Are we in search of the superhuman in partners or are we just not organising our firm in the right sort of way?  Should we really expect our lawyers to win business as well as deliver it, manage the client relationship and also motivate and lead teams within the firm? 

If you look at your fee-earners and feel that either:

• they are not winning and delivering the right business or
• they are not stimulated by their work or
• there is a huge disparity in performance between different individuals

this article aims to give you some pointers on changing the status quo.

How things have changed
10 years ago 'selling' and 'cross selling' were seen as tacky, grubby, unsuitable and not quite the right thing to do in law firms. Client Relationship Management, if heard of, was nothing more than a database. Just doing a great job seemed enough to be assured of repeat business. "It used to be about a partner and a couple of mates down at Twickenham,” a senior partner of a leading law firm recently told us.

Today, fee earners are often called upon to learn the processes and skills of business development in order to attract new clients and new work from existing clients. They are expected to formulate client plans to protect and develop their relationships. Many are learning to understand their clients’ businesses and organisations. In the public and private sectors, procurement professionals now expect their advisers to have a deep understanding of the procurement process and the pressures facing their organisations.

The ‘Super’ Partner
Now, it isn't enough for a lawyer to give advice on a point of law; they need to give that advice in the context of the client’s business strategy, critical success factors and values. Clients still expect a great job to be done, but technical brilliance alone appears to be rarely enough to sustain a successful, long-term business. Technical brilliance is seldom a differentiator between competing firms, it's expected.

We once worked with a firm that mapped out what qualities they ideally wanted from their partners and in what proportions.  It looked a bit like this.

Figure 1

We then asked did they feel their partners exhibited all these qualities in the equal values they’d stipulated.  The answer that came back was, no.  In reality, they looked something like this:

Figure 2

For a host of reasons there was a mismatch between what so many professionals believed was the correct balance for sustained business success and what happened in practice.

Are we realistic?
But are we right to expect our partners to be everything - technically brilliant, commercially adept, fantastic client relationship managers, successful business developers, inspirational managers and leaders. On reflection, this just does not seem to be feasible. 

Each of these roles requires a unique skill set, passion and motivation to be successful.  If we look at a law firm’s business developing capabilities, we usually find that it is made up of a 3-tiered system:

1. Those who are brilliant at business development (perhaps less exceptional at other skills)
2. Those who are average or not so good at winning business
3. Those who don’t do it or avoid it like the plague

The same is often true for client management and leadership activities.

Time to reorganise – the benefits
We have found that the more successful law firms are beginning to refocus their businesses so the best people are using their strengths to innovate, win business or retain clients. This is about playing to strengths whether one is a fantastic rainmaker, technically brilliant, a wonderful client manager or an inspirational project leader. This approach appears to bring a number of benefits for these firms.  Namely:

• Winning the right kind of work – in terms of profitability, kudos, long-term client value, stimulating projects
• Happier and healthier fee-earners who are able to excel in their strongest field
• A more focused approach to fee-earner training and development (possibly with cost-savings)
• A better return on investment in the development for fee-earners (by focusing on developing skills they want developed)
• An increase in fee-income
• A lower staff ‘churn’ from fee-earners across the firm

Such a reorganisation may mark a cultural sea change and may affect the way firms remunerate their fee-earners.  However, we believe the benefits we’ve listed could make it worthwhile – especially for those firms struggling with fee-earner and client defections, fee-earner ill health and reducing fee-income and profitability.

But how do you go about such change?  We would suggest a number of steps that HR, Marketing/Business Development and Senior Management can follow.

The ‘Strengthen For Success’ Plan

Step 1: Understand people’s current limitations and why they exist
Step 2: Rethink the training and career path
Step 3: Rethink your skill base
Step 4: Re-assess your business development plan and processes
Step 5: Develop the skills and behaviours people need to perfect their strengths even further
Step 6: Monitor and change where necessary as time goes by

Understand people’s current limitations and why they exist
Quite often we assume that people who are not performing in business development simply cannot do it.  This is not always the case. A fee-earner may not feel they know how to win business, it may seem alien and away from their comfort zones.  That’s not to say that with help and training they could get better.

If we look at a lawyer’s career before partnership, very few experience help in developing the right skills and qualities to win and retain business. Bright graduates join having, in the main, studied the technical aspects of their profession.  They spend several years in an 'apprenticeship' role, get their heads down in the bowels of the firm and get good at their job working with other people’s clients. They report to a partner or director who often shapes their view of how to deal with clients and people for the rest of their career.  For the ambitious, the future is about gaining their own client portfolio, a partnership or equivalent and thus becoming a part owner of the business.  Very few receive training on business development, client management or team leadership.  Many are expected to accumulate such qualities through osmosis. During this career progression most professionals will have invested very significant time, energy and money to develop their technical expertise - which they then sell to the firm’s clients.

Rethink the training and career path
Having looked at the training and development plans of even some of the more enlightened firms, the amount of time, energy and money given to develop professionals for their future business development, leadership, management and business responsibilities is still minimal.

Perhaps it is time for the legal profession to look at how the world of commerce develops its managers and directors. Here graduates go through a rigorous selection process and will be inducted into the company’s management development programme.  This programme will have the same structure for all the commercial disciplines required, whether that be finance, manufacturing, logistics, sales, operations and so on. The induction will introduce the new recruits to procedures and processes, products and services but also to the aims and values of the organisation.

Over the following two or three years the recruits will be monitored and developed against everything the business expects of them.  During these early years they will be given, as part of their development, delegated tasks that they have been well prepared to undertake. They will be trained in the areas where they exhibit a weakness or lack of knowledge/ability.  Only when they have proven their ability are they allocated greater responsibility or helped to secure a bigger client or customer base.

This is a much more structured process, that gives individuals a real chance at excelling in what they do and actively contributing to their employer’s and their own personal success. We would encourage firms to introduce business development, client relationship and leadership training much earlier on in their fee-earners’ careers. Ideally, it should be part of the induction process.  In doing so, firms would be able to identify early on the qualities and skills that, with help, can be cultivated for future success.

 

Rethink your skillbase
Whilst you can train people how to win business, if they do not feel comfortable with business development (and let’s face it, for some it is a completely alien concept) any attempt on their part will be half hearted at best. We therefore need to look at our skill base across the firm.  What do our people love to do in their heart of hearts? Yes there will be people who love or would love to focus purely on winning business.  Similarly there will be those people who are technically brilliant and love nothing better than to innovate using their incredible knowledge, understanding and experience. 

In looking at the firm in this way, we can see that nobody is ‘less worthy’.  Everyone has a part to play in making the firm as successful as possible.  So for those truly brilliant technical people – let them concentrate on what they’re good at, perhaps even market their individual abilities. But also have rainmakers and business developers feeding them with work. Use their technical innovation in pitches, but don’t expect them to lead them.  Have fantastic client relationship managers working alongside your rainmakers, who will carry the relationship forward when the rainmaker moves on to their next ‘win’.

By understanding the current motivations within our firm, we can assess:

• What strengths we can play to
• What strengths are there in essence but need cultivating and developing through training, coaching and other development methods
• What weaknesses exist and may be need to addressed through recruitment

We often get asked what are the key characteristics a business developer should possess.  By compiling such a checklist, firms can look at their fee-earners and assess who is best suited to what.  For business developers,  we would suggest these are some of the key characteristics you should be looking for:

• Sensitivity
• Vigorous mental energy
• Strong verbal reasoning
• Adaptability
• Persuasiveness
• Affiliation / sociability
• Listening skills
• Needing challenges & achievement
• Persistence and resilience
• Self esteem
• Inquisitiveness
• Analytical ability
• Work ethic
• Initiative & resourcefulness
• Moral & emotional comfort with role 

Some firms we work with use psychometrics and other such tests to help them identify the key characteristics they feel are necessary for a particular role.  They then test for these qualities in their new and existing people.  This helps them in a number of ways:

1. They can be more focused in their recruitment and development of fee-earners and test for the key skills and characteristics they need
2. They can be more realistic in what they expect from a particular role and have a much greater chance of having those expectations met
3. They can create more relevant means and methods to reward and motivate the individuals in these roles
4. They can identify how best to manage the individuals in these roles
   

Re-assess your business development plan and processes
It isn’t enough for a firm merely to identify the strengths of its people in isolation.  They need to be viewed in the context of what the firm wants to achieve with its business development or client relationship management plans and processes.  With regard to business development, the firm needs to see what skills and qualities it can best employ to ensure a steady flow of work from both existing and new clients.  In doing so, law firms can plan and manage in a balanced way the activities that are required to stimulate this flow.  They can also focus their people’s skills and abilities to concentrate on particular stages or activities to bring the greatest results and rewards for the firm.

Develop the right skills and behaviours
Not everyone will be brilliant in a particular field, however some people may have the motivation and the passion for a certain activity.  We therefore need to consider who needs help in building their strengths into vital assets for the firm.  Appraisals and review meetings with fee-earners will help to identify areas for development and fine-tuning.  Firms can then be more focused in what training and development they provide, for example, you won’t have to send the whole partnership on that ‘how to win new business’ programme!

As we suggested earlier on in this article, we do strongly urge firms to consider bringing in business development and client relationship management training earlier on in people’s careers. We do believe they will reap greater rewards in the long run.

Monitor and change where necessary as time goes by
Things change and evolve and so will the strengths, passions and interests of your fee-earners. As with any plan, it is therefore important to regularly monitor how things are going.  What changes have been experienced in fee-income? Fee-earner motivation? Staff and Client retention? Service innovation? The overall client portfolio mix? etc. 

Measurement becomes easier if there are fixed objectives we are assessing our performance against and so if your firm is planning to play to its strengths, we’d suggest you initially spell out what you’re hoping to achieve with the change and measure your progress against these goals as time goes by.  If things do not look as if they are going to plan, it’s important to assess why and make the necessary changes to get back on track.

Summary
There is a desire that partners should be everything - technically brilliant, commercially adept, fantastic client relationship managers, successful business developers, inspirational managers and leaders. This is just not feasible.  Each of these roles requires a unique skill set, passion and motivation to be successful.  We strongly urge law firms to refocus their organisations so the best people are using their strengths to innovate, win business or retain clients. 

We hope in this article we have given you ideas on how your firm can rethink its valuable human resources and make sure you have the right people, with the right skills and the right motivations to drive the firm forward.  We’d welcome your views on the subject, so feel free to tell us via tpp@pacepartnership.com

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© 2008 The PACE Partners LLP London England