The session Keep Your Lawyers in Shape: A Professional Development Strategy for In-house Talent brought together thought leaders from the in-house legal community to explore the challenges and rewards of creating effective professional development programs.

The panel discussed many different aspects of effective training, including the necessary elements of a comprehensive program, the importance of developing both substantive legal skills and business acumen, using performance assessments and reviews as a professional development tool, effective use of knowledge management systems and new approaches to in-house hiring.

A key theme that emerged from the session was the belief that the best way to develop in-house lawyers is to ensure they are exposed to a wide variety of experiences and many different cycles of learning. The panelists stressed that, even with the best training programs, there is no substitute for gaining first-hand experience in different capacities. This approach benefits both the individual lawyers and also their clients, who receive deeper, broader and more creative counsel and support.

In addition, the panelists agreed that individual lawyers must take responsibility for their own careers. Regardless of the size of their legal department or the effectiveness of their internal review processes or formal training programs, the individual is in the best position to ensure his or her own professional development. If the in-house environment is not providing a lawyer the training he or she needs, the lawyer must explore other avenues — through external legal education, trade associations and individual mentoring. An individual's professional development should be an ongoing, lifelong pursuit.

Panelists Brad Smith, General Counsel of Microsoft, Mark Roellig, General Counsel of MassMutual and Gabriel Buigas, Deputy General Counsel of Hewlett-Packard, each share some of their views below.

Assessments are crucial to helping lawyers grow in their career. We have a formal review once each year, and, mid-year, we have a structured conversation for people to sit down with their manager to think about and discuss next steps in developing their individual skills. We also sometimes use this conversation to determine when is the right time for the employee's next step in the company.

For some, we also do 360 degree reviews every few years. We also have found an online tool to be incredibly useful across the company to provide a vehicle for employees to give feedback on their manager and their manager's manager ("skip-level manager"). This includes a short quantitative survey followed by a section for comments. The questions we ask include:

With at least four to five responses from direct reports and 15 to 20 skip-level responses, we usually start to see a pattern. We can use this to start a dialogue with the person being reviewed, and take them through three steps. First, we communicate the symptoms (for example, "You don't communicate well"). Then we have a discussion as to the underlying causes of the problem. From there, we can discuss steps we can take to address the issue, including through formal or informal training. We have found that this approach can unearth issues and lead to real improvement through a personalized plan.

Our training program for lawyers joining the company falls into five categories:

Before lawyers even arrive for their first day, we send them materials on how to think strategically and the difference between working in-house versus working at a law firm. From day one, we assign both a peer mentor and a leadership mentor to help them navigate their new environment.

We spend a lot of time trying to teach new lawyers skills they may not have received at a law firm. For example, many lawyers think they are great communicators, but in reality that is often not the case when it comes to communicating with business professionals. Accordingly, we periodically bring in experts on legal writing and presentation skills. One skill we have them focus on is how to think and write in bullet points, something most lawyers have trouble doing but which is a way of life for business people. We also use outside trainers for negotiation skills and emphasize litigation risk analysis for all lawyers, so our legal team can understand how we and our business clients think about litigation from a probability point of view rather than from a law firm perspective.

With respect to learning the business, I am a big believer in mini-MBAs (or actual MBAs) and often send members of my legal team to these programs. While there is debate on whether business judgment can be learned, I believe it can. In fact, I have brought in an outside professor to focus on this issue with my team. Our goal is to help lawyers learn to be strategic, add value and become members of the team. Lawyers should not talk in the third person with the business people: it's not "what you can do," it is "what we should do." We also make sure that we teach cost consciousness, especially in terms of how to manage vendors (including outside counsel).

In terms of personal development, we have found assessments to be critical and beneficial, particularly when we focus on areas in which the individual excels and areas in which they need to improve. This helps us create customized plans for each individual going forward.

In terms of substantive knowledge, we benefit from "all you can eat" offerings of CLE providers and take full advantage of outside counsel, who typically provide a menu of free offerings to their clients.

HP received some publicity recently because we started hiring first-year lawyers. It is important to explain the context of HP to see why this makes sense, as this has been the subject of much debate.

Over the past three years, we have moved a significant amount of our work in-house. We do much of our own patent applications, much of the diligence in M&A and are very hands on in terms of litigation management. We also do almost all commercial transactional work in-house as well, both in-bound and out-bound (some work is outsourced to a lower cost LPO). So we have a lot of work first-year lawyers can do. In addition, there have been changes in the legal services industry and to the law firm model that have made us competitive in terms of salary, allowing us to recruit great candidates from top schools. And, based on our internal strengths, we think we can develop lawyers just as well, if not better, than law firms.

Our training program for these new lawyers is divided into three pillars. First, we focus on substantive knowledge — that is, what do all young lawyers need to know generally? We build on top of that the specific content they need for their assigned practice area (in this first year of the program, we have one first-year in each IP, corporate M&A, commercial and litigation).

The second pillar focuses on practical experiences. We asked ourselves what experiences a new lawyer should have. For example, we discussed how many depositions they should attend, whether they should shadow a sales person and whether they should work on a trial. We strive to give the lawyers a set of practical experiences that will round out their practical education over the first year or so.

Finally, we focus on the soft skills, giving them tools to draft, communicate, write and present well — not only in terms of legal information but specifically for the business environment in which they are working. Even more important, however, is that they develop a "solution orientation," which requires business acumen and judgment. We think we can do a better job of teaching this than a law firm can, which is one of the reasons we are excited about our new program.