Listen on

Train Your Lawyers and Build Culture at the Same Time

My Milwaukee team stumbled on a simple, almost magical tool that builds community and trains attorneys to be excellent lawyers at the same time.

The “magic tool”? A big table. But not just any table – a 15-foot long, 8-foot deep communal workspace that has become the heart of our Milwaukee office. While it might sound basic, the impact has been extraordinary.

The Evolution of the Big Table

The story begins with our Milwaukee team, which consists of seven lawyers plus support staff, paralegals, and legal assistants, led by Holly Mullin.

Among them are Austin Miller, one of our partners and a fantastic lawyer, and Bailey Holt, a rising star who’s become a senior associate on our team. They’ve helped pioneer an approach that’s revolutionizing how we build community and train our team.

Austin:
“Prior to the big table, we all had our individual spaces in a big open room, but they were still pretty distinct. I don’t like spending time in my office – it’s usually mountains of paper. So when we reorganized the office, and everyone got their own individual spaces, we had this big conference room table moved out into our common space, and that’s where I naturally gravitated.”

The change came when we reorganized our Menomonee Falls office. The physical setup is intentional – a large open area with offices arranged in a horseshoe around it.

While each attorney maintains their private office for focused work, client calls, and Zoom hearings, the big table has become the nucleus of daily operations.

A Day at the Big Table

For Bailey, who joined our team when she was just two months into her legal career, this setup provided an invaluable learning environment.

Bailey:
“There’s people who gravitated towards that table as their primary workstation. Throughout the majority of the day, everyone hangs out at that table when they’re drafting, when they’re preparing for hearings. The offices are more for client calls or court appearances.”

This organic gathering place has become the heart of our office operations.

Bailey:
“It’s our main hub. That’s where I start my day in the morning. Everyone starts there unless you have a meeting first thing. Maybe I’ll go off for 10 minutes for a phone call with a client and then come back to the table. It’s the starting and ending point of our day.”

Austin:
“We check in with each other as the day starts – ‘Hey, how was your evening? What’s on the books today? Anything interesting coming up?’ We open the conversation with each other from the get-go. Getting your last-minute arguments together for court, refining those, bouncing them off each other. It happens all day long. I spend not an insignificant portion of my life at that table.”

Natural Learning and Development

What’s particularly fascinating is how this setup accelerates the development of new attorneys. Bailey’s experience illustrates this perfectly. In just two and a half years, she advanced to senior associate well ahead of the typical timeline.

Bailey:
“For me, as a new attorney having only been practicing for two months, it was a huge way for me to learn from other attorneys. Just sitting and hearing what they’re talking about, having conversations about upcoming hearings they have that day or that week. Everyone’s always bouncing ideas off of each other, talking about decisions from hearings they just had and what commissioner or judge they were in front of and how they ruled on certain issues.”

The learning goes both ways. Austin finds that helping newer attorneys enhances his own practice.

Austin:
“We’ve got reference books, we’re looking at cases, we’re sharing cases. Someone asks a question that we haven’t run into, and that happens not infrequently. As a group, we can dive in and tackle that together and come up with an answer. My own practice benefits, my own knowledge and skill set is refined by being around amazing attorneys like Bailey and the rest of our team.”

Building Emotional Support

Perhaps most importantly, the big table has created an essential support system for our attorneys.

Austin:
“Family law is tough. We carry the emotional burdens of every client we work with – them, their kids, even sometimes their spouses. It can be isolating; I can’t go home and share all these details with my spouse. Being at that table, being around a community of attorneys who are going through the same thing, who are carrying those same weights and spreading it out just a little bit amongst us, lifting each other up and supporting each other – that wasn’t an intended side effect of putting a big table in a common area, but it really has worked wonders for us.”

The Role of Leadership and Culture

This collaborative environment didn’t emerge by chance. It requires thoughtful leadership and the right cultural foundation.

Bailey:
“It’s not something that can be forced. I think the biggest thing from a leadership standpoint is having teammates who are willing to be part of a community and help one another, not individuals who are just focused on themselves and unwilling to collaborate.”

Austin emphasizes the intentional nature of our culture.

Austin:
“We put a lot of focus at Sterling on culture and aggressively defending it. Putting people, our atmosphere, and client approach first brings in the right type of people and helps really make that atmosphere.”

The Power of Simple Solutions

What began as a straightforward change to our office layout has become a powerful tool for transforming our legal practice.

While not every firm needs a literal big table, the principles behind its success – creating spaces for natural collaboration and fostering a supportive culture – can enhance any law firm.

Consider starting with something as simple as a shared space where your team can naturally come together. The results might surprise you.

SHARE
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn

Sign In

Register

Reset Password

Please enter your username or email address, you will receive a link to create a new password via email.

Build a Beautiful
Family Law Firm

The stuff they don’t teach in law school. Learn world-class law firm leadership, growth strategies, operational principles, and marketing models from my 10 years building one of the largest family law firms in the US.

Weekly Newsletters - Actionable Insights - ZERO Spam