Sept. 24, 2025 – What does it take to lead a legal team with confidence and credibility? How do you balance managing people with your own legal work and client needs? These are real questions attorneys face when they step into supervisory roles – often earlier than expected.
Attorney Abrielle Newman shares insights from her own career journey as a young lawyer taking on a leadership role. Emphasizing that strong supervision directly impacts client outcomes, team morale, and professional growth, she provides best practices for supervising other attorneys and staff, especially as a newer attorney.
Newman presented on this topic at the State Bar of Wisconsin’s 2025 Young Lawyers Conference.
A Leadership Role – From Day One
“I was from the get-go supervising pro bono attorneys,” says Newman, who today leads Legal Action of Wisconsin’s Eviction Defense Project – a pro bono initiative connecting volunteer attorneys with tenants facing eviction.
Peter Kraemer is Digital Communications Coordinator with the State Bar of Wisconsin. He can be reached by email or by phone at (608) 250-6139.
In addition to managing her own caseload, she coordinates schedules, supervises procedures, and mentors both attorneys and law students involved in the project.
Newman joined Legal Action shortly after graduating from U.W. Law School in 2021. When her own supervisor left, she didn’t hesitate to step into the role:
“I saw myself as someone who was ready to … make more of the kind of broader decisions and broader responsibilities.”
For Newman, the shift wasn’t just structural – it was motivational. “I just found myself really feeling impassioned and excited to … incorporate creative decisions and changes into something that I've been doing for a while. It just felt like the right time to be able to do that in my career.”
What Makes Supervision Worth It?
For Newman, the best part of supervising others is simple: “The ability to make things easier and more efficient for other people… because I can then see that in how it helps our clients.”
“I love taking feedback from people and I love seeing the little things that I can tweak that make a big difference,” she said. “I just love the constant evolution of making things easier, more efficient, and just better for everyone involved.”
On Discipline, Trust, and Communication
Supervising people isn’t all process improvement. Sometimes, it’s hard. “Disciplining people is really hard,” Newman admitted.
Her strategy? Frequent, honest communication. “If you have constant check-ins with people … it's not going to come as a surprise to them when you have something constructive or something disciplinary to say.”
Another challenge? Learning when to let go. “What is adequate criticism versus what is just bothersome to me?” she asks herself. “It doesn't need to be exactly what I want as long as it's getting the job done.”
She uses check-ins to ask her team what they’re struggling with: “What have you been working on? What questions do you have? What challenged you this week?”
That way, feedback becomes collaborative – and tailored to growth.
Building Credibility and Confidence
You don’t have to be the most senior lawyer in the room to lead with confidence, Newman said. “Someone trusted me to be in this role, so I need to trust their judgment and then I need to trust myself.”
Her advice to young lawyers is clear: “You absolutely have all of the skills already that you need to be able to do this. You just have to have that confidence in yourself.”
That confidence isn’t rooted in ego – but in humility and service. “Communication, humility, being able to admit that you're wrong, and being able to ask other people for help … you don’t have to know all the answers. You just need to know where to get them.”
Being an effective supervisor isn’t about knowing everything. It’s about leading with confidence and care.
Leading By Doing
Newman believes supervisors should stay involved in the legal work they oversee. “If you aren't doing the work, how are you going to advise someone on how to do it too?”
Balancing legal work with administrative leadership isn’t easy – but it’s necessary. “You can’t really intertwine them, but it all has to get done,” she said. “I always have to set aside time for administrative tasks and also legal work.”
She also takes her ethical responsibilities seriously, especially when supervising students or paralegal staff. “I have to be very wary and cognizant that they are limiting their interactions with clients to legal information,” she said. “I just try to model that in myself.”
But she also makes it clear: the learning flows both ways. “I really do try to learn and take the experiences of the non-lawyers and incorporate that into the work as well because I have so much to learn from them.”
Pro Bono as a Path to Leadership
For lawyers seeking to build their supervisory skills, Newman offers one major recommendation: “Pro bono work is the number one opportunity that people can take to be able to build those leadership skills early in their career.”
“If you're doing pro bono work, you're going to be the lead attorney on that case. You're likely going to have a student that is going to be your subordinate in that case, and you're going to have that leadership opportunity right then and there.”
