Catherine “Cat” Youdan offers an inside view of an innovative system that Blakes, Cassels & Graydon LLP has implemented to leverage technological and human resources to level the playing field by allocating work to associates more equitability and objectively. By taking direct aim at workload disparity that can lead to burnout or disengagement, the program is also ensuring that all associates enjoy the skills- and relationship-building opportunities that will help them advance in their careers.
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Charlene Theodore:
Hello, and welcome to the Work that Works podcast. I'm your host, Charlene Theodore. Before I begin, I want to acknowledge that I'm recording this episode from the Dish With One Spoon Territory. I'm grateful to the original owners for taking care of this land, and I recognize the treaties that govern it. Knowing that our listeners span the country and are tuning in from other areas with their own treaties in unseated territories, I encourage you to continue learning more about the indigenous history in your community. It is important history, and a story that continues.
Speaker 1:
At Lawyers Financial, your satisfaction is our success. It's not that money doesn't matter. Financial, it's right there in our name. But we're not for profit, and that gives us the freedom to give you break-even pricing on insurance and investment solutions, and exclusive rates on home, auto, life, and disability insurance, just to name a few. At Lawyers Financial, we focus on you so you can focus on your family, your firm, and your future. And that sounds like success by any measure.
Charlene Theodore:
Busy partners faced with an avalanche of files are often inclined to seek assistance from whomever they see as the most ready and reliable resource. In other words, the known quantity, the associate who has helped them out before, whom they've chatted with at a staff, social who shares their passion for pensions law and Premier League Football. I think we all know that while assigning work based on familiarity or affinity is easy, it's also antithetical to an inclusive culture. So what's the alternative? Well, what if it were just as easy for partners or managers to allocate these assignments more evenly and equitably? What impact might that have on engagement, performance, and satisfaction, not to mention top-to-bottom diversity in a dynamic legal workplace?
Charlene Theodore:
I'm OBA President Charlene Theodore, and this is the Work that Works podcast. My guest today, Catherine, or Cat, Youdan, a partner at Blake's, is helping her firm remove affinity and unconscious bias from the work allocation process with a game-changing initiative that combines cutting-edge technology and a continued concerted commitment to inclusion to offer associates equal access to opportunities for rewarding work, relationship-building, and skills development. I'm looking forward to chatting with her today about the ins and outs of this exciting undertaking, and how technology and human resources can come together in creating a workplace that works for everyone. Welcome, Cat. Thanks so much for joining us.
Catherine Youdan:
You're most welcome. Thanks for having me.
Charlene Theodore:
So we've talked before on this podcast about the opportunity gap, and we've talked about efforts towards inclusion that need to go beyond hiring. Was tackling this gap the motivation behind Blake's creating the work allocation tool? Were there any other considerations that prompted the initiative?
Catherine Youdan:
Sure. It's a good question, and I think I could answer it best by saying it was definitely a factor, and as time went on, it became even more of a motivation. So when we first put together the system, sort of thinking about it, we were really focused on... We believe we have an uneven distribution of work, and what can we do about that? And what does it mean? And so when we talk about uneven distribution of work, we were thinking about things like... Why is it that some associates have too much work, and we worry that they could be burned out? Why is it that some associates have too little work, and we worry that they're frustrated they're underutilized? Why is it that some associates have too much of one kind of work? Why is it that some associates don't get to work with as many different partners?
Catherine Youdan:
So we were looking at a variety of different issues as it related to the distribution of work, but then looking at the uneven distribution of work quickly morphed into thinking about how is an uneven distribution actually inequitable. And that's where we started to think, "Okay, so some people are busier than others. Some people get to work on different kinds of transactions that maybe are seen as preferable or better or more helpful to their career. Why is it they got them? Why is it someone didn't get them?" And that's when we started thinking not just about how do we make sure that we don't have burnout, how do we make sure that people are developing skills, and sort of thinking about...
Catherine Youdan:
Why is it actually that some people are getting better work than others? Why is it some people are getting to work with more people? And that's where the opportunity gap came in. And that's where we started realizing this isn't really just about work allocation, it's about opportunity allocation. Not as simple as just dishing out work among people, it's providing people with an opportunity to build a career and be successful at Blake's. So I guess to go back to your original question, it's always been an aspect of what drove us, but I do think it became over time even more of a motivation.
Charlene Theodore:
I love that. I love that you and your team came to connect the benefits of this program for so many other things, which is often what happens with successful EDI initiatives. We find that they benefit not just our initial intended target group, but other people tend to reap the benefits as well. So I love the connection between mental health, burnout, and then actually looking at career opportunities. It's a workload issue, but it's also a leadership issue in terms of who's getting developed to be the next generation of law firm leaders.
Catherine Youdan:
That's very right, and its infancy was sort of trying to solve for some things, and now it's sort of got a broader motivation behind it.
Charlene Theodore:
That's great. So let's get into the nitty-gritty of how it actually works. Who administers the program and the allocation?
Catherine Youdan:
If you don't mind, maybe a quick way to sort of make that be a meaningful answer is if I tell you a little bit about how work often is allocated. I don't know if that would be helpful.
Charlene Theodore:
Yeah, let's do it.
Catherine Youdan:
In the context of our firm, and I imagine most law firms, historically work has been allocated in I suppose what you'd say is almost a free market. People come to our firm as a junior associate having spent some time articling, they have some relationships, but the articling experience is a fairly short time in our particular group that they've now joined, so they wouldn't necessarily have close relationships, and they're sort of left to their own devices. You are there, and hopefully someone may come by your office and give you work, or you seek out the work yourself. It was definitely based on the input that the associate put into it, but it was a bit of a free market.
Catherine Youdan:
And there was a little bit of a, "Hey, you," aspect of it, in the sense that you might be on your way to the restroom or to get a glass of water, and someone would see you and be like, "Hey, you, I've got a great new assignment. Come to my office." And that system actually sometimes works really well, but it doesn't always work well, and so that's sort of how work used to get allocated. And of course behind the scenes, we were always tracking hours and thinking about who was on what, but it wasn't as explicit a focus about who was getting what assignment at the front end, as opposed to... We tended to think about it at the back end. At the end of the month, who was busy and who wasn't, as opposed to every day thinking about who's getting this opportunity and this piece of work.
Catherine Youdan:
So with the work allocation system, it is both a technological tool and it has this human element. The technological tool is one that we developed in-house, and it collects all kinds of data that the people, the humans who administer the system, access before making a decision to allocate work. And then there's the humans, and both of those things are, I think, equally as important to the system.
Charlene Theodore:
What I like, and I think it's very accurate when you describe and it's not specific to Blake's, allocation of work as kind of a free market-style practice. And one of the reasons I wanted to have this discussion is because a lot of our firms in the industry are thinking about work allocation tools for issues of fairness, but also in terms of issues of we're not in the same space.
Catherine Youdan:
Oh, yeah.
Charlene Theodore:
So that's kind of really forced it to the table, but what I think you've touched upon is a broader kind of, I think, defining issue with regards to workplace culture. And what I'm thinking is if you have a free market kind of attitude and infrastructure to getting good assignments, to getting into those positions that are going to advance your career, what does that say about your business? How well you take care of your people. I don't think any law firm consciously wants to drop their associates or even their lateral hires into the deep end and say, "Sink or swim." One of the key business functions of law firms is to develop talent and retain talent, and by having that free market system and the way you describe it like that, it's kind of every man, literally man, for themselves in some aspects.
Charlene Theodore:
And so I love that your description of it makes me, and I'm sure will make our listeners, think about the bigger workplace culture issues in having a system like that. And I think it's just more impetus to change from a free market system to what you have now, which is bringing to my next question, so let's dive again a little deeper. What is the criteria or benchmarks that come into play in distributing possible assignments, both from a data perspective, like what data are you looking for, and what are the humans who are interpreting the data doing?
Catherine Youdan:
Sure. So from a data perspective, you can picture sort of an online portal with charts that categorize all this information, and then the humans have access to this. And so that data, what it looks at first is capacity. And by capacity, we mean self-reported capacity to start. Our associates input information about their capacity into the system. They're encouraged to update it as often as possible, and we do it by percentage. So what's your percentage capacity? Obviously, zero means, "I cannot take on any more work," and 50% means, "I have quite a bit of capacity to take on one or more new assignments."
Charlene Theodore:
Is that a qualitative or quantitative percentage? So are we talking about billings, or are we talking about, "I have one file, but it's taking all of my time?"
Catherine Youdan:
Yes, this is [inaudible 00:10:05]. This is, "How much time do I think I have to take on new work?" And that's supposed to be now, right now, today, and that's why you have to keep it up to date. Then we also ask them a month from now or two months from now, "How do you see your capacity?" So someone who's on a very large transaction with an IPO might have very little capacity for quite a long time, or someone who might be closing a deal that week who's really busy now, but by the following Monday is going to be at 90%. So we try and mix the current with the forward-looking. It's not perfect, but it gets us part-way there. And then we look at historical data, and we use that data to sort of guesstimate what the associate's year might look like.
Catherine Youdan:
So for example, we look at rolling two-week hours. We look at last month as a period of time historically. We take their hours to date in a year and we annualize it. So we're looking at all this information, their sense of their busyness and their capacity, and historically, how many hours have they actually docketed, and what would that look like if they continued that pace for the year? We also look at daily hours, which brings to the surface importance of docketing daily, which is part and parcel of making the system work, and policing around that a little bit. Because if you don't close your dockets and we can't see how busy you were the day before, we don't know that you're too busy to take on new work. Combined with just generally during the pandemic, a desire to have people closing their dockets and being able to produce very up-to-date information about the time we're spending on different matters, that's important.
Catherine Youdan:
The system relies on it. And then we look at things like vacation. So we know you're going to go on a vacation next month, but the particular transaction or case requires a huge amount of time. Well, then you might not be the right person for it. And all of that information is input by the associate to do with their holidays and plans, and then we also look at the kind of work it is. We characterize all the work that comes in, and it gets put into the database. And we have a big chart, sort of like a heat map, that shows here's the associate and here's the categories of work. How many times have they been staffed on work that falls this category? So in my group, it might be corporate governance work, versus a public offering of securities, for example, or an M&A transaction.
Catherine Youdan:
And so we want to encourage in the first couple of years of practice people to do all different kinds of work. So that's why we track that information. And then we also track who they worked with before, very similar. Here's all the people who assign work. Here's all the associates, who's worked with who. Again, the goal is to have people work with as many people as possible over the first years of their practice, so they can figure out who they like to work for, see different styles, try out different kinds of work, and then once they leave the allocation system, we only do it for two and a half years, they just have better footing. They've built some relationships, they have some basic skills. They haven't accidentally become this kind of lawyer just by virtue of where their office was located, for example, a factor that has nothing to do with their interests or ability in a particular area.
Charlene Theodore:
I love that you are taking the charts and the data and incorporating that visualization of a heat map to it. We've had a couple other really interesting conversations on this podcast where people for different aspects have said, "Well, when you're tracking this, assign it a color." There is something about that very visual representation of assigning colors to deliverables, which is essentially what you want to hit, something that anyone at any firm of any size that may not have the capacity to build that data from an AI perspective can just simply track their own numbers that they already have and assigned colors to it. I think that's great.
Catherine Youdan:
But then the interesting thing about it is that while the data is at the heart of it, at the end of the day, the allocation decision is not made by the computer. The allocation decision is not made by our technology. It is made by a team of humans, who in our case are young-ish partners. I'm one of those, so the ish is important. We sit on our legal personnel committee, which is really our associate's committee, and that's a firm-wide committee, but we also do work in our respective groups. And so in the securities group, those are the individuals who are most involved in sort of day-to-day associate matters in the group in any event, and so that's who currently in our group are involved in work allocation. That's how we set up our system. And so we as a group have developed a system among ourselves about how we take that data, and we actually make an allocation decision. It's interesting, because when we first put in place the system, and I think we'll probably-
PART 1 OF 4 ENDS [00:14:04]
Catherine Youdan:
It's interesting, because when we first put in place the system, I think we'll probably get to this, but if I'm an associate, one of the first things you might say is, "Okay, wait a second. I hear what you're saying. I believe in why we need this, and I believe in the goals. Equitable distribution of work, but why should I trust you?" It might not be working that it's in my control, but at least it's in my control. And now you're telling me I have to trust you and three other people to do it. That's a really important thing to think about. And it was really important to us in the beginning to show people that we were credible. And part of that was showing them the data and the tool. We're going to have the right information to make a good decision.
Catherine Youdan:
But part of it was also saying to them, "Listen, we are trying to be neutral. We are trying to pause before work gets assigned so that it doesn't just go to the person you meet in the kitchen when you're having your coffee, that might be the right person, but it really might not." And so we're just trying to halt, take a pause, and try to be as neutral as we can to make a good and thoughtful and ultimately equitable allocation decision. But it did require our associates to really believe in us. They had to believe in the process. They believe in us as humans. I think we've done right by them, but that's not lost on me, because we did take that out of their hands. Because again, the data is important, but it is not actually how they work [inaudible 00:15:14].
Charlene Theodore:
Another repeated theme that comes up over and over again, whether it's EDI or overall workplace culture initiative, is establishing a foundation of trust. There's no AI.
Catherine Youdan:
That's right.
Charlene Theodore:
There's no data set that's going to replace having those conversations and explaining this is the kind of firm and kind of legal community within that firm that we want to be, and this is why we're doing this. And so opening up those lines of communication are definitely important. Now, the other thing that I hear often about when we're talking about work allocation is how do people turn work down, and is it even possible? How do we build that in? So how do you deal with that issue? Associates wanting to turn down to the assignments.
Catherine Youdan:
It does happen. And actually I think the system can't solve for that in the sense that we have the data, and we think right now it works really well, and it's as current as the inputs we get from people are. And then during a busy time that doesn't always work, and also the reality is this. We track work that comes into us, but we don't know, the system's not there yet, when a transaction, for example, in my group dies. It doesn't move forward. So we might think we've allocated someone on a very busy transaction, but if that transaction falls away, we wouldn't necessarily know that. And then we're really relying on the hours. Is if we see, okay, we thought the person was getting busy, but then their hours start to go way down, assuming they closed their dockets.
Catherine Youdan:
But the point is, it's not perfect. So when we reach out to someone and say, "Listen, this new piece of work came in. Any concerns taking it on, but that might be how we approach it." Or sometimes if you see that they are very busy and everyone is very busy, the firm is very busy right now, so allocating works really hard and you're often looking at people and saying, "Who has the most capacity or people, none of whom actually have that much?" In which case it might be a bit different. You might say, "Listen, I know you're very busy, but do you think could take this on, or we understand it's not going to get busy for a few weeks, or let's talk a bit about what actually you're up to right now." We can only see so much from the data. So there is a conversation.
Catherine Youdan:
So to go back to your question, do people turn down work? Yeah, they do from time to time. But actually not that much. And I think it is actually because the data's pretty good. I hope the associates feel comfortable explaining why, in fact, they might not have capacity, not withstanding the fact that we believe they do, because of course things can change. And not to mention our lives go on outside of work and things can happen that are not revealed in the data, and that's okay too. And so we do get that from time to time. Obviously we try to encourage people to put into the data set and the portal, information about known events that are happening. I'm getting married, I'm taking a holiday. But the reality is our lives are complex. Things happen out of nowhere, and that doesn't go in the data. You can't predict needing to care for a sick parent. Those things are not in the data. And so there is always a conversation, and that goes back to this is not AI. This is a human process of utilizing the data to then have a thoughtful conversation with someone about whether they can take on the work.
Charlene Theodore:
When sensing is the approaches, not just having the conversation, but the way that you have a conversation.
Catherine Youdan:
I think so.
Charlene Theodore:
Leading it, being open to it, being a discussion in case there are any supports that are needed, as opposed to a yes or no.
Catherine Youdan:
Yeah, I think that's right. And I think it's usually pretty smooth. Like I said, I think the data is pretty good. It's usually a pretty smooth conversation, but we are definitely open to a conversation, because it's not perfect and life can change very quickly.
Charlene Theodore:
Well, no system that you first create is right. It's probably going to be tweaking, those things happen.
Catherine Youdan:
That's right. And we have tweaked a lot actually, because my group, I'm in the securities group, and we are a large group and I think that's partly why we were the pilot for this. And so we sort of rolled it out as, "Okay, this is a pilot project." Well, it became obvious pretty fast that this is here to stay. We need a system like this, we need this tool, and now it's being rolled out in other groups in the firm, the other large groups, where management of associates can be more difficult than oversight of work allocation is more challenging. And so, because we went first, we were subsequently able to benefit from the rollout in those other groups, because they developed their own portals that are very so much ours, but met the needs of their group a little better or differently, because litigation might think about their work in their allocation differently than securities group. So we got the benefit of being able to learn from when they did six months and a year later.
Catherine Youdan:
And so our tool, or online tool, and even our general approach, I think has changed a bit. We've made improvement. We know now what information do we need to get from someone putting in a request for an associate, and we now ask for, in some cases, slightly different and additional information that we didn't originally ask for that we now realize makes it a lot easier just to staff something. So a very small example, when we recently added a question about how many hours do you need this person in the next seven days? So yes we know it's a very big deal, and yes, we know it'll be a substantial commitment, but literally in the next few days, how many hours? And so that's very helpful. Even if someone might be closing a deal next week and suddenly a lot of capacity, if they're needed right now, that's not going to be the right bit of work for them. And that's just a very small tweak, but something that we found quite helpful in making a better allocation decision.
Charlene Theodore:
And I guess developing it in house makes it easier to tweak and manage even between practice groups as you go along.
Catherine Youdan:
Absolutely. There was a lot of dialogue at the beginning. Because if I'm being really honest, this was quite a change to how work was allocated. It was a fundamental shift in how work was allocated, and we talked about it for quite a long time. I want to say maybe several years before we rolled this out. And it was all at a time with other people at other firms in other jurisdictions were starting to think and write and talk about this. And we were benefiting from that, but it wasn't as if a handful of people just in my groups unilaterally did this. It was very much something we were all thinking and talking about it. We had a unique and good opportunity to just go for it. And that's, I think then, inspired a bit of a shift in other groups of the firm as well. And it actually now it's being rolled out even in our other offices, which is really exciting to see.
Charlene Theodore:
Oh, that's great. Do you have any tips or lessons learned about collecting feedback as you go? I know it was a long, I guess pre-development process and a long rollout, and a staged roll out, which I think are all great tips. But do you have any tips specifically to how you collect feedback as you fine tune this process?
Catherine Youdan:
Well, I guess the main tip, it goes with saying, but you need to collect the feedback that when you are fundamentally shifting the way you do something in your work environment, you need to seek and listen to feedback and figure out how best to act on it from all players. So the associates who are in the system, that's one group, we have the senior associates and other associates who use the system to find someone more junior to work with them on something. And the partners are part of that as well. We have the partners who we need to support the system, generally, because often times it's sort of a top down thing. We need everyone to be on board with why we're doing this. Because in the beginning it can be challenging to get everyone on the same page, and you need the support of everyone.
Catherine Youdan:
So I think listening to feedback is important. Being realistic about what you can change and not change. I think being both formal and informal about it. Early on we had some meetings where we planned, we sat down with groups of associates and said, "Tell us what you think we're doing well and not well." Particularly in the first couple of years where it really was a pilot, but also being open to a more informal conversation to the extent you're already chatting with someone. Tell me, how are things going with work allocation these days? Do you like it? Do you not like it? Sometimes you get a bit more information out of the informal session, but we found you also do need to have the group session where other people can hear, and there can be a bit of an interaction about the feedback.
Catherine Youdan:
We received feedback early on about things we hadn't anticipated. Unintended consequences of having this kind of system, including one in particular, that was a negative consequence that we really had to work around that we really didn't anticipate. And that came to us through feedback. It came out in the first review process we had after we implemented the work allocation program, and a number of the people we met with, because the same individuals are involved in managing the work allocation system are also part of the committee that administers the reviews and has the review meetings with associates. A number of associates mentioned that they felt in coming to the review that they really, until they got the review and had that meeting, they didn't know how they were doing. And that's not uncommon in first and second year to really not certain because you're so new to it. But it was unusual. It was different than in the past. And we said, "What do you mean?" And he said, "Well, with work allocation, we don't have return business." Our sense, even from articling, when someone comes back to you and says, "You did a terrific job on that private placement last week, I'd like you to do another one. Maybe for a different client, same client."
Catherine Youdan:
But with work allocation, you've disrupted that on purpose because we actually don't want you to necessarily do that deal again. We want to give someone else the opportunity, but it means you don't get that return business confidence.
Charlene Theodore:
As a metric.
Catherine Youdan:
As a metric for I'm doing a great job. We suddenly realized, wow, that is not something we thought about. And so how do you manage that? Well, work allocation's here to stay. So we clearly need to work on getting real time feedback to our associates, which was frankly, something we were very focused on and continue to be focused on anyways. Formal reviews are really only part of how you get feedback, and it's so often after the fact. It could be almost a year after you do something. So we're always trying to encourage real time. I felt that with work allocation, we've had to stress that even more.
Catherine Youdan:
And then actually couple that in the last year with the pandemic, you can envision being a junior associate who's never come to our office, by themselves at home, no sense of return feedback. Just randomly being asked to do things by a member of the legal person. I can imagine that would be very stressful. So we've tried to encourage real-time feedback, is I think extra important during the work allocation here.
Charlene Theodore:
Any other challenges that your team had to work through in rolling this out and putting it together?
Catherine Youdan:
I think we had some challenges early on, or questions about, "Okay, well as an element of compensation, we track hours. And it's just one aspect of how we compensate associates and think about bonuses, for example, but it is an aspect. And so if you're controlling my workflow, how does that impact my bonus? If I want to work incredibly hard at a pace that you might not otherwise think I should, because I want that bonus, how does that work? And so we've had to think a little bit about compensation or bonuses for associates who were a part of the work allocation program, keeping that in mind. And again, I don't know if we really had thought through that when we put the program in place.
Charlene Theodore:
Well that's actually a perfect segue for my next question, because I want to talk about the outcomes that you were hoping to see, and what's actually transpired and what maybe the unexpected benefits that we referenced earlier. And so for those associates that say, "How will this affect my bonus? I'm one of those people that I choose to shatter the record of billables every time it's their personal choice. Have you noticed an impact on employee morale or mental health?
Catherine Youdan:
Sure. Well, I think what's interesting is that while we definitely haven't seen the swings in hours, the very, very high hours and the very, very low hours that we might've had before, because we're intervening before that can happen and we're watching hours more closely because of the system. So that has been a good benefit that you don't have someone relative to others working very, very hard, versus not getting enough work and getting a chance to develop their skills.
Charlene Theodore:
Especially during the pandemic.
Catherine Youdan:
You want to talk unexpected benefit? Definitely having a work allocation tool during a pandemic. That is an unexpected benefit.
Charlene Theodore:
There you go.
Catherine Youdan:
If you have a pandemic, let's hope you have a work allocation tool. Yeah. I can't say we knew about that, but it has come in really handy, because I can't even imagine the challenge of making sure we're getting an opportunity to do good work and monitoring what they're doing without this tool. I have no idea how we would have done that. And I think an unexpected benefit that's specific to the environment we've worked in the last year, the pandemic environment, is that we're connecting with associates a lot more than we used to. It might just be an email saying, "Hey, this piece of work has come in on this kind of transaction, any concerns taking it on?" But we rarely just say that. We usually say, "How are you doing?"
Charlene Theodore:
It's a touch point for a conversation.
Catherine Youdan:
Yeah. And so I think unexpected benefit of having work allocation tool in a pandemic is that it helps you maintain a connection with people during a time where that's really, really hard, and it's not a forced connection because you're already reaching out to them and they're expecting to hear from you. So that has been fantastic. I don't know what we would've done without it. I really don't.
Charlene Theodore:
I don't have a crystal ball, but if you were dealing, as you say, swings in hours, super, super busy or not busy at all, that is the perfect recipe really, Cat, combined with this pandemic for people taking stress leave, people having mental health crises. In a way, one of the benefits that I see here is what didn't happen to your associates during the pandemic.
Catherine Youdan:
I agree. And our associates have been very busy. So if any of them are listening to this, I want to recognize how busy they've all been. But at least we were able to make sure that a handful weren't materially busier than others. We were able to try and even out the work, and that should always be-
PART 2 OF 4 ENDS [00:28:04]
Catherine Youdan:
It is easier than others. We were able to try and even out the work and that should always be the case, but it's been especially important for the last year.
Charlene Theodore:
My sense is that you've got a really great product here and a great tool, that's gone through a few iterations and really helps address the equity piece in terms of access to opportunity. And as you refer to those swings, people being too busy and some people having not enough work, that you've tried out in an in-person environment and in a pandemic, how do you use that tool in combination with any other programs you may have to really affect the experience of working at Blake's for your associates?
Catherine Youdan:
I think this work allocation system, it kind of gets to the heart at what we're trying to accomplish broadly, with our diversity and inclusion initiatives. If we think, take a big step back and say, what at its core are we trying to accomplish with those various initiatives at Blake's? I'd say, one of them at least is that, we want a workplace where everyone feels valued and can see a path to success, like that at its core. And I know that's a very high level mission, but that is what drives many of these initiatives. To me, work allocation goes to the heart of that. The goal is to make sure that associates get access to the type of work that they can develop skills, take risks, build relationships, internally and externally, that can help bring them along in their career path. And if you don't distribute work equitably, I don't think we're living up to that commitment we've made to inclusion.
Catherine Youdan:
So I actually think this is so core to diversity and inclusion. And I like when people ask about our diversity and inclusion initiatives. One of the really great things about this, and again, we started off by saying it came about in part, because of thinking about diversity and inclusion and a part about generally thinking about the distribution of work for other reasons is, this is a very concrete example of something we're doing that I think is really moving the needle. It's practical. It's not training based. It's not thinking or talking. It is a doing thing. It is a thing we are truly doing, that was disruptive on purpose and change something we did for a very, very long time.
Catherine Youdan:
That worked really well for a lot of people. It was starting to crack and was starting to feel like maybe this isn't quite helping us meet those other objectives we have as a firm that are so important to us, and diversity and inclusion and objectives related to diversity and inclusion, was one of those things. And I think this tool is a really concrete example of it. We're doing this real thing. We are really doing something that could have a real difference for people.
Charlene Theodore:
The whole point of my presidential initiative, "Work that Works" and this podcast of the same name, is because myself personally, in the OBA's organization, believes that it's time for us to move from the why to the how, right? And what you just described there is that transition. We thought about the why, whether or not business cases were made, you said people were publishing things about it, and then you got down to the business of how we do it and putting it into action.
Charlene Theodore:
And I think that... Didn't pick up on this earlier, but you did mention that you started it as a pilot, whether you're in-house or in private practice setting, we work and we are there to manage risk. And I don't think you can overstate how much of a fundamental shift this is and the implementation of pilots and testing, and even your rollout, it wasn't spread throughout the firm. You started in one department, you roll it out. You allowed for tweaks and iterations. These are all critical elements of process change that can make these kinds of radical shifts, if I can call it that. Possible within a fairly structured corporate environment that is, has to be attuned, has to be attuned to risk.
Catherine Youdan:
I think that's right. And I also... Law firms can be nimble, but they can also be a bit slow to change. I mean, there's such big organizations. There's so many different people involved, are the particular, the national firm. One of the great things about this is that, I think because we did position it as a pilot and enabled us to say, "listen, we're just going to try this out." We are going to try it out in the Toronto securities group. And we're going to take responsibility for it. And we will have the meetings with the various people, associates and partners beforehand, so everyone is on board. And we're going to pilot it. If it's a big flop, we won't do it. And I think the people who were behind it, myself and others were like, "well, of course we're not doing this" and we're going to keep advancing it.
Catherine Youdan:
But we were able to, as you said, get some traction and try it out because we didn't just rush and roll it out, nationally. So we got some success. And then we were able to leverage that success to get some more success. And like I said, now, I feel like it's just in the culture. But you're right, that rollout, which was a bit maybe luck, you're making it sound very coordinated, I'm not sure with that. But it's giving us a bit too much credit. It did really work to our benefit.
Charlene Theodore:
I love a pilot. Okay. Got it. [crosstalk 00:32:39] And I don't think people understand the power of framing organizational change within pilot programs. For the reasons you mentioned, and also, because we keep going back to communication, feedback is such a big piece, pilot projects necessarily require reporting and feedback. So it's a structure that's already built in. It brings everyone on board, in a way that is not disruptive, is really, I think, where innovation in law is going to be birthed from. So Cath, is this approach and the technology itself, I know we talked about the heat map, is it something that you think can be adopted for other legal settings beyond the national big firm environment?
Catherine Youdan:
There's probably two ways to answer that. I have no doubt that a tool that's used to make sure that opportunities are distributed equitably could be used in any number of different legal environments. Our tool is definitely geared towards aspects that are quite unique to private practice. For example, the idea of capacity relies heavily on the data related to billable hours. And that is not something that is applicable in other environments. Certainly in smaller group settings, you might more naturally have a sense of what people are up to, in a more informal way. So I think, what we've built absolutely lends itself to other large groups and organizations where work might come in in one place and has to find a home somewhere. That's what's so interesting about law firms, one particular partner, their phone rings and work comes in and you've got all these other associates who can do that work, but you have to decide who to give it to. What makes our role quite unique is how many of these allocation decisions are being made every day and every week.
Catherine Youdan:
Usually, no, one of them is that important, but overall they're incredibly important. So I think, with that in mind, the tool we've created is quite specific to a law firm setting that has, like I said, some of those challenges and those characteristics. I have no doubt that you could use it in other environments because really, it is a tool that just takes decision-making out of the hands of someone who might make a more emotional decision or a decision based on factors we don't think are the right factors, to give an opportunity to someone and puts it in the hands of people we believe are neutral or at least highly motivated to make a thoughtful, equitable decision.
Catherine Youdan:
This is also just about the humans who are involved. So part of the system is having so-called neutral third parties make an allocation decision, as opposed to it being made by the person who actually needs to get their work done. So for example, in our system, there's four of us right now during the work allocation, we don't allocate our own work. So when a piece of work comes in and if it's something that I need an associate for, I step out and the decision is made without me. And I think that could be applicable in a variety of settings.
Charlene Theodore:
You use the term neutral. You also earlier said, we want to pause and think before we allocate work. So what, the key thing there that I took from that is, we're taking it a decision out of the hands of someone who has to get the work done, what you describe as neutral, of course, as neutral, but it's the element of pausing, and being considerate and deliberate, and having a collective understanding of the firm ethos.
Catherine Youdan:
That's right. Like, what are we trying to accomplish...
Charlene Theodore:
Exactly.
Catherine Youdan:
...by this decision? And I think, what we're trying to accomplish is we want to pause before we allocate work and make work decisions on the basis of criteria, we decided are important and as much as possible, objective metrics. And then to the extent, there's some subjectivity, but at least we're pausing before we use that to make an allocation decision. So it's not quick and it's not random.
Catherine Youdan:
I think it's the randomness that gets me in some respects more than [crosstalk 00:36:15] anything else. Yeah. It's just so important what work you get. And therefore, if that's true, and no one would disagree on that, it also means it's really important what work you don't get. And you just need to know that, at least it doesn't come down to a role of a dice or when you happen to use the restroom that day and we ran into the hallway. I mean, we want to use those moments in times and build relationships with people, which I recognize will ultimately potentially to work, but it just introduces the worry that... Unconscious bias is not random, but unconscious bias together with other random factors is impacting who gets work and who doesn't. And that is at the heart of it for us.
Charlene Theodore:
What space do you think this leaves for other types of relationships? Just based purely on mentorship, coaching sponsorship.
Catherine Youdan:
One thing I would want to stress is that, those sort of relationships have never been more important. And this is definitely meant to be a system that works in parallel, with partners and the more senior associates continuing to build relationships with junior associates. So we definitely want that. And we want that ultimately for work too. Like, part of this is figuring out who you like to work with. Figuring out and learning about different work styles. So there's no question that's a part of it. It was almost as if we wanted to take out the idea that a preexisting relationship would necessarily be the reason you got to work opportunity. Mentorship has never been more important, both informally and formally. Sponsorship, we talked about all the time and what that means in the law firm context. So all of those aspects of relationship building are as important as ever.
Catherine Youdan:
And the work allocation system does not replace the building of those relationships. And in fact, we do encourage associates, not withstanding that we ultimately allocate the work through our system, to seek out people who they're interested in the work they do. And we encourage people to say, "listen, I'd love to do your work one day." We don't have a system that says, propose who you'd like to work with and we'll sort of tell you whether or not that works. Every so often, it is appropriate to say, "listen, I understand this is particularly interested in shareholder activism. This kind of work doesn't come up a lot. Is it possible to consider them for this work?" And that's okay, but the system has some flexibility built into it. That is the importance of the humans behind all this. We wouldn't want a system that didn't allow that, because the reality is, not withstanding our goal of having our junior associates develop evenly and have a breadth of skills and work with a variety of people.
Catherine Youdan:
We recognize that they also come into this experience with us at work and articling with things they're interested in and not interested in. And there's no point forcing or encouraging someone to take on work they don't like. So I do listen. If someone says, "I really, really like public M&A, and it doesn't come along a lot, can you please think of me? I'm really interested." Meanwhile, if someone else says, "listen, I'm starting to realize, I am really interested in investment funds. I don't think I'm interested in public M&A." When the allocation decision comes. If it comes down to those two people, all things being equal, we will of course take into consideration the preferences.
Catherine Youdan:
We want people to express preferences. That is a factor because it isn't always obvious from the data. It's not as if it's, there's always an obvious person to allocate the work to. We're often making a decision between two or three people. So personal preference does play a role. I think with that in mind, absolutely associates are encouraged to continue to build those relationships. And the reality is also, this program, in our group, lasts for about two and a half years. And some of the other groups at the firm, it's about three years, and then you're not in work allocation and you enter the big world of the group. And our hope is that you enter that world with a variety of relationships.
Charlene Theodore:
How much time do you and your colleagues on the allocation team spend on this work? And are there any financial counterbalances to the actual real-time investments, such as time saved by other partners, productive associates and work spread amongst the group? How does that work in terms of what your real investment in it is?
Catherine Youdan:
Particularly in the first year, we track that a lot because we weren't sure what it would be like. And neither were the other people who we were sort of convincing to let us put in places, this pilot program. So we tracked that quite closely and we continue to track our time. I think it really varies, because of course, it varies on how busy we are in many ways. The more work that comes in, the more time we spend allocating it. So there's that piece. It's how much time are we actually spending, sending the emails, making the phone calls. Also, we together, the four of us who do the allocation work, we collaborate. We thought in the beginning and we might sort of be like, I'm on this week and this person's on. And we realized, we like having the discussion. So now, it often goes sort of something like, "Hey, I think associate X will be terrific for this. They haven't worked for that person before. It looks like some capacity opened up this morning. What do you think?"
Catherine Youdan:
And then it's almost sort of a three out of four or at least a two out of four have to say, "yeah, I agree." But quite often you get some good feedback which might be, "you know what? Have you thought about this?" Or, "I actually just heard from this person," or "I understand that deal that died is actually just come back to life, I think they're about to get super fammed." So those conversations take time too. And I think I'd say, it's probably a couple of hours of work a week. We've had a busy year, so there's been a lot of allocation of work. I think we probably spent more time this past year. in some of those conversations we've had with associates to allocate a piece of work, turn into 'hello and connecting.' And that's again, as we've said, that's sort of an unexpected benefit of the system, particularly during the pandemic.
Charlene Theodore:
Cath, I firmly believe, and I talk about it yourself as I can, that we are now in our profession at the intersection of traditionally homogenous workplace culture, and a new younger cohorts of lawyers that are values-driven and certainly more diverse. So as co-chair of Blake's legal personnel committee, that deals with associate matters, as we've discussed, you're going to have a lot of interaction with this new cohort of lawyers. How do you think expectations around legal practice are changing for them? What's the one thing you think that legal employers can do to really attract, engage, and really leverage the talents of what I see as a really idealistic and ambitious generation of legal talent?
Catherine Youdan:
That's a very hard question to answer. It's a good one. I think, it's really important for law firms and other legal employers to...
PART 3 OF 4 ENDS [00:42:04]
Catherine Youdan:
Really important for law firms and other legal employers to be flexible. I think certainly law firms, many other legal employers have for a long way, had certain structures in place. Whether it's at a law firm, like how many years you spend as an associate before you become a partner. Those processes do work, and they're often totally fine for many people, but the reality is lives are very complicated, and I think the young people coming into the organization expect to have a more open dialogue and a more transparent discussion about what their path will look like, what the options are for their path. They don't just want to know that, "Okay, if you've landed a law firm, just work hard, put your nose down, meet the right people, and in X number of years, you'll be up for partner." That answer doesn't work for them, nor should it.
Catherine Youdan:
They want to understand. "What does it take to become a partner? What's it like to be a partner? What happens if I have a parental leave? What happens if I go on secondment?" They want to have, I think, more ongoing discussion about their career. We can and should meet them with that desire because I think our organization certainly, and I expect others, actually do have quite a bit of flexibility built into them. It's just that we haven't always talked about it. I think the expectation now, of the young people coming in is that we will have a discussion about it. And what we have found is that when we do have those discussions, you get a tremendous amount out of them. You actually learn a lot about what someone wants and you can help them proceed through the organization, or if they're not interested in maybe doing that, then there's a more elegant way for them not to be in the organization. Because the reality is, particularly in private practice, many people come into a law firm who aren't going to necessarily make and stay partner, but they go on to fascinating and interesting careers, and staying in touch with them, whether it's for reasons that are as obvious as, they could go to a client or become a client one day and maybe we'll get the chance to work with them. That's important too.
Catherine Youdan:
I mean, the reality is that we all have lives outside of work, and I think for quite a long time there was a sense that that sort of had to stay outside work. I mean, for years and years we've obviously brought our home lives to work. But I think truly being the kind of place where someone can bring their true self to the office. We've said that for a long time, "You need to be your authentic self when you come to the Blakes firm." But that means being able to raise concerns about what's happening in your life, your family, your health, and not being concerned about any kind of ramifications professionally.
Catherine Youdan:
Another aspect of it, and this is sort of inherent to being flexible is not being afraid to change, even when your organization has done incredibly well for many years. And I think our firm is lucky enough to be one of those places. You cannot rest on your laurels. You need to face forward. You need to think about how to embrace change, and I think the younger people coming into our offices demand that of us. One interesting example of that, I think, is that for several years prior to the pandemic, one of the main things on the legal personnel committee we were dealing with was, "How do we manage work from home?" You know, technology is such that people can now work quite effectively at home. They are doing that on evenings and on weekends, and we'd had increasing requests for, "Could I start working from home?" Or people just were, particularly like, you know, you have a new mattress being delivered, you got to be home, and you could, and so it was very handy.
Catherine Youdan:
But we've had requests for something more formal, you know, "Can we have a policy where we can work from home a certain number of days of the month," or the week or whatever it was. And that became a little bit of a hot issue. It was very challenging to talk about that because there's certainly, in an organization as big as ours, lots of people who think, "Well, no. Being a lawyer at the firm means you come into the office. That person to person connection is really important." That's true, but it's also, that's just the way it's [inaudible 00:45:19] been, and people hadn't really experienced an environment where lots of people were working remotely. So that was the environment we were dealing with in basically February of 2020, and then March 2020 rolls around and suddenly the entire 650-lawyer population of the Blakes firm is working remotely in a 48-hour period, and lo and behold, the sky did not fall. And lo and behold, actually some of the very people who were most concerned that work from home wouldn't lead to a great work product, or great client relationships, actually are the very people who've come to really appreciate working from home.
Catherine Youdan:
I think that's an example where we were forced into a situation, to upgrade something, but there's no question that when we leave the pandemic time, when we're free to go back into our office, then what we've learned about working from home will now be incorporated into the firm environment. I don't know what that model will be like yet. That's something we, like many others, are working through. But the reality is that those requests for working from home that came from our younger associates, that were very easy to dismiss, you can't dismiss them now because you've experienced it.
Catherine Youdan:
But I think that's an example of, like, you can't be afraid to change the way you're doing things because it turns out actually it's fine working from home. It's possible, and it actually can be preferable, and it can make many people's lives much easier for various reasons if they can have a bit more of a connection to their home life. So I thought that's just one example. We were forced in that case, but it really highlighted that you can't be afraid of change, you need to embrace it. And I do think that is what the young people expect of us as an organization, to be open to at least have discussions about things, and to have them be part of the discussions.
Charlene Theodore:
Yeah, and that's what I like about that, because it's a discussion that started before the pandemic and through that experience you realize it is possible. And it's another example of initiative that was sought out by one specific demographic group of the firm, but has benefited lots of people. Not to ever underscore the seriousness of the pandemic and all that it has wrought, but it's again, another benefit for some people that goes beyond younger lawyers and newer lawyers, junior lawyers, and it's benefited people at all levels. I think that's great.
Catherine Youdan:
Yeah, well it's actually quite interesting because we're having a bit more confidence talking about the so-called return to work day. I do think actually it's our younger people who are most excited to come back to work.
Charlene Theodore:
To come back, I know.
Catherine Youdan:
Whereas some of the older people in the organization who were the most worried about what working from home would be like, are actually loving working from home and thinking everyone's doing a terrific job getting the work done. So it's actually quite interesting how in reality that has played out.
Charlene Theodore:
I love it. And I mean, that is a challenge that I'm sure you'll rise to. This was such a wonderful discussion Cat. Thank so much for joining us.
Catherine Youdan:
You're most welcome. That was awesome, thanks Charlene.
Charlene Theodore:
Now, we know not everyone listening is in a setting where a system like Blakes' is feasible. But from Cat's example we've learned a lot about what all workplace leaders should be taking into consideration when allocating work. The next time you've got a file to assign, take a beat and reflect on the following.
Charlene Theodore:
Are you overloading those who are keen to work themselves into the ground while under-utilizing those who are perhaps more introverted or less forceful in advocating for themselves? If so, you may well find you've got a frustrated workforce on your hands, with some struggling with burnout, and others disengaging altogether.
Charlene Theodore:
Are your associates or junior team members working consistently with the same senior staff on the same types of files? If so, they may not be getting the well-rounded and relevant experience and connections they need to develop their skills and advance in their careers.
Charlene Theodore:
Are you assigning work on a "Hey you" basis, in which the most directly in your eye-line or orbit are tasked with most of the projects with which you need assistance? If so, take a pause next time to consider who has the capacity to take on the work, and who might benefit best from the specific opportunities it affords, to make a good, thoughtful and equitable decision.
Charlene Theodore:
Do you provide a mechanism for associates to report on their capacity for new assignments, or do you check in with them to assess workload? If you've accumulated and availed yourself of good data when it comes to capacity, you know how to more evenly distribute the work and avoid putting associates in an uncomfortable situation of either turning down or reluctantly taking on work they just don't have time for.
Charlene Theodore:
If you're looking to make a change, keep these key tactics top of mind. Identify the data points that would be most useful to you and your associates or junior staff in equitable work allocation, and adjust or add to them regularly to improve the process.
Charlene Theodore:
Whatever allocation system you use, remember that you need to collect, listen to, and act on feedback from those who assign, and those who receive the work.
Charlene Theodore:
Once you've implemented a more equitable model and disrupted the return business aspect of your file assignments, you have to find another way to deliver feedback in real time to the associate about how they carried out the work, so they have a good sense of how they're performing.
Charlene Theodore:
Consider the impact of controlling workflow on bonuses and compensation, and adjust accordingly, and communicate with transparency.
Charlene Theodore:
When introducing a new process it's always best to roll it out in a small and contained fashion, as a pilot or within a single department, to manage implementation and work out any issues before wide-scale adoption. You can leverage that small success to gain traction, buy-in, and even greater success.
Charlene Theodore:
The system at Blakes allows associates opportunities to deepen and widen career-enhancing internal and external relationships, but it operates in tandem with formal and informal coaching, mentorship, sponsorship, and relationship building. Don't view the former as a replacement for the latter.
Charlene Theodore:
Humans, not data, remain at the heart of a good allocation system. It's still people, not computers making the decisions. At Blakes there's an entire committee devoted to this work. As such, there's room to listen to the personal preferences of associates in terms of the work that interests them and take those into account.
Charlene Theodore:
Lastly, and in my opinion, most importantly, if you have a free-market attitude and infrastructure when it comes to work allocation, you're sending a sink-or-swim message, and signaling a lack of support, that in addition to fostering an unhealthy culture will have a harmful effect on your ability to recruit and retain talented lawyers. By taking a more objective, equitable, and structured approach on the other hand, you contribute to a workplace where everyone feels value, and can see a clear path to success.
Charlene Theodore:
You can find both the Ontario Bar Association, and me, your host, Charlene Theodore, on LinkedIn and on Twitter. Let's keep this conversation going.