It's been a great week here at the JAG School and I've got three great events I'd like to share (in addition to a re-cap of BG McMaster's leadership discussion, which I have mentioned before).  Keep reading for a follow-up on the leadership discussion that started a few weeks ago, involving the JAG Corps' warrant officers; and stay tuned for two more posts coming shortly to talk about a visit from one of the Army's senior trial judges (he spoke to my Military Justice Managers course) and Professor (retired USMC Lt.Col.) Gary Solis, author of The Law of Armed Conflict: Internatioanl Humanitarian Law in War, who spoke to both my Advanced Topics in the Law of War class and my History of Warfare elective.

Yesterday, the Chief Warrant Officer of the JAG Corps came down, with a half-dozen more warrant officers, for a roundtable discussion about the role and function of legal administrators in the legal office.  One of CW5 Rick Johnson's first comments was that legal administrators can handle "anything that doesn't require a law degree."  He went on to point out, and the other members of the panel supported, that judge advocates aren't getting the expected performance out of their legal administrators because, as a group, we aren't engaged with them.  We don't set expectations or counsel them, and (perhaps most importantly) we don't do a good job of holding people's feet to the fire when they're not meeting expectations.  (On this note, Chief Johnson reminded us that, as leaders, we have an obligation to do the "dirty work" of counseling and giving fair and accurate evaluations.)

A few folks in the class pointed out that JAG Corps doctrine doesn't explicitly address the role of of the legal administrator.  They wanted to be able to point to some language in a regulation to say, "Ok, this is what you're supposed to do, so do it!"  As one of our panelists pointed out (and I agree), such doctrine -- while providing a tool to get unsupportive legal administrators to work -- is actually a hurdle to fully utilizing your warrant officers.  The best description of the warrant officer's role came (again) from CW5 Johnson: legal administrators should be office managers; judge advocates should be practice managers.  Even though I've never practiced law in the civilian world (where this is standard), that description really made sense to me.  What I wish now was that someone would talk to me about how to manage a legal area of practice.  (I know how to manage my own case load, but what is requried or expected of a leader managing the case load of junior attorneys - especially where they have unique attorney-client relationships that don't include me?)

All in all, I thought this was a useful follow-up to the discussion in my small group a few weeks ago.