are, but a coach can help you clarify those goals, streamline those goals, and then help you create a plan to achieve them. I guess if it were that simple, people could do this without a coach. But one of the things that happens is that obstacles crop up for us.

Coaches who are trained are trained to help you figure out what those obstacles are. There are lots of external obstacles that might get in your way. For example, “I want to become an Olympic snow skier, but I live on a volcano in Hawaii.” Or, “I want to become a judge, but I don’t have a law degree.” Or, “I want to be a partner, but I’ve been practicing for six months.” That kind of thing.

There are external goals that we know about. Much of what gets in people's way are the internal goals—the stuff that kind of gets us stuck. Some people call it head trash. Coaches might call it gremlins. There are all sorts of different things that get in our way.

Coaches are adept at helping you figure out what those are, bring them to the surface, and then either eliminate them or navigate them. Again, it's about maximizing your potential, figuring out what you want, and then developing a plan to achieve it.

Coaches also provide a lot of support. They may have systems in place to help you figure out how to do everything I've just mentioned. There may be structures in place. You'll get feedback from your coach, and it should be very neutral feedback—what the coach is observing or asking you what you're observing.

So it's a process of questioning, helping you come up with solutions, potentially giving you ideas, but never telling you what the coach thinks you should be doing. They might recommend that you think things through. You might hear a question like, "Well, I know a client who's done something like this. How does that land for you? Is that something you might be willing to try?"

Coaching is different from some other paradigms out there. For example, it's different from consulting. Typically, in consulting, a consultant will come in, evaluate the situation, and then tell you what the consultant thinks you should do. They may or may not stick around to implement it for you or help you implement it.

Coaching is more of that partnership that I mentioned, where the coach and the client are on a level playing field, just bringing different things to the table.

It's also different from mentoring. In mentoring, typically, you've got someone who has been around the block, if you will, on a particular topic. Someone who already made partner, let's say, if you're interested in making partner, and can tell you how they got where they were going and give you some advice about what they think you might want to do.

Mentoring is all about them leveraging their experience and sharing their experience with you so that you can learn from it. They may also be a shoulder to cry on, a sounding board, but it's different from coaching because they're really sharing their experience with you and hoping you learn from that.

People also sometimes get confused about the difference between coaching and training. Without going into too much detail, training is really more about information transfer, knowledge transfer. You might go and sit in a group, or you might do an online training or something like that where it's just you. But the idea is to share information with you in a more general way—maybe turn the light bulb on for you about something. Maybe you learn something new or you remember something that you've forgotten.

Coaching is a fantastic follow-up to training because what we know about training is that most people will go back to their desk, even if they thought the training was fantastic, and do the same thing they always have.

First of all, we're human beings, and so we are creatures of habit. Once we're in a habit, we tend to continue it. And second of all, as lawyers, we're mostly driven by the billable hour. And so to suddenly go back to your desk and make wholesale change can be very challenging.

The reason coaching is such a great add-on to training, and the way in which it's different from training, is that it's all about two things in my view: customization and making it work for you. How do you take the principles of the seminar or training workshop that you've learned and customize it for who you are as a person and what's going to work well for you? It's the idea of taking it from the 30,000-foot view to the 1,000-foot view.

The second thing that I think coaching does that's very different from training is it helps you with implementation. Many times, people talk about accountability when it comes to coaching, and I think sometimes people get confused about what the accountability piece of it means. Some people think they're accountable to their coach.

What I always say to people is, "You're not accountable to your coach. You're not accountable to me. It's my job as a coach to help keep you accountable to the goals that you've set for yourself." How do I help you navigate the obstacles? How do I help you make time in your schedule for it? How do I help you conquer some of the head trash that you have that's getting in your way? How do I help you stay on the path and stay focused even when there are so many other things going on in your life?

So that's where the accountability comes in, and people find that immensely helpful. Many coaches have their own coaches because while they may be really good coaches for their clients, they also benefit from having some structure and having someone to hold them accountable to their own goals.

How does someone become a coach? Is it a licensed profession? Do you go to coach training? How does all of that work?

Becoming a coach doesn't follow a single standardized path. Unlike therapists, psychologists, or lawyers, coaching is not a licensed profession in most countries.

What that means is that virtually anybody can hang out her own shingle, call herself a coach, and set herself up in business. I mention that because I want you to be clear that when you hire a coach, there are lots of different ways to make the decision about who is the right coach for you. One of them for you may or may not be whether this person has a tremendous amount of experience, what kind of experience they have, or whether they've been trained as a coach or not.

Be aware that coaching, because it's not licensed, is a self-regulated profession. What does that mean? So again, anybody can become a coach, have a business, and start taking in clients. They don't need to be part of any kind of organization. They don't need to subscribe to a set of ethical standards. They don't need to take coach training.

Having said that, there are a number of organizations out there that are self-regulating bodies of the coaching profession. Perhaps the most well-known of those is the International Coaching Federation. I am a member of the International Coaching Federation, and in fact, many, many years ago, I was actually the president of the New Jersey Chapter of the International Coaching Federation or the ICF.

The ICF does a number of different things. First of all, believe it or not, there are over 50,000 members in more than 150 countries and territories worldwide as of the data that I saw from January of 2022. There are actually chapters in more than 80 countries and territories.

There are a lot of coaches out there. In order to be a member of the ICF, you need to demonstrate that you have had certain kinds of training. There are different ways to get your training hours. You can be in a formal coach training program, which is what I did. I went to a formal coach training program, and I had a certain number of hours of coach-specific training, as they call it.

There are unaccredited programs that people go through, but then there are accredited programs. I chose to go through an ICF-accredited program, probably because, as a lawyer, I'm a little bit compulsive about that sort of thing. I'm glad I did it.

In addition to accrediting training programs, the ICF also has certain credentials that you can earn. There are three credentials right now: ACC – Associate Certified Coach, PCC – Professional Certified Coach, MCC – Master Certified Coach.

I am a Professional Certified Coach. I happen to be eligible for Master Certified Coach with the number of hours that I have under my belt and the experience that I have. There are a number of hoops, more training, and testing that I would have to go through in order to become an MCC. At the time of this taping, I haven't taken that on yet, but I'll update you at some point if I wind up doing that.

Just know that there is a self-regulating body of the profession. There are several of them, but the ICF is the most popular one. If it's important to you, you might want to make sure that any coach you hire has had coach-specific training, has credentials, and has signed on for the ethical obligations that the ICF requires, and that sort of thing so you know that you've got someone who's educated on what coaching really is and that they're not trying to act like a therapist or a consultant when what you're really looking for is coaching.

Another question that comes up is: Who is coaching for? I think a lot of people used to think that coaching was really only for struggling lawyers, let's say. It's really changed to the point where instead of somebody saying, "Well, why on earth are you giving me a coach? Do you think there's something wrong with me?" it has become more like, "Well, why don’t I have a coach?"

Because if somebody is offered a coach by their firm, it usually is an indication that the firm has a lot of respect for them, views them as highly talented, views them as high potential for being a rainmaker or being a leader. So they're willing to invest in that person—to invest money, time, and energy in that person.

At The Lawyer’s Edge, our clients are all lawyers, as I've mentioned, and they’re often lawyers who are looking to make it to the next level, whatever that looks like. For example, it might be a senior associate or counsel who wants to become partner and recognizes that there are certain skills that they need to demonstrate in order to be considered for partner. Those may be rainmaking skills. Those may be leadership skills.

It could be a junior to mid-level partner who’s in a similar situation. Maybe they're a non-equity partner and they want to make equity partner. Maybe they see themselves being at the firm for a long time and they want to develop some of the leadership skills that would allow them to become a practice group chair or sit on an important committee such as the compensation committee or the management committee.

At our firm, we do a tremendous amount of work—the vast majority of our work—with people who want to become rainmakers and leaders.

One common misconception about coaching is "I don’t have time for this." It’s not necessarily super time-consuming.

I'm going to, in a few minutes, tell you a little bit more about how it typically works, but I'm a big believer in investing in yourself and taking the time and investing the energy that allows you to level up in whatever way you want—to build a book of business, develop leadership skills, and navigate transitions.

I'm assuming I've convinced you for a moment that coaching is a good idea. Potentially. How does coaching work? So every coach is going to do things a little bit differently, but there are things that you typically see in the industry.

I'll tell you a little bit about how coaching typically works with my firm and tell you a little bit about other things that I've heard so I can give you an idea of what it looks like and sounds like.

Typically what happens at The Lawyer’s Edge is that an individual reaches out to us and says, "Hey, I'm thinking about the possibility of having coaching. Here are a couple of the things that I want to achieve, and I think a coach may be able to help me."

Or a law firm reaches out. We do have some existing relationships with law firms who regularly send us some of their attorneys for coaching. Or a law firm may reach out and say they have someone specific in mind for coaching.

When that happens, what we do is we set up what I call a complimentary coaching consultation. We get on the phone with you for 30 minutes or so and we start asking you some questions: "What made you decide to reach out to a coach at this point? What is it that you're looking to achieve? Let’s say you get that—what is that going to do for you?"

So now we're uncovering motivations. How is this going to change this person’s life? What are they going to be able to do that's different from what they've done? How are they going to feel different? What is that going to mean for them in terms of their relationships, both inside and outside the office?

Another question we often ask is, "What’s getting in your way? What do you think could get in your way? What kinds of obstacles do you think you're experiencing now?"

And then, if we think that we can help them—You know, we don’t work with everybody. We’re not here just to suck the money out of people’s pockets. We want to make sure, as I hope you're doing as a lawyer, that we’re working with the right people so we can really be of service to them, really help them find value, and knock it out of the park for them.

When we think the person could be a good fit for coaching, we talk to them about what that looks like, and I'll get to that in a few minutes. If they're interested in doing it, then we get them onboarded.

What coaching typically looks like for us is we ask our clients to commit to a six-month coaching engagement.

What we know is that coaching for less than six months is not likely to get people where they want to go because the kinds of things that we're working with our clients on are not the kinds of things that are just going to happen overnight.

So if you are starting from scratch and want to develop a book of business, let's say, or you even have two or three or five million dollars in business and you want to grow that book even bigger—that's not something that's going to happen in a two-week timeframe, let's say, or in a month.

When I first started coaching, I was doing three-month coaching engagements because that was what was recommended to me by my coach training program. What I learned was that at the three-month mark was really around the time people started seeing some results, settling into coaching, feeling like they had gotten a great direction, and they were focused and intentional and moving in the right direction.

We want to be with them longer than that to help them really cement what they're doing, feel comfortable with it, and if they want, feel that they can take it over on their own without the additional support of a coach.

Many of our clients stay on for much longer, in many cases years, because they are getting value out of the coaching process. When I was in coach training, they also talked to us about talking to people every week. What I have found is that for lawyers, that's simply too much contact with the coach one-on-one. Lawyers are busy.

What we do is six months of coaching, that's typically 12 sessions. So, you're talking to your coach every two to three weeks. What I think that does is it allows you to have enough time between coaching sessions to actually execute on the things that we're talking about.

We're executing on things that you've committed to. I'm not giving you a to-do list. We co-create a to-do list. You sign on to that. So it gives you enough time to take action on those things, but not enough time to let it fall by the wayside.

I've had clients say to me, "Hey, what if we just talk once every couple of months or once a month?" And I say, "Look, if you've been working with me for a really long time and I know that you're really great at executing and not getting distracted by bright, shiny objects, then yeah, absolutely, we can do that. But in the beginning, we really do insist on doing it via this structure because we know that that's what works."

You're getting together with your coach, you're talking about what you want to achieve, you're setting goals, you're getting together regularly with your coach.

In our case, you always have email access to your coach and we'll always hop on a quick 10 to 15-minute laser coaching call, if you want to call it that, if you need us in the interim.

But it's mainly the regular sessions along with what we call infographics or action sheets—information that we can share with you, things that you can fill out, things that we've developed over time because we know what some of the questions are that lawyers have and what some of the issues are that they're grappling with. We try to make it as easy as possible for you to get some answers and some clarity inside your own head.

Our individual coaching does have a structure to it, and at the same time, it is very unique to each lawyer. We customize our approach and we tailor our approach to the lawyer in front of us. When you're getting individual coaching, you are being coached in a way that works for you. Of course, you get to tell us what's working and what isn't working, and we continue to tweak the process until we know that it is exactly what you need.

One question I get asked is, "What kind of results can I expect from coaching?" I don't know how else to say this except to say that if a coach promises you results, like, "I'm going to make sure that you grow your business by X% in the next six months," or "I guarantee you that if you work with me, you'll make practice group leader," I beg you to run screaming in the other direction.

Coaches should not be promising you outcomes. What a coach can promise, and what I promise my clients—and everybody at The Lawyer’s Edge does the same thing—is that we are going to show up for you every single time and knock it out of the park for you.

We are going to follow good coaching guidelines. We are going to customize it for you. We are going to help you figure out what's the best fit for you. We’re going to show up 110%.

What we don't know is what the client is going to do. What I can tell you is that if you participate enthusiastically in the coaching process, you can expect change. You can expect to: Clarify your goals, figure out what's going to be a good fit for you, take action, start moving the needle, even if it's in small incremental steps.

When you find the right coach, commit to the coaching process, and become a partner with your coach—who is doing a good job of partnering with you—you can get that clarity, develop a plan, eliminate or address the potential obstacles, and then consistently take concrete action in the direction of your goals.

Some examples of clients that I'm working with right now, or I've worked with recently: I recently worked with a counsel in a law firm with about 30 lawyers who wanted to make partner but knew she had to get serious about business development and get some traction so she could demonstrate to the decision-makers in her firm that not only is she an exceptional lawyer, but she is also willing and able to drive business generation for the firm.

We worked together for some time, and she recently did make partner, which was pretty exciting. I'm also working with the founder and managing partner of a prominent boutique firm that specializes in one particular area and has a very large book of business, about $6 million or so.

He's really focused now on growing the next generation of rainmakers and leaders in his firm, so he can continue to focus on his book of business and grow that, and also help the firm succeed even when he's gone.

This law firm is kind of his baby. He loves the people that he's hired. He's very happy with how things are going. But we know that not every law firm survives into the next generation so he's very committed to making sure that he is preparing those future leaders—what lawyers call succession planning.

Many senior leaders aren't thinking about succession planning, but the ones who are, we often work with to help them figure out how to make that happen. Should you choose a firm that specializes in coaching lawyers? Obviously, I'm pretty biased. I'll tell you a little bit about why I think that might be a really good idea.

We're often contacted by lawyers who have had coaching in the past, but they really weren't satisfied with the experience. Typically, the first question I will ask someone when they come to one of those complimentary coaching consultations is, "I'm curious, how much do you know about coaching? Have you had a coach? Do you have a friend that's a coach? What is your experience like?"

And the reason I ask that question is because I want to know whether they've had a positive experience with coaching. I also want to make sure that they understand what coaching is in a similar way to how I've described it to you.

Oftentimes, lawyers will say to me, "Well, I had a coach in the past and it wasn't a great experience. I wasn't that satisfied because the coach wasn't a lawyer. He was a nice guy. I have nothing negative to say about him, but he didn't understand how law firms work. He didn't understand how we get our clients, the pressures that we're under, what my law school experience looked like. It was all really general, and I needed something more specific that I could act upon—things that made sense for me, my practice area, my level of experience."

I've also occasionally heard, "Well, she's nice and she means well, but she was mostly a cheerleader." If I said I was doing something, she would say, "Wow, that's great. You rock. Keep doing that." And the client will say, "I needed more practical guidance and ideas. I didn't need to just pay for a cheerleader."

Our clients at The Lawyer's Edge come to us because we are trained and certified professional coaches who have decades of experience in private practice law firms. We are former practicing lawyers and former marketing and business development professionals for law firms.

We understand what you got from your legal education—and maybe more importantly—what you didn't get in terms of practical education and how to be a successful private practice lawyer. We understand law firm economics and politics. We understand how compensation and promotions work in law firms, the different opportunities and challenges experienced by lawyers at every level, whether they're associates, non-equity partners, equity partners, practice group leaders, managing partners, because those are the clients we're working with every day.

We also speak the language of private practice lawyers and law firms. We're not using corporate speak, and we're not trying to get lawyers to do things that might work for other sorts of businesses but don't really make sense in the legal context.

Understanding the legal profession's nuances, I believe, makes a huge difference for our clients in terms of achieving meaningful results. There's nothing general about what we do.

Does that mean that someone who isn't a former practicing lawyer or former law firm administrator can't help you? Absolutely not. Does that mean that someone who is not trained as a coach can't help you? Absolutely not. But I do believe—and again, I'm biased—I do believe, and I have seen, that for lawyers, when people are trained, they understand what coaching is and isn't.

They have that experience with lawyers, and they understand the legal profession deeply, that they make a big difference in terms of helping lawyers achieve the goals they've set out to achieve.

If coaching sounds like it might be a good fit for you, I invite you to explore our website for more information and to reach out to us for a complimentary coaching consultation. As I mentioned, we'll chat with you about your goals, find out what might be getting in your way of achieving them, and then help you determine whether working with us would be a good fit.

I just want to be clear that there will never be any pressure to become a client. We don't work that way. We only work with people when it's a good fit, not just for you, but for us as well.

Visit us at thelawyersedge.com. You can fill out the contact form on our website and we'll get right back to you, or you can reach out to us at hello@thelawyersedge.com. We look forward to connecting with you. In the meantime, be bold, take action, and make things happen. We'll see you next time.