Originally published in The Leader Intelligencer
A Day of Reckoning for Law Firm Leaders?
A heartfelt thank you for the esteemed group of people with brilliant minds, creative ideas and generous hearts who joined an engaging conversation upon which this article is based: Tim Corcoran, Patrick Fuller, Heidi Gardner, Susan Manch, John “The Purple Coach” Mitchell, Kathleen Pearson, James Willer
In anticipation of the launch of Who Leads the Am Law 200: An Analysis of America’s Largest Law Firms and Their Leadership, ALM Intelligence convened an esteemed group of industry thought leaders to discuss leadership and the role of leaders within law firms. The agenda was loose and rather informal, propelled by shared interest and an acknowledgement that the demographics and trends included in the report are just the tip of the iceberg. Our starting premise, surfaced by Heidi Gardner, Distinguished Fellow at Harvard Law School’s Center on the Legal Profession, set the stage exceptionally well: we must acknowledge the report studies formal leaders in name only – it is their title that defines them, not their characteristics, qualities or ability to shepherd change.
What, then, does it take to be a leader in a law firm – and what should it take? What effects has the pandemic had on the role of leaders? And, perhaps most importantly, what is the potential impact leaders can have on the legal industry in the aftermath of 2020?
The Process of (Unnatural) Selection
Industry followers have long noted the disconnect between the skills that make a lawyer rise in prominence – excellent lawyering, rainmaking, relationship-building, client service – and those that make an effective leader – humility, empathy, integrity, self-awareness. Yet it is the most successful lawyers – not leaders – who are often bestowed with leadership roles and titles. Why the paradox?
Law firms suffer a number of challenges in getting the right people into leadership roles. The ability to define and identify an individual’s leadership skills is just one – and probably not the most obstructive. Too often, candidate selection for the top spot relies on the individual’s demonstrated prowess as a lawyer. Lawyers are reluctant to be led by someone they do not perceive to have exceptional rainmaking abilities or legal skills, even when this approach might be against their self-interest. “In a law firm partnership, a leader’s influence is based more on relationship capital than on business acumen,” says Tim Corcoran, law firm strategist and Founder of Corcoran Consulting Group. “As a result, relatively few top leaders are marketable as a Managing Partner,” Corcoran continues. “Unlike corporate leaders with transferable general management skills, law firm leaders’ effectiveness is often firm-specific.”
The upside to this qualification, of course, is in a professional services firm “knowing who your people are means understanding the nature of your organization at its heart,” as Kathleen Pearson, Chief Human Resources Officer at Pillsbury, is quick to point out. Both she and Sue Manch, recently retired Chief Talent Officer and recognized leadership coach and trainer, underscore the importance and value trust plays in making a leader effective – both within law firms and in the corporate world generally. Trust and respect, though, are not one in the same. To build trust demands open, honest communication. “Consistency, acknowledging when they don’t have all the answers and showing vulnerability,” says Kathleen, goes a long way to developing trust. Similarly, Sue Manch draws parallels between a leader’s ability to develop trust during the pandemic through “personal communications with caring and humanity,” and their ultimate ability to engender confidence in times of crisis.
The Effect of the Pandemic on How Lawyers Lead
Which is an excellent segue into the role of lawyer leaders during one recent crisis, the pandemic. Law firms on whole fared better than most would have expected, yet more than a few struggled. Sue Manch is quick to question whether those firms who failed to see financial gains in revenue and profits similar to their peer firms suffer from a failure of leadership as well, or if some other dynamic was at play. Research across sectors demonstrates a clear connection between effective leadership and financial performance. In a year like no other, similarly situated firms performed very differently. The likelihood the effectiveness of firms’ leaders drove those results – in both directions – is high.
In times of crisis, research shows lawyers tend to adopt more anti-collaborative behaviors, notes Heidi Gardner, who specializes in the study of Smart Collaboration. The pandemic, global turmoil and civil rights activism of 2020 created a confluence of events likely to send lawyers into a tailspin. Anti-collaborative behaviors – becoming uncommunicative, clustering into like-minded groups, increased skepticism – further amplified the importance of a leader’s role. In many firms, though, it was not, in fact, the single leader with the foremost title who stepped up. Instead, our discussion surfaced a multitude of examples where others – whether other lawyer leaders or business professionals – stepped into the spotlight.
Tim Corcoran observes as the stakes got higher – decisions around COVID carried with them fears of negatively affected someone’s health or even death – a single executive typically rose to the occasion, displaying perhaps previously untapped leadership skills. Moreover, this person was often not the formal firm leader who carried the title of Managing Partner, CEO or Chair. This phenomenon, in context, is not all that surprising for a student of leadership styles. John “The Purple Coach” Mitchell, who coaches executives within and outside of legal and is co-creator of The Leadership Institute, notes some people have a default, or natural, leadership style they tend to revert to in times of crisis. For those whose default leadership style tends toward authoritative, for example, a critical event can bring out valuable characteristics such as speedy decision-making or targeted directives.
Lawyer leaders, though, were not the only ones who stepped up during the past 18 months. Business professionals had their hard-earned opportunity to shine when mission-critical questions turned to their areas of expertise – personnel issues, financial management, technology infrastructure, diversity and equity, and more. Sue Manch explains how lawyer leaders regularly consulted business leaders during the crises, inquiring “what is the right thing to do,” and acknowledging their C-suite professionals “know more about this than they do...which doesn’t often happen in law firms.” Tim Corcoran agrees, noting law firm executives recognized they had access to “top-notch business minds and they should listen to them.” Inevitably, the discussion quickly led to the next significant question, posed by Sue Manch – “will this last?”
Law Firm Leaders of the Future
Sadly, whether business leaders retain their newly elevated stature across law firms remains to be seen. What is certain is the industry is about to embark on a tremendously significant shift which will test the capabilities of even the most experienced and effective leaders – perhaps even more so than the pandemic itself. Kathleen Pearson predicts “emerging from the pandemic will prove to be a much bigger leadership challenge for law firms than the past year and a half. As we develop new ways of working and coming back together, the trust leaders have built, or in some cases lost, will be tested. This is where real leadership is going to be key, where we’ll start to see cracks.”
Others on the call agreed. Among the challenges facing law firms as they return to office is how to create an inclusive culture, how to manage remote teams and, at least in the near-term, how to navigate a wildly competitive environment for talent. Heidi Gardner connects the dots between diversity, leadership and performance. “Diversity poorly managed is destructive,” she asserts, “Diversity well-led and well-managed? This is where leadership will make an enormous difference.” Leaders have the power to use their roles and influence to do better, and to be better.
Yet leader development alone can not solve all the challenges facing law firms. John “The Purple Coach” Mitchell explains, “what is tolerated in a law firm is not tolerated in other organizations. There is no great solution to leadership development within a law firm until there are structural changes.” Among the structural changes proposed included questioning the value of term limits, creating a glide path back into practice and regularly deploying employee engagement surveys as a tool to gauge effectiveness and measure performance. More broadly, the partnership structure and the way law firms get paid and pay themselves further restricts what is possible. To change all this? Well, that requires effective leadership.
The report Who Leads the Am Law 200: An Analysis of America’s Largest Law Firms and Their Leadership is available exclusively on Law.com Pro. Users of Law.com Pro can download the report, alongside other reports by ALM Intelligence Fellows, here.