This article is kindly sponsored by your Career Big Sis, Mel Storey and her podcast, Counsel! Counsel is a podcast for in-house lawyers (and those that want to be one) hosted by an in-house lawyer with over 10 years’ experience, Mel Storey. Mel interviews key people in the profession, demystifies life as an in-house lawyer and shares the good, the bad and the really good! Find it wherever you get your pods. Mel also shares daily career insights on her Instagram and TikTok @theinhouselawyer.

There isn’t a clear point when lawyers shift from a junior role to a supervisor one. Somewhere between years 3 to 6 of my career, I went through that transition. Although there are guides on the ‘how-to’ aspects of becoming a supervisor (I’ve even written a few!), I wasn’t prepared for the mindset change and self-reflection needed to be a good supervisor. In case it helps, I’ve set out some of the issues that I’ve encountered, stories that guide my approach to supervising, and the lessons that I’ve picked up from them.

Issue #1 – “It’ll be better / faster if I just do this myself.”

When I became a senior associate, my partner warned me about becoming a ‘hold point’ for work. As a junior, we get so used to doing the work ourselves that it can be hard to start delegating properly. Especially when we are responsible for reviewing the delegated work – it’s easy to think “it’s faster / better if I just do it”.

Story – “Who’s got the monkey?”

There’s an article from the Harvard Business Review called “Management Time: Who’s Got the Monkey?”. In the article, tasks or problems that an employee brings to their manager are thought of as ‘monkeys’. Often employees will come to their managers with a problem (the monkey) and the manager, instead of helping the employee to solve the problem themselves, will take on the problem, meaning the monkey has now jumped onto the manager’s back. Managers end up shouldering numerous monkeys, which holds back their ability to manage effectively and can contribute to work overload, while at the same time employees aren’t learning how to take care of the ‘monkeys’ at all.

Instead, the manager should aim to keep the monkey on the employee’s back, guiding and coaching the employee to “feed the monkey” themselves. Employees develop the right skills, managers can focus on areas that they can add more value than the employees (while freeing up time for their own learning), and bottlenecks are minimised.

Lesson

There might be times when we have to take over a junior’s work / problems (especially with tight deadlines etc.), but we should try to leave the work that’s within their ability to them by:

• fixing up a smaller part of the junior’s work and providing specific feedback for them to fix up the rest, instead of amending everything ourselves; and

• working out timelines that give you a chance to review and the junior to do the revisions following your feedback;

• providing guidance instead of answers; and
  
  
• giving the opportunity for regular check-ins to deal with issues.

1.  

Above all, whenever a junior comes to you with a problem, ask yourself – does the junior still have the monkey, or has it hopped over to you?

Issue #2 – “I don’t trust the juniors that I need to delegate to.”

In law firms, it’s surprising how quickly some seniors label juniors as incompetent or lazy.

Unfortunately, you’ve probably seen this too – a senior assigns a task and receives sub-standard work so they get frustrated and lower their expectations, complain to others, or even try to not work with that junior again.

The problem is that this sets up a self-fulfilling prophecy. Especially if that first sub-standard work resulted from poor instructions, unreasonable deadlines, or other reasons outside of the junior’s control.

Story – “The Pygmalian Experiment”

There’s an experiment from the 1960’s that proved how these self-fulfilling prophesies can occur and the real impact that they have.

At the beginning of the school year, 2 psychologists carried out an IQ test on students in an elementary school. Then they identified 20% of the students as “high achievers” to the teachers.

The researchers monitored the academic performance of the “high achievers” and “non-high achievers”. At the end of the year, it was found that the “high achievers” showed significantly greater improvement in their academic performance.

But in reality, there were no “high achievers”. The “high achievers” group was chosen at random and their actual IQ test scores weren’t even considered.

So, why was there a real difference in academic improvement?

It all tracked back to the expectations of the teachers, and how those expectations actually shaped the development of the students. The researchers found 3 key impacts:

1. • Increased attention – the “high achievers” group may have received more attention from the teachers simply because they were considered to have greater potential.

1. • Changed behaviour – because of the higher expectations, teachers may have interacted with the “high achievers” differently compared to other students, such as providing more positive feedback, challenging them with more complex opportunities, or offering additional support and encouragement.

1. • Confirmation bias – teachers were more likely to notice and remember behaviours that supported their belief in the potential of the “high achievers”, while overlooking or downplaying evidence that contradicted it.

On the flip side, what do you think happens when a junior is labelled “incompetent” based off first impressions or just a few tasks?

Lesson

It’s a story that really stuck with me as I shifted into more senior roles to not underestimate the impact I can have on somebody’s career, and a reminder for me to:

• • provide clear instructions and set out expectations (e.g. if we went to a meeting on negotiating a contract, I’d expect to review and settle the draft amendments the junior makes to the contract but they should make sure that every negotiation point is addressed);

• • give them the right training and background knowledge for new tasks (e.g. providing an example end product or working through the first part of the task together);

• • take the time to give proper feedback; and

• • hold off on judging whether it’s a technical skill issue (which can be fixed) or attitude issue (which is harder to address) until I work with somebody for a few weeks.

Issue #3 – “I’ll just teach them the same way I was taught. I turned out fine.”

I used to work with a senior associate that all the juniors would complain about. It was like a case study of all the bad management traits – harsh (and personal) feedback, intense time pressures, micromanagement etc.

We all thought it was because that person just hated working with juniors and loved the weird power trip that they got from delegating this way.

Over time, we learned that they truly thought this was quality mentoring. They had worked under the same intense management style and ended up becoming a great lawyer, so it made sense to adopt the same mentoring approach when they became a supervisor. If the juniors couldn’t handle it, then they wouldn’t be great lawyers anyway.

The problem with this thinking is survivorship bias.

Story – “The bullet-ridden planes”

During WWII, Allied engineers studied the damage on returning bombers and found that many of them had bullet holes in the same areas. So, they tried to protect the bombers by adding armour to the places that had the most bullet holes. But there wasn’t any improvement in the bomber survivor rates despite this extra armour.

A statistician suggested a different approach. He pointed out that they were only looking at the planes that had returned. However, the planes that didn’t return likely had fatal hits in other areas – armour should actually be added to these other areas instead. Survivor rates went up.

That’s the same problem with my colleague’s approach. By focusing on the fact that they had turned out to be a great lawyer through the intense ‘mentorship’ style, my colleague believed that this approach was effective while ignoring all the other juniors who were adversely affected or left the law firm because of that ‘mentorship’.

Lesson

As we transition from junior lawyers to supervisor roles, we need to reflect on the delegation styles and habits that we’ve picked up. Just because you’ve become a good lawyer doesn’t mean you’d automatically become a good supervisor. I’ve found a few habits that I’d normalised during my junior years that I’d had to unlearn as I’ve become more senior, and chances are you will too.

To avoid the same mistakes:

1. Get feedback: Ask juniors what works for them and adjust your approach.
2. Be flexible: Understand that different people need different kinds of support.
3. Prioritize learning: Create an environment where mistakes are part of the learning process, not something to fear.
4. Break bad habits: Look at the things you accepted as “normal” as a junior and ask yourself if they really help others grow.

Issue #4 – “The feedback I give is really clear. It sets out all of the changes that I’ve made.”

In my first year as a construction lawyer, I had to review a couple of 300+ page contracts and prepare a first draft of a due diligence report. I sent it to my partner for review and I received it back with red hand-written amendments on basically every line. Over the next few days, I felt like I had really screwed up the task and was really worried the partner wouldn’t want to work with me anymore. After I had made the amendments and the report was sent to the client, I was surprised when the partner said I did a good job on it because I picked up all of the right issues, and they mostly rewrote it for their own style.

Although I had received very clear feedback (all the amendments to the report), I wasn’t given any context to properly understand what was expected / missed.

Story – “Defects. Defects everywhere.”

In contrast, the best example of how important context is to feedback came when I engaged a building inspector to check a house I was thinking of buying for potential defects. I remember getting a call that went like this:

“Hi Jason, I’ve just finished the inspection. Before I send the defects report, I wanted to give you a quick overview. With these inspections, my job is to really test every part of the house for anything that might be wrong with it. So the report I’m sending will be about 40 pages and point out a lot of issues, which might look really bad. But overall the house itself is in really good condition, has been designed and built way above minimum standards and one of the best properties that I’ve inspected in the last few years. Take a look through the report but just remember that it’s written to only set out the negatives, and this is actually one of the better houses.”

The report ended up being 60 pages with summaries and photos of 80+ defects. Without that call, I’d be thinking that house was a complete dud.

Lesson

These experiences remind me to add context whenever I’m giving instructions or delegating to the juniors I’m working with. For example:

• • If I’m asking somebody to do a contract review, I might say that I expect them to read the contract carefully and provide an accurate summary of all of the key points that we’ve set out. But I don’t expect them to get the writing style perfect or to get the assessment of whether the positions are ‘market standard’ – that’s where I’d be focusing my review.

• • With feedback, I’d try to point out the areas that I think should have been in, or out, of their range of competence. I might only have a few amendments, but they could be important and should have been picked up by the junior. Or there could be heaps of changes, but might have been too technically difficult for somebody new to understand.

Work with me

For the past 5 years, I’ve prepared how-to guides and practical training programs for junior lawyers.

Here are four ways that I work with junior lawyers, law firms, in-house teams and brands:

1. • Junior lawyers – step-by-step guides focused on technical and professional skills that form the foundation for a successful legal career;

1. • Law firms – webinars to quickly upskill your junior lawyers with actionable and tested career advice on topics such as managing up, contract drafting, matter management, and productivity / time management;

1. • Brands – sponsorship and branding on quality content to 70,000+ lawyers on LinkedIn and 10,000+ lawyers on my mailing list; and

1. • Infrastructure and energy clients – front-end legal services (including contract drafting, negotiation, advice, and procurement support).