THE ART OF LEADING LAWYERS INTO 2001©

Each lawyer in your practice has the capacity to be an effective leader. Each lawyer is, in fact, a leader from the moment she enters the practice. Because one major reason lawyers stay with your firm is whether and how much trust in leadership exists, the question is: how effective a leader will she become? How well will she master the art of leading lawyers? And, how can the firm assist her in developing her leadership skills, including the four components of trust: dependability, openness, acceptance and candor?

Perhaps you’ve heard estimated that it costs five times as much for a firm to get a new client as it does to keep a client the firm already has. Interestingly, it costs more than five times as much to get and train a new employee as it does to keep and retrain a current one. Thus, the more effective your lawyer/leaders are, the more profitable your practice will be.

How many lawyers has your firm lost in the last twelve months? How many good replacements have you found for them? How many of your lawyers are not as productive as you’d like? How many of those lawyers would have stayed or been more productive if your firm had effective leadership, mentoring and professional development systems in place?

A national survey of 30,000 people employed in various businesses showed that 77% felt their employer did not demonstrate a real interest in their welfare. Seventy- three per cent would strongly not recommend their company as a good place to work. Over 70% felt they were not kept informed about what was going on in the company and management was not open and honest with them. Over 60% felt they were expendable, did not get the proper training to do their jobs well and were not encouraged to work to their full potential. In this survey, 40% said they were seriously looking for a better job. Do you believe your firm would fare better? Recent law firm surveys reflect that 56% of associates are looking for new jobs for the same reasons.

How does your firm rate with your present lawyers? Do you know? Most firms don’t. Most firms have not conducted firm effectiveness surveys to learn the current climate among their lawyers. Many firm management teams are afraid to conduct climate surveys out of a misguided view of what the survey would accomplish or, perhaps, require management to do in its aftermath. This very fear is one of the reasons American businesses (your clients) and Gen X lawyers view law firms as anachronistic enterprises soon to be extinct.

Lawyers receive no training in leadership or developing trust as a part of the law school curriculum. Nor is such a staple of basic management taught in the training programs of most firms and bar associations. The result is that lawyers with natural leadership ability do moderately well and lawyers with no natural ability are abysmal. Many a lawyer has left his practice over failure of leadership--in himself and in his leaders.

Common mistakes ineffective leaders make include: