How To Bounce Ideas

Hann,D (2007) PhD Lawyers Practising Learning; Reshaping Continuing Legal Education

Bouncing Ideas in Professional Leadership

In Professional Working Cultures, such as Legal Working Culture, lawyers and those working with them have a preference to bounce ideas around when leading the carriage of for instance a legal matter.

Although, clearly, lawyers who are knowledge workers and ‘master practitioners’, acquire their own intellectual skills and ability, the lawyers participating in my PhD study, including Senior Counsel and judicial officers, emphasised that when doing ‘professional leadership’ and leading other lawyers at work, for instance when they have the carriage of a legal matter, they do not themselves necessarily have all the answers but rather they ‘use all the minds and experiences at [their] disposal’ (A1).

So instead of being autonomous independent working professionals, lawyers have a tradition of ‘bouncing ideas around’ with one another to make decisions about their professional work, whilst each still retains their professional obligations.

This does not, however, constitute a community of practice but rather is a relational endeavour with lawyers learning from each other through the constant testing and challenging of ideas through engagement with others (Laster, 2001) and has links to reflective practice (Boud, 2006, Bryant, 1993).

This key behaviour—‘bouncing ideas’ —to make a professional judgement involves a process of using all the minds and experiences at a person’s disposal and in doing this, lawyers learn to undertake the following sequence of actions.

Tip #1 - Take a position

So, given the lawyers available to them, in what is often a loose coalition, the lawyer doing professional leadership work must pragmatically guide their colleagues in legal thinking in order to meet his or her professional obligations. This is achieved by first planting an idea, next encouraging lawyers to accept the idea and then guiding them in a shared direction.

Tip #2 - Open up discussion

This process of ‘bouncing ideas’ avoids a directive approach of saying ‘this is the answer and you will adopt this view and do x, y, z’ (A1-2-23).

It also emphasises the fact that lawyers with emotional intelligence know not to direct other lawyers to think in a particular way because many lawyers do not want to be told what to do even if they are less experienced.

Tip #3 - Look for Consensus

1. Having empathy and trying to understand how other lawyers see the issues [Performing Art Leadership].

2. Understanding the emotional issues about what lawyers have ‘got themselves into’, by making or failing to make a sound legal decision [Performing Art Leadership].

3. Role modelling professional values [Leader as teacher].

4. Teaching other lawyers how to think through legal issues by ‘bouncing ideas’. [Leader as teacher].

5. Assessing the expertise of other lawyers [Results-based Leadership].

6. Consulting with other lawyers to create momentum and effect cultural and social change. [Cultural and holistic leadership].

Tip #4 - If No Consensus Make a Decision

In contrast, a ‘dictatorial leadership style’ (A1-2-24) [or authoritative approach] is considered by many lawyers to be an undesirable aspect of working together.

Although part of personal and intellectual leadership it can inhibit the teaching of other lawyers. Yet it is necessary to strike a balance between entertaining the views of others and making a decision to move forward in a legal matter.

In Conclusion

My PhD findings show that lawyers do not necessarily have a workplace in which "bouncing ideas" is valued by those in positional authority. When this is the case the professional development and wellbeing of lawyers can be detrimentally affected.

Dr Deborah Hann

February 2023