This is an action that has become a manifesto of how the firm cares for human beings in every way. It is not possible to dissociate performance, career evolution, and professional development journey from individuals’ mental and psychological health.
Renata Maiorino
CHRO
By promoting initiatives that contribute to the role of professionals, Mattos Filho reinforces its positioning by having a pluralized vision of people, through interdependent pillars, such as attracting and retaining talents, continuous development, performance evaluations, and a structured career plan.
For the CHRO, Renata Maiorino, “the priority is to make humanistic management of professionals, who are the key for a unique and excellent service, offering them a greater balance between their personal and professional goals and keeping them aligned with the firm’s values and client’s needs”.
The strategy goes far beyond offering a career plan or a competitive benefits package. The idea is to understand how formal and informal initiatives impact each person, respecting individualities and promoting the debate on the journeys of these professionals.
This personalized follow-up is maintained under a broad perspective for the management and development of people in all professional steps and is not limited to those just beginning their careers. The mission is to be a facilitating agent for the direction and support of the individual in the transformations experienced during the time he/she remains at the firm, looking at his/her full trajectory, from the entry as an intern until the partners’ retirement plan.
Still concerning management, Mattos Filho promotes an intense flow of communication on a daily basis to keep partners, leaders and teams always aligned with the goal of ensuring everyone’s engagement with efficiency, teamwork, entrepreneurship, and innovation, which are essential to keep a lasting relationship with clients and, thus, for the development of the business.
We always understand the importance of developing skills beyond what we learned at school, specifying details of the Law, and bringing additional themes, including technical and behavioral issues to become better and better lawyers.
Marina Procknor
Partner from the Asset Management Services and Investment Funds practice
In 2019, the organizational development area expanded and gained relevance, contributing to the implementation of better conducts and technical and behavioral reflection on topics that result in an increasingly assertive delivery to the client. The corporate education program, one of the areas in which Mattos Filho invests most of the time and resources, carried out a total of 323 hours of courses on 102 different subjects in 2019, impacting both the technical and administrative areas.
“At the firm, we always understand the importance of developing skills beyond what we learned at school, specifying details of the Law, and bringing additional themes, including technical and behavioral issues to become better and better lawyers. Continuous development takes professionals to a different level than when they entered the firm”, explains partner Marina Procknor, from the Asset Management Services and Investment Funds practice, that closely follows the career development actions at Mattos Filho.
The directing of individual development needs and the increasingly humanistic and pluralistic perspective of professionals, within the organizational development strategy of the firm, are defined from a robust 360-degree feedback system, which is used for performance evaluation purposes. In 2019, it was expanded to include the administrative area too, in addition to partners, lawyers, and interns, taking into account that there are different ways to enhance the efficiency and excellence of the firm’s professionals.
The 360-degree performance evaluation program’s methodology transcends the hierarchical relationship and engages everyone throughout the process. The evaluated professional has the benefit of career guidance plans, mentoring, technical and behavioral development opportunities, which contribute to the constant improvement, as well as to the firm’s growth.
Mattos Filho offers a program to deal with mental health and its impacts on the corporate environment
Launched in 2019, Mind was created with the objective of promoting permanent initiatives of carefulness and awareness of the importance of professionals’ mental health. The fresh and extremely relevant topic is a challenge for everyone who needs to satisfactorily reconcile the demands of professional life and how they adjust it with ambitions, ideals, and personal emotions.
“This is an action that has become a manifesto of how the firm cares for human beings in every way. It is not possible to dissociate performance, career evolution, and professional development journey from individuals’ mental and psychological health “, details the CHRO Renata Maiorino.
With the support of specialists in different fields, Mind promotes debates to Mattos Filho’s teams, training and engagement forums among professionals guided by seven pillars: physical activity, healthy eating, social interactions, positive emotions, healthy sleep, brain training, and meditation.
In the first year of the program, a cycle of lectures was promoted with national and international authorities on topics related to mental health, as was the case with Dr. Mario Sergio Cortella, considered one of the greatest Brazilian thinkers today; Jon Kropp, founder of Mindfulness for Lawyers; and neurologist Rodrigo Carvalho, who dealt with the prevention of chronic stress.
When evaluating Mind’s first results, there are two strategic pillars for the positive results collected so far: the human being as a protagonist from a broader view; and management (of time, people and work), which allowed greater alignment and transparency on the subject between partners, leaders, and teams. Professionals gave positive feedback to the Human Development team because they felt welcomed or because the program opened doors for those who want to help others in need.
In the long run, it is expected that the initiative will contribute to making Mattos Filho’s professional journey more profitable and life more balanced. “Our business structure has people at the center of our strategy. In order to maintain excellent service, we have the best people who are satisfied with their projects, balancing their personal and professional interests”, explains José Eduardo Queiroz, former managing partner of Mattos Filho.
An eye on the future with diversity
How diversity will impact Mattos Filho’s long-term vision
Jovens Talentos Program
Professionals from a new generation foster a more collaborative and less hierarchical scenario, which are positive elements in an environment like Mattos Filho’s that is constantly renewed.
Inserted in an increasingly dynamic and plural society, Mattos Filho develops initiatives that aim to enhance the diversity of thoughts and worldviews. In this way, the firm builds an innovative vision of the legal system while remaining aligned with the main needs of society, seeking out new experiences through different views and opinions, which results in a better and more efficient service to clients. There is no doubt that the union of different perspectives is capable of improving results.
Looking at the attraction and development of talented individuals is one of the strategic aspects of building this plural future. To this end, Mattos Filho invests in the Programa Jovens Talentos (Young Talents Program), which in 2019 had its fifth edition. The initiative aims to select interns and trainees who will be prepared to become our professionals of the future, able to work with all fields of law in a humane way and engaged with the values and purpose of the firm.
In 2019, the initiative had around three thousand applications – the largest number ever registered – and the hiring of 112 professionals, which represents a 60% growth in relation to the admissions made in the first edition of the project, in 2014. Professionals from a new generation foster a more collaborative and less hierarchical scenario, which are positive elements in an environment like Mattos Filho’s that is constantly renewed.
Those approved, after attending to integration and networking events, have a career development plan that includes activities such as mentoring by professionals, corporate education courses and training, integration and networking events, in addition to the opportunity to act in complex cases and to experience the routine of a full-service law firm, contributing to social responsibility and, even after being hired as lawyers, experiencing the international market through internship programs in the London or New York’s offices.
By investing in the possibility of an international professional insertion, Mattos Filho allows talents to find inside the firm an opportunity to fulfill the desire for academic and professional experience outside of Brazil, which is one of their main aspirations of young people.
In order to advance racial equity in the legal market, Mattos Filho launched, in 2019, SOMA Talentos, an affirmative action program, which recruits first and second-year self-declared black law students to develop their skills while participating in a team of the firm’s professionals.
The program treats diversity as an opportunity to provide representation in a market where this issue is still evolving. According to the Diversity Census conducted in 2018 by the Aliança Jurídica pela Equidade Racial (Brazilian Legal Alliance for Racial Equity), only 1% of attorneys working at law firms declare themselves to be black.
In its first edition, SOMA Talentos received a total of 720 applications and approved 16 students to work in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. For a period of two years, the students who were approved start off as legal assistants and are inserted in a long process of mentoring and counseling with the partners and managers of the firm, in addition to participating in the daily activities of different areas of Law and technical and behavioral knowledge trails of the firm’s corporate education.
The main purpose for Mattos Filho in this issue is to expand the horizons in the legal market that is still very segregated, since young black people, like the SOMA Talentos students, need the opportunity to develop their full potential and, thus, add value to the business. “It is important to emphasize that we have learned more than we have taught”, concludes Renata.
