Washington, DC—Dentons, the world’s largest law firm, announced at its 2019 Dentons Partner Meeting, the launch of an innovative talent development program, NextTalent. The program will support its lawyers and professionals’ career goals, by focusing on the capabilities needed to be successful in the law firm of the future.

NextTalent brings together the Firm’s focus on innovation, fueled by the Firm’s industry-leading Nextlaw Labs, with leading research on behavioral science. At NextTalent’s core are leadership, team development, mindfulness, emotional intelligence and resilience. Applying these elements will enable every lawyer and professional in the Firm to develop and unlock human potential in the digital era.

“The fourth industrial revolution is connecting digitization, neuroscience, and human behavioral insights,” said Joe Andrew, Global Chairman of Dentons. “NextTalent recognizes that to assist people to meet their professional aspirations it is more important to develop our talent than it is the tools our talent uses.”

“Development of talent across the firm is critical to our success,” said Elliott Portnoy, Global CEO of Dentons. “NextTalent will be a personalized and data-driven approach which will help us become the ‘talent titan’ in the same way we have been recognized as a ‘technology titan’.”

Across the firm Dentons has already implemented leading talent development approaches. NextTalent builds on these, enabling leading practices to be shared across the Firm, and developing additional, innovative, talent-enriching solutions to enable people to reach professional goals in a leading firm.

“By leveraging Dentons’ scale, we are able to accelerate our ability to develop talent in a tailored way in a profession which is increasingly characterized as both stressful and challenging,” said Jay Connolly, Global Chief Talent Officer - Dentons.

NextTalent Q&A

Why are you launching NextTalent?

• There is a need to rethink how talent is developed within professional services and law firms.
• The capabilities needed to be successful, deliver in a changed and changing world and profession, along with technology advances, have evolved.
• The legal profession is becoming increasingly stressful and we need to address these challenges.

What will NextTalent do?

• NextTalent brings together Dentons’ focus on innovation and high performance, with behavioral science and the capability needs for the digital era.
• By leveraging insights from neuroscience, behavioral economics, and new technology that is powering the fourth industrial revolution, Dentons is developing its people in new ways.
• NextTalent will operate as a skunkworks, gathering the best practices across Dentons in order to share them with others.

What makes NextTalent different?

• Importantly, NextTalent is underpinned with a skunkworks mindset - experimenting and testing solutions across the firm.
• NextTalent will support individual development; apply behavioral research; leverage leading programs from around our firm and bring new support and development opportunities.

About Dentons

Across over 80 countries, Dentons helps you grow, protect, operate and finance your organization by providing uniquely global and deeply local legal solutions. Polycentric, purpose-driven and committed to inclusion, diversity, equity and sustainability, we focus on what matters most to you. www.dentons.com