How O Shaped is Changing the Way Law Firms Approach Hiring

Highlights of this article

• The basic principles of O Shaped

• The need for this type of professional vs. historically hiring the T-Shaped professionals

• The impact this shift has had on hiring and professional development across the legal profession

What is O Shaped? 

O Shaped was founded in 2019 as the O Shaped Lawyer by Dan Kayne, who was Regional General Counsel at Network Rail. Dan had previously spent a year as a commercial program manager in the Network Rail business and had seen first-hand how disconnected the legal function had become from its business colleagues and how that impaired its ability to deliver the best possible service.

Dan recognized that whilst the legal function was technically excellent, it needed to move beyond that to connect with business colleagues. By focusing more on their people and business skills, the legal function would get to understand the business better and spend their time on the most important strategic work. Equally, they would look for innovative ways to address the more commoditized, less strategic work.  

Dan always hired for attitude and trained for skill, recruiting people who could contribute to the business objectives and not just the legal ones. What he discovered when interviewing for vacancies in the team was that most lawyers he met were so intent on being the best technical experts they could be that they lacked the broader, more well-rounded (hence O-shaped) skills needed to become great lawyers.   

At the time, the T-shaped professional was in vogue. This represented someone who was both technically strong and able to work across different disciplines. The ability to collaborate across disciplines is critical, but the T-shaped professional model fell well short of what Dan had in mind. It didn’t stress the criticality of people skills (historically referred to as ‘soft’ skills) or business skills.   

O Shaped assumed a level of competence in technical excellence and focused on people and business skills, elevating them to the same level as technical skills to create the well-rounded, O Shaped Professional.   

Many senior in-house leaders he spoke to validated Dan's experience. They shared their concerns about the training and development of legal professionals and recognized the gaps it left in their career development. This made it exceptionally difficult to recruit lawyers in-house, particularly from private practice.  

The O Shaped Frameworks 

The 5 Os Mindset 

Those conversations led to the development of the 5 Os that have become the foundation of O Shaped. 

Open: O Shaped Professionals are open to new ways of working and new perspectives, including receiving feedback and being open with emotions.  

Originality: O Shaped Professionals consider creativity and innovation to be part of the day job not a luxury. 

Opportunity: O Shaped Professionals are proactive. They look for problems to solve and create more opportunities for themselves as a result.  

Ownership: O Shaped Professionals take ownership of their own career and are accountable for the outcomes of their work not just the inputs. 

Optimism: O Shaped Professionals are positive in their approach and look for ways to make things happen. 

The O Shaped Attributes 

In late 2019, O Shaped interviewed some of the leading General Counsel in the UK, publishing a report the following February which highlighted that: 

1. Technical knowledge is a given;  

2. Legal Professionals need to intimately understand the people, businesses, and industries they work in or are advising; and 

3. The most effective legal professionals are those who can create value for their organizations or clients. 

We distilled the conversations down to 12 skills — the O Shaped Attributes — which fit into three main buckets:  

• Building Relationships

  • Emotional Intelligence

  • Trust and Influence

  • Communication and Collaboration 

• Creating Value

  • Simplifying complexity

  • Identifying opportunities

  • Synthesizing and problem-solving

• Being Adaptable

  • Courage

  • Feedback

  • Resilience

  • Continuous learning

Cross-Industry Collaboration 

From the outset, the O Shaped movement worked across the legal industry, embedding the O Shaped Mindset and Attributes in legal education, at law firms and in-house legal teams. As it has gained traction, O Shaped partnered first with Browne Jacobson and then with Dentons who have both embraced O Shaped, including embedding the frameworks into their recruitment processes. 

Browne Jacobson 

The Browne Jacobson recruitment team works with hiring managers to provide guidance on the attributes they are looking for:  

• Original: candidates who are capable of thinking outside the box and are not constrained by their previous experience or job title 

• Open: a willingness to learn, and embrace different perspectives and ways of working  

• Opportunity: demonstrating a willingness to step out of their comfort zone and create new opportunities for themselves and their team 

• Ownership: taking responsibility for their own personal and professional development, role modelling and thinking about how this can benefit their clients by building relationships and creating value 

• Optimistic: having a “can do” attitude and sharing this expectation with their team 

The recruitment team has developed an O Shaped Mindset and an O Shaped Attributes toolkit which contain interview questions to dig deeper into the 5 Os and the 12 attributes. Their online assessments also feature questions based on O Shaped to explore which of the attributes people feel resonate most with them and how they can support their clients. This gives candidates a chance to reflect on how they can apply the O Shaped mindset so that, even before they join the firm, they are challenging themselves to explore what motivates them and their personal “why”.  

The O Shaped mindset is woven through all parts of the process from application, interview/assessment right through to induction and onboarding. This is regardless of level of hire, length of contract or type of role (legal, central or support). 

The firm’s clients and people want, and deserve, to work with others who come from diverse backgrounds, are open to new ways of working and look for opportunities to support each other. That is why the firm actively recruits O Shaped Professionals.  

Dentons 

In May 2023, Dentons became the first global law firm to partner with O Shaped. They have incorporated the O-shaped principles into both their early careers and experienced hire recruitment processes, highlighting their importance in how they identify and assess talent. 

For those starting their legal careers, the firm has integrated the O-shaped frameworks into its outreach programs. The principles are also woven into its contextual recruitment platform, allowing Dentons to recognize talent beyond just legal knowledge. As a result, Dentons has expanded its talent pool and improved access to the legal profession. 

When it comes to experienced hires, we prioritize personal skills alongside legal acumen. We recognize the value of traits like connectivity, collaboration, and empathetic leadership, viewing them as equally essential as technical expertise. The assessment process reflects this balance, as the firms actively seek out individuals who excel not only in their technical area of specialism but also demonstrate the O-shaped mindset and attributes. 

The O Shaped Recruitment Toolkit 

O Shaped runs a series of senior in-house leader working groups, one of which focuses on recruitment. In October 2022, the working group published the O Shaped Recruitment Toolkit designed to support in-house teams with the advertising, interviewing, and selection of new legal professionals into their teams. 

In Summary 

Recruitment in the legal industry has, for some time, gone beyond just strong academics, but it has never been supported by an ecosystem that values it. Law firms may have hired for broader skills but have rarely encouraged those skills to flourish as they have been seen as a luxury rather than a necessity. 

Now O Shaped is changing that emphasis. Our client-led approach has brought this to the attention of law firms, who have, in turn, recognized the need for a broader set of skills being developed at law school and then built on at the firms. O Shaped has created a consistent framework where there was previously a vacuum, keeping the content simple and easy to deploy.  

As generative AI increasingly disrupts the legal sector, making technical legal knowledge more accessible and consumable than ever before, the people and business skills of O Shaped will become even more critical for the modern-day legal professional.