Matching Authority and Responsibility
Many law firms remain acutely political organizations with much of the firm’s decision-making having to run the gamut of opinion-seeking, back-scratching and adroit manoeuvring before the management team can make significant progress. It has long been recognised that the extreme consensus model (whereby every major decision gets delayed until the achievement of positive ratification) is […]
Three things about special law firm leaders
With two upcoming talks on leadership development to deliver over the next few months to groups of lawyers, I thought it would be interesting to get some fresh ideas from one or two of my colleagues; Nick Jarrett-Kerr was kind enough to share his thoughts. While Nick was quick to emphasise the mountain of books […]
Illuminating the Future
Today, speakers, writers and consultants in our field are besieged with questions about the impact of change on every aspect of the legal profession. Law societies, bar associations, corporate legal departments, private practice law firms and sole practitioners alike all want some expert to illuminate for them the mysterious path into the future. My advice […]
The New Direction of Law Firm Leadership
There is no law firm management topic about which more has been written than Leadership. The presumption at the base of most of these discussions is that the most successful professional service firms have the best leaders. And that prompts all sorts of further discussion about leadership styles, techniques, and the eternal debate as to […]
Does “The Vision Thing” Work?
Specific behaviors by leaders can contribute to the success of a firm’s shared vision. When law firms prepare or revise their strategies, we ask them to write a vision statement: “What do you aspire to be?” We find that discomfort is evident, and disagreement follows. Somehow, the statement gets written, and then adopted by the […]
How Managing Partners Can Support Law Firm Administrators
Note: This article was originally published in the Jan/Feb 2015 edition of Administrator’s Advantage, the newsletter of the Greater Chicago Chapter of the Association of Legal Administrators Managing partners hope that administrators will cause fee earners to do the following: show enough self-discipline to record their time daily; optimize the use of the firm’s IT […]
Entrepreneurship is at the Heart of Good Governance
In the last couple of years I have been honoured to advise nearly a dozen clients on complex governance projects in at least six different jurisdictions. Some of these projects have been driven by tax or regulatory considerations, but most have had effective management and leadership at their core. One of these projects was to […]
Looking in the Mirror
Law-firm leaders must learn how to assess their firms objectively in order to effectively guide them into the future.
ProfitMotive®
A mini case study about positive change… Many of our clients strive to build on current achievements. To that end, when planning retreats and workshops, managing partners often ask me to suggest a structured list of objectives — and to reflect on what the discussion topics ought to be. It was just this kind of […]
Winning through Practice Excellence
The attaining of best practice can lead to an advantage in which true excellence becomes a winning competitive formula.