Team building ideas for lawyers New York City

This week, we had the honor of creating events with two different groups of attorneys: one from the firm Debevoise & Plimpton, one of our oldest and most loyal clients whom we have had the pleasure of working with from almost the beginning, and the legal department of LexisNexis, a new client. Both audiences were coming from very different places in terms of industry, culture, reason for being together, and nature of their work as a whole: the law firm folks are employees at one of the largest and most prestigious international corporate practices in the world, while the other crowd is a smaller department within a larger organization, in town from all over the country for a retreat.

But both have way more in common then it may initially appear on the surface. You see, these two audiences were made up of EXTREMELY bright, fun-loving people. The goal for both events also happened to be the same: give the attendees a highly enjoyable, memorable and laugh-filled social experience. But how to do that?

As I’ve written about before on this blog, it is a unique but very real challenge to create group bonding activities for attorneys in NYC or anywhere, because not only can they be fiercely competitive by nature, but by and large they tend to be very, very smart (click here for another article on creating events for high-performing staff). What I’ve found in doing so many of these, be they morale boosters, corporate event entertainment, holiday parties or summer intern events, is that when you’ve got people as intelligent as this in a room together for a good time, there is a delicate balance which must be met if you are producing a competitive brain game such as live trivia contests.

It’s a question I receive virtually every time I receive an inquiry from a group such as this: my people are both sharp AND cutthroat, and a spirited competition must be suitable for that type of participant. My response is first to agree with them 100%, because it is absolutely true: if you have chosen this particular career field and have performed at such a level that you land a coveted law spot within a prominent company, odds are you fit this profile to some degree. You’re hungry, you are quick, and you love winning (or, perhaps even more accurately, hate losing).

My approach to these types of assemblages is to meet them where they are. Customizing the experience is already something which you should be doing to make a highly successful and impactful experience for those in the room, however with groups like this, it’s even more critical, for one simple reason: smart people like to feel smart (and to borrow once more from the theme of the paragraph above, they HATE to feel stupid). Thus when crafting the program (in my case researching/writing trivia questions), it is really, really important to make sure the material being used is HIGHLY relevant, appropriate, and the perfect fit.

What do I mean by this? When the attendees are brilliant and highly educated, you can’t give them puzzles, challenges or whatnot that’s deemed too easy: this type of group will quickly get bored, disenchanted, and tune out. There’s no faster way to lose this type of audience than to make them think you’ve dragged them away from their busy lives for a few hours, only to make them engage in something which they feel is beneath them. Not a good way to facilitate cohesiveness and boost morale.

As bad as providing content which is too simple is, your function will be deemed a virtual failure if the opposite is true: the stuff is too hard. While “virtual failure” may seem a bit dramatic, let me try to explain why I go for the hyperbole here: what’s the one thing which really bright people hate the most?

You got it: feeling dumb.

If the activity is such that your people can’t figure it out, can’t dominate, can’t be the winner, then they are going to not just be unsatisfied: they will be LIVID. Losing is NOT something which comes naturally to this personality type, particularly if it’s on account of not knowing something. So yes, if you want your meticulously-planned affair to be a complete disaster, make it too hard.

Again, it all comes back to balance: how do I strike that perfect place between being challenging, but not TOO challenging? Enough to whet their thirst for intellectual stimulation, but not over their heads or out of reach? Knowing your group well also helps here, since by doing so you can zero in on their likes/dislikes, interests, practice areas and many other variables to help you tailor it for your specific group and goals.

I’ll end by saying I absolutely love working with attorneys – it’s always a fun exercise in coming up with material that is the perfect fit for that SPECIFIC crowd, but at the events themselves they are invariably some of the greatest folks I get to cross paths with. High energy and creating a raucous atmosphere are never a problem, and the old “work hard/play hard” mantra is usually on full display – they know not only how to have a blast, but don’t take themselves too seriously when they do. Whether coming from a large firm or a small department, employee team building activities for attorneys can absolutely be one of the most fun things someone like me gets to do!