Washington Lawyer - July/August 2024 - 46

ON FURTHER REVIEW
Fostering Productive
Dissent in Teams
By Lloyd Liu
T
he hallmarks of a good leader
get discussed all the time, as
anyone who spends just 15
minutes on LinkedIn knows.
But as trite as talking about leadership
can be, the reality is that topquality
leadership remains difficult
to find, particularly in the legal
profession.
Leadership has particular relevance in trial
practice because, for so many cases, the complexity
and unpredictability of trial is too much
for any single person. We cannot see beyond
our own blind spots, so it is imperative to have
a team and to embrace disagreement.
Former Medtronic CEO Bill George described
the importance of dissent within teams in a
2007 Harvard Business School article, writing,
" You need to reward and promote the mavericks
or else the organization will lose its creative
edge. You try to create tension inside because
the outside challenge is so great. " General
George Patton said it another way: " If everyone
is thinking alike, somebody isn't thinking. "
Anyone can create internal tension, but for
Steve Levin, senior counsel at Steptoe LLP, fostering
productive dissent is a much more difficult
task. Levin is a retired Army JAG officer who
served as a military judge. He also served as an
assistant U.S. attorney in the United States Attorney's
Office for the District of Maryland,
where he was a supervisor, before moving to
private practice and focusing on white-collar
criminal defense.
One of Levin's initial lessons in leadership came
from mentoring a junior attorney handling her
first court-martial defense. Levin explained to
this junior JAG lawyer how to conduct voir dire
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* JULY/AUGUST 2024
of the prospective jurors, or panel members as
they are called in the military. When the junior
lawyer asked, " Are any of you in positions of
command? " the prospective panel members
rolled their eyes in response. The junior attorney
failed to realize that because the jurors
were in uniform, you could tell immediately
whether the person occupied a command position
- commanders wore a green tab.
This kind of story happens to every new attorney,
but how a supervising attorney responds
is telling. " She was so new that she didn't realize
what the green tab meant. So, she asked a
question that she didn't need to ask, but it was
my failure not [explaining] beforehand why she
didn't need to ask that question, " Levin says.
Holding oneself accountable speaks not only
to insight into what leading means, but also to
patience in helping others grow. Levin regards
one of his current colleagues as the epitome of
such positive leadership. " He never says a negative
word about somebody who is sincerely
trying to help on a matter, " Levin says.
" The best leaders [have been] those who wanted
to know what I thought and weren't going
to chide or embarrass me if what I thought was
different from what they thought. You might
have a bad idea the first four out of five times.
If someone embarrasses you, you won't be willing
to speak that fifth time, " he adds.
Talking about his years in JAG, Levin says people
often think of the military as " a bunch of
generals yelling at a bunch of privates. " Although
that may happen on occasion, " that's
not leadership, or at least it's not good leadership, "
he says.
" Good leadership is when the senior leaders are
listening to junior soldiers, but you rarely hear
about that. These junior soldiers often have
great ideas. And the same is true of associates.
An associate can have the best idea in the
world, but if they're too afraid of being embarrassed
by a practice group leader, then that
great idea doesn't go anywhere, " Levin continues.
Developing
this kind of environment requires
thinking about leadership beyond ordering
other lawyers around. Our profession tolerates
ineffective leadership strategies because, on
the whole, lawyers are highly educated and
motivated. Junior associates can succeed despite
poor leadership by virtue of persistence
and resilience. And that success would not
cause a supervisor to revisit whether the leadership
technique is a good one or not.
Levin rejects the notion articulated in a Tennyson
poem that " Theirs not to reason why, Theirs
but to do and die. " Instead, he encourages lessexperienced
lawyers to speak up and ask questions.
" If I'm writing a sentencing memorandum,
for example, I might share a draft with an
associate familiar with the case and encourage
them to offer suggestions and ask questions. In
turn, I will ask them questions, even if I think I
know the answer, " Levin says.
" I want them to express their opinion, speak
freely, and offer an approach we might be able
to use, " he adds. " If I just make the decision and
fail to discuss my own thought process with
them, they don't learn. And the final product
may not be as good as it otherwise could have
been. "
This all takes time, so much so that many lawyers
may find it too costly. But Levin believes
the effort is worthwhile. " The part that gets lost
is that we, as lawyers, are constantly teaching.
You want your associates eventually to do better
than you, " he says.
Lloyd Liu is a partner at BLL LLP, where he focuses
on white-collar defense, government investigations,
and complex civil litigation.
Washington Lawyer - July/August 2024

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