Focus Areas
Coaching sessions are tailored to your needs. Clients will frequently focus on two or more areas. Below are some of the common areas we help our clients with.
Leadership Coaching
As a new or experienced leader in law, finding the potential in people and processes, and having the courage to develop that potential, is integral to your success and that of your team and organization.
Through leadership coaching, you can gain clarity and confidence in your ability to strengthen workplace relationships, build trust, navigate change, manage difficult conversations and conflict productively, and improve workplace culture.
Conflict Management Coaching
Conflict management coaching supports individuals in improving their understanding of their response to conflict, expanding perspectives to have better working relationships, and developing skills and strategies to manage conflict more effectively.
This area of coaching can be dispute specific or general conflict competency. Conflict management coaching can also help address organizational and interpersonal roadblocks and prepare you for a hard conversation.
Practice Management Coaching
Practice management coaching is focused on strategies for time and energy management with a deep dive on tools, processes, and habits for improved organization, planning, prioritization, and delegation.
This area of coaching supports individuals to gain clarity and implement processes that deal with distractions, thinking traps, and procrastination. Practice management coaching also provides an opportunity to learn simple ways to improve time entry or docketing, and meet billing expectations without self-editing.
Through practice management coaching, you will learn how to implement systems into your workday that help manage your time more efficiently and lead to more productive and balanced days.
Career Coaching
Career coaching supports individuals through the various stages and shifts within their practice. This area of coaching includes transitions you experience in your level of seniority and role within an organization, or while changing organizations.
As we progress through our careers, we experience professional changes and often these changes come with some degree of uncertainty and overwhelm. Through career coaching, you will gain insight into developing a roadmap for your career, preparing career documents, building resilience, and working through challenges along the way with an accountability partner.
Business Development Coaching
Business development coaching is focused on strategies that help transition your legal practice into a growing legal practice.
This area of coaching provides practical resources that help you gain insight into different strategies that help build your credibility and reliability within certain areas of practice. Business development coaching also assists with gaining effective networking skills and creating meaningful connections and community.
Solo & Small Firm
Founding and running your own firm has so much upside – the freedom to make your own decisions, chart your own course, and build a firm that fits you. The challenges of running your firm don’t need to outweigh the benefits.
Our coaching program for solo and small founders offers one-to-one sessions and membership in a solo and small firm community that gathers every couple of months to share ideas and resources.
Topics addressed in the coaching and group sessions can include law finances, human resources, strategy, marketing and business development, recruiting and dismissing, and lawyer wellbeing.
Succession Planning
As someone ready to dial back your practice or transition to another related area of work, it is important to get a head start on succession planning.
This area of coaching helps you gain clarity and direction so that you can develop a plan and put it into action well in advance of your transition. Succession planning coaching helps you develop a customized plan that works for your immediate and long-term goals, in addition to navigating any challenges that may arise.
Return from Leave
As someone returning from leave (including but not limited to, maternity leave, paternity leave, parental leave, sick leave), it can be a challenge to get back on track while integrating additional roles and responsibilities.
Through this area of coaching, you receive support that helps you prepare for and navigate a successful return that often includes adapting to a number of changes with confidence.
Time Management Coaching
Time Management Coaching is focused on improving billables and collections through better time management strategies and habits. This area of coaching supports individuals in applying simple practices to improve their docketing systems, learn the difference between billable and non-billable, reduce lost time, and clear the backlog of unpaid bills. Through time management coaching, you will learn how to implement simple processes that help reduce long work days while still meeting targets.
Parenting & Lawyering
As someone who is trying to balance parenting and lawyering, it can be a struggle: the feelings of guilt for not being there for family, or feeling stretched thin and overwhelmed, or struggling with meeting expectations consistently at work.
With your coach you will receive support with work-life integration, how to manage others’ expectations and your own, and gain clarity and confidence in each of your roles. You will also receive support for thinking through bigger picture career questions that may be arising now that you are a parent and a lawyer.
What People Say
Here’s what some of our coaching clients past and present have said about their experience
“I am approaching practice development in a completely different way than I ever have before.”
“The session on coaching skills for mentors led by Karmen Masson was really useful for me. Karmen is an experienced, engaging and informative instructor – I learned the importance of listening, clarifying and engaging with mentees in a thoughtful and effective way, without imposing my own beliefs and strategies on my mentee, but rather working with their own skills, beliefs and attitudes. I am definitely a better mentor for having attended this course.”
Allison was instrumental in my transition to a practice devoted to mediation and arbitration. With her assistance, I was able to develop and then execute a plan going forward. I continue to use Allison’s services to keep me my marketing and business development work on track. I have no hesitation in recommending Allison as a coach and a marketing consultant.
“As a result of the coaching I’ve noticed I’m better able to work with and delegate to staff.”
“In just three sessions together, Karmen helped me to identify the sources of my late-career malaise, to get my bearings about why and where to proceed from here, and to develop a framework for designing the optimal path forward for the subsequent stages of my working life. She has a knack for making the right suggestion or observation at the ideal time to trigger a revelation or kick-start the next stage of the journey. I would unequivocally recommend her services.”
Allison is my go to person for career advice. Whether I’m struggling with a new aspect of day to day practice or planning for the future, Allison is there for me. Allison takes the time to listen to and understand me: my goals, areas of challenge and personality. Allison then provides practical and useful advice that I have implemented time and time again. I really don’t know what I’d do without her.
“I think this was extremely valuable… I feel every mentor should have an opportunity to take this course [Coaching Skills for Law Society of Alberta Mentors].”
“I started working with Allison in 2023. Fatigued and bewildered by the lingering effects of the Pandemic on practice and the workplace, I turned to Allison for insights and advice on firm management and business development. Allison’s advice is strategic, practical and joyful. She’s no bobblehead – Allison has delivered hard truths that have been invaluable in shaping my practice. And her solutions are bespoke; customized to the client’s unique needs. She is one of my most trusted advisors.”
“The result has been a remarkable increase in my efficiency and productivity. This in turn has given me the confidence that I am in control of my career, a perspective I did not have prior to working with Allison.”
“Coaching has ensured that I prioritize my time to focus on tasks that support my career goals.”
“Karmen is fiercely intelligent and intuitive, with a heart of gold and amazing listening skills, always bringing clarity to the core of matters.”
Over the last few years, Allison has become my ultimate professional–and sometimes personal–support. Her advice is strategic, action-oriented and practical. She will break down larger career goals into manageable steps that don’t feel overwhelming. I come away from our meetings reinvigorated about my career path–one that I own and have created. Ultimately, working with Allison is an investment I have made in myself and in my career. I cherish her wisdom, her sound advice and her friendship.
“I am so glad Karmen was my first coach ever! By utilizing exceptional listening and critical thinking skills, a warm and non-judgmental approach, and her pure passion for helping others along with her integrity, I could open up and trust her.”
Coaching with Allison has been invaluable to me and my career. Allison is a dedicated, patient and effective coach. She has been both a practical resource for business development and a sounding board on the human and emotional level. She celebrates my successes, helps me generate ideas, and holds me accountable in moving forward, even when I am feeling uncertain or discouraged. She helps me build my resilience in dealing with all the challenges inherent in being a lawyer. She also has a very essential human touch I really appreciate.
“I am currently working on becoming self-sufficient in my business development. My approach is noticeably different. Having someone who knows more about marketing, targeting people, and how to approach people has been helpful. I’m learning how to do this from my “authentic self”.
Allison has provided invaluable counsel to me for many years, and I now have more control and satisfaction in my legal career than I thought possible. She has the experience to know “how it is” in law, but she also has a vision for how much better it could be, and the training to help clients discover and chart their own paths.
“Karmen was fantastic – obviously very knowledgeable, and she has a calming presence and teaching style about her that made me feel comfortable/relaxed and engaged.”
“I was surprised at how easy the process was and how well Karmen facilitated me through my thought process to get to where I wanted to go.”
“I started (and most importantly, stuck with!) a personalized professional development plan that works for me. Making a plan, and continuing to put that plan into place. Without question, coaching helped shape the direction of my practice, and shifted my approach to client development.”
Allison’s advice and guidance have been instrumental in helping me to develop a busy commercial litigation practice, while also prioritizing family and outside interests. Allison’s range of experience with lawyers in the United States, Canada and overseas allows her to offer a perspective to her clients that few others can. I highly recommend her services to lawyers looking to improve their practices and personal lives.
“What a fantastic workshop! Karmen was great. I loved her energy and how she had us learning through a dialogue with her and with one another. I took a lot away from it.”
