As we contemplate a return to the office and the merging of our physical and virtual workspaces, how do we carry on with progressive initiatives from “the before times,” while using all that we’ve learned over the past year to create a hybrid practice model of unprecedented innovation, inclusion and engagement? Monique Jilesen, a partner at Lenczner Slaght who is leading the firm’s COVID response, provides an insider’s take on combining technology and human potential to best effect in the reconfigured legal workplace.
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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 trees that governance. Knowing that our listeners span the country and are tuning in from other areas with their own treaties, and unceded territories, I encourage you to continue learning more about the indigenous history in your community. It is important history and a story that continues.
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Charlene Theodore:
Some law firms are very well positioned to be looking into the future. They see opportunities and they are willing to take the bold steps to get themselves where they want to be. Then along comes 2020 and no matter how far thinking you are, you could never foresee what the global pandemic would have in store for all of us. However trade it sounds, the events of the past year have significantly altered the way we engage with colleagues and serve our clients. As we contemplate a return to the office and the merging of our physical and virtual workspaces, how do we pick ourselves up, carry on with the progressive work we had underway, and even more importantly, how do we ensure that we take all that we've learned about technology and collaboration and apply it in a way that creates new practice models of unparalleled innovation, inclusion, and engagement?
Charlene Theodore:
I'm OBA President Charlene Theodore, and this is the Work that Works podcast. My guest today is Monique Jilesen, who is a partner at Lenczner Slaght, and leading litigation counsel, who has been recognized by Benchmark Canada as one of Canada's top 50 trial lawyers. Just as important for us in this discussion today, Monique is also a member of Lenczner's management committee and the partner responsible for people and leading the firm's COVID response. So she has invaluable insight into the question I raised off the top, namely, how legal employers can carry on leveraging and combining technology and human potential to the best effect in the reconfigured post COVID workplace. I'm excited to have this opportunity to explore all that we might look forward to. Welcome Monique, thanks for joining us.
Monique Jilesen:
Thank you for having me.
Charlene Theodore:
All right. So Monique, you started your career at Lenczner Slaght and are now a partner and trusted member of the management team. I think that gives you a unique perspective on really the evolution of private practice culture. So your firm is obviously doing something right to keep you engaged and rising throughout the hierarchy of the firm over the duration of your career. What's worked well for you there?
Monique Jilesen:
I get this question asked a lot because, of course, I've now spent over 20 years at the firm and not everybody spends that much time in one place, but the answer is really very easy. It's a combination of two things, one, the people and the nature of the work. So we are a litigation firm only. We get amazing work in half for the whole time I have been at the firm. So every day you wake up and you're doing something different and fun and exciting. So that gets you half the way there. But the other half of the way is the amazing people. So I wouldn't stay if it was just great work and not the greatest people, and I probably wouldn't stay if it was the greatest people in a really boring work, but we have the unicorn effect of amazing people and amazing and engaging work. That's 100% what has kept me at the firm all of these years.
Charlene Theodore:
That is a winning combination. So as you mentioned, you've been there for 20 years. So you have some history to draw upon, not just in the evolution of the firm, but the evolution of private practice overall. So what are some of the positive changes you've witnessed internally when it comes to creating healthier, more inclusive, and productive workplace culture at your firm?
Monique Jilesen:
It's interesting, the recent pandemic has been a trigger for some of those things. We of course had things before that, but now, particularly when we talk about inclusiveness, there are more events opportunities that are the entire firm, and you see the lawyers and the business team really communicating with one another on a personal level at the various events that we have at the firm virtually. And we have learned so much about the people at the firm. People have volunteered to present things like their pandemic baking, or their pandemic reading, or their pandemic gardening and it's really fun. And of course, the pandemic dogs and babies also super excellent. That in my mind has really contributed to the inclusiveness.
Monique Jilesen:
Before the pandemic, of course, we had diversity inclusion committee made up of all members of the firm. We continue to have that. We thought carefully about our space, which we'll have to think carefully about again, but we have a gender inclusive washroom, prayer meditation room, a private space for nursing mothers, collaboration space. So all of those spaces contributed to inclusivity. Again, we'll keep all of those things, but now we have to think about how we work together in a different way. So lots of things going on at the firm to make it a healthy and inclusive workspace and it's changing based on the way the work is changing as well.
Charlene Theodore:
You know, that sense of the pandemic, having the effect of you and your associates really leaning into that sense of community and comradery. Something that resonates a lot with me. That's the one thing that I was worried about in my practice, for my clients, for my colleagues at work, and also amongst our OBA membership. That sense of disconnection. And of course we would all rather be together, but what I've noticed too, is that in embracing the virtual world and being creative and thinking out of the box as you guys have done, we've really managed to create an even tighter community, especially being within a provincial organization, lawyers from Sudbury and Windsor are connecting.
Charlene Theodore:
I've noticed a similar thing, and I think it's one of the silver linings coming out of this pandemic. Now, the foundation money for this podcast is really my belief that we're currently in the world of work at the intersection of a younger, more diverse workforce and a traditionally homogenous bordering culture that has left many of those new up and coming lawyers out of the equation. That is what we're coming together to talk about. Those are the lessons that we're learning as we stand at this intersection in time. So we can all have productive, healthy workplaces in our sector for the future.
Charlene Theodore:
So given that, I'd love to know what you think are some successful tactics, things you've either noticed at your own firm or in the profession overall when it comes to attracting and engaging this up and coming and increasingly diverse and increasingly idealistic generation to the law.
Monique Jilesen:
There are some things that we've been doing for a long time and that we have to continue to do and of course, some new things. So again, as a litigation firm, the opportunity to get up and be present in court and not be the six person on just doing the document review really drives recruitment and retention at our firm. We have seen over the past few years, both the profession and the judiciary, actually thinking more about this. About there being inclusion, allowing young people who do a lot of the work on the cases to actually have the opportunity to get up and speak. And that's been a tradition at our firms since the day I started. They talk about the disappearing trial. Sometimes I don't know about that.
Monique Jilesen:
We have a number of them coming up in the firm over the next little while, but making sure that our young people have those opportunities to learn on their feet in that. While that is a thing we have been doing forever, it is we see in recruitment, a main thing that attracts people to come to the firm. They want to have that opportunity to be the courtroom lawyer. And then another part that's been around for a long time and I think should continue to every organization and people when they're thinking about where they want to work is what is the culture of the place?
Monique Jilesen:
Is it a welcoming, inclusive culture? If I'm going to work like this, if I'm going to devote so much time to my profession, do I want to be around the people as I talked about before? And so we are a group of people, among other things, who are excited about this work, excited about litigation. Law nerds in the best possible way and we hope that that also contributes to recruitment and retention, and it is one of the things we miss is the hallway opportunities during the pandemic to just talk about your case. We do, do that still very much online, but it's harder to have those accidental meetings where you get back from court and you're like, "I just did this." Or you see an associate come back from court, "What judge were you in front of?" That sort of thing, I certainly do miss that a little bit. I'll call you the next time I come back from court and tell you.
Charlene Theodore:
Anytime, I mean, you know where I'll be.
Monique Jilesen:
Yeah, exactly.
Charlene Theodore:
[crosstalk 00:09:54] a year and a half, so I'm pretty easy to reach. So your firm is one of our partner firms, and we appreciate that and we love working with our partner firms. Something I've noticed in my work as OBA president is that our partner firms are really committed to taking action on issues of importance to this generation and the next generation of lawyers. So when I'm saying issues of importance, I'm talking about issues such as diversity, mental health, mental wellness, and the use of technology. Now I know your firm is leading work in all these areas. So I want to touch on a couple of them with you, but let's start with diversity.
Charlene Theodore:
A couple of years ago, your firm announced that it would try out a name-line student recruitment process as part of your overarching diversity and inclusion program. Can you walk us, Monique, through some of the thinking at the time and how it's panned out for you? There are lots of EDI strategists that come out on both sides of the issue. I personally think it's an issue of fit and implementation. Is it something that you'd recommend or what have you learned through the experience?
Monique Jilesen:
I agree with you Charlene, that how you implement a program like the resume anonymization is so important. We spent a lot of time looking at how others did it and why some succeeded and some failed. The thinking behind it was, what can we do to stop that unconscious bias and increase the diversity and inclusion of the firm? There have been lots of studies about these issues in there, and one of the concerns from the studies is that when names are included on resumes, unconscious bias seeps in. And that people with white sounding names or men in particular with white sounding names are more likely to get interviews than women or people with nonwhite sounding names.
Monique Jilesen:
Studies have shown that we can unconsciously be attracted to those who are like us or what looks familiar so that if you remove that from the resume, it's more likely that candidates won't be unconsciously separated out for those reasons. So our solution was let's remove the names. Let's see what that looks like. How that works. What we didn't remove, and this is the implementation point you made a point about is we didn't remove any of the extracurricular activities on people's CVs. We didn't ask people at all to not somehow through their CV, if it disclosed gender or any other characteristic. We didn't ask them to remove that. All we did was remove the names. And in terms of implementation, it worked well.
Monique Jilesen:
The first thing really is just that as the reviewer of the application is reviewing it, they stop and think about it, right? They've just stopped to think that the purpose of this was to remove my unconscious bias. I should review the application purely on its merits. I think one of the things I like to do in management of the firm is every decision if I can is, think what are the implications of this? What are the DNI implications? Does it have an impact? Is it possible that I'm bringing an unconscious bias in? So even just the simple removal of the name, makes the reviewer think about it as they're reviewing the application. That in my mind is a benefit in and of itself.
Monique Jilesen:
So we've done it now for a couple of years. We're not a small firm anymore. We're a medium firm, but we're smaller than the large firms. And so statistically speaking, I don't think it's fair one way or the other to declare a success or otherwise, but I can say it has been a great recruitment tool. Students have seen it as being a commitment to diversity and inclusion and whether through the anonymization itself or because it was a good recruitment tool, we have been very lucky to have diverse groups of students come in through those application procedures.
Charlene Theodore:
What I appreciate about your approaches that you've put this anonymization in place, you've personalized it to where you see your pin points arising and you review it and you're looking at the results. I think that that with any EDI initiative, that is the key, right? To look at it, to match it to your overall strategic plan and to constantly review it so you can pivot if necessary. I know, and I think by now everybody knows that your firm has been a partner and refer to her. A tool designed to connect experienced women lawyers with referral work. So I would love for you to tell us about what prompted your involvement. I just think so highly of this initiative and the uptake that you've seen and why it's so important as a means of inclusion in referral work and work allocation.
Monique Jilesen:
This was a great idea that came from the collaboration of two of our partners Sana Halwani and Shara Roy. And the prompt is what they saw in the marketplace, what many of us see in the market that the referrals just don't go to women as often. We also see that women are highly competent lawyers, but that they don't necessarily have the same recognition overall within the profession. So how do we improve that? One way is just to bring women more top of mind. So how do we do that? And they came with this idea of this list and that we worked a very long time. So that was their idea and then the firm worked together to think about how we could build it, that it would be fair, that it would grow, that it would live on its own, that it wasn't a Lenczner Slaght list, but that it was a list built by professional, successful women, but used by everyone.
Monique Jilesen:
In my mind, that's really important. I think your last question was, so what have we seen? What has the uptake been? We have seen that women, of course, are using it, but men as allies are using it. Every time someone says to me, "Do you know this or that lawyer?" The first place I send them to is refer to her so that women are at the top of the list of potential referrals for whatever that colleague is looking for. So now we have about 35,000 views on the website growing every month. We have 450 people listed. So we have litigation, we have corporate, we have supporting legal areas. It has grown from what it started as was just litigation lawyers to other professionals within the legal community.
Monique Jilesen:
We have new ideas for lists and other ways for the groups to collaborate. Our main growth plan, one thing we really want to focus over the next year is to find ways to ensure that the list is more inclusive of BIPOC women. That's an area that's definitely a need for growth in the profession generally, and on this list in particular.
Charlene Theodore:
So I think refer to her is such a shining star of an initiative because the template can be applied everywhere. What you've got is an organic idea, thought up by people who are not just have observed a deficit or a vulnerable or equity seeking group, but they experience it. You've got broad-based firm or corporate sponsorship, and there's that great mix of the administrative and infrastructure support with the independence of the planning from the people whose needs are actually going to be served. I think that refer to her could be replicated in so many other industries.
Charlene Theodore:
One of the reasons why this podcast has been well-received outside of the legal industry in areas like engineering and banking and retail is because ideas like this can be refer to her engineering, refer to her consulting, refer to her tech. The template is just so well done, and so I'm excited to see it grow and evolve and I really commend you and your colleagues on this work. I think it's such a simple, but well-executed solution to a problem that we've been trying to address in this industry for years.
Monique Jilesen:
One of the big areas has been mediators and arbitrators. I don't know Charlene, how many women mediators and arbitrators you've had the opportunity to work with, but I can say for me, I think it was one before this and she was great, but there's a regular list of people you hear about and more or less you don't hear about anyone else. And so this is a great opportunity actually, to go out to our colleagues and say, "Who have you used? And who's the best?" We've created a list there. So I hope that only grows. Anyways, my only point is that there was one really jarring example of there really being no explanation for why women wouldn't even have a list of women, mediators and arbitrators that they could think of off the top of your head. So now you don't have to have it off the top of your head. There's a list available to you and they're great.
Charlene Theodore:
The other great tool about and this specifically when you're talking about female mediators and arbitrators, part of the problem is anecdotally, I would say women are discouraged from going into the industry because it's a very open secret in our field that you won't necessarily get all the bookings because there is a crew. The field is dominated by men and women are not getting the referrals. And so I think the by-product of having initiatives like refer to her applied in different sectors not only gets the existing women, the work and an opportunity to shine and thrive, but it encourages other women to go into those specific areas of practice, which is so needed.
Monique Jilesen:
Absolutely right. When you see a list of people, you're like, "Wow, those are great people and I can do that too."
Charlene Theodore:
Exactly. So let's switch to mental health. I think we all know at this point over a year into the pandemic that maintaining good mental health has been a challenge for everyone with social distancing and all encompassing health crisis. And just the challenge of balancing everything on our plates, a top shifting ground and changing rules and our profession and in our personal lives. Lawyers who are already engaged in demanding work and taking on the problems and stresses of their clients have really struggled with the wellness piece. Monique, considering that everyone responds so differently to these challenges and requires different kinds of supports, I think it's been difficult for employers to take a uniform approach or even know how to devote resources effectively in this area. What kinds of support has your firm been offering?
Monique Jilesen:
If there's one thing that's keeping me up at night during the pandemic, there's lots of things probably keeping me up at night during the pandemic, but from the firm perspective, the health and wellness of our people is 100% the thing that keeps me up and mental health being a really big part of the health of our colleagues during this time. So at the very beginning, the very first thing we did was make sure everyone had a laptop. That's not mental health. That was like, "Okay, can we do this?" And then literally the very next thing, three seconds later was, "Let's check in with every single person."
Monique Jilesen:
So every single person at the firm. We have various directors at the firm responsible for IT, responsible for the associates and they were all asked to spend their time, their focus immediately was to reach out and make sure that everyone was doing okay, had what they need. Were there any resources they needed? And that was a huge job for any organization, but it certainly gave us some comfort that everyone knew that there would be a person that they could go to if they needed help. So we're not calling everybody up every day anymore, 14 months in, but we have been very, very heavy on the communication with our colleagues.
Monique Jilesen:
One example of that is I'm sure you've read the Erin Duran article about her experiences. We actually sent that around to everyone at the firm. She was focused of course, on being a lawyer, but that just like you talk about this podcast being available to everyone, her article went beyond really what it was like to be a lawyer, but anyone having mental health issues generally are through this period. And as part of circulating that at the firm. We reminded people about the resources they had within the firm, various mental health resources. We increased our mental health benefits during the course of the pandemic.
Monique Jilesen:
We have on our intranet and mental health resources. We changed our fitness policy. So it wasn't just a gym because that doesn't work so well in a pandemic so we provided people with a fitness benefit. There's various resources that we have available both online and otherwise. We reminded people of the resources for the lawyers through the Law Society. And then as the final thing, reminder, if you need to talk, speak to someone that you trust, that you're comfortable with. Speak to me.
Monique Jilesen:
We have had people reaching out as needed, and there have been people who need personalized support to your point that it can't be uniform. It has to be personalized. Do I need a leave? Do I just need a reduction in time? If I'm an assistant, I've got my kids all day, do I need to work at night? There are different things for different people in different circumstances, and we work through making sure that we can accommodate that.
Charlene Theodore:
I really like, especially as a workplace lawyer, deals with pensions and benefits, a baseline fairly easy to implement move is to have a conversation with your benefits provider and switch around some of those benefits allocations, as much as your contract will allow you because increasing the allowance for mental health care during this time and getting rid of, or at least temporarily getting rid of things like gym memberships, which that money has not been used for me in a long time because of the pandemic is a really smart idea and it's something that's easy to implement right away. Now, switching back to sometime, hopefully in the foreseeable future, what if anything, are you doing or will you be doing to address the anxiety many may be experiencing at the prospect of returning to work?
Monique Jilesen:
Again, we start with constant communication. I think my colleagues are tired of getting emails from us about these issues. So there's two different ways. We communicate through email, of course, but we have had town halls throughout the pandemic. So we had them twice a year live before the pandemic, and now we've had one a month since March of 2020. During the course of the town hall, we do fun things like people talking about their gardening habit or kids and dogs come on the screen. And we also talk about where we are in our pandemic preparedness. What the firm looks like, what we're doing at the firm, what we're going to do in the future.
Monique Jilesen:
To be honest right now, the most recent thing we have said and we'll probably say right now is we don't know when we're returning to the office. We have said, no, one's going to be asked to return before September, 2021. And likely no, one's going to be asked to return in September, 2021. There's a lot of anxiety over, what am I going to do with my kids? How am I going to manage my space? We're not going to ask you to come back on a dime. Whatever happens, the reverse, there's some anxiety of when can I come back? My 400 square foot condo is not working for me and my mental health is suffering and I'd like to come back as soon as I can.
Monique Jilesen:
I'd love to be able to answer that question. The answer will be when it's safe enough for us to do so, but because we've been doing constant communication, people know we are thinking about it. We have done pulse surveys. We will continue to do that and people know because we've done it from the beginning. We've made changes within the office, from touchless doors, lots of signage, PPE kits for everyone. We have a small group of people that go in to use the office for virtual hearings. So we have an essential services team and we have people use the boardrooms for hearings so that we have all the protections in place to make those people safe. So to the extent that we may return, whenever we're going to return in larger numbers, think people are comfortable and know that we have the protections you can have in place in an indoor work environment.
Charlene Theodore:
Even though we don't know what's going to happen over the next month, we don't know what's going to happen tomorrow or next week, as far as public health is concerned. I think that the importance of signaling that open communication and here's what our approach is going to be at whatever time goes a long way into relieving anxiety around returning or not returning. So I want to ask you a few more questions surrounding what does workplace look like in a post COVID world? What did you perceive as the biggest challenge to your team in the first few weeks from working from home and what are the biggest challenges now more than a year later?
Monique Jilesen:
So what are the biggest challenges then, and now has actually been all the changes with the court system. From a litigator's point of view, we went from not going into the courtroom to working from home and we did do it seamlessly. It wasn't that hard to move on to the screen. We actually had implemented a team software before the pandemic. The take-up was much quicker after the pandemic, but it was actually already all implemented, but there were notices from the profession about every other day.
Monique Jilesen:
It seems like at the beginning and so we started a court changes task force, so that instead of one person being responsible for looking at that and communicating it, we've got a group of people across the firm who were looking at it because there are changes to the way you serve and file and there are different platforms and you can do it all, but it is very difficult to keep up with those changes.
Monique Jilesen:
So we've responded by making sure that people are communicating that within the organization and the isolation issue, the not being able to work as a team in person is a big change as well for a litigation practice. There have been real benefits to some of the technology you can win great thing when you're doing a Zoom hearing is your colleague can pass you a note without it being a yellow, sticky note, or pulling on your gown. You get the chat and you can just slip it right into your cross examination, which you couldn't do before. So there's some great benefits, but I think we miss being able to sit in the boardroom and just pound out a cross examination together.
Monique Jilesen:
Now sitting on the screen for another few hours is not necessarily the top of anyone's list to do so. We've managed the isolation issues or the concerns by as many places have through various social events. Some dinner events with smaller groups. I actually have one tonight, but some of the associates we do education sessions. We used to do them live in the office every other Friday. We do those virtually. We get together as a firm or in subgroups, as much as we can to manage that isolation issue. As soon as we can have an outside event, we will be there.
Charlene Theodore:
In terms of responding to all of these changes, and some of them are constant in terms of the ongoing changes and adapting to the courts. What aspects of your responses to the pandemic? Do you anticipate becoming a permanent part of your posts COVID workplace?
Monique Jilesen:
I'd say virtually all of them. All of the things that we brought in, the technology allowance, the constant transparent communication, the fitness allowance, the additional health benefits. They're not going away in 2022. Those are permanent policies up on our intranet. They're important to support our colleagues. I expect our virtual hearing rooms will continue. Probably not every boardroom as we have right now, but the courts have said that at least some hearings will continue virtually, case conferences likely. So those will continue and hopefully improve. Some sort of flexible work arrangement will continue. What that looks like exactly, we haven't finalized, but it is the case that not everybody needs to work in the office and we've proven it.
Charlene Theodore:
Yeah. I was going to ask you about that next. What I'm hearing, the thread I'm hearing throughout it is you've leaned into being flexible as someone who was not just in charge of the physical workplace, but also in charge of the workplace culture. And as we said before, there's been different reactions to this pandemic. Have you picked up any resistance to your willingness to operate more flexibly?
Monique Jilesen:
The short answer to that is no. You might've expected that that would happen, but everyone has adjusted. So the only resistance is not the flexibility, but just the desire for some people to get out of their house, get into the office. And that's not resistance. That's just like everyone else in the pandemic.
Charlene Theodore:
Once a little of variety.
Monique Jilesen:
Yeah. Exactly.
Charlene Theodore:
Yeah. I love working from home, but some of my colleagues really struggled. And even me, even though I do like this arrangement working from home, it would be nice to on occasion, pop into the office, go to lunch with friends. I think that that's the piece that's missing, but I also think that that's translates well to your plans for return to work post COVID. Any thoughts on how you are going to keep up this great sense of engagement and the post pandemic world, when things are still going to be virtual, to some extent?
Monique Jilesen:
There will be some sort of hybrid result. Obviously, our formal mentorship between students and associates, those happened. One of the great things we've actually had at the firm came out of our suggestion box was virtual coffees. What's been great about that again is that's been across the whole firm. So 40 people sign up, four people at a time, agree to have coffee Friday morning at 10:00. It's a partner and associate and assistant and someone from the mail room, they get conversation prompts never necessary at our firm and they have a coffee.
Monique Jilesen:
So whether that continues virtually or in person, the idea of bringing people together, finding ways to bring people together, I think almost certainly will continue. I think the pandemic has been very, very hard and I would prefer like everyone that it did not happen. There have been some great positive triggers to moving people beyond what they might be comfortable with, whether it's methods of communication virtually, thinking more about issues like mental health, collaborating with different people across the organization. There've been a lot of positive movements on that and we can't lose that progress just because the pandemic is going to be over. We have to take it and go with it.
Charlene Theodore:
I couldn't have said it better myself, Monique especially in my area of practice workplace law. I tend to focus on all of the positive things that have come out of this. All of the innovation around workplaces and workplace culture and thinking of new ideas and people really engaging in a different way. And those are of course the silver linings, but obviously this is a horrible experience for not just our city, our province, our country, the world. And I think that that is what motivates me because we cannot have let all of the loss of life and all of the bad be for nothing. So in my capacity, as a workplace lawyer, in your capacity as someone who's leading a firm, I think we feel the same about if we had to have this bad thing, let's make sure some of the good things we discover. Let's safeguard them and protect them and not slip back into the old ways of doing things when we found so many better ways of doing things during this crisis.
Monique Jilesen:
Absolutely.
Charlene Theodore:
So I continue to be a major proponent of data collection when it comes to identifying ways of creating a better experience of the legal workplace for everyone, and a healthier, more sustainable culture all around. So what types of actionable measurement monitoring do you think all legal workplaces, regardless of size should be conducting in the interest of being more productive and more inclusive in their operation?
Monique Jilesen:
Good question. It is funny. I was thinking about this one in particular because the regardless of size I think is a bit of a hard question. So I agree with you absolutely on data. And that's a great area of growth and thinking within the legal profession. So of course the first one, if we're talking about inclusiveness is who actually works at your firm? Who are they? This year, we're going to be able to implement an EDI survey that comes from an outside service provider. We have done it internally in the past, and I will say it didn't go perfectly because people aren't necessarily comfortable sharing within their organization information about themselves and that's totally fair and it was not mandatory, but what it meant is you're not necessarily getting the best data.
Monique Jilesen:
And now, as you know, clients are asking for this information, so we need it for ourselves to see where we are today. You need a base of data in order to look at where you're going. So we need to do it and we need to do it in a way that people have confidence in both in the content of the data and that it's not going to be used against them in some way. We're at a size now where that will work, that we get an outside provider to do it and implement it. Think if you're a smaller organization. You're the workplace lawyer, Charlene, I should ask you this question. How do you do it if you're a 10 or a 12 person law firm? It's a bit of a hot point for me because I'm mixed race. So I don't want someone to identify for me who I am by looking at me.
Monique Jilesen:
I don't think anybody probably wants anybody to identify who they are by looking at them. And you'd be happy to identify if you were in a larger organization, some characteristic, but you don't want anyone to know who it is. Impossible to do if you're at a 12 person firm. So I think it's easier for the larger organizations to do that work than it is for the smaller ones.
Charlene Theodore:
Well, I think that it can be done and here's how I think you get it done. I think what you've walked us through is the lesson that most of us have learned and a lot of us have yet to learn is that you're not going to get the results you want specifically around issues around race, disability, sexual orientation. What you want is lower your risk of people not feeling open and honest to answer those questions. You have to get a third party provider. And that third party provider, the terms have to be made clear to your employees, that they are the guardian of that material, because the third party provider, their interest isn't solely about collecting your information. It is about protecting your information from the management team. A previous guest on our podcast, Lily Zang is an expert at this and that's her career. That's what she does. She works with data.
Charlene Theodore:
I'm not an expert at working with data and the way that she does. I know what we need to collect, but she is an expert at working in the data so they're not identifiable. One of the things that's happened in our profession is people are realizing that this EDI mountain that we're trying to climb to get to the other side is bigger than all of us. We went from an era where firms had their EDI initiatives and programs and that was, this is our trade secret because we want the best racialized gay indigenous candidate. Whereas we've now realized, no for the sake of the profession, we've got to tackle this issue in terms of our workplace culture overall. And so firms are having conversations about some of these issues and separating recruitment and that competitive edge with the fundamentals that we still need to get right.
Charlene Theodore:
Some of the suggestions I would make to a smaller firm, are there others in your area of practice or your county law association, you get together, right? And you hire somebody to do the data for these firms overall, and how you may compare against the benchmark in your geographic area or in your area of practice. There are certainly going to be limitations to what you can identify and what you can do with the information, but collecting the data is useful and it could be used in many ways. Beyond, we have this many people who identify as black. We have this many people who identify... There's so much more to data collection and using that data. One thing that people sometimes overlook in terms of looking at their firm diversity is not only your staff, but your vendors. How diverse are your relationships with your community? That's another thing that you can use that data collection process for as well.
Monique Jilesen:
You're 100% right, obviously about the need for the data, because some of the things we're working on and thinking about our work allocation. So it helps again to understand who your workforce is and what work is going to, who and you need that base of data first and then compensation. Obviously, that's been a big issue in the media recently, not hard for us to do that analysis by gender, which we have done. But again, it's helpful to have the base data so that you can compare your compensation against what your firm looks like. And then there's recruitment, promotion, all of those things. So you really do need the base first.
Charlene Theodore:
Another valuable data set is looking back, right? People who aren't in your firm anymore, people who came and went, people who interviewed and weren't selected having, engaging your third-party provider to look at that information, to see how long are indigenous lawyers, lawyers that are part of the LGBTQ community. How long are they staying? Are they all leaving at a certain point? Is there a pattern that we see here are people who have one child staying, but people who have multiple children leaving? What about parents of children or caregivers of children with disabilities? There's so much you can do with the data more than we have this many black people, we have this many biracial people. There's so much you can do looking at that collection of information that you have as an employee. I think there's value for everybody.
Monique Jilesen:
I'm looking forward to having that data and being able to use it and navigate it.
Charlene Theodore:
Absolutely. I'm excited for you. It's an exciting to start. We also don't often think about the other side of the coin. How we can use data and really leverage it to create a better client experience. Do you have any thoughts on that?
Monique Jilesen:
So we have, as you may know, a data-driven decisions project at the firm. I'm not the expert on that Paul-Erik Veel my partner has been driving the data-driven decisions, but I've been so lucky to work with him on some of the projects. So we've been collecting data about cases. What I've been involved in particularly has been on the commercial list. I practice primarily on the commercial list and then from hotel website commerciallist.com or there's information about that particular court. I think it was one of the earliest things we've done in data-driven decisions is collect up information about the cases that are reported on the commercial list, and then seeing what can be learned out of them.
Monique Jilesen:
One thing we can tell our clients is we know that court, but not only do we know that court, but we can give them actual data about what the court has done and in what circumstances. We're doing this to great success on Supreme Court leave applications and so he has built a model because he's a Renaissance man. He's a lawyer and has built a data model to predict which cases might get leave. So there's a very useful thing for clients and making decisions. And so we have a model that can help clients look at that. It's not just our gut reaction. Lawyers are forever in a day have been able to speak to in my experience X or Y. So now we can talk about our experience, but also the data underlying it at many levels of court now.
Charlene Theodore:
I love the way you phrase that, because that is our language in my experience. This is my sense based on the factors of the case, past decisions, but there is maybe a gut instinct when we're with this judge. And so this is how it feels, but it's very opposite to the client language and the client wants lottery odds.
Monique Jilesen:
They always want to know.
Charlene Theodore:
They always want a percentage. No matter what area you practice, they want things put in a very different way than we have been trained to talk about potential outcomes in a case. We're not going to change the way clients want to receive information. That piece of technology really bridges that communication gap and inspires confidence with client. So last question for you, obviously the workplace we return to post COVID, there'll be an adjustment period. We'll be subject to some fine tuning. Some of which you talked about. It's been a work in progress and it will continue to be, but let's project a little further down the road. What's your vision given the position that you're in, you are again, the one in charge of not just workplace, but workplace culture. What would you like to see or do you expect to see in the legal workplace let's say five years from now?
Monique Jilesen:
I think I'm going to cop out of this question a little bit, because I think it's almost impossible to know what it's going to be five years from now. I think it's going to be very, very different from for sure where it was in 2019 and very different from where it has been in 2020 and 2021. The world is a little bit our oyster. Yes, the work is going to be flexible. Our spaces are going to be different. I think given what we've seen, we're not making final decisions about our space right now. Let's see what it's like, because if I make a decision now that we want pods or we want hot desking, or everybody gets their own office, my guess this is likely to be the wrong decision.
Monique Jilesen:
No one really knows how they want to work right now. Yeah, I want to go back to the office, but maybe I'll be back at the office for two months. I'll be like, "Oh, get me back home." I have no idea what I'm looking forward to in the next five years is we have seen that we're agile. Lawyers not usually being the most agile in terms of the workplace. We've been resistant to change.
Charlene Theodore:
Rigidity is the thing. Yes.
Monique Jilesen:
I think what we've seen is we can be agile and embrace change. And so I'm really excited about where we might be five years from now, but I think anyone who says, I know that's where we'll be, but they're not looking at the data. I don't think we do know yet. I'm excited about it. I think we'll be working differently. One of the things our firm and others have been working on for example, is legal project management. More business people working along with the lawyers to move a case forward in a different way, in a different process. And so that's the thing I can see growing significantly over the next five years. Ultimately, it's how do we provide service to our clients in the best way possible while actually having a really engaged workforce, engaged healthy, excited workforce. That's the goal today, but over the next five years, I just think so many things through technology, through open-mindedness, we're going to be somewhere exciting five years from now, for sure.
Charlene Theodore:
Well, I got to tell you, I don't think that's a cop out at all. I think I really appreciate that answer because what it shows is that what you've been building for over 20 years when pandemic was not part of our vernacular is a management style and a workplace culture that is supportive, forward-thinking, and dynamic and open to change. You're right. When we said, we don't really know where we're going to be five years from now, but I think what you're showing is the preparedness to rise to the occasion with a healthy client and employee centered culture at its core. So I think that's a great answer, not a cop out at all.
Monique Jilesen:
All right. Good. I'm glad.
Charlene Theodore:
As recovery from a pandemic that has taken a heavy toll on all of us slowly becomes reality, Monique's brought us some very timely advice on how to ensure the silver lining lessons we learned and approaches we adopted around everything from work interaction, to allocation, to mental health and wellness become permanent fixtures in our reconfigured workplaces. Remote work has given rise to more frequent and more informal opportunities to connect with colleagues we wouldn't otherwise interact with as much. Lawyers and members of the business team, associates and managing partners, which has a positive impact on the culture.
Charlene Theodore:
Consider instituting or when possible in person coffee chat or small group gathering that brings interested staff members from different parts of the organization together to converse casually with or without prompts. Giving more junior employees the opportunity to take on higher profile work is great for retention, but also great for recruitment. As Monique noted, people look to join her firm knowing they'll have the chance to actually get up and speak in court and work on more than document drafting alone.
Charlene Theodore:
Refer to her is a great service for raising the profile of and referring business to women lawyers, working in various areas of practice. It's also an excellent tool to take advantage of when you need to bring in an expert and to contribute to if you know of talented women, particularly racialized women who would be good additions to the lists. But on top of that, it's a model for us to consider when developing our own ideas for solving an inclusion gap and gaining buy-in and resources from our colleagues and employers. Now, you've probably amped up communication with employees during the pandemic, whether it was to check in on mental health or just to ensure they have the tools they needed to succeed.
Charlene Theodore:
Continue this work. Continue to solicit feedback through town halls, continue to keep your staff in the loop on workplace, practice or court changes. Keep it up. The steady communication will go a long way to easing re-entry anxiety. Maybe you've adjusted your benefits to employees to better meet their needs in a remote environment, fitness, wellness, or pension allowances, for instance, or flex scheduling. Continue that accommodation and adjustment as we move into the next normal and needs change once again. We've said this before, but data collection is vital to enacting strategic progress. Enlisting a third party to collect this information might help increase and improve participation.
Charlene Theodore:
If your organization is small enough that people feel their responses would be too easy to connect back to them, you might consider banding together with similar organizations in your area to aggregate your data collection while giving you insight into how you measure up against benchmarks as a group. Remember the data can be used not only to enhance employee experience, but that client experience as well. We've seen this past year, how agile we are and how quickly we embrace change. Keep that forward thinking outlook and people-centric focus at the forefront as you forge your workplace reinvention. You'll be well-equipped to navigate not only the next normal, but anything else that comes your way. We'd love to hear from you rate and review this episode on Apple Podcasts and follow the link in the episode description for additional resources.