Michelle Wimes

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Chief Diversity and Professional Development Officer

Ogletree Deakins

 

 

Kansas City, Missouri

 

 

Interview Transcript – continued…

 

Click here to read Part 1 of our interview.

 

PAMELA: I’ll tell you, Michelle, your firm is, as you said, leading-edge. We had an opportunity to interview many, you know, AM100, AM200 firms and you certainly have set a stellar example, and I’m just so glad that we’re able to put this out so that- and I’ll actually share this with those firms so they can maybe see some ideas about what they can do to make- for gender equity, diversity, and inclusion. So tell me more about your innovative programs within your firm.

 

MICHELLE: Yes, so I need to say that it’s interesting because, at Ogletree, we have combined Professional Development with Diversity and Inclusion. So my title, when I first started with the firm almost seven years ago, was Director of Professional Development and Inclusion. And I’ve since, as you stated, been promoted, so I’m Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer now. But we were very intentional and strategic about that because we recognized that many times, you can’t divorce the two, right? Of course, lawyers need to be great critical thinkers. They need to be great analytical people. They need to have solid legal writing skills. They need to have solid research skills, writing skills- all of those are great Professional Development skills that we- that my department teaches and provides webinars and all kinds of learning and resources for our lawyers to gain those skills.

But at the same time, we recognize that our world is constantly changing and we are living in a very dynamic legal environment where our lawyers need to be culturally competent. They need to have a set of professional skills that allow them to navigate different perspectives, different experiences, different backgrounds that people are coming from and they need to make sure that they are not allowing bias to interrupt or bias to to be a barrier to who they decide to give feedback to, who they decide to give a certain amount of work to or the quality of work that they’re giving to folks. We need to make sure the bias doesn’t impede on the promotion process- who gets recommended for partner, who doesn’t get recommended for partner. So we believe that embedding those cultural competency principles within our Professional Development initiatives are very important. So that’s one thing I will share with you.

We had two big, major projects that we’ve done within the last five years. One of them is, we have worked on benchmarks and we call those ODPro, OD Professional. And so, it’s kind of, Pam- it’s what I didn’t have when I was an associate. I didn’t have anybody saying, “Okay. Michelle, you should be taking a deposition by the time you’re a fourth-year or by the time you’re 50. You should have a second chair to trial, you know, if you’re a litigator by the time you’re a sixth-year,” right? I didn’t have anybody saying these things to me, nor was this outlined for me in any way. So I had to basically assume that the work that the partners were giving me was helping me to develop and grow and helping me to get to the point that, okay, well one day Michelle will be promoted to partner.

Well, as you know, Millennials are very different. Millennials- they want to take ownership of their careers. They want to know, what trajectory am I on, where am I going, am I getting the skills that I need? Because, you know, if I can make partner in five years, six years, I’d rather do that then eight years, right? So we have developed these benchmarks that outline for them, what are the developmental milestones that you need to be achieving along your way to partnership, from the first year when you come in as a new graduate out of law school all the way up to an eighth-year? So we’ve divided that out. So we have benchmarks for our first and second years, which we call our Juniors, our third, fourth, and fifth years, which are our Mid-levels, and then our sixth, seventh, and eighth-years, which are our Senior attorneys, right?

And so, the purpose of that is to say, okay, by this date or by this level, you should be engaging in XYZ. So it allows them to take greater ownership of their careers. Now what we’ve done too, which is a little bit different than some other firms, is we have also embedded cultural competency principles within that. So we will say as a first-year, these are the kinds of Diversity and Inclusion experiences that you should be having. As a 7th or 8th-year, these are the kinds of things that we expect you to be doing to contribute to your own growth and development and to also contribute to the firm’s support of diversity in our community, in our legal profession, generally, as well. So we’ve embedded not only the substantive legal skills that we expect them to have, but we’ve also embedded those cultural competency and those Diversity and Inclusion skills that we want them to have and experiences that we want them to have. So that was one big project.

And we started- because 60% of our lawyers are labor and employment lawyers- we started with labor and employment competencies. We then had our Managing Shareholder, Matt Keen, who is a big proponent of Professional Development for our associates and our attorneys. I love working with him. He said, “Look, we need to have benchmarks for the remainder of our practice group.” So we have spent time over the last two to three years developing benchmarks for the immigration attorneys and associates, for our class-action attorneys and associates, for our wage and hour, our Workplace Safety Group, and our Employee Benefits Group. So we have five sets now. We will have, by the end of this year, benchmarks for our International Practice Group and then we have the attorneys in Mexico and Canada who also want their separate benchmarks. So we have partnered with subject matter experts because of course, you know, I’m not an expert in benefits, or workplace safety, or international law. And so, we partner with shareholders who have that expertise and they help us to develop those benchmarks from first to eighth-years. So that has been a big, huge project because part of that- yeah, I mean just huge because it really does give our associates that opportunity to take ownership.

The big thing that we’re doing right now is we have a new app that is going to allow us to do that electronically because before, it’s just been a cumbersome kind of word document, which is horrible, but that’s really, you know, that’s just kind of how we started. So this year, we’re uploading the labor and employment benchmarks to an app that connects to our evaluation system. So the wonderful thing is the associates will go in, they’ll fill it out in this app, and then the Partners- when they go to do the evaluations, during the evaluation season, they will pull up the ODPro for their associate, as they’re completing their evaluation, they’ll be able to see where the associate is in their benchmarks, and be able to utilize that as they’re doing the evaluation, which can then lead to wonderful conversations about where the associate is and where the associate wants to go. Does that make sense?

 

PAMELA: Yeah, I mean that is such a comprehensive roadmap for everyone- for the Senior lawyers who are doing evaluation and for the younger lawyers who need to know where they want to go and how to get there. That’s just- Bravo, Bravo to your firm. I know that had to be a huge, huge undertaking.

 

MICHELLE: Oh my gosh, it was, Pam. And I will tell you it took us two years. I mean, I was a former labor an employment lawyer, so I developed the initial set of benchmarks. And it took me about a year and a half, two years to get- as you can imagine, you’ve got to amalgamate or, you know, bring together all of these different skills and experiences from first year to eighth-year. And they’re progressive, right? You start at one level and then it becomes more difficult as you progress. And so yeah- so yeah, the first set, it took a long time to develop it. And as you can imagine, we went through several levels of approval, right? We had to get our steering committee on board, we had to get our, you know, our board to look at it and approve it. We went through several levels of approval, but I’m happy to say that it’s been wonderful and it’s been well-received.

There are some offices that are just now starting to utilize it with their associates because I think they thought, “Oh, we don’t have to do that.” But then there are other offices that, you know, are gung-ho about it and every single associate is doing it. And so, the challenge now- I think because it was manual, it was not easy because we didn’t have this app. I think now that we have the app and we’ll roll it out through that, it’s going to be so much easier for everyone and I don’t think we’ll have a problem with utilization, right? It’s cumbersome when you’ve got a Word document and people have to save it in a particular place where somebody can find it and go and get it and, you know, it just is a little cumbersome. But that’s one project.

The other big project I wanted to chat with you real briefly about is, we have another project called Success the OD Way. So ODPro was identifying the legal substantive benchmarks, right? Success the OD Way is, okay, I’m coming into a law firm and I don’t know this law firm. I don’t know the culture. What if I make a faux pas? What’s gonna happen? What are the things that I, you know, if I do X Y Z, I’m almost certain to shoot myself in the foot? And that is big faux pas here in this culture. We wanted to identify the unwritten rules for success. We wanted to identify what were the cultural norms of this firm? Like, what’s the firm’s culture? And then we also wanted to identify, what were the success factors that if you are- if you do these things, you are more likely than not to be successful here? And so, we identify five success factors and six cultural norms.

And I will tell you- and we created a learning guide for our associates. And how we did that was we hired somebody- a consultant- to come in and interview a number of our board members, our Compensation Committee members, our top rainmakers in the firm, successful Shareholders. And frankly, we also identified some folks who were kind of under-performers because we wanted to balance it out and see, okay, well, what are they not doing? You should be doing as well as, you know, the top performers. And so, the wonderful thing is, we were able to distill all of that down into cultural norms and success factors, put it all into a learning guide for our associates, and the wonderful thing is, they now have- with these two foundational documents- with ODPro and with Success the OD Way- they really have this transparent roadmap, this guide. Which really outlines for them, you know, what does it take to be successful here? You’ve got the behaviors and the traits, and you’ve got the legal substantive skills. So if you cannot be successful in this environment, I think it really- you have to take a good, hard look at yourself because we have made it as easy as we can so that you understand- our associates understand- what it takes. We’ve codified the unwritten rule, so to speak.

 

PAMELA: Wow, I’m sure that’s really helpful and probably, it’s gonna make an impact with your attrition.

 

MICHELLE: Yeah.

 

PAMELA: And your retention of associates because one of the biggest complaints is no feedback, you know, not feeling a part of something. And you all have seemed to have covered all those bases. And to actually give them a roadmap and on an app, on top of that. That’s just wonderful.

 

MICHELLE: We are trying. And I tell you, I think we were looking at our retention numbers the other day and, you know, I think the standard is you want to have 90 percent attrition, you know, across the board- that that’s a good number, both for companies and law firms. I think we were looking at Charme data and our attrition, overall, is really good. And now, that’s not to say that we don’t have some pockets where there’s a little bit of a gap where- because we’re over 90 percent with most of our demographics, right? Although we do have a little bit of a gap when you look at our- some of our minority numbers. So we may be in the high 80s. We may be at 86, or 85 percent, or 88 percent. We’re not quite at the 90. So now, we’re looking to see, okay well, why is that the case with certain groups? And then what kinds of other strategies do we need to be developing to make sure that the retention is 90 percent or above? Because that’s what we’re striving for.

 

PAMELA: Oh my gosh! That’s really great.

 

MICHELLE: Yeah.

 

PAMELA: That is really, really great. I’m trying- I just did a talk in Wyoming on retention- I’m trying to think of the figures. I can’t think of them off my head, but your numbers are off the charts. So that’s really wonderful. Now Michelle, what are your biggest challenges right now? You seem to have been really looking and covering most of the areas that most firms haven’t even begun to approach. So what are your challenges as you look forward?

 

MICHELLE: You know, as we look forward, I would say- one thing that I’m not- I’ll just be real frank- I mean, we have international offices that have come on board since I’ve been here. Like when I started almost seven years ago, we had an office in the Virgin Islands and then we had 41 other offices, right? But the Virgin Islands are still, you know, part of the States, right? So we didn’t have offices- now we have offices in Paris, and London, and Berlin, and Mexico City, and Toronto. And so, we’re all over the place now in Europe and Latin America. And so, the big challenge for me is wrapping my arms around, what does this mean? Because diversity is very different in Mexico City than it is in Paris, than it is in Berlin, that it is in London. And how they define it and then what inclusion means for them. It’s very different.

And so, I- my team- really needs to wrap our arms around this global Diversity and Inclusion, and what that means for Ogletree, and what kinds of strategies- specific strategies- that we need to develop from a global perspective to really help our international offices be more- and I’m not saying that they’re not inclusive right now. But it’s just that we haven’t had a lot of experience with them. And so, we need to do that. And so, that’s the big challenge that I’m looking forward to. I have not visited those offices yet. Like I said, they’ve all come on board within the last couple of years and I’ve been so busy getting the infrastructure built on the US side of things, that I just haven’t focused on the international side. So that’s the next challenge.

 

PAMELA: That’s wonderful. You know, as you’re thinking of it- I have a client, actually, that I speak to several times a week who’s in Paris. And she’s an African-American young lady, and she actually works- she lives in Paris, works in Paris, but her- the Partner she reports to is in the UK- in London.

 

MICHELLE: Oh, wow!

 

PAMELA: So I had an opportunity to speak to her Partner that she’s working to help her to kind of, you know, bridge the being in Paris, and the culture and all that. So yeah.

 

MICHELLE: Absolutely. It’s different.

 

PAMELA: It’s a big difference, for sure.

 

MICHELLE: Yeah, and I’m sure with her reporting to somebody that’s in the UK.

 

PAMELA: Yeah. And speaking, you know, in French in the office, you know, learning French and all that. Now I know, Michelle, you’re married to a distinguished judge, you’ve got three beautiful daughters, you’re involved in the community, you are, you know- travel a lot with your position there with Ogletree and all of the initiatives. Name something that you do and how do you manage your stress levels?

 

MICHELLE: That’s a great question. You know, I have several rituals that I do that I think really help me to manage my stress level and I’ll give you a couple of them. One of them is, I’ve recently started meditating and I try to meditate at least every other day. Sometimes- I like to do it every day. It doesn’t always happen every single day. But the meditation has just been wonderful for me because it really helps me to center myself and to really focus on being grateful and focus on those things that I’m happy about and feel blessed about, right? So that’s one of the things that I do.

The other thing that I do- and I have been doing this and it’s gonna sound- you know, I’ve been doing this since my old- my oldest turned 21 in May- I have been doing this- I’ve been seeing the same woman for 21 years. Because I remember going to her initially when I was pregnant with Sydney, my oldest. She’s a massage therapist and she has become a dear friend of mine- a dear, dear friend. I see her every three weeks and- without fail. And it is wonderful because, as you know, you know, being a lawyer, you know, doing this kind of work as a Chief Officer- you are often- things are coming at you from all different sides. And it can be very stressful, especially with the travel and all of that and trying to raise, you know, three daughters and my husband’s a judge. So I have found that the regular massages are just a must for me and it is not a splurge. It is something that is investing in my well-being, so I budget for it and I do it. You know, every three weeks, religiously.

The other thing is- and this is just a small thing- I get my nails and feet done. [  ] I’ve gotten into the whole powder thing- the powder instead of the acrylic- and I love it because it lasts longer. And so, I go there probably every four to five weeks. I don’t have to go every two weeks, but it’s wonderful because I can look down and my nails are done, my toes are done, and I feel great.

 

PAMELA: That’s great!

 

MICHELLE: You know, it’s just the little, small things like that that really make a difference in your mentality, in your outlook. I also, Pam, I keep a journal, and I keep a journal on my iPad.

 

PAMELA: Oh great!

 

MICHELLE: So, the wonderful thing is, I’m traveling with that and so, it’s an opportunity for me to reflect on- I take words of wisdom from Oprah. What are you grateful for you? I try to list out once or twice a day- the one or two things a day, I should say- the things that I’m grateful for, right?

 

PAMELA: Yeah, yeah.

 

MICHELLE: So I do that. And I just- and I was talking to my best friend this morning and I called her and I said- I try to acknowledge when folks have been wonderful to me in my life and have brought value. And so, if I just think of somebody in the moment, I say to myself, I’m gonna start calling them. I’m gonna start reaching out to them because I need to let people know- life is short and you never know when somebody’s gonna be here. And so, I try to reach out to people. And I reached out to her this morning- and I hadn’t talked to her for a couple weeks- and I said, “You know, I just want to thank you for the conversation that I had with you.” I said, “I don’t even know if you remember this.” I said, “But 14 years ago when I was freaking out because I got pregnant with my third daughter, and I’m working in a law firm, I was freaking out about, ‘Oh my god, how am I gonna be able to make billable hours? How am I gonna be to do what I do? I have two daughters already that are four and six. Here I go getting pregnant again.'”

And she was such a calming force. And I remember where I was when I had that conversation with her and she said, “You are going to be fine. You are going to figure this out and this is a blessing.” And I just remember- and so I told her this morning- I said, “I don’t know if you remember that conversation but it made such an impact on me.” And I fast forward and look at my 14-year-old. I am so grateful! I am so grateful that she is here, and that we have her, and she is part of the family, and I don’t know what I would have done without her, right?

 

PAMELA: Right, right.

 

MICHELLE: So it just- I think just recognizing those small moments and trying to be present when you have good things that are happening, and when you can acknowledge that those good things are happening in your life, I think that it just makes you happier, I think. So that you’re not focused on the negative. You’re not focused on what you don’t have. You’re not focused on what’s not in your life.

 

PAMELA: Right. That’s great. Well, I’m so glad that you shared that. You know, I’ve been meditating, believe it or not, for 20 years.

 

MICHELLE: Oh! That’s wonderful.

 

PAMELA: And I could- it’s like, now I have to brush my- not brush my teeth. You know, I mean- I’d have to meditate. But I’m going to try to get that massage in because I have had massages but I think I could really use- at least once a month. At least once a month.

 

MICHELLE: It’s wonderful, it’s wonderful because- and this particular woman since I’ve been going to her for so long, she knows my body so well. And I don’t even have to say anything to her. She’s like, “Okay, what have you been doing because-” So it’s- yeah, if you could work that in, I’d highly recommend it. It’s truly, truly a great blessing to have.

 

PAMELA: Well, Michelle, I just want to tell you, you know, the overall from everything that you said- the thing that strikes- that comes out to me, is that you are a person who naturally creates community. I mean, you have created such community in your law firm. You know, with diversity, and with women, and with LGBT- and Q- and, you know, that everything that you’ve touched has been inclusive- in community and that is such a gift to your firm, to your community, to your family. You know, I see your posts. I mean, you just naturally create community. And this is what this world needs today. And especially with the legal profession. And so, I’m just so honored to have you as our guest. I’m so happy because when I talked to you, I said, “Oh. These other law firms are all stuck. I really want them to be able to see some of the things you all are doing.” So I’m so thankful. And thank you so much for being our Lawyer of the Week.

 

MICHELLE: Oh, thank you so much for having me! I really- it’s an honor that you asked me to do this and I’m just grateful to be able to share some of the things that we’re doing. And I believe in creating community. I feel like this job is a natural extension of who I am and what I do. And so, it just feels normal to me to create that community because it’s part of who I am, I think, as a person. And so, this career allows me to be who I- to be more of who I am and who I have become, both personally and professionally. So thank you for giving me a platform to be able to share that today. I really appreciate it.

 

PAMELA: Thank you. And to our guests, thank you so much for joining us and we hope you’ll join us again next week.

 

Links for Michelle:

LinkedIn Profile

Ogletree Deakins

Social Media:

Twitter: @WimesMichelle

Instagram: mwimes

 

 

Pamela DeNeuve, Lawyer & Law Firm Peak Performance Strategist

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