Getting your law firm fit for purpose

What does a firm need to address in order to remain fit for purpose? Human fitness is often measured through the ‘five Ss’ of strength, stamina, speed, suppleness and state of mind. Assessing your firm’s performance through the five Ss can provide you with a new perspective which your partners, colleagues and employees will be able to address through developing ideas and processes and a positive culture of success.

Let’s see how fit your firm is by exploring each of these elements in turn.

Strength

How strong is your firm? What breadth and depth of technical and specialist capability to do have? What structures do you have in place? Do you have the right blend of experience to offer cost effective as well as quality services and products? Have you provided sufficient training and development for partners, paralegals and administrative staff? Are they expected to be sufficiently professionally curious to develop their own management and leadership capabilities if they are partners, or their own technical capabilities if they have a process-focused role?

Increasingly in hard-pressed firms, the need for employees to be interested in the technical aspects of their role, to seek out good practice elsewhere and to offer suggestions for continuous improvement has diminished. It seems that fewer L&D functions in law firms are spending time and budgets on helping partners to conquer their business and management skills alongside their technical and subject matter expertise than pre-2008, with more effort being put into BD-related subjects and activities. Today, conferences are attended more for who is going to be there than what might be learnt from speakers and fellow delegates, which is why most delegate fees are met by BD not L&D budgets.

What does this shift of focus say about the strength of management and leadership in your firm? Are those muscles sufficiently developed to be able to move the firm forwards? All the cogs of the business need to be working well and be nurtured. How many city law firms appear to dismiss the contributions of large parts of their organisation because they are not fee earning?

Stamina

If your firm has the strength to be fit for purpose, does it have the stamina to be successful in the long run? The word stamina is the plural of the Latin word stamen and has come to be used to depict a sense of power to resist or recover, strength and endurance.

How has your firm steadied itself during the past five or six years? What plans are in place for succession planning of your future leaders? Do you have growth plans for your core business areas? How are you going to retain key clients as your firm adapts to its economic, political or technological surroundings and demands?

What are your internal communications like? Keeping everyone motivated and engaged is widely acknowledged as being critical to the longevity of success of a firm. An organisation needs good stamina in order to be able to operate at its best for sustained periods of time.

Speed and suppleness

In organisational fitness, suppleness and speed go hand in hand. A successful firm must be flexible and agile. What pace does your firm operate at? Is it fast enough for your clients and their sectors?

Your firm needs to be able to adapt positively to change so that it thrives and your individuals remain committed to the firm and its success. The ability to manage change and to respond quickly to demands from clients, competitors and others requires awareness of them.

Look to see who in your business needs to develop their speed and flexibility of response. The concept of the ‘agile organisation’ is, for most firms, focused on their flexibility around billing and fee arrangements, staffing structures, outsourcing and the development of their products and services. This was fine over the past couple of years, but what now? What does your firm need to be doing to remain fit and healthy? Is your firm’s leadership team supple in its approach to the business?

State of mind

What therefore is your firm’s state of mind? A positive mental attitude towards success is perhaps the biggest criteria in any sporting success. The same is vital to business success. Not only do individuals need to have the horribly clichéd ‘can do’ attitude, but so does the firm.

A firm needs to have a culture where ideas are welcome. Attempting and failing need to be used to learn and suggestions acted upon, with credit being generously acknowledged and applauded if a firm is to demonstrate that it has a fit and healthy state of mind. A client centric and client service mentality is a must, but how many firms take it as given that they excel in these areas? What are your firm’s values and how well understood, believed in and lived are they?

Sue Beavil is UK learning and organisational development manager at international law firm Slater & Gordon (www.slatergordon.co.uk)