I have a new survey for you to complete, similar to my previous questionnaire about building your own law firm — except that today’s quiz looks like a lot more fun. But first, some background as to what prompted this one.

Five years ago this month, I posted a short entry here at Law21 called “Core competence: 6 new skills now required of lawyers.” I identified six attributes that the legal profession has traditionally valued, the ones we’ve always assumed are the most important assets for a lawyer to possess (e.g., analytical ability, logical reasoning, persuasiveness). I then suggested that these skills, while still necessary, were no longer sufficient — that tomorrow’s lawyers will require new abilities such as financial literacy, emotional intelligence, and project management. I thought it was an interesting post, but to be honest, not much more than that.

In fact, however, “Core competence” turned out to be far and away the most popular post I’ve ever written on this site. It’s among the most frequently accessed posts every day of the year, and often this five-year-old article is the top daily entry.

The popularity of that post just underlines for me the tremendous demand, both from within the legal profession and among those who wish to join it, for information about what kind of abilities — practical, functional, and performance-based — you need to be a successful lawyer. This is a question that ought to be occupying virtually everyone with an interest in the practice of law over the next decade:

• Current or potential law students (there are still a few out there) who want to know what attributes they’ll need to compete in a tough market with a heavy debt load;
• Law school administrators who want to know what kinds of pragmatic, professional courses they should be offering to attract those students and impress employers;
• Managing partners and law firm hiring directors who want to know what aptitudes should inform their recruitment, training and retention efforts;
• Clients who want to know what characteristics they should require of both their outside counsel suppliers and their own growing ranks of inside lawyers; and
• CLE directors who want to know what training and educational opportunities they should offer in order to maximize market interest and curriculum effectiveness.

Over the course of the last five years, however, I’ve found my own thinking on this subject has evolved. I’m still interested in skills — the ability to effectively execute important tasks will always be highly coveted — but a focus on skill that underplays other characteristics will result in a work force too heavily reliant upon technical abilities and shortchanged on the kind of dynamic talents that separate the merely good from the truly great. Not only that, but over-emphasizing skill ignores the reality that some people are simply born with innate talents that give them an advantage over others. Charisma, for example, is a talent, a remarkably effective one (especially for trial lawyers and rainmakers), but like speed, it simply can’t be taught.

So that got me thinking: if we were to expand our repertoire of potential abilities and advantages for lawyers — if we thought more broadly about what lawyers require to be successful in the coming years — then we could start to assemble a more diverse and well-rounded inventory of market-centred attributes for 21st-century lawyers. And that leads me to my new survey.

This survey, like my new book Evolutionary Road, was co-created with my friends at Attorney At Work, and it touches on the same basic issue: the future development of the legal marketplace (if you haven’t checked out the book yet, please click through to learn more). Evolutionary Road posits five stages in the transformation of the legal market and recommends ways in which firms can adapt.

But what about individual lawyers? What can they do to adjust their own inventories of market offerings? The answer to that question depends on another one: what precise individual skills, talents and resources will maximize lawyers’ odds of success in the coming years? I have my own answers to that question, but I’d like to find out yours first. So I’ve put together a survey that tries to elicit your responses, and in an innovative way.

Have you ever taken one of those survival quizzes, like Survival At Sea or The Sub-Arctic Plane Crash Survival Test? The idea is that an accident has stranded you in a harsh and desolate location, and you must choose, from among a small array of remaining supplies, the items most important to your survival. In some tests, you can only take a limited number of items with you; in others, you can take them all, but you must prioritize them in order of importance. These quizzes test, to a certain extent, your knowledge of basic wilderness survival techniques — but also, and more importantly, your ability to think creatively and cleverly about how you can use the tools and resources available to you.

Using these tests as inspiration, allow me to present: Your Future Law Survival Kit Quiz:

You’re stranded in a future legal market, vast and unfamiliar, and you need to launch a new legal career. Luckily, you get to start off with several skills and talents — but it’s a limited supply, and you’ll need to choose carefully. Which ones will help you most? Below you’ll find 15 resources that seem like they’d be useful, including innate abilities and valuable skills. You have 100 points to assign among these resources, according to how important you think they’ll be.

And here are the 15 attributes (listed here in alphabetical order, but randomized in the quiz):

• Connections: Strong and productive relationships with clients in your chosen field.
• EQ: Your emotional intelligence fosters great relationships, especially with clients.
• Famous Brand: Start off your new career widely known and respected in your field.
• Financial Facility: You have a business background and a great head for figures.
• Innovation: A talent for and enthusiasm about improving upon current practices.
• Legal Knowledge: Good old-fashioned legal know-how, the black-letter kind.
• Moral Fibre: You’re renowned for strength of character and high levels of integrity.
• Nice Niche: Start your career with a strong grasp of a narrow but very promising field.
• Pricing Strategies: You know how to price your work effectively and profitably.
• Process Mastery: A knack for developing systems, procedures and efficiencies.
• Recruiting Prowess: You easily attract talented colleagues and collaborators.
• Risk Acceptance: You’re not averse to risk; you’re confident about taking chances.
• Solutions R Us: A gift for solving seemingly intractable challenges, legal and non.
• Techno-Wizardry: Facility with programming, web design, apps and all things tech.
• War Chest: A bank balance to help finance many (but not all) of your future needs.

Which of these would you choose to launch a legal career in the future legal market described in Evolutionary Road? How much weight would you give the attributes you choose? As with the previous test, you’re given 100 points, which you must distribute throughout the list according to which features you think will prove most important; you will almost certainly have to leave some out, and you will have to award some choices more points than others.

Here’s the link to the survey — it’s open as of today, July 22 , and will stay open until August 12 (or until I have enough responses to draw some conclusions). Please take the survey — Note: print out your choices before pressing “Done,” so that you retain a copy — and forward it to your friends and colleagues. And then check back here next month to see how your answers compared with your fellow readers — and with mine.

Available now! My first two published books: Content Marketing and Publishing Strategies for Law Firms (co-authored with Steve Matthews, published by The Ark Group) and Evolutionary Road (e-book published by Attorney At Work). Click the links to learn more and order your copies today.

Jordan Furlong delivers dynamic and thought-provoking presentations to law firms and legal organizations throughout North America on how to survive and profit from the extraordinary changes underway in the legal services marketplace. He is a partner with Edge International and a senior consultant with Stem Legal Web Enterprises.