Learning to be a lawyer in transnational law firms: communities of ...

study exercises with the delegates. So in that role they are immediately acting effectively
as coaching and mentoring facilitators. But delegates love the fact that this is a real
lawyer sat with me for two days chatting about how we should manage this case
scenario…I see principally the role as being a sounding board. So somebody tells you
[the editorial layer] what they think and you don’t offer your own opinion, you just
challenge their assumptions and you keep challenging their assumptions until they
become more robust in their opinion, or not as the case may be”.
(14)
Feedback allows individuals to understand if their values, attitudes and behaviours make them a
legitimate participant in the community of lawyers that is the firm. As Lave and Wenger (1991)
describe, to effectively participate in a community requires legitimacy, something developed
over time as an individual learns and displays both the skills (i.e. best practices) but also the
identity – i.e. attitudes, values and resultant behaviours - that allows legitimate community
membership. In transnational law firms this means demonstrating the attitudes, values and
related behaviours outlined in Table 4 which form part of the home-country defined joint
enterprise and shared repertoire of the firm.
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