Supervision basics guide

Supervision failures do not arise because principals are indifferent. They arise because supervising well takes skill and structured time, and without a system, supervision is the first task displaced by client demands. The result is that early career practitioners make decisions they are not yet equipped to make, and the file contains no record of guidance given.

The success or otherwise of a law firm depends on many things. Arguably, one of the most important factors is a firm’s ability to attract, develop, and retain talented lawyers and support staff. Effective supervision and delegation are crucial tools in doing that.

Supervision has many roles in legal practice. At the profession-wide level it enables the legal profession to be self-regulating profession that can assure a very high quality of legal advice to the community.

At the law firm level it provides on-the-job training, imparting technical knowledge, communication skills, good practice management and work habits. It embeds ethical behaviour and sets the standard and culture of a law firm. This maintains the quality of work undertaken for clients and creates a supportive environment to improve the performance, engagement, wellbeing and retention of staff.

Knowledge

Supervisors typically have a wealth of knowledge that they can pass on to less experienced practitioners. This is not just technical knowledge of the law, but imparting strategy and practical lessons learned over many years of practice to develop and mentor practitioners to do good quality work.

Effective communication

Practitioners can learn enormously from observing a more senior lawyer interact with clients and other parties and should be given this opportunity. Good supervision should also include supervisors sitting in with supervisees in client meetings and calls and providing feedback. Analyse whether the supervisee is obtaining and testing the client’s instructions with active listening and asking probing questions, effectively communicating advice, and checking and adequately testing whether the client understands the advice. Constructive feedback and support is important to help hone these essential communication skills.

File management skills

There are critical file management skills that early career practitioners can learn from supervisors such as the discipline of recording in writing all communications with clients and other parties and always confirming legal advice and key risks to clients in writing. Good supervisors teach practitioners these things should always, without exception, be done so they become lifelong habits.

Dealing with difficult clients and work

Supervisors have an important role to help file handlers move forward when there is a block to doing the work. We all have a ’too hard’ basket file, and from time to time need guidance on how to action these matters before they become a problem such as a complaint or claim. Often discussing a file with a supervisor will give the supervisee the confidence to action the matter or identify another strategy, such as briefing counsel or initiating a client conference to discuss the difficulties. It may be hard to identify a way forward until you talk about it with another practitioner who with fresh eyes can see a clear path forward.

Ethics

Legal practitioners have professional responsibility and ethical obligations under general law, legislation and professional rules, and are trained in ethical theory, but ethical behaviours, including what to do and how to handle an ethical dilemma are often learned and developed in real practice situations. It is not just staying within the technical rules and law but also identifying and taking action to avoid potential problems and ’doing the right thing‘. This is often best learned from the guidance and direction of supervisors and colleagues as new and different situations arise. Supervisors and leaders of the firm must set, live and pass on the ethical standards that everyone lives by.

A culture of support

Providing a structured and proactive program of supervision within the firm that includes regular discussions and meetings, feedback and proactive follow up, shows a commitment to support, train and mentor staff to be better practitioners. It improves performance and risk management within the firm but also signals to staff that they are valued and are being developed which improves engagement, wellbeing and long-term retention of staff.

Non-delegable responsibility to supervise

Supervision is also a regulatory obligation. Rule 37 of the Legal Profession Uniform Law Australian Solicitors Conduct Rules 2015 (Conduct Rules) obliges practitioners with designated responsibility for a matter to exercise reasonable supervision over solicitors and all other employees engaged in the provision of legal services for that matter.

A ‘solicitor with designated responsibility’ refers to the solicitor ultimately responsible for the conduct of the client’s matter. Given a client’s retainer is with the law practice and not the solicitor working on the file, the responsibility to supervise employee solicitors falls on the principals of the firm.

In addition to the obligations under the Conduct Rules, where a firm is engaged in connection with litigation, the courts have the power to make a non-party costs order against the firm, if the firm’s conduct causes costs to be incurred improperly or wasted by a failure to act with reasonable competence.

There are four skills that good supervisors of early career staff need to have.

Analysing the work

Good supervisors need to be able to analyse the work to be done in terms of:

• how difficult and complex is the legal work
• how difficult and complex is the situation, personalities, time etc
• how much time it should take
• what skills are required to do the work well.

Delegating the work

Good supervisors need to be able to delegate the work by:

• choosing the appropriate person to delegate the work to – someone with the capacity and capability, with support, to do the work
• communicating the work that needs to be done by when
• Communicating the outcome they are looking for, including level of detail, how they have approached the work, if for example they were doing research what search terms did they use.

Checking the work

Good supervisors need to be able to follow through after the delegation and check:

• that the person understands the delegated task and what is expected of them
• at appropriate times that the work is being done and the person is on the right track and then at the end that the work has been completed as expected.

Feedback on the work

Good supervisors need to be able to provide timely appropriate feedback that:

• may be during the task if it is long and at the end of the task, identifying what went well and what to do differently next time
• is specific and concrete feedback rather than general impressions. For example: "The advice letter at page 34 did not address the guarantee risk. Next time, use the firm's standard risk disclosure wording."

We are all human and are prone to making errors regardless of our experience, intelligence and hard work. Everyone needs a safety net and support. Firms that understand this see supervision for everyone as a quality assurance and safety issue just as they do in professions like medicine and aviation.

While supervision should never stop it should change as practitioners become more experienced and capable. More experienced practitioners may not need the training in knowledge or file management skills that early career practitioners need but they do their manager to know what they are doing, how they are managing their workload, what new challenges they can be given, a second opinion on significant matters.

Supervision will vary depending on the area of practice and experience of the employee but should always involve regular face-to-face meetings and file reviews at appropriate intervals.

Good supervisory skills do not come naturally to all lawyers, and some will require training and support from the firm.

Firms that support supervisors well take the following steps:

• Allocate time in supervisors’ budgets to do the job well, recognising that good supervision is an investment in time that saves more time and money later from the consequences of no or poor supervision.
• Provide training and resources for developing supervisory skills
• Recognise the good supervisors in the firm and help others to learn from them by asking them to think about the qualities that make them a good supervisor and to share their experiences, techniques and tips.
• Identify supervisors who are not supervising effectively, give them feedback and support to help them improve and where necessary change their role away from supervision.

• Victorian Legal Services Board and Commissioner: Supervision Plan Template
• LPLC Podcast: Reframing supervision as the greatest compliment
• LPLC Delegation/supervision instruction sheet
• LPLC Client file audit tool