Leading Lawyers, Reinventing Leadership: Lessons from the Rise and Fall of a Legal Empire

22:49Mark Herschberg:You're talking to somebody who in their late 50s is exactly where you are today, starting over to learn and what are the principles of learning new skills and how do you get over your fear of failure or that you won't succeed at what it is you're trying in terms of learning new things and how do you push yourself to be successful at that new thing you're taking on? I said, so I'm at the exact same stage you're at, just trying to do things today that I've never done before. As long as I do that, that's what gives me my purpose. So and so what that what that became was writing fiction, writing non fictions, which are the manual Never Stop and Take Charge, Take Charge, I call it Take Charge series.

23:39Mark Herschberg:You know, I talked to a whole bunch of professionals from all different walks of life in terms of their starting point to see what was common. and it and it turns out the commonality for successful people is uh not being afraid to fail in fact embracing it and knowing out of the failure that that's your best chance of your

24:04Norman Bacal:next success yep couldn't agree more and i talk a lot about this before and i've picked up from people everything you ever wanted is on the other side of fear right and i think you know i talk a lot about as well my own acronym when it comes to failure I use the acronym of lose which isn't actually lose it's life offering some experience and I think if you if you take that from everything that you go through it you build on it and it's interesting you meant to reference your wife there as well it's sometimes the people that know us best know what might be good for us in terms of suggesting those things and we have blind spots ourselves and yeah significant people in and around my life um yeah definitely say things to things that like yeah maybe and actually they're so right when I actually take a step back and think about it.

24:44Norman Bacal:And I now want to talk about a phrase that I absolutely love. That when we were messaging back and forth, I was like, yes, I need to need to have this conversation. Because the phrase around rewirement, what does that mean to you? And how has it shaped your post firm career?

25:01Mark Herschberg:Well, we've started touching it all on it already. but I just go back in time, and this is my message, to when I was a fourth-year lawyer going nowhere. Literally, I was that introverted, geeky tax lawyer. I was the person who, if you were sitting next to at a dinner party, after about three minutes, you turned to the person on the other side of you. You didn't want to be beside me at a dinner party. I had no idea how to manage myself. I was this nice guy. And my review was, Norm, you have a lot of potential, but there's something missing and we don't know what it is. And it turned out, and once again, my wife gets all the credit.

25:45Mark Herschberg:She pointed out what I was lacking at that point in time was initiative. I wasn't taking charge. And it was just those two words when she said it to me that night that changed my entire life. And anyone who's read Breakdown will know I'm not the hero of that story. She is. She's a former accountant and now an artist.

26:12Mark Herschberg:But at the core of rewirement is kind of taking charge and continually trying new things, understanding that the only thing separating you from success is not being afraid of falling down a number of times while you're learning those new skills. We start, and it's funny because we start as, you know, professionals coming out of school don't know anything about anything. So everything they're going to be successful at are things they are going to learn pretty much from scratch. You find out law school was pretty much, rather than wiring your brain a bit, it was a complete waste to time doesn't prepare you for work at all.

26:55Mark Herschberg:You're going to learn it all through the school of hard knocks, which is one of the reasons why I wrote Take Charge, which is sort of the manual, all the things nobody's teaching you in school that you need to succeed. And writing that book also helped me see how I needed to continue to apply that to my life. So the minute, and it's almost trite to say, but the minute you stop moving, you start falling back. Yeah. I've applied that to my life. So my first publisher said, Norm, if we're going to sell books, you need a social media presence. I had zero. I think I had 500 connections on LinkedIn when I started.

27:38Mark Herschberg:And I don't even know how I got to that number because I didn't curate it all. So I took a, basically I took a two hour lesson from a social media expert who told me how to set up better than I was set up. And then I just started going and experimenting and trying and these things didn't work. And, you know, I published some article. It was very interesting. Everything I published at the beginning were articles on LinkedIn. And like I was getting 28 reads, 35 reads and all these. And I'm watching all these other people getting 10 ,000, 15 ,000. And you don't actually see it, but you see they're getting 800 likes on a post and I'm getting two.

28:18Mark Herschberg:So what was it? So I published something like a paragraph long, didn't realize there was a difference between posts and articles. I mean, this was how basic my challenge was. And suddenly my post took off and I still didn't understand why. It took me a few till I figured it out. But perhaps the greatest success I ever had on LinkedIn, I was at a conference, and this ties all the stories together. I was at a writer's conference, a thriller writer's conference in New York City, in Manhattan, trying to pitch the novel, my first novel that I hadn't completed yet, to a bunch of agents. It was basically speed dating.

28:57Mark Herschberg:you had three minutes to sell them. And I sit down with the first agent and I'm all excited. Like I'm starting over. I'm like, I'm, I'm, I'm 60 years old, but like, I feel like I'm a kid again. I've got to pitch something. And I sit down and 60 seconds into my pitch, like literally, she said, Norm, let me get this straight. You're, and she was a big publicist in, in New York said, you are a white 60 year old male and you're writing a story about an African American hero because I took Shakespeare's Othello is is black and she said have you ever heard of cultural appropriation and and I said to myself like you know I'm in Canada we're really big on that she said i cannot sell a book written written by somebody like you about somebody like that and it was sort of a but but but and i got up completely crushed i'm a failure i'm never going to succeed and the list of it was my first pitch but i was standing in line for my next interview and i while i was in line i took out my phone i did a linkedin post explaining how crushed i was And as I was writing and I said, but I'm not going to give up.

30:21Mark Herschberg:I've got nine more people to meet and I will, I am not giving up. And by the time I got to the front of the line, it was 20 minutes to see the next agent. I'd already had 25 ,000 views. And by four o 'clock, I was like at 85 ,000. So it was, oh, maybe there is something to this social media. Like maybe, maybe I actually can succeed. It was sort of the side version, but it's all about, I think, not giving up when you meet the obstacles, trying new things and understanding you will find out some things are not cut out for you. At one point, they tried to shoo me into being a real estate lawyer at my firm, and I just hated every minute of it.

31:06Mark Herschberg:I did it because I was a loyal soldier, but I decided I would rather leave and do that for the rest of my life. but I can't tell you how many lawyers I've met over the course of my career who are still doing the same thing today that they were doing 10 years ago. And why? Because A, they say, because they're the expert at it. But the real reason is because they're afraid to try and do something new.

31:30Norman Bacal:Yeah. And that's what I mean. Yeah. And thank you again for being so open and sharing that and sharing your self-accountability is what I get from that. You're always prepared to take self-accountability. And mentors said to me, if it's meant to be, it's up to me. It's really important. And I love that you talked about that sort of, again, a body in motion stays in motion, right? You've got to keep things going because things keep going in the right direction. And look, every master of us wants a disaster. We've just got to start and get better at these things. Social media, whatever it is, a new skill, a new hobby, whatever.

32:01Norman Bacal:I think it's just getting comfortable with actually not being great at it right now. And over time, if you continue to learn, stay curious, ask the right questions, acquire the right information, things start taking off and like you say when you start seeing results you start building confidence and things grow from there and there and there okay i want to before we go into a little bit more about modern leadership and diving deeper into three c's i want to ask about how law firms can foster cultures that encourage innovation and psychological safety rather than fear and conformity

32:32Mark Herschberg:it's it's a the question is simple the answer is complicated because it really depends on the organization and the organizational leadership and and we're in a transition we're in a transition where people like me like that older generation are still running the show and they're getting older and you know in a lot of places they're not moving out they're not getting out of the way and you have all these young people who are growing up with the ai and it's part of their life and they're they're much more comfortable with technology and to me the question is from a leadership perspective are you willing to cede control and take chances with all this because we don't know remember this this now takes us back into the if we were any other kind of business we'd have a division focusing on how the ai is going to drive our future A few law firms will do that.

33:28Mark Herschberg:But by and large, the larger conservative firms, they don't want to spend their money on it. I'm going to wait until firm X figures this all out. And then maybe I'll start doing it. If I see they're successful at it, let them make all the investment in it. And that can be demoralizing to the younger generation who's trying to like, where's where's the leadership imperative here? How are we going into the future? And a lot of law firms are saying we're doing very well on what's worked. And they're partially right, because while I believe it's changing how AI as a work companion is going to change and predictor is going to change not only how you use your workforce, but how you interact with clients.

34:17Mark Herschberg:The fact that from now on, and it's already started, you can't go visit a client without probably having run their problem through AI to see what it is you should be solving. It's like Dr. Google for lawyers. You don't visit your doctor without having something in hand on your own, sometimes shoddy, but sometimes perfectly reasoned research. but you're now dealing with clients who are doing the same thing and I think the future of the firms is apart from anything else you have to keep things exciting for the people coming up through the ranks you know it's the other thing that I find fascinating and doesn't matter how big your firm is but my experience always was that i usually knew within 30 days of a hire who whether that person was going to be a superstar or not whether that was somebody who i needed to do everything in my possible power to make sure they never left and uh and i'll give one because i think one example because i think it's pertinent to this discussion is i had a he was a commercial lawyer i hired him as a student because he showed up for an he i wasn't hiring for his position.

35:38Mark Herschberg:It was when we just literally, we were four lawyers looking for a student. And he showed up at the interview and said, I know you're looking for an articling student, but I'm about to start law school. And so I'm not qualified for this job, but I really like the idea of working with a firm like this. And would you hire me? You don't even need to pay me. I'll do anything you want. And at first I laughed and then I called him back a few days later told him you're hired because I figured anybody with that attitude I wanted to be my partner one day. So he ended up being one of the most senior partners in the firm and eminent in his field.

36:18Mark Herschberg:But it's the field that's critical. He came to me as a fifth year lawyer. He said, listen, my wife doesn't want me working here anymore. And I said, why? He said, because I hate what I'm doing for you. He said, I'm just working on these boring deals and I feel like I'm going nowhere. So I looked at him, I said, well, what do you want to do? He said, well, there's this thing called technology. This goes back a long time. He said, I think there's something to it. The internet was just getting off the ground. If you could imagine, we were that far back. and he said, I think there's a future for technology lawyers.

37:00Mark Herschberg:I said, fine. And remember, he's not a partner. He's just a fifth-year lawyer. And I said, you are now the head of the technology group at Heenan-Blakey. Go build it. Which is exactly what he did. He's now one of the leading privacy lawyers in the country at another firm. But I say that from a perspective of when you find that talent as a leader, you then have to do everything in your power to make sure they don't leave. And that will include keeping up, trying to predict where the future is going. And not only that, those decisions shouldn't be made by people like me, who still barely understand it or who use it.

37:47Mark Herschberg:They should be made by people who are using it every day, who are in their 20s or early 30s like the people are adept with it let you know let them help you build it and that way they don't see it as something they don't see it as what what's going to replace them they see it as uh here's how we use it to build something way better than what we have i love that story and

38:10Norman Bacal:it just reminds me of my first ever basketball coach who said to me rob a i e and i had no idea and he said rob this will get you through life attitude is everything and if you have the right attitude and you bring that you gave that out to the example of that attitude of that person there it just shows that it shines through and they'll go on to be successful in whatever they want to do and similarly you know i think it's the richard branson quote around you know don't hire great people tell them what to do hire great people and you know go off and do yeah exactly do do great things i mean we're touching on ai then so i want to kind of bring it back to your three c's framework now around communication collaboration and culture because how do you suggest because we are in different times.

38:52Norman Bacal:I know you were sort of giving that analogy of technology way back then, but we're in a very interesting time, a once-in-a-revolution time, many will be saying. How do you suggest leaders of today's law firms and in-house legal teams adapt those three Cs in the age of sort of AI, hybrid work, and shifting client expectations?

39:12Mark Herschberg:It's certainly more challenging, particularly if you ask what the law firm of the future was. And I know when our firm collapsed, one of the things we were looking at was starting an office where we didn't have any space, where all we had was a convenient meeting space that we spent one-tenth of the rent on than what we were paying already. So overhead comes down, gives you way more money to play with for other things. But the question and these are the key questions right now is particularly in hybrid work. How do you build build the collaboration and how do you how do you handle the mentoring?

40:01Mark Herschberg:when a lot of the mentoring when I grew up was just sitting in somebody's office and watching them and being completely odd as to how they handle the conversation or watching it being brought into client meetings and this I'll get to that in a second but we're going into a client meeting and watching a difficult client deal with a partner and concluding okay now I just learned something or more important I just learned what I'm never going to do because this is not really badly and not how I would have handled it, but you need to see it in action. And how do you see it in action when you're home on your computer, you know, just doing your work?

40:42Mark Herschberg:I did a seminar for young law firm leaders in Vancouver last year, sort of 30-somethings who were, you know, at various stages of building their own boutiques. And I asked them, I said, how many of you will have gone to lunch with a client in the last year and nobody raised their hand why because there didn't seem to be any any there was no file purpose in it they were all used to dealing with their clients by email or text and the whole notion of face-to-face was because we'd come out of covid was completely alien to them and i said you know some things won't ever change in terms of uh in terms of client service and being in a client's space sometimes for no apparent reason is going to get you way more work than just sitting at home.

41:41Mark Herschberg:So how do you teach those? And this is a leadership issue. How do you teach those lessons to young lawyers, the things that wouldn't naturally come to them about the sort of the business side of law? And remember, this brings us back to where we started. A lot of people have gone into law because they're afraid of client facing situations. I started that way, but I got dragged along to meetings by my mentors. And eventually, like everything else, it's, you know, it was young, young stage rewirement. Okay, this, this is how you do it. How do I most important? How do I apply that to my personality?

42:22Mark Herschberg:and what are the acting lessons I can learn about how you can start pretending to be this other person that you're not really but you need to be to get you through a situation. But again, that's all practice. But in terms of how it all fits together, leadership needs to be forward thinking. They need to figure out how the future fits into the, the far future falls into the near future in terms of what they're going to be doing. Now they're going to incorporate the AI, but more important in terms of building, there has to be a huge focus on the personal. And I think there's no avoiding it. It's the people who will succeed at law, what we've always called the rainmakers are the people who can sit in a room and command it.

43:17And that's a skill you can only learn by observing people doing it in

43:22Mark Herschberg:person, or by starting to figure out how to do it yourself and flailing at the beginning until it starts to become second nature.

43:33Norman Bacal:And again, thank you for sharing such wisdom and stories with us. I'm just fascinated here listening. And I want to kind of reflect on the point that you about certain things that won't change. And it reminds when I watched a webinar online about Jeff Bezos quoting, he couldn't imagine a world with Amazon in terms of certain things not changing. And what he said by that is in the world of AI and things of constant change, what are some of the behaviors of our existing clients that probably won't change? And he said, I couldn't imagine a world where our clients are going to want their products slower.

44:04Norman Bacal:They're going to want them more expensive. He can't imagine a world where Amazon would be doubling down on that. He said, so sometimes you need to think about as a business and organization, what are some of the habits and behaviors of your existing clients or your people that won't change or are very highly unlikely to change and double down on getting them absolutely nailed on. And I think the organizations that understand that and can meet them where they're at, like you say, that human touch, particularly AI is coming in and meeting clients, whether it's for lunches, whether it's through whatever it might be, it might be workshops, it might be organized, whatever.

44:34Norman Bacal:I think if you really understand that and double down on those behaviors, I think you'll do super, super well. Okay, Norma, just a couple of quick questions before we close. It's been an absolute masterclass and I was super excited for today and I've really, really enjoyed the discussion thus far. What's one thing you hope next generation of lawyers can learn from your story, both obviously the triumphs, but also some of the setbacks?

44:55Mark Herschberg:I think what I'd say is the most important thing I'd say is don't give up. one, two, and this is going to happen repeatedly. And I'll give you just one more aside. When I joined the Lionsgate board, and I really wanted to be on that board, but I went to my first few meetings. And here I was, you know, one of the world's leading film finance lawyers. I'm running a law firm, very successful Canadian. I'm sitting in this boardroom and suddenly I feel completely out of my league. They're talking about corporate finance and things that affect stock price and all kinds of other issues where I'm just sitting there in awe and feeling rather embarrassed that I don't know the first thing about any of these things.

45:50Mark Herschberg:So for the first year, I was relatively quiet on that board. I spent most of my time listening and then applied the lessons from the rest of my life until I earned my stripes or whatever it is on the board and began to be a contributor. But it's a reminder that throughout your career, you have a choice. You can avoid those situations because you're afraid you're going to embarrass yourself or you can embrace them and say, all right this is going to be very uncomfortable for a while until i get comfortable and then i will be at this whole new level that i could never have imagined and i and i think that's the point in terms of growth you have to keep pushing yourself through those moments where you just want to crawl under a rock and hide because you feel so stupid i couldn't agree more i said all

46:41Norman Bacal:the time the comfort zone is lovely and cozy but nothing ever grows there and um it's so true and you gave a great example there and just the importance of two ears and one mouth as well, you know, really listening. And, you know, again, someone said to me very early on, Rob, if you do all the talking, you're not doing any of the learning. And sometimes you've got to take a step back and just shut up and adore what people are saying and really go away and reflect on it and learn on it. And I couldn't agree. Okay, what's one, I guess, what's the question you wish more leaders asked themselves before stepping into positions of power?

47:21Mark Herschberg:it's it's a hard one to answer because it's still a a lot of uh leaders and positions of power are determined by elections which which i think is insane i think that's it it's i don't want to use the word dumb because that's that's offensive but it's pretty close to that um uh leaders have certain personality characteristics in terms of being able to put their ego second. Not all leaders, because there are two kinds of leaders, and some notoriously put themselves before everyone with the results you might expect. But I think the great leaders know how to step back, put their ego second, and understand that if I make you feel extraordinarily valuable, If I give you credit for something that I could easily take credit for, I can build a loyalty that defies imagination.

48:21Mark Herschberg:And the great leaders know it's all about building followership. It's all about building loyalty. It's about, you know, the day I walked in and told, had a chat with the receptionist in my firm. And I walked in and this was close to the end. And I said, I said, Joan, do you know who the most important person in the firm is? And she looks at me and smiles sheepishly and says, yeah, you. I said, no, no, it's not me. It's you. I said, because you are the first point of contact for anyone walking in the door and for anyone who calls in. And if they have a great experience with you, you make my life so much easier.

49:04Norman Bacal:Yeah, I love that story. and what a great way to sort of empower, motivate, but make people feel seen, heard and truly genuinely valued and that you care. And again, that's just why, you know, you've had such a wonderful career and doing great things now. And I guess with that, and finally, how can people follow your work, find your books like Breakdown and others and stay connected with your latest products? Where do they need to go? Feel free to share any websites, any social media handles, we'll share them too.

49:32Mark Herschberg:Yeah, so I do most of my social media communication on LinkedIn. So it's Norman Bacall. Pretty simple. My website, where you'll find everything I've done, including the link to my TED Talk, which has been viewed by almost 700 ,000 people around the world, is normanbacall.com. And the hardest part of that is spelling my last name right, which is just B-A-C-A-L, one L. And you can also find my books on Amazon. So it's two fiction, two murder mysteries, three non-fictions, two great manuals. If you're learning, want to learn about career success, take charge. Simple, simple, two simple words as a book title.

50:16And the other thing that I tell everyone, because I'm so thankful for what my career

50:24Mark Herschberg:and the contacts that I've met along the way have given to me. This is the part of my career where I really feel it's important for me to give back. So if you have any questions or anybody ever wants to reach out for me, just DM me, send me an email at normbacollegemail, really. Not Norman in that case, just normbacollegemail, or DM me on LinkedIn. I answer every message I get.

50:48Norman Bacal:I love that. And it just comes back to when a mentor said to me when they retired, they said to me, Rob, I want to empty my head before I'm dead. And I think it's just such a great way in terms of wanting to give back and really kind of share knowledge. And I just loved it. And I've loved this whole conversation. It's been beautiful, truly candid. And your story just reminds us that leadership isn't necessarily about never falling. It's about actually how you rise, how you reflect, how you rebuild, how you rewire. So I just want to say thank you to everyone who's tuned in live today and everyone who's picking up the recording afterwards.

51:20Norman Bacal:Norman's Insights has been absolutely brilliant when it comes to all things resilience, humility, and obviously reinvention. Absolute gold. So please do go grab a copy of his books. Check out his website. Do follow him here on LinkedIn as well. It just leaves me to say from all of us here on the Lead and Speaking Podcast, sponsored by Clio, thanks so much for joining us, Norm. It's been an absolute blast. But until next time, keep leading with courage and curiosity. But for now, over and out.