Are law firms prone to suicide-inducing meetings?

I was at a law firm recently where I know most of the partners very well. Independent of one another, several of the partners mentioned that they had a meeting the previous week that was one of their worst ever. No one could really pinpoint what had triggered it, but there was a consensus that it started bad and just continued in a downward spiral to the point that it was a blessing that the windows in the meeting room didn’t open, or there would have been a queue of partners waiting to jump out of it. This is in a firm that is doing well and the partners all get on together.  

It’s fair to say that we have all been in more than one of those meetings. I have seen instances where one partner has successfully projected his feelings of doom onto everyone else. But is that the only reason meetings go off the rails? 

David Maister’s article ‘Are Law Firms Manageable?’ identifies a number of factors about legal practice and training that prevent lawyers from effectively functioning in groups – trust issues, detachment, difficulties with values and ideology, and a particularly unusual approach to making decisions. 

How many times have we been in meetings where ideas have been shot to pieces in a battle where, at the end, we’ve openly asked why we have been disagreeing? Maister points to the plain fact that, day in and day out, we compete with other lawyers and so just carry that over to working with our own partners. 

Perhaps the problem is losing sight as to what a meeting is about. Alan Barker defines a meeting as “a group of people thinking purposefully together” in his book How to Manage Meetings. Remember that and you won’t go far wrong. Stop meetings that are called for the wrong reasons or lack a clear objective or don’t have the right people there.  Ensure the timing and venue are right. Make sure that everyone prepares for the meeting thoroughly and that there is adequate control. 

The point of control or discipline brings us back to Maister’s point about lawyers bringing a combative approach to every discussion. This isn’t helpful to thinking together. 

In her 1999 book Time to Think, Nancy Kline highlights the need to listen with respect. Think that through – it means that we don’t interrupt others in meetings (and the chair doesn’t allow it). We let the person finish, we pay close attention and, if we spot a false assumption, we help to dispel it by asking the ‘incisive question’ because, as she argues, false assumptions limit thinking. 

We need to have meetings in law firms, but they need to be purposeful and allow us to think together. Hand on heart, how effective are your meetings in achieving that purpose?