Lawyers play a crucial role in the organizations they render their services to. However, many years of legal education fail to equip lawyers with the knowledge and understanding of managing teams. Most lawyers in managerial positions get their roles because they have excelled as lawyers. But management, alongside leadership, requires new skills that need to be developed.
Mila Trezza started ‘Coaching Lawyers by Mila Trezza’ after she identified the deep- rooted need for legal professionals to receive more support, insight and guidance to build greater self-confidence and accelerate their success as legal leaders.
CIO Bulletin had the opportunity to talk to Mila Trezza about Coaching Lawyers and the impact it has had so far.
Q. What made you walk away from a successful corporate career and set up Coaching Lawyers by Mila Trezza?
After having worked with lawyers and legal teams worldwide as an in-house lawyer for over 20 years, I realized there was a deeply felt need for lawyers of all seniorities to build more than the professional experience and intellectual skills needed to be great lawyers in order for them to be effective advisers.
There is little in the professional journey and training of a lawyer that prepares them to become a manager, let alone a corporate leader. And leadership roles can be lonely.
To become effective leaders, legal professionals have to develop the skills that allow them to break through silos, grow the enormous talent pool in the legal profession, and lead change.
One of the many things that attracted me to executive coaching is the way coaching facilitates the cultivation of authentic leadership and boosts leadership confidence. My vision was to make an impact by offering what I had learned to other lawyers in leadership positions.
Q. What is the Coaching Lawyers’ Individual Coaching program? How does it tailor its services around its clients’ needs?
Each lawyer has different challenges, operates in a unique environment, and has a unique professional journey and set of talents.
Many of my clients are newly appointed GCs or heads of legal who feel overwhelmed by their new responsibilities and the pressure to deliver big results. They may feel they have huge potential in their teams — but they don’t know how to develop it. They may have busy bosses or report to non-legal professionals like CFO and CEO.
Others may be unhappy with their role and are challenging what’s next for them. They need a roadmap, ‘a strategy’ or ‘a 360-degree view of the situation’. They may have tried a few things and ‘feel stuck in a rut’. Or, using their own words, want to work with somebody ‘whose sole agenda is helping me’.
In Coaching Lawyers’ Individual Program, we start with working out what the exact challenges are so you can draw a master plan to get to where you want to get and understand what you need to get there – and then take meaningful action towards doing so.
Once we discuss what my clients wish to achieve, we explore their options and design a coaching program. Some clients work with me weekly for a few months, and some work with me monthly for a whole year. It depends on how bold their ambitions are and what serves them best.
Q. Can you briefly explain how Coaching Lawyers’ Legal Teams Coaching improves the legal teams of your client companies?
When working with a team, my engagement is usually driven by the initiative of their leader. The manager in charge has tough challenges but also a vision to bring their team to the next level. However, they may realize they don’t know exactly how.
In today’s fast, increasingly sophisticated and often highly regulated business environment, every project requires a collective effort.
When the team is under-led, no matter how capable the individuals are, it quickly becomes apparent that the team is not equipped to achieve the very best of its potential.
Legal teams coaching is about understanding and developing high-performance dynamics and shifting the focus from individual performance to collective impact.
Q. Can you share some success stories of clients after their time with Coaching Lawyers?
For many of my clients, a breakthrough in their career is ending up wrestling with themselves and moving from daily frustration to a place where they finally feel confident and enjoy what they do. They share, ‘I’m getting resourced and tooled. I got the tools to deal with it.
’ My favorite success stories include outcomes that are also very tangible. In-house lawyers and private practice lawyers who have been trying to move up in their organizations and finally get the bigger responsibilities they want and share, ‘I finally have a job I enjoy’.
Other success stories include a senior in-house lawyer who got a 20% salary increase, which he attempted to negotiate with his employer for a couple of years without traction. Finally, a senior lawyer who lost motivation and confidence after a long career break until she got the role she never thought she would get and shared, ‘My self-confidence is through the roof!’
A brief biography of Mila Trezza
Mila Trezza spent most of her career as an in-house lawyer, with more than 10 years as General Counsel of a Fortune Global 500 energy company. She developed 20+ years of professional experience as a lawyer internationally and recruited, led, and developed high-performing teams of in-house lawyers. She served as a director for over 30 companies, operating across many jurisdictions and cultures. She has lived in six countries and is dual-qualified, which shaped her passion for the international dimension of the legal profession.
In early 2022, she launched her first business, Coaching Lawyers by Mila Trezza, which was recognized as one of the Top 5 Executive Coaching Companies in the UK in 2023.
Her work on transformational leadership was recognized by Women Influence & Power in Law UK, and she was the winner of the 2023 Award for Lifetime Achievement, In- House.
If you wish to learn more about coaching or discuss your challenges with Mila Trezza, visit https://coachinglawyers.co.uk.
