More Leadership Training at Law Firms

Leadership consultant Linda Pennington claims that "only about two or three of Philadelphia's largest 15 firms have seriously began to do this," referring to leadership training in law firms. 

The Philadelphia Business Journal last week interviewed Pennington and others about the growing trend to invest in law firm leaders:

"When law firms think of leadership, Pennington said, they automatically refer to serving as managing partners, chairmen, practice leaders and executive committee members. But her coaching focuses on informal leadership qualities such as social skills. She conducts a few sessions with a lawyer and cross references information gained with his or her co-workers to see if the self-perception jives with the view others have of the lawyer's leadership skills. She then offers a critique and asks the lawyers to implement behavioral changes and report back on progress. " - Philadelphia Business Journal.

The article lists Reed Smith, Blank Rome and Morgan Lewis were mentioned as having some sort of leadership development program.  The article also refers to something close to my heart - community leadership programs:

"Krufka was surprised to see how many law firms had enrolled their lawyers in Leadership Philadelphia -- a nonprofit that works to improve leadership skills of private-sector executives through a series of seminars each year. Krufka predicts that firms will continue to develop more in-house programming.   We just did a program with junior partners from a firm," she said. "And their response to it all was 'Boy, I wish our senior partners had this kind of training.'"

Here's the article.   Frankly, I'm surprised that three Philly law firms have actually started leadership training.  Not a bad start.