Where is all the partner management talent?
How can law firms develop their partners once they have passed the partner threshold? No FTSE 100 company neglects the development of its executives to the extent that law firms do.
In most firms systemmatic development stops once someone has undertaken the basic new partner induction. For the next 25 years development is left to the individual: usually comprising of ad-hoc conferences, technical updates and 2 hour “training” sessions.
Firms reap what they sew.
- A business plan which is slowly and painfully drafted but devoid of strategy
- Management boards consisting of “shop stewards” representing their constituent departments,
- Managing partners still “keeping their hand in” with client work as an insurance for later years,
- Director appointments who are incapable of getting decisions executed because of inept management discipline.
Michael Heseltine famously said that you couldn’t run a whelk stall with the talent available on a government front bench. The typical law firm would perform even worse in a corporate environment.
The crux of the issue is that lawyers like to neither manage nor be managed. There is no desire to develop the complex skills that a modern manager needs, and they are also psychometrically unsuited to the role. This means that standard programmes, developed for a standard partner going into a standard role are useless. There are no standard people in a law firm. They are a bunch of individuals, all gifted in the ability to apply supreme critical thinking skills to clients’ issues.
If we are to develop these people into management roles – and increase the whole firm’s bench strength – we must go through the messy process of working with each partner to:
- Help them understand their own abilities and preferences, using proper psychometric tools and their own life history.
- Work with them – and the firm – to reflect on the future roles that they will undertake.
- Create a development strategy (not a training plan) which will enable the partner to achieve their potential.
The final result will be akin to dry stone walling. We will know the abilities, aspirations and possibilities for each partner (the dry stones), from which we will be able to craft an appropriate business plan (the dry stone wall) as well as sensibly consider the missing talent so we can recruit for management and leadership, not just client following.