Better Aim, Faster Results

Our careers are shaped by thousands of actions over time, just as a shoreline is carved by the constant pressure of a thousand waves. But unlike a shoreline, we have the power to consciously shape the direction and outcome of our business lives.

Today, lawyers are expected to be experts in a broad range of areas that go way beyond legal knowledge—from leading teams and managing firm politics to planning for succession. It is unrealistic to think we can master all of these complex business skills on our own, or that doing so independently is the best use of your time.

That is why I offer targeted executive coaching for lawyers.

My coaching practice provides a strategic, confidential sounding board for senior lawyers and managing partners. This is a structured process designed to help you set clear business goals, clear away firm roadblocks, and commit to an implementation plan that actually works.

Individuals who seek out coaching do not need fixing; they are already highly capable professionals who want to sharpen their leadership, navigate firm transitions smoothly, and get where they want to go much faster.

Specialized Coaching for Every Career Stage

While my primary focus is helping firm leaders design high-stakes strategies, I partner with lawyers at every stage of their professional journey. Legal careers are dynamic, and I provide targeted coaching across three core areas:

  1. Strategic Leadership & Firm Governance
    Designed for managing partners, practice group leaders, and senior lawyers navigating complex organizational dynamics.
    • Executive Leadership Coaching: Shifting from a top-tier legal practitioner to an impactful firm leader.
    • Lateral Hire Integration: Accelerating trust, alignment, and performance when senior lawyers switch firms.
    • Preparation for Partnership: Preparing for application to Partnership.
    • Succession/Retirement: Preparing an exit strategy.
  2. Business Development & Career Strategy
    Tailored for individual lawyers looking to design their career trajectories and build sustainable books of business.
    • Career Planning: Mapping out an intentional, long-term path within your firm or the broader legal market.
    • Business Development Planning & Training: Transforming technical legal skills into a practical, authentic strategy for rainmaking.
    • Return from Leave Integration: Creating a smooth, confidence-building ramp-up after a maternity, medical, or extended parental leave.
  3. Practice Management & High-Performance Skills
    Focused on the day-to-day execution, mental resilience, and operational efficiency required to thrive in modern law firms.
    • Practice & File Management Issues: Streamlining workflows to handle heavy caseloads without drop-offs in quality.
    • Core Work Skills Enrichment: Tailored training in high-utility habits like delegation, strict prioritization, and corporate administration.
    • Improved Productivity & Time Management: Eradicating inefficiencies to maximize billable hours and lower daily friction.
    • Stress Management & Work-Life Balance: Designing protective boundaries to minimize burnout and handle relentless professional pressure.

Coaching Structure and Cost

Coaching is available in blocks of four one-hour sessions over a two-month period with unlimited quick calls and e-mails as needed. Alternatively, for those who need coaching as an ongoing support tool throughout a more challenging time period (such as the starting of a new business, a change of career or business strategy, or through a more extended personal growth period), I also provide a six-month fixed fee coaching retainer option.

The cost of coaching is similar to that of going to a counselor, lawyer or other professional. Many of my clients submit their coaching costs to their accountant as evidence of a professional development expense.

Why Work with Me?

Selection of a coach is a personal decision, because all coaches are different.  We have different personalities, we have different training, we focus on different types of individuals and different situations.

I am a certified through the International Coaching Federation and have over 20 years of experience in coaching lawyers and law firm management.

Coaches usually come from another discipline – often HR. I come from the marketing profession. This means that in addition to coaching, I can provide marketing advice that leads to pragmatic, action-oriented solutions that can make all of the difference in achieving business goals.

Questions & Answers

Can Coaching Help Me? Q&A on what coaching is, what it looks like, how it can help, and how to prepare for a coaching session.

Have you ever found that the same types of events were holding you back from accomplishing what you want to accomplish?  Are you confused as to the best way to proceed on a plan or with an objective?  Are you having a problem making a major decision?  Is there a trait or skill that you want to learn but don’t know how to go about learning it?  Are you dissatisfied with an element of your work or business life that you would like to fix?  Are you concerned about work-life balance and want to bring greater stability to your life?  All of these types of issues (and more) can be addressed with coaching.

Coaching is very different from counselling.  In fact, in coaching a detailed description of events or situations doesn’t tend to assist in resolution.  Rather, it tends to enable the client to focus on the past and stay tethered to old behaviours and responses that might be at the root of the issue being explored.  Coaching is about finding solutions for the future, rather than spending time examining the past or present.   As your coach, I don’t need to know all the details of your situation in order to help you.  In fact, allowing clients to spend significant amounts of their precious coaching session describing their past situations in detail would be a waste of their valuable time.  For this reason, I try to limit “information sharing” to an absolute minimum and instead, focus on the actual coaching process.  That said, I understand that part of dealing with an issue is often simply talking it through.  I encourage my clients to use close friends or counsellors for this purpose, or to practice journaling.  My intent is not to diminish this part of a healing or development process.  It is simply to ensure that time spent with me in maximized.

Coaching sessions are one hour – often by phone – and are conducted in blocks of four sessions spanning a two month time period.  Clients are requested to arrive at the coaching session with a specific objective in mind.  During the remainder of the session, we will work on developing a solution to that issue or need.  It is rare that an issue is alone; generally sessions reveal that there are multiple, related issues that must be addressed in order to clear a pathway to success.  For this reason, coaching sessions are batched in four session segments.  It is suggested that at least a week occur between sessions, to enable the client to think through, collect information, or take action or practice in between sessions in order to prepare for the next coaching session.  During this in-between period it is possible that questions may arise, or that the client may wish to report on accomplishment of activities as a method of accountability.  For this reason, I accept unlimited emails during the course of a coaching process.  However I do not provide extensive coaching advice by email.  If a significant issue is revealed during email communications, I will request that we work on the issue in a more fulsome way during a proper session.

Clients arrive at the coaching session with a particular issue they wish to work on.  It may be that they arrive with a general sense of what they want to achieve, and together with the coach are able to better article specifically what they wish to work on.  What follows is a structured series of questions aimed at helping the client to explore the issue and develop realistic strategies for dealing with it.

Session blocks include an introductory phone call, four one-hour coaching sessions and unlimited emails throughout the process for a total of $1,300 (+GST).  This is equivalent to or less than the typical cost of counselling or other professional services.  It also ensures that clients are committed to growth and the coaching process.

If you feel that you have many things going on your life, but nothing is getting your proper attention, then a work-life balance (WLB) plan might be just what you need.  This is also helpful for individuals who sense that their home life is suffering because of their commitment to work, or vice versa.  Some clients may be strongly encouraged to create a WLB plan before proceeding with a personal business plan.  That’s because in the of a WLB plan, any business plan they build might become unsustainable if they have not first sought to build a strong foundation in the rest of the lives in order to support their career aspirations. A WLB plan helps to ensure that whatever business plan is subsequently developed is not conducted at the sacrifice of the other elements of your life that are important to your health and happiness.  Once a WLB plan has been completed, the client has a methodology for determining priorities, assessing their degree of follow through on those priorities, developing a plan for improving work-life balance, and tracking their success in doing so.  This process can then be repeated whenever needed by the client on their own.  On average it takes three sessions to development a fulsome WLB plan, placing it in the same cost range as a four-session coaching block.

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