Leadership for Lawyers

Advice on Weathering the Storm

 Every day I read about law firm layoffs and the effect of the recession on our profession.  Rarer are insightful articles about what to do about it.  Here are a few that I found helpful:

Surviving the Slide:  What Firms Should (and Shouldn't) do to Ride Out the Economic Storm.  Panelists Ed Flitton (former managing partner of Holland & Hart), Merrilyn Astin Tarlton, Karen MacKay and Gerry Riskin participate in a prescient panel moderated by Dan Pinnington for LawPro Magazine.  The panel offers insightful and sometimes counter-intuitive advice on matters of leadership, human capital, employee engagement, client relationships, marketing and finance.  Read the abbreviated article here and the full discussion (worth the read) here. 

Weathering the Storm.  Gerry Riskin and fellow Edge Group Consultant Robert Millard offer these seven admonitions to law firm leaders in this article.       

1. Display Strong Leadership
2. Ramp up frequency of financial data reporting
3. Make the hard decisions quickly and humanely
4. Focus client and practice team leaders on short term action plans
5. Involve your clients
6. Manage internal expectations
7. This too shall pass:  Keep a balance with your long term strategy

On law.com, we find ACC's Susan Hackett's advice to GC's on getting through the storm.  Her advice focuses on how to set matter and project budgets for outside law firms.  Her comments are from ACC's new songbook, the ACC Value Challenge.

Lee Altenberg discusses business development in a National Law Journal article from last May in this article.  Gail Cutter offers some personal professional development advice for lawyers in a recession, in this New York Law Journal article, Think Like an Olympian. 

Peter Zeughauser discusses four pillars of a strong law firm culture in hard economic times in the American Lawyer Article,Four Essential Elements of a Strong Law Firm Culture.  They are:

1. Hard Work
2. Rewards for Rainmakers
3. Knowing who you are (and aren't)
4. Transparency, with discretion.

Zeughauser is always a must-read.

Finally, I opine on a new e-zine, Originate, focusing on relationships with key clients.  Read the article here.

How do you get to be a better leader?

"Practice."  That's what Jim Kouzes, co-author of The Leadership Challenge book and leadership development process said last weekend at the annual conference for LC facilitators and clients.  Invoking Olympic tales and sports analogies, Kouzes said that leaders need to identify specific skills that they need to develop, create ways to improve those skills, and practice them daily to refine them. 

"My son once asked his tennis coach how much he needs to practice to be competitive.  He answered, "Two hours a day to keep your skills.  Three to improve."  Kouzes said.  As it turns out, research on expertise indicates that the most important factor in developing top-level performance - whether it be in the boardroom or basketball court - is not innate talent, rather it is dedicated practice. 

"Eat. Sleep. Swim." is how Michael Phelps describes his life. 

So what can leaders do to practice leadership?

Taking the Leadership Practice Inventory (LPI)is  a great way to start.  The LPI is a 360 degree and personal leadership skill assessment that illustrates your leadership strengths and weaknesses.  Kouzes challenged the prevalent idea that leaders should focus only on leveraging their strengths, "Often, it is our weaknesses as a leader that get in the way of us being effective.  We need to work on both our strengths and weaknesses to be more effective leaders."

The five practices of LC are:

   -  Model the way

  -  Inspire a shared vision

  -  Challenge the process

  -  Enable others to act

  -  Encourage the heart

In what area do you need practice?  Communication?  Sharing your vision for a practice group or firm?  Giving feedback?  Catching someone doing something right?  Delegating?  Mentoring or coaching?  Modelling the firm's or your values?  One on one communication? 

"We're Not Going to Take It" - Association of Corporate Counsel

You could almost hear Twisted Sister "singing" "We're not going to take it...anymore" at the Legal Marketing Association's national conference last month when Susan Hackett, General Counsel of the the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) and Laura Stein, Chairperson of ACC, along with two other ACC members met with hundreds of law firm marketers to explain their approach to escalating rates of outside counsel. 

In a ninety minute presentation and discussion, Hackett outlined the pressures and realities facing in-house counsel, specifically, increased pressure to contain and predict legal costs and their frustration with double-digit rate increases, off-the-scale associate salaries (and corresponding hourly rates), a perceived unwillingness by law firms to discuss alternative fee arrangements and create lower-cost methods to provide lower-value (commodity) legal services.

To paraphrase, they said, "we're not going to take it anymore".  Hackett and Stein have created an initiative within ACC to explore ways to re-define the relationship in-house GC's have with out-house firms.  This new committee will develop a set of best practices to recommend to ACC members. ACC will sponsor seminars to teach GC's how to reduce outside attorneys costs, manage matters to budget, consolidate (or 'converge') the myriad of law firms some companies use to a small 'core counsel' cadre of firms, and stratify legal work so that only the high-end/high-value work goes to high-cost firms and commodity work is handled on a lower cost basis.   

Details were short at the meeting, but emotions were high.  The panel of in-house counsel differed on exactly what they wanted from their lawyers, but the agreed that lawyers and firms should work harder to understand what their clients wanted and they should create a relationship custom to those requirements.

What will come from this rebellion (and that's the word used in the LMA Conference brochure, btw)?  Hard to say, but I was impressed that four big-wigs from ACC spent a day at the LMA conference, not including travel time, to clearly articulate their frustration with the community of outside counsel and fire the warning blows over the bow of the $1,000/hour battleship created by our largest law firms.

Implications for biglaw?  Figure out - fast - what your clients want, including how to be billed, what work they consider high-value, what behavior they are tolerant of (and not, including associates billing $450/hour or more) and their plans their plans for convergence and changing how they manage outside counsel.  And after you listen, design a new way of serving them. 

For those of you who have conveniently forgot about Twisted Sister, here's a refresher:

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Jim Collins to Speak in Denver, May 14th

Jim Collins, author of Good to Great, will make a rare speaking appearance in Denver on May 14th.   The Community First Foundation is sponsoring his talk.   I hear Collins speak last Fall, where he discussed new research on great companies.  The mystery that puzzled him that day?  Innovation seemed irrelevant to long term success of a great company.  I'll ask him about it in May.   

Go to http://www.communityfirstfoundation.org/goodtogreat.cfm for more information.

Lessons from Terminal Five

London's Heathrow Airport opened Terminal 5 this week, reminding me of the troubled opening of Denver's International Airport more than ten years ago.  Terminal 5 was slated to solve much of Heathrow's problems, including long security lines.  The terminal was supposed to be the pride of London, the entry point for athletes and visitors worldwide for the 2012 Summer Olympics, and the peak of airport efficiency.  Instead, thousands of pieces of luggage have been lost, the terminal opened unfinished, dirty and with poorly trained staff. 

The website ContinuityCentral has an interesting post on four lessons learned from the T5:

1.  Don't let it ever happen in the first place.

2.  Take responsibility for your actions

3.  Take radical steps to show that you are in control.

4.  Buy goodwill.

What?  You don't plan on opening an airport in the near future?  How about opening a new office, merger with another firm, acquiring a practice from a competitor, or launching a client service program.  Read the article here.

Patrick McKenna Launches Leadership Advisory Board

So, you are a managing partner facing a vexing issue and the usual advisers and articles leave you as confused as before.  What's a MP to do? 

Edge Group Consultant Patrick McKenna teamed up with Managing Partner Magazine to help.  Patrick, along with Baker and Daniel's Chairman Emeritus Brian Burke, has corralled a small group of former law firm managing partners and other leaders including Nixon Peabody's Harry Truehart, Snell and Wilmer's John Bouma, and McGuire Woods' William Strickland. 

Managing Partners can write to Patrick or MP Magazine.  Patrick will convene a panel of experts, and draft a response, which will be sent to the inquiring MP.  The response will be posted on McKenna's website, without identifying the inquiring managing partner.

Why the Leadership Advisory Board?  Patrick responds in his press release:

“Our Leadership Advisory Board was constituted to offer a safe sounding board, especially to provide new leaders with pragmatic advice and experienced support to help them succeed.” commented Patrick McKenna of Edge. “I am so impressed and excited that every one of those whom Brian and I asked to participate in this initiative, responded enthusiastically.” For more information on the LAB, including their first article on "Preparing for the Worst",click here. 

Explained one of the LAB members, “I believe that there is a dearth of good advice and mentoring available to new managing partners. It is staggering to think that corporate CEO's and other C-level people in the corporate world train their entire careers in order to be prepared when it is their turns to take the helm, but law firms put people at the helm of an enterprise whose revenue numbers have two commas in them with little or no formal training and almost no mentoring.”

Download info_release1.pdf

More Law Firms Launch Leadership Programs

Reporter Gina Passarella of The Legal Intelligencer reports on the law firm of Stradley Ronon Stevens & Young's new Leadership Development Program in her article, Leadership Programs Born From Lack of Born Leaders .   What do you think?  What is the best way to provide leadership training for lawyers?

Leadership Development for Lawyers

Several legal marketers have been discussing leadership development on its list serve.  Here is my response to one member's question about starting a leadership development program in their firm:

Thank you for launching a discussion topic that is close to my heart.  I've been working with law and architectural firms for almost 20 years.  These professionals are smart, energetic, creative, insightful and mostly great people.  They come up with great ideas and aggressive plans.  Why, then, do so many practice groups, regional offices, and task forces struggle with getting things done?  Was is just that they are compensated and rewarded for billing hours?  Can it be that firms are really just lawyer-hotels with portable practices?  Why is that a few groups and offices grew smartly and rapidly, but other wobbled along, struggling to replace the associates or partners that have left?  Why does the conversation almost always go silent this time of year when firm leaders ask, "So, who should we choose as the next leader for XYZ practice group?"

My conclusion is that it comes down to leadership.  About 5% of lawyers in firm management have developed adequate leadership skills.  Their skills are often recognized and they serve in some sort of practice group, office or firm management role.  Unfortunately, we need more than 5% to grow the many practice, industry and client teams prevalent in large firms.   --more --

Leadership Development in Law Firms Widely Divergent

Law Firm Inc Magazine published an article on the state  of leadership development training in law firms last month.  In "Reluctant Leaders", (free registration required), reporter Arthur Jones interviews several law firm managers and trainers on the nature of and acceptance of leadership development among law firms.  Programs range from a day and a half to two weeks.  Firms, Jones reports, still haven't figured out how to compensate leaders outside of the billable hour/production model.  Skilled lawyer-leaders are in high demand within law firms, as well as in law departments. 

Motivation to be a leader is critical:

"Hildebrandt consultant Larry Richard, who is a Ph.D. psychologist and a J.D. [see "The Full Program," below], focuses on lawyer/leader development for Dechert, a 17-office international law firm. He works on "skills to make lawyers more effective managing partners and practice group heads," he says. Richard says the first thing he looks for are lawyers who really want to lead. "Research tells us that people who genuinely want to be leaders make the best leaders," he says.

Next, says Richard, the would-be top managers must learn the "leader behaviors" that make them effective. And that means "attending a leadership boot camp, a didactic program that teaches partners the fundamentals of what makes leaders effective in a law firm," Richard says. "The key quality is motivation."

Schwartz and West Allen Launch "Brains on Purpose"

Stephanie West Allen, JD (ideablawg.com) and Jeffrey Schwartz, MD, author of The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force have teamed up to create a seminar and blog on the topics of neuroscience and conflict resolution for lawyers.  According to their website, in their seminar they will answer questions such as:

"The 6-hour program looks at conflict and the process of conflict resolution through the lens of neuroscience. What does the brain do when it is in a conflict? What does neuroscience have to tell us about how to facilitate conflict resolution? What lessons does the brain have for preventing future conflict?"

What does neuroscience have to do with lawyers?  A lot of energy is spent on discussing what we think without considering how we can think better.  Recent discoveries on how we think, and how our brains work, can help lawyers in the courtroom as well as leading their firms.  Add Brains on Purpose to your RSS feed.  Their 6-hour class will be in Denver in the Fall.