One trait thought to be essential for successful leaders - in law firms and elsewhere – today and in the future is “resilience,” defined as tough-mindedness and the ability to accept criticism.

A study (released in mid-2006) of more than 2,000 employees at the managerial and professional levels by PsMax Solutions, a human capital assessment firm, provides some intriguing findings. Ranked highest of all groups was the middle-managers’ resilience score. CEOs and company presidents ranked lowest in resiliency, followed by executives and professional employees.

Whether the cause or the effect of resilience, in middle management roles people are subject to feedback from all directions. Middle managers may be responsible for planning, directing and coordinating day-to-day activities and leading the people on the front lines. In a professional firm, middle managers include the directors of marketing, professional development, recruiting, information technology and finance and office administrators.

Law firm senior associates and managers in accounting firms are in this category.

Clearly CEOs and professionals need to increase their resilience given the challenges they face with the accelerating pace of work demands and change. Without developing the resilience trait, such problems as allowing stress and frustration to show, becoming defensive in response to criticism and difficulty in bouncing back can greatly impact individual performance and team results.

Another group sorely in need of developing resilience as defined above is Generation Y/Millennials, new to the dynamics of organizational politics and economic realities. This is especially true for those who have been hovered over by helicopter parents, teachers and mentors through school years.

Coaching can be very helpful in developing resilience. People can learn with a coach’s support to accept constructive criticism, learn from it, and temper reactions to non-constructive feedback. They can learn to be more open with their thoughts and reactions rather than holding them in and building high stress. Listening, showing that you are listening, speaking and not shutting down communications all are behaviors that can be learned and practiced. Coaching can also help managers, chiefs and directors navigate the dynamics of an organization’s internal politics.

We all can have some control over what we let get to us and cause high stress and what we overcome to be more effective managers and leaders for our own benefit as well as those around us.

Resilience is a personal gift as well as a key leadership trait.

Please share your thoughts and experiences

Phyllis Weiss Haserot

Editor’s note: Phyllis Weiss Haserot will appear on a panel for Cornell Law School alumni on November 18 in New York on alternative career options. More in-person talks and webcasts on inter-generational challenges, professional development and social networking topics are planned with her for December and 2010.

Phyllis Weiss Haserot is the president of Practice Development Counsel, consulting and coaching, an inter-generational relations expert and West Key Author of The Rainmaking Machine and The Marketer’s Handbook of Tips and Checklists. For more information, visit her website, pdcounsel.com, or her blog, Next Generation, Next Destination.

Today I presented the Minnesota Ultra High-Speed Broadband Task Force’s report. I was appointed chair of the Task Force by Governor Tim Pawlenty back in 2008. Since then, the 23-member Task Force met 18 times.

We’ve read, listened, studied, debated and eventually agreed by consensus to all the findings in the report.

I am very proud of my fellow Task Force members. We had conversations that were sometimes difficult. But the consensus process worked and I believe Minnesotans will be better off for it.

I am excited about what ultra high-speed Internet can do. Not only for customers of the legal businesses of Thomson Reuters who have clients all over the world, but for our employees who can possibly telecommute while they are serving those customers.

Ultra high-speed broadband is vital for Minnesota, and all states, and their economic vitality. It is important for me personally to live in a state that’s innovative and forward thinking.

Rick King
Global Head of Technology and Operations
Thomson Reuters, Legal

It tackles the trends in the inside-outside counsel relationship. Among the survey findings:

-In-house counsel are setting more rules for their relationships with outside counsel

-In-house counsel are terminating relationships with their underperforming outside counsel

-Although hourly rates still predominate, many corporate clients are getting discounted rates

Read the full post on In House for more information.

This week, Apple made the Black’s Law Dictionary app for the iPhone and iPod touch one of its “Staff Favorites” on iTunes. You can see the icon for the dictionary app in the screen capture from the App Store above.

It is some nice recognition for the app (and its developers at West). It has been available since April and has been the subject of several reviews and lists on the Web.

The Black’s Law app was built from the 8th edition of the dictionary, published by West. It is considered by many attorneys, legal professionals and law students to be the most citable and credible legal dictionary. The app provides easy access to its legal terms and phrases and embedded audio of that information. At this time, the current print edition of the dictionary is the 9th edition.

You can learn more about all the mobile apps from West and Thomson Reuters here.

(Photo courtesy: Fox 9)

On Oct. 24, more than 7,000 girls attended KMSP-TV Fox 9’s Girls & Science event at the Science Museum of Minnesota. Thomson Reuters was a proud sponsor of the event.

Leading science and technology companies from the Twin Cities metro area came together to demonstrate how science and technology affect everyday life.

At the Thomson Reuters booth, several hundred girls had the chance to create their own Web sites. At other booths, girls experimented with weather-prediction technologies with Fox 9 meteorologists, explored human biology with St. Jude Medical, and learned about the latest in energy technologies and science from Flint Hills Resources.

Twelve women from Thomson Reuters’ technology organizations volunteered at the event.

“Having a presence in the local community is really important,” said Elizabeth Psihos, president and chief technology officer, Westlaw Business. “As a woman technologist, I have a personal interest in seeing young girls become excited about and educated in the science and technology fields.”

West’s litigation productivity team does not take this challenge lightly. They too have been talking with customers, working with attorneys and litigators to help them overcome obstacles by being more productive and efficient in their day-to-day work.

A recent case study with Bill Leader, partner at Leader Bulso, Nolan & Burnstein, PLC, illustrates how the firm is making the most of West’s productivity tools – like West Case Notebook and LiveNote – to gain competitive advantage and greater productivity and effectiveness.

“Case Notebook is on our server, it’s on our laptops,” says Leader. “It’s all under one license…and gives ten times the bang for the buck.”

Leader joins Taylor Sutherland, an associate at the firm, along with fellow law firm leaders Carl Solomon, partner at Gergel, Nickles & Solomon; and Jan L. Warner, partner at Warner Payne & Black LLP, in this video about how firms are using technology tools to gain productivity and effectiveness in managing litigation workflow:

WIPO and Queensland are partnering to offer a first of its kind program in the Asia-Pacific – a Master of Intellectual Property Law program in Australia.

You can read the full post here.

And today it is, with free repositories of caselaw, plus regulatory and administrative materials easily accessed through hundreds of government and commercial Web sites – including our own, FindLaw, which offers one of the Web’s largest collections of free legal information.

These sites are a great resource for professionals and personal users interested in general background on a legal matter or case. But for specialized users, and for the most critical applications, information needs to be more than free.

It needs to be relevant, current, contextual, organized and authoritative – requiring rigor, process and, for West, a human hand guided by unique expertise and insight.

We asked Bob Berring, legal research guru and Walter Perry Johnson Professor of Law at the University of Califonia, Berkeley, for his thoughts on the matter:

Editor’s note (Oct. 30, 2009): West has published legal research titles authored by Bob Berring. He was a consultant and speaker at law librarian events for West until 2007.

This week marks the first “National Pro Bono Celebration” in the United States. It’s a new project of the American Bar Association, sponsored by the ABA Standing Committee on Pro Bono and Public Service:

…the celebration is a coordinated national effort to showcase the great difference that pro bono lawyers make to the nation, its system of justice, its communities and, most of all, to the clients they serve. The week is also dedicated to the quest for more pro bono volunteers to meet the ever-growing legal needs of this country’s most vulnerable citizens.

In a message posted on its Web site, the ABA says the national celebration comes at a critical time:

The confluence of two circumstances make this timing ideal: the increasing need for pro bono services as economic conditions worsen, and the unprecedented response of attorneys to meeting this need.

The ABA says local bar associations across the country will have the opportunity to note the pro bono contributions of America’s lawyers and recruit additional volunteers. On its Web site, it says 73 percent of American lawyers report doing pro bono work for people of limited means, with some donating an average of more than 40 hours each year in free legal services. Still, the ABA says more than 80 percent of the legal needs of America’s poor remain unmet.

Thomson Reuters, Legal, supports the spirit and purpose of pro bono work. Earlier this year, West launched Do Justice, a global pro bono initiative to build upon the $12 million in Westlaw legal research we donated for pro bono counsel in 2008. Learn how your law firm can participate here and read a message about our commitment to pro bono from Peter Warwick, president and CEO, Thomson Reuters, Legal.

For more perspective on pro bono work, we offer video interviews we did with Arthur Miller, professor at New York University Law School; Bob Berring, professor at Berkeley Law; and Linda Will, law librarian consultant.

Miller’s video clip includes his statement, “…the pro bono climate is as favorable as I’ve ever seen it in my life”:

In his video interview with us, Berring said “Pro bono work offers fantastic experience and real human contact”:

And in her clip, Will offers that “Pro bono is extremely important in these days”:

The ABA also has videos highlighting pro bono work on its Web site for “National Pro Bono Celebration.”

In this post – the third in a series with Berring – we bring you his video response to another question for him that came in via our @westlaw Twitter account.

It’s from Stephanie Kimbro (@stephkimbro) and deals with the virtual practice of law:

In his response, Berring focused more on the virtual practice aspect versus research, workflow or SaaS (Software as a service), but I trust his answer still provides some perspective on his point of view:

I want to thank Stephanie for her suggested question for Berring, as well as questions I got from @richards1000 and @montserratlj for recent posts here on Legal Current about reference librarians and the structure of the law.