The T-Shaped Lawyer

At a time when everybody in the corporate legal industry is focused on technology, this book is about something else: You and Your Work. Human transformation, not digital transformation. It is a theory book but a practical one because it is about the practice of law. You will struggle to find any guidance on how to practice law as a corporate lawyer especially something that looks forward to where 'the puck' is headed. The practice of law is a 'dark art' and those that master it are extremely valued by their clients and rise to senior positions in corporate legal departments and law firms. What is it that distinguishes those lawyers from others? For most individuals it will be surprising, and perhaps disconcerting, to learn that it is not about your legal knowledge or excellence in legal work. Rather it is about being more than a lawyer and doing more than just legal work, that makes the biggest difference in your career. Most leaders of legal departments and firms will instantly recognise this 'other' role and work as something that they just do but have not thought much about or attempted to put into words before. The book spells out this secret sauce. It paints a clear picture of this new role and work for individuals and it helps leaders to call it out to their legal colleagues and business clients. By shining a bright light on this dark art, the book exposes a new game-changing direction for individuals, legal departments, and firms at a time when the game is changing. It challenges the conventional idea of what it means to be a corporate lawyer and it reframes the name of the game for departments and firms beyond the efficient delivery of legal services.

If this book is about 'the what' and 'the why', then the second book in this series from this author - The T-Shaped Lawyer Guidebook: A Framework for Your Professional Development - details 'the how' to realise this new vision through a holistic and comprehensive framework that covers skills, competencies, qualities, knowledge and mindsets. Although the books are primarily about lawyers, they also relevant to legal operations and other legal professionals working in legal departments and firms and to academics and students. The books are not a prediction of the future. Rather they help you to create your own, different, future starting today for yourself and your colleagues in legal departments and firms.

The ideas in the book represent the original thoughts of the author, Peter Connor. They are based on his personal experience working in various international locations over a 25+ year career as an in-house and law firm lawyer. After finishing up as a lawyer in 2014, Peter was one of the first two people in the world to apply the the widely acclaimed t-shaped professional concept to lawyers. Since that date, he is the only person to have set up his own full-time business to turn that high-level concept and those ideas into a range of theories, programs and frameworks that he has tested with over one thousand lawyers all over the world through his various T-Shaped Lawyer workshops. Peter has been acknowledged by Legal Business World and others as a global thought leader in the corporate legal industry and he regularly writes and speaks about innovation and transformation.

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