“Sometimes you just need someone who tells it to you straight. This has been a mental shift for me and I appreciate it.”
We’ve pretty much seen it all.
If you’re looking a lawyer coach and résumé writer who truly knows the legal market and has experience working with clients like you, then you’ve come to the right place.
“I needed someone objective looking at these problems through a different prism.”
At Bryce Legal, we specialize in working with lawyers who want to practice law, leverage their law degrees, or re-evaluate the trajectory of their legal careers. We work with attorneys across their career lifecycles, from launching a successful legal career through career fulfillment and advancement, to rebalancing or exploring alternative options, to downshifting in preparation for retirement.
Our clients have backgrounds in just about every practice area, have worked in just about every environment, and have faced myriad challenges and opportunities, including the ones listed below.
Legal Career Coaching for Both Immediate and Long-Term Needs
We give lawyers the tools they need to move forward. Taking an accountability approach to lawyer career coaching, we work with attorneys to develop step-by-step action plans that address their individual needs. Our clients are committed to the understanding that:
- They must choose to be their greatest asset
- Success is the result of habits, behaviors, and attitudes that can be learned
- Short, mid, and long-term strategies are best pursued simultaneously
Julie Cromer Young (on hiatus from Bryce Legal) with the Hon. Ruth Bader Ginsburg at “Her Honor: Women in the Judiciary,” a 2013 conference Julie organized as conference director.
Shauna C. Bryce talks legal careers to senior-level lawyers at Harvard Law School. She was selected by her classmates to be the 1996 Class Symposium speaker, addressing mid-career options and decision-making in “Improving with Age: Making the Most of Your Legal Vintage." Introduced by Dave Aronberg, State Attorney for Palm Beach County, Florida.
Some lawyers want long-term coaching to delve into bigger issues—including leadership development, preparation for promotion, and laying the groundwork for career shifts.
Others don’t want (or don’t need) to hire a professional career coach for long-term coaching. They have an acute need, like preparing for a job interview, that requires immediate preparation and action. Or they just have a burning or nagging something, and they need an impartial expert with whom to discuss it.
In either case, coaching is an opportunity to talk through issues with someone who has been around the block, as well as to formulate an action plan.
Although we often work with clients for years, we don’t commit you to a multi-session package you may or may not use. Our legal career advising is available in sessions as short as 30 minutes. You can use it for one-off questions, short-term coaching, or to road-test a long-term partnership.
Through one-on-one career coaching, lawyers partner with us to develop and implement strategies to achieve their goals.
Leadership Development & Executive Development
- Leading with authenticity and values
- Developing an executive presence
- Dealing with “imposter syndrome” and other blocks both internal and external
- Building confidence and trust, both within and with others
- Having difficult conversations with compassion
- Strengthening communication and relationships within multi-generational and diverse workforces
- Smoothing office and client relationships
- Creating a unified, forward-looking professional brand
- Creating and executive business development and client development plans
- Establishing a reputation as a thought-leader
- Finding and networking with potential clients and referral sources
- Delegating to SMEs, junior lawyers, staff, and others
- Building the softs skills to “manage up” and “manage down”
- Improving on-the-job performance
- Adjusting to new and embracing a leadership style, philosophy, or organizational culture
- Setting and achieving goals
- Developing a culture of excellence, innovation, and inclusion
- Championing DEI
- Creating organizational and team culture
- Focusing on practical, actionable advice
- Shifting from individual contributor to manager, and from manager to executive
- Developing a “business-first” mindset, with the role of legal as a business partner, deal facilitator, and revenue enabler—rather than roadblock or cost center
- Giving advice and making decisions in a fast-paced world of imperfect information
- Understanding internal and external business realities, including competitive landscapes and differing risk tolerances
- Balancing business goals and priorities with individual goals and priorities
- Managing and prioritizing scarce resources
- Identifying and partnering with stakeholders
- Seeking out relationships with internal and external clients
- Thinking strategically
Success in the Workplace
- Creating a business plan
- Building 30-60-90 day success plans to get off on the right foot
- Transitioning from law student to practicing lawyer
- Facing time-tracking and billing pressures
- Addressing criticism or constructive feedback on performance evaluations
- Straddling conflicting philosophies and demands of multiple supervisors
- Learning to say no and build boundaries
- Building a case for a raise, promotion, or increased role
Career Planning, Decision-Making & Development
- Positioning for next stage opportunities and mid-career pivots
- Making your mark in law school to increase your post-graduation opportunities
- Transitioning from law school to law firm, from law firm to in-house, or between other environments
- Parlaying e-discovery or contract attorney work into a full-time career in growing areas of law and legal services
- Finding mentors within your geographical area, practice area, or industry
- Increasing technical skills to stay in-demand in changing times
- Leveling up
- Changing practice areas, sectors, and geography
- Giving back through non-profit board work, mentoring individuals or organizations, and more
- Moving to corporate boards
- Downshifting
- Leaving the law
- Career decision-making
Getting Unstuck, Finding Your Path & Reclaiming Happiness
- Finding your place
- Building confidence
- Moving past "imposter syndrome"
- Redefining what success means to you
- Finding a more fulfilling work / life balance
- Bringing wellness, mindfulness, and well-being into your day
- Rediscovering what brings you joy
- Decision-making centered around what you value most
Professional Branding & Reputation Management
- Creating a consistent brand to attract potential employers, recruiters, clients, and other contacts
- Distinguishing yourself from other qualified candidates
- Finding and dealing with “digital dirt” impeding your job search and career development
- Disseminating your brand across platforms to create a positive online presence
- Building, protecting, and repairing your professional reputation
- Leveraging skills from a prior career
- Creating marketing materials
Networking for Results Now & the Future
- Understanding the value of a personal and professional network
- Building and strengthening your network online and in-person
- Putting your network to use
- Increasing the value and ROI of your LinkedIn profile
- Learning to network in a way that’s natural, comfortable and authentic
- Meeting new people critical to getting where you want to go
Job Search Strategies in a Competitive Market
- Finding hidden opportunities before they turn into public job listings
- Getting inside intel on jobs, employers, and industries
- Working with legal recruiters
- Increasing your skill set during the job search
- Re-entering the legal profession after a personal or professional break
- Identifying transferable skills and pivoting mid-career
- Minimizing the impact of underemployment, unemployment, layoffs, RIFs, corporate bankruptcies and reorganizations, short-term positions, and more
- Entering the U.S. market for foreign-trained lawyers
- Exploring other roles or career options
Interview Principles, Practicalities & Preparation
- Learning what interviewers are looking for and how to give it to them
- Applying principles of interviewing to specific situations
- Preparing answers for questions you don’t want to—or don’t know how to—answer
- Identifying and addressing real or perceived weaknesses
- Critiquing your mock interview
Non-Traditional Lawyers
- JD/MBA, JD/MPA, JD/MA, LLM, and multiple degrees or licenses
- Second-career lawyers
- Lawyers returning to the workforce or to the practice of law
- Lawyers transitioning practice areas
- Lawyers leaving the law
- Military lawyers / JAG Officers transitioning to civilian practice
- Military spouses
- Non-linear career paths
- Foreign-educated and foreign-trained lawyers
- Other highly individualized situations
Lawyer Coaches
Team Bios
