The Conscious Lawyer: Courageous leadership for high-performing professionals

By Kiran Scarr

Don’t just produce results, unleash potential.

Radical disruption in the legal sector has meant increased pressure on lawyers to be strategic business enablers and innovators. Today, leaders of law firms and legal functions must steer change more effectively to create client-centric solutions for the businesses they serve. But this requires a new set of leadership skills focused on delivering success through vision and values, purpose over profits and positive impact on people.

The Conscious Lawyer is a simple, powerful roadmap for professionals seeking a more meaningful way of leading high-performing teams through change. Discover a fresh perspective on how you can reshape your leadership to advance the future of law.

As an international lawyer, general counsel and law firm COO, Kiran Chawla Scarr has spent a global career leading transformational change in the legal sector. Widely recognized and awarded for transformative leadership, process innovation and contribution to the legal community, she is a prominent voice on the future of law.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Practical Inspiration Publishing
• Release date: Jun 26, 2023
• ISBN: 9781788604451

Kiran Scarr

As an international lawyer, general counsel and law firm Chief Operating Officer, Kiran Chawla Scarr has spent a global career leading transformational change in the legal sector. Her experience has been widely recognized: she has been multi-awarded individually as General Counsel of the Year and with her teams for legal technology innovation, compliance innovation, championing diversity and contribution to the in-house legal community. A prominent keynote speaker and thought leader on leading through change, she is a regular contributor to legal and business publications on the future of law. Kiran holds an LLB (Hons) from University of Glasgow and worked 25+ years as a lawyer in UK, Australia, Singapore and the Middle East. She is a 30% Club mentor to senior female leaders and a qualified executive coach, helping law firms and legal departments transform the way they lead themselves and their businesses through global challenge and disruption.

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Preface

Where it began

It is 14 February 2018, a cold, crisp day at the top of a ski mountain in the French Alps. I look up at the cloudless sky and smile; it is my first day on a long-overdue holiday. I kick off, feeling the thrill of my first descent through the powdery snow. I stop mid-slope to allow a group of small children to zigzag past me. I am observing how freely they move when, suddenly, my legs are thrown above my head and I am falling through the air. Silence engulfs me except for one sound, a twig snapping. But it is not a twig that has snapped. It is the anterior cruciate ligament in my right knee. What I just heard was the sound of a clean tear.

I have been hit from behind by a skier. What follows is an evacuation by stretcher to the local emergency room, where a doctor comes to examine me. ‘Where does it hurt?’ she asks. I look at her straight. ‘I have an extremely high pain threshold’, I respond. The doctor is confused. She asks me again, ‘Where do you feel the pain?’ I lie there in silence. Tears start to well in my eyes. ‘Don’t cry,’ she says, ‘I can help you.’ I close my eyes, hurriedly wiping the tears as they surface. I am overcome with shame. At that moment, lying broken on a hospital bed, I realize I cannot admit to being in pain.

That accident started a rehabilitative journey for not only my knee but also my head, my heart, and my soul. My post-operation recovery became an exploration into my relationship with pain, my inability to ask for help, and my unwillingness to accept defeat. Through this challenging process of discovery, I started to explore my definition of success and fulfilment. Not knowing where this journey would take me, I was simply compelled to go on. What I did not know then was that I had started on the path of transformation to being a conscious lawyer.

Why it is time to change

Lawyers are under unprecedented levels of pressure and stress from global challenges, technological disruption, and generational shifts in the workplace. We must deliver more with less. We must create new business models, innovative solutions to meet client demands, and better talent retention capabilities.

As high-performing professionals, we define success through delivering exceptional results. The more we achieve, the deeper we dig in and push for even better results to maintain our positions at the top. The financial rewards are great, but the cost to our personal fulfilment is high.

We have never needed leadership transformation as much as we do right now. Leaders of law firms and legal functions are being called on to be creative and innovative leaders of change. But in the absence of knowing how to change, we simply soldier on, unconsciously surrendering to diminishing fulfilment in life and work. But there is a path ahead that we can take. We can choose to be conscious lawyers.

What it means to be a conscious lawyer

When we choose to lead consciously, we are choosing a journey that teaches us to shift attention from doing high performance to being leaders in our own lives. It means purposefully stepping into a higher level of responsibility and integrity to lead through disruptive change in the legal sector.

Conscious lawyers shift focus from producing high performance results to unleashing untapped potential in people. This requires a courageous leap to valuing learning over performance and process over results. We become growth leaders of change by building new leadership skills focused on transforming how we deliver success, prioritizing vision and values, purpose over profits, and positive impact on people.

Conscious lawyers engage people in the higher purpose of transforming legal operations, resourcing, and service delivery. And in doing so, they empower the change leaders of tomorrow to fulfil their highest potential in delivering the future of law.

I have written The Conscious Lawyer to help you discover a more meaningful way of leading high-performing teams through change in the legal sector.

My approach

In Chapter 3, I outline my CARE model – a four-leap process that takes you through the shift from leading high performance results to unleashing untapped potential in people. In describing the model, I have drawn heavily on my own experience as an international lawyer, general counsel, and law firm chief operating officer (COO). I have also leaned on my experience as an executive coach helping leaders of law firms and legal functions transform how they lead themselves and others through change. There are some points that I must clarify.

First, my case studies, examples, and stories are a combination of facts and circumstances that are grounded in truth but have been adapted and developed to protect the confidentiality of the people involved. I identify individuals using random initials rather than actual names. In some cases, I have merged events or individuals where they relate to similar themes or points. As a result, there are cases where I have erred on the side of sanctity of trust over sanctity of truth.

Second, I have tried to be gender agnostic in my case studies, examples, and stories. I am a passionate believer that radical change in the legal sector will come with greater diversity at board level in law firms and corporates, particularly through the promotion of women. However, I do not believe that the skills required to lead law firms and corporate legal functions are defined according to gender, race, religion, creed, or any other factor that may differentiate us. We all must evolve our leadership skill sets to create meaningful change for the people we serve. And we are all capable of change; it is simply a choice.

Finally, I wrote The Conscious Lawyer for lawyers and non-lawyer professionals working in the legal sector, because my passion lies in helping others advance the future of law. However, the learnings I share relate to issues affecting people in any sector facing disruption or global challenge. I hope the learnings in this book will give them food for thought too.

My path to being a conscious lawyer continues today, as it has for many days, months, and years. With each day comes greater learning. With each step forward, I come closer to fulfilling a deeper purpose in my life and work.

As we connect to our own consciousness,

We give others permission to connect to their consciousness too,

So that we

Unlock greater meaning in our work,

Serve people in our lives, and

Have greater impact on this earth.

Chapter 1

Doing high performance

The problem with being a high-performing professional is that it can be rewarding and punishing in equal measure. The aspects of the job that provide us with wealth, power, and status also rob us of our self-worth. The more we do, the less we feel. It’s time to change.

How we are taught to behave

When I look back at the 15 plus years I spent as a private practice lawyer, the word that consistently comes to mind is ‘striving’. No amount of effort was ever enough. The primary measures of my performance were quantity and quality of input. Because of this, I poured the contents of my soul into being smarter, quicker, and keener than those around me. In the constant pursuit of perfection, I did not have time or space to connect to the bigger picture.

So focused was I on the glimpse of partnership at the end of a long, dark, and winding tunnel, there was no room for reflection, reality checks, or connection to me. The more machine-like I operated, the more seamless my delivery became. As the cogs continued to turn at increasing personal cost, I dug deeper into my reserves and submerged any doubts as to whether I would get there. It was all about results – being on the best deals, delivering the strongest outcomes and fighting for the next opportunity – to prove my strength and hunger.

It strikes me now how the terminology used in the law firms where I worked reflected how we were expected to behave. Partners would refer to junior associates as ‘troops’. Litigators had ‘war rooms’ and would talk in terms of ‘crushing opponents’, as if we had been posted to an eternal battlefield. In conversations with my peers now, we share stories of how it felt to be a young associate moving up the ranks of private practice. How we did not raise concerns or grievances in fear of being seen as weak or not a team player. And we talk about the impact this had on how we learnt to behave. For many of us, over time, our armour simply toughened and our resilience hardened. We soldiered on.

Does any of this resonate with you? Do you treat every challenge as a competition to be the best? In the face of challenge or obstacle, do you lean in and hustle your way through until you get what you want? How did you learn to behave? Certainly, in my case, I majored in the military approach to high performance. I would issue orders at will, expect loyalty and excellence from everyone, and demand results that met the highest of standards. People showed appreciation for my command and authority, my willingness to roll up my sleeves, and my ability to absorb and withstand the highest of pressures. My team showed respect for the flair I had for transforming stress into power.

The source of my power came from my ability to deliver exceptional results. In the context of Maxwell’s (2013) five levels of leadership (refer to Table 1.1), I was operating squarely at Level 3 (production). The Level 3 leader gains credibility and influence not only because of their ability and competency but also because of their track record of success – the quantity and quality of work delivered. They are the quintessential ‘high performer’ with a reputation for tackling tough problems, solving the most complex of issues, and taking other people to a higher standard of effectiveness.

Table 1.1 John C. Maxwell’s five levels of leadership as they relate to positions in the legal sector

Source: adapted from Maxwell (2013)

By upholding the traditional focus on financial results, Level 3 leaders can deploy resources and directly control achievement of goals and targets with maximized efficiency and effectiveness. Teams become high performing under this leadership approach because it gets the desired results – that is, specific, short-term business objectives are met. Success flows from this: leaders are recognized in their fields, attract awards for their deals, and are financially rewarded for their efforts. By making financial performance requirements the primary focus, they come to be relied on for exceptional results and profits year on year.

How we are measured

Law firms and corporates love performance criteria that measure people by revenues, profits per equity partner, cost savings, billable hours, and other financial indicators. When the primary success criterion by which we are measured is financial return from our efforts, our choices align with the most direct route to this destination. We are judged not on how we behave, but on what we deliver, so we shift our focus to demonstrating solutions and results, at whatever cost.

During my career, I spent some time observing the behaviour and interactions of a team of equity partners in an exceptionally high-performing international law practice. Table 1.2 describes what it looked like from where I was sitting.

Table 1.2 What high performance looks like in an international law practice

In truth, at the time, I accepted these indicators at face value as the measures of success. In hindsight, I realize they translate into toxic workplace behaviour (this is discussed in greater detail in Chapter 12). In the context of my experience of people’s behaviour in law firms, the impact of this environment was that we were measured not by our potential capacity for future success, but by our ability to deliver in the now. This meant that my decisions about what deals to work on were principally political, based on which partners I wanted to align with and for what specific purpose, rather than on long-term opportunity or potential for learning. I would grab every chance of new work from the partner who could advance my career quickest. As my success grew, I drew greater satisfaction from my results.

How high performers perceive themselves

I liked being a high performer; it was serving me very well. I had a strong team of lawyers who consistently sought to work with me. I felt pride in what I was able to consistently deliver. I would take command of what needed to be done, and I could make things happen. My instructions were always clear, concise, and results orientated. I was straightforward and conscious of time and time wasters. I was also very deliberate, thorough, and logical. My approach was systematic and disciplined. I remained calm and level-headed even in the throes of crisis or deadline.

It was robotic, in truth. Efficient, dependable, reliable. I liked it that way. It meant I had control. By reducing scope for uncertainty, delay, or complication, I could increase the likelihood of goal achievement on time and in budget. And I was sure my team loved it too. They knew what was expected of them and how high the bar was set in respect of quantity and quality of effort. I was always clear and exact in my feedback to them. I would not sugarcoat the negative, strong in my view that they would appreciate the openness and honesty of where they fell short of my high expectations. How else would they learn? And in appreciation of what we had achieved, I always ensured we celebrated a win or the closing of a deal. I was leading high performance and the results made me look and feel good; my ego shone bright.

The power gap

What I did not appreciate at the time when I was leading high performance was the cost of this endless execution. There may have been big wins, big deals, big results, but there was not much humanity. There was little space for what makes us human: vulnerability, humility, self-awareness, creativity. There was little acknowledgement of what I was experiencing in my daily life: detachment, desensitization, diminution of self-worth. Work had become an addiction; I was focusing on the next fix of a deal rather than facing the reality of the experience of a life I had created for myself.

When I donned my high-performance armour, I felt at my most powerful. On the fleeting occasions I stepped out of this armour – at home in private, sometimes with friends – it felt uncomfortable, uneasy, alien. I preferred to stay in character, knowing that the self I created would be perceived better than the version that lay beneath. High performance had created a power gap within me. On the surface, I was strong, solid, reflective of success. I had created an image for myself, and in time, I felt compelled to demonstrate that I was living up to this image. Rather than sit in the reality of how it felt to be vulnerable, in need of care and support, the impression of myself as a strong and powerful leader started to drive my choices and decisions in life. Work was my utmost priority, to be maintained above all. Demands became what I ‘should’ do instead of