Tunnel vision: Source the best leaders for your law firm

In her excellent Managing Partner blog post in February, Beverly Landais espoused the qualities of skilled leadership. She painted a picture of a great leader being a great communicator, flexible and approachable, and an excellent team player who is able to set clear and measurable objectives in the absence of a 'blame culture'. She states that such people will not only articulate a vision of how the future will be but how to get there. She then concludes by saying that, while there is no mystery to leadership, these qualities are rare. I agree, but why is that? Is it all down to the individuals themselves or does the wider partnership bear some responsibility?

Law firms do not spend nearly enough time identifying potential leaders, training and preparing them for leadership, supporting them when they are there and helping them to step down when the time is right for them to do so. It is this failure of firms themselves to truly understand the value of great leadership and invest in it properly that poses the greatest threat to law firm survival in this period of unprecedented change, deregulation and external competition.

Traditionally, as we know, a law firm leader has simply been one of the partners - someone who has put him or herself forward to take on a role that is often not considered a particularly edifying one by everyone else. Indeed, sometimes, a partner will take on a leadership role because no one else wants to do it.

Other times, partners will put themselves forward because they think they have the right skills to do it. For example: "I am a corporate lawyer, I know how to run a business" or "I am an employment lawyer, I know how to deal with people". However, they find out all too quickly that leading a law firm requires so many more skills than those needed to be a good lawyer. Some would say that many of the skills required to be a good lawyer are the antithesis of the skills needed to be a good leader.

The important point, however, and one that is often overlooked by writings on the subject, is that, actually, leadership is not all about the leader. For a start, without followers there can be no leadership at all. It is the relationship between the partners and the leader that establishes leadership. That relationship is therefore crucial. Just as the qualities of a leader include authenticity and honesty, so do the qualities of the partners who elected the leader in the first place.

How are partners assessing leadership qualities? Are they assessing them against the interests of the entire firm or are they assessing them against their own personal interests? Are they likely to vote for the individual who will shine a light on their own performance or are they likely to vote for the one who is likely to turn a blind eye?

Creating future leaders

We are all human and lawyers, in particular, can be a very insecure bunch, especially when work is harder to come by. Yet there is greater pressure to perform in a world that is increasingly competitive. That is all the more reason to identify and prepare tomorrow's leaders today.

What do I mean by preparation? What I don't necessarily mean is training. If you want to excel as a leader, the one thing you need to understand above all else is yourself. It is trite to say this, but we are all different. We've all had different influences and we all have different personalities. We all see the world in slightly different ways. We react to situations in different ways and we cope with pressure in different ways. Yet how many of us know why? Our weaknesses drive our insecurities.

Many law firm leaders put themselves forward and are selected by their partners because they are good lawyers. They are good lawyers who may even be able to articulate a clear vision for their firm. But, even though they can describe their destination, how many are able to explain the journey and how they will use their own personality to get the best out of others?

Emotional intelligence is therefore a key attribute in any leader. Understand what you are good at, what you are not good at, how you are motivated and how you motivate others. Many people overlook the fact that emotional intelligence can be taught. But, like any lesson worth knowing, the sooner it is taught, the better. Young lawyers will then grow up knowing how they can, by force of their own personality, influence others. They will also know how they can deal with people issues that they will encounter, rather than just the legal or financial issues that most training is focused upon.

Another reason for identifying leaders early on is to give them time to really focus on where they want their careers to go. One of the reasons why managing partners stay in the job past their sell-by date is because they haven't got the first idea of what they are going to do when they step down. More importantly, those who could be strong candidates for the job do not put themselves forward because they can't see what they could do once their term is over. By identifying and encouraging potential leaders at a much earlier stage, firms will give themselves the time and space to consider how their careers could develop beyond legal practice.

At present, the focus on life after being managing partner tends to be centred around going back to fee-earning work. But, it seems completely wrong for lawyers to see a full-time management role as simply an interregnum in their fee earning careers. Leadership should be a vocation, something that is fulfilling in itself and provides the leader with a platform to go on to do other equally fulfilling things, either within or outside of the firm.

External appointments

Is it always necessary to identify leaders from within a firm? In my view, no. In the UK, alternative business structures (ABSs) and, particularly, those set up for the purpose of securing external investment, will increasingly look outside the organisation for leadership talent. This is for the simple reason that external investors will demand the best leadership their money can buy, not the best leadership that is available from within the firm.

So, why do traditional law firms look at leadership differently? The answer that invariably comes back is that the person leading a law firm "has to understand our culture". This is not always right for two reasons. The first is that 'culture' is often relied upon as an excuse for laziness or lack of discipline. "We don't do it that way here" or "we have a relaxed style, so we don't want a different personality coming in and upsetting that" partners say, when actually, that's exactly what the organisation needs.

The second reason is that good leaders do not simply reinforce traditional marks of identity and culture; they must innovate, using the best of the old ways to harness new ways. Arguably, an outsider stands a better chance of doing that than someone who is as ensconced in the old ways as everyone else. This, again, is where the partners in a firm have such a vital role to play in assisting their new leader to quickly understand the true culture and values of the firm. The leader will then be able to understand enough to maintain that which should be maintained, while discarding the practices and attitudes that might be holding the business back.

Really progressive firms will recruit such a person during the tenure of the existing managing partner to help the new leader to adjust to firm culture. That, of course, highlights a further issue that often holds firms back: protectionism by incumbent managing partners and acquiescence to that fact by the existing partners, so that there is no real attention paid to succession planning. The incumbent will lumber on because it's a job and he doesn't have a clue as to what he's going to do next, the rest of the partnership are comfortable with the arrangement and nobody else really wants the job.

I'm not suggesting that managing partners should step down at the end of a set term, come what may. There are numerous examples of managing partners who have been in office for many years and continually manage to motivate their partners and progress the firm. But, even then, do many of those managing partners have a real idea of what they ?are going to do next and how they will find a successor?

There is often no one better to look for a new leader than the incumbent leader. Yet, how many managing partners would feel comfortable with doing that? It is a fundamental role of the partnership as a whole to provide the supportive environment needed for succession to be discussed and considered openly, with all options up for consideration.

Non-lawyer leaders

That then leaves one final question. Can non-lawyers be brought in from outside to lead a law firm? For legal businesses that sell highly commoditised services, the answer is most certainly yes.

Many ABSs of the future will fall into this category. The lawyers in the business will focus only on the legal work, leaving professional (non-lawyer) managers to run and lead the organisation. That is much more difficult in a traditional law firm.

Of course there are examples of non-lawyers successfully running a law firm, but it is not as widespread as it could be and I don't see that changing anytime soon. This is not because of a lack of good quality candidates out there. It has far more to do with how the partners view non-lawyers - as people who have not gone through the same rites of passage that they have; people who simply do not have the same identity that they do; people that do not understand the challenges that they consider unique to lawyers.

It is because of this mindset that it is always going to be difficult for non-lawyers to be properly accepted in top leadership roles within law firms. I'm not even exhorting that this has to change. Research has concluded that, in other professions, the best people to assume leadership roles are those who have qualified into that profession themselves.

Taking responsibility

The law is changing like never before and the boundaries of what constitutes a law firm are becoming increasingly blurred. ABSs are looking to choose the best leaders in the marketplace - not just in the legal marketplace - and traditional law firms have to be willing to keep a genuinely open mind about how they source ?the best leadership talent.

Strong leadership is the key to the future survival of many law firms. For leadership to work, however, the entire partnership has to understand the great responsibility they have in creating the right environment for leaders to be identified, grow, thrive and then retire. This may well mean looking beyond the boundaries of the firm.

Warren Foot is chief executive ?at Cornerstone Barristers ?(https://cornerstonebarristers.com). ?He was formerly managing partner ?at Tarlo Lyons and London senior ?partner at Blake Lapthorn.

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