(Again, excellent judgment and management skills are taken as a given for these positions.) In Kiersey’s terms, corporate lawyers might well fall into the “Guardian” temperament - a personality type that values order, stability, group membership, and rules. Trustworthiness, listening skills, emotional awareness, diplomacy, and other human relations capabilities are the coin of the realm for successful corporate lawyers. In these arenas, the so-called “soft” skills become core competencies for success. Practicing law in a corporation (or other large organization) requires capabilities that go beyond technical expertise alone. What’s more, these amped-up attorneys are overwhelmingly characterized by what Keirsey called the “Rational” temperament” - valuing logic, expertise, rationality, concept mastery, and precision in the use of language. Those lawyers who pursue the sub-specialty of litigation, however, take these competitive traits to a new level. Through a self-selection process that begins long before law school, individuals pursuing legal careers become increasingly more competitive and results-oriented than members of the general public. David Keirsey called the “Idealist” temperament - typified by the search for meaning and significance in one’s work. Although social scientists have observed a shift towards external rewards (money, power, prestige, etc.) that occurs in most law school students, members of “The Advocate” group retain their loyalty to internal values. Core values for these lawyers include unity, morality, ethics, authenticity, and social justice. This personality type might be found in a public interest law firm, a nonprofit, a government regulatory body, or any place where there’s a commitment to serving a greater good.
So if their sales pitch is turned down, they pick themselves up and try again. They build (and maintain) trust - and their confident, assertive nature makes it easy for them to “ask for the order.” Rainmakers also are known for goal orientation and resilient egos. Rainmakers are empathetic, interpersonally adept, and skilled in the persuasive arts. Not surprisingly, a successful legal salesperson is a “people person”- an extravert who thrives on the give-and-take of social interaction. As you read these descriptions, however, think about your legal colleagues and friends: Recognize anyone here? Needless to say, the list is not intended to be comprehensive or exclusive it’s only a snapshot of five personality types commonly found in the legal community. Let’s begin with this caveat: The five lawyer “types” listed below are simply approximations-designed to provide a framework for considering personality information on complex individuals. We have applied some of these tests’ findings to our own categories, shown below. Lawyers’ personalities are different from those in other professions, and from those in the general public.
Keirsey, sorts people according to preferences in how they communicate and how they act.īoth the MBTI® and the KTS®-II tests are widely administered in the legal community - and they generally confirm what you already knew. One of these types (labeled INTJ) reportedly occurs five times more frequently in attorneys than in the population at large.Ī related test - this one billed as “the most widely used personality instrument in the world”- is The Keirsey Temperament Sorter®-II (KTS®-II). The popular Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® (MBTI), for example, sorts individuals into 16 personality “types” but practicing lawyers overwhelmingly cluster into only five of them. When standardized personality tests are administered to lawyers, the results tend to be quite different from those that arise in the general public. Evaluating Lawyer Personality Types & Traits
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