In every endeavor there is an optimum way of doing things. The art of sculpting a retreat is no exception. So the content for your retreat should not be prescribed externally. Beware the consultant with a hammer to whom all the world is a nail. No matter how tempting it is to pull a previous experience out of the hat and simply replicate it, it is a path fraught with peril and is of low utility. (Can you apply to one trial the precise plan from a previous one? Does one corporate acquisition exactly replicate another?) Each firm is unique as are its current circumstances. At Edge, we favor an interactive approach – team working between the firm’s leadership and us as consultants -- in creating your retreat to achieve optimal results.

The rapid growth of law firms in the past decade has created some new and unique management difficulties. With firms’ size, and the complexity of global legal practices, coordinating the availability of partners to perform any management function beyond routine meeting attendance is increasingly difficult. The problem of finding partners to assume leadership roles is compounded by the feeling of many partners in large firms that they are functionally employees rather than owners. The values of the partnership model to which many law firms aspire are becoming difficult to achieve in a modern professional service organization. The problem is further compounded in large multi-office firms where partners not only don’t know their fellow partners from other offices well, they may not have even met each other...

Many firm’s partnership agreements require an annual meeting for the election of member of management, selection of new partners, approval of compensation and other similar issues. These are important issues, not only because they concern day-to-day operating concerns but because they go to the fabric of what it means to be a partnership and the concept of being the owner of a business.

End the cycle of making big plans for nonbillable project…and accomplishing nothing. Here we offer practical suggestions for breaking that cycle...

Don Boyd is the Executive Chairman of the Australian-based group of worldwide Deacons offices. Don instituted four days of summit meetings that he conceived of to kick off the practice management and firm leaders of their newly-integrated firm. We'll let him tell you about the successful impact those meetings had on the new firm structure...