Douglas B. Richardson, JD, MA, CMC

Doug Richardson is a Certified Master Coach with over 30 years of consulting and coaching experience in  leadership development, interpersonal communications, career management, and both individual and organizational assessment. He has counseled, coached and trained hundreds of attorneys, executives and management teams from scores of law firms, legal departments and corporations worldwide.  His clients have included corporations of all sizes, entrepreneurial enterprises, major national law firms in the US and abroad, smaller firms and boutiques, diverse legal departments, and numerous government and academic organizations.  In addition to services provided directly through The Richardson Group, Doug provides legal leadership programs and services through Altman Weil, Inc., a worldwide leader in consulting services to the legal profession.

Following his early legal career as a federal and state prosecutor, large firm litigator with Dechert Price & Rhoads in Philadelphia and Regional Counsel for the Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare, Doug moved into human resources development, communications consulting and career counseling, initially as the Welfare Department's Press Secretary and Communications Director. He later held senior-level positions and served as a practice leader with respected national and global consulting firms. Over the last two decades, Doug has served as Director of Key Executive Consulting for Right Management Consultants, the world’s largest career services firm; Senior Vice President and Principal for Manchester, Inc., an international career and organizational development consulting firm; and Founding principal for W.K. Gray  & Associates, a regional executive search and human resources consulting firm.

Doug is a graduate of Harvard Law School, the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School of Communications and the Honors Program of the University of Michigan. He has been certified as a Master Coach by the Behavioral Coaching Institute and is a member of the International Coaching Council.  He holds a Level II Certification from Birkman International in the use of The Birkman Method., and is certified on numerous other assessment instruments, including the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (Type II), Life Styles Inventory, Organizational Culture Inventory, Emotional Quotient Inventory, Strong Interest Inventory, and his own Richardson Operative Values Inventory.

Doug was an award-winning columnist for Dow Jones’ National Business Employment Weekly for 16 years and continued as a featured columnist for its successor, Dow Jones' online Career Journal, into 2005. For several years he wrote a regular column on lawyers' careers for American Lawyer Media, and he presently writes the monthly Leadership Dimension column for Altman Weil's Report to Legal Management. In recent years his articles have been featured frequently in various American Lawyer publications. Doug also is the author of Dow Jones’ NBEW Premier Guide to Networking (John Wiley & Sons, 1994) and Haiku Talks Business (Bala Creative Group, 1998).  His articles and commentaries have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Inc., The National Law Journal, The New York Times, Money and Vital Speeches of the Day.