Who we work with

SMALL AND MID-SIZE FIRMS that have recognized areas for improvement and want to make firm-wide changes, but that need help from an expert to make that change a reality

• Generational challenges
  • The partners/shareholders are frustrated with the associates, who aren’t working hard enough and need to take more ‘ownership’ of their work
• Attrition and Recruitment
  • The firm is having attrition problems or having trouble recruiting top talent
• Associate Underperformance
  • The associates need to perform better (and bill more), but… the current training isn’t accomplishing that
  • ‘Baptism by fire’ / ‘throwing people into the deep end’ is clearly not resonating with the current group of associates
• Culture Shifts
  • The firm knows it needs to shift its culture, but it’s hard to even know where to start or how to go about bringing about that change. All you know so far is that something needs to change!
• Supervisory/Management Challenges
  • The lawyers supervising the associates have never been trained in management/supervisory best practices (and even if they had been, no one is following them or knows how to do that while maintaining a busy practice!)
• Hard Conversations Need to Happen
  • You know the hard conversations need to happen, but you don’t want to be the one having them (and quite frankly, even if you do have them, you know you’re going to need help executing on any potential changes)

LARGE FIRMS (AMLAW 100 AND 200) who are looking to make changes in specific practice groups or with their general training and development programs

• Culture Change
  • We know changing BigLaw culture is next to impossible (we’ve been down that path before). So instead, we work with practice groups or certain teams within a firm to drive the change that is needed
• Learning & Development
  • Some firms don’t want to rely on outside trainers indefinitely, but they know their current training is full of talking heads, boring PowerPoint presentations, and just isn’t resonating with their associates
  • Firms come to us to review the status quo, figure out what the real gaps are, and then build and oversee the launch of their new training programs to make sure things go well!
• Training Coaches
  • Many firms want to build out their own internal coaching programs
  • We help ‘train the trainer’ and ensure these programs are built properly and function the way firms want them to!
• Mentorship
  • At some firms, we act as a ‘mentor-in-your-pocket’ for corporate associates
  • The associates are able to reach out to us in real time to ‘pick our brain’ on files (we have NDAs in place of course, and we obviously manage all conflicts)
  • This helps fill the gap between the associates needing more feedback, the partners not having time, and the associates not wanting to ask the ‘dumb’ questions internally

Our approach to consulting (and our fees)

The Assessment Package ($7,495)

• Initial conversation and fact finding with our initial contact from your firm
• 5, 1-hour Zoom sessions with the key group (e.g. Exec Committee members) who we’ll be working with
  • Each session is deliberately structured to identify key issues and root causes (which are rarely what firms think they will be) and to generate buy-in from the key group
• Delivery of an initial written assessment, suggested next steps, potential timelines, and fees
• We work on your timeline - the faster you want to start, the faster we’ll get started!
• We recommend scheduling sessions 1-2x a week (but not more frequently)
• As you’ll see below, we offer a full money-back guarantee if you aren’t happy with our work (Full money-back guarantee)!

Consulting Next Steps

• After you review our written assessment, we’ll get aligned on the scope of work for next steps
• Even though your firm likely bills most of its clients hourly, we know you want cost certainty - and that’s fine by us!
• We’ll get advance approval on fixed fees/fee estimates before starting any subsequent phases of our engagement
• We know the scope will change over time, and we work flexibly with firms to accommodate those scope changes!

Courses and Coaching

• As part of the execution plan, most firms request that we run group courses () and engage in 1-on-1 coaching with certain people (Coaching - 4L Academy)
• We have the most practical training programs out there, and we don’t leave you to figure out how to implement change yourself
• In addition to the steps we’ll take as part of our consulting work with you to drive culture change, we also drive that through our courses and coaching
• Each course can accommodate a maximum of 30 people (we don’t recommend more than that); we typically run sessions either weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly

Why us

• The partners at your firm don’t have time to coach or train. And even if they did, most of them aren’t very good at coaching or training!
• When it comes to consulting, well… let’s just say if your firm was confident in its ability to drive this change on their own, they wouldn’t be coming to us. It’s not your fault- law schools don’t teach this at all, and most attorneys aren’t aware of what best practices look like outside of the legal profession
• Your learning and development and professional development teams are great, but they aren’t in the thick of things. They don’t know what it’s like to be a practicing attorney today
• As we all know (even though it doesn’t make that much sense), attorneys take advice way better from people who are in their shoes. They respond much better to feedback and coaching from someone who can say ‘I dealt with this yesterday in my practice - it was challenging, but here’s what I did, and here’s why I think that might help you’
• Most coaches, consultants, and trainers haven’t practiced law in ages and they don’t relate to Gen Z and Millennial lawyers
• Most consultants have their heads in the clouds. They are great at knowing what the ‘ideal’ situation looks like, but as for how to go from A (status quo) to Z (where you need to get), well… they leave that for you to figure out. We’ve worked with enough firms who have mistakenly believed that figuring out a strategy was the easy part. The reality is that the execution on a strategy is the hard part, and thankfully that’s an area that we excel in and really enjoy!
• How many people at your firm have:
  • Been BigLaw partners
  • Built their own book of business from scratch
  • Run a law firm (and had to overhaul the firm entirely to make it run the way it needed to)
  • Trained thousands of people and coached hundreds
  • Understand neurodiversity, what it’s like to be an associate today, and what it’s like to be a partner who is juggling dozens of files at a time
• We’re 1 of 1. There is nobody else out there like us in the legal profession
• We are walking in the shoes every day of the people with whom we are coaching, training, and consulting
• Stop relying on ‘those who can’t do, teach’. Start relying on those who can do (and actually do). We practice what we preach, and we preach what we practice.
• Feel free to stick with the status quo and the tried‑and‑true consultants, coaches, and trainers. And feel free to keep hoping the people at your firm - the same ones who get no billable credit for mentorship and training and are overworked - will solve it. You’ll get the same results you always have: attrition, burnout, and frustration