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Law firm R/X

By: dmc-admin//December 28, 2005//

Law firm R/X

By: dmc-admin//December 28, 2005//

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“Do you treat your colleagues as well as you treat your clients? If not, there’s a problem.”

F.A. “Tony” Brewster

The business plan is simple: Each lawyer will bill “x” amount of hours at a certain rate every year, to generate a projected amount of revenue.

But, the best laid plans… Because these are lawyers — people — sometimes other factors must be considered. Factors such as:

  • A partner is going through a divorce, or is caring for a sick parent or child;
  • An enthusiastic rainmaker suddenly loses his zeal;
  • A group of lawyers within the firm has built up some animosity against another group within the firm.

In short, people problems, often times among the firm’s most valuable people, have stymied the firm’s financial goals.

In the past, a partners’ meeting might have concluded with an ultimatum of some sort, followed by someone cleaning out his or her desk. Or, maybe, after tortuous months or even years, the firm lost a block of lawyers, or even breaks up entirely. Sometimes legal action even ensued.

This need not be the outcome anymore. Help is available for law firms in distress. And occasionally, the persons offering this help can even head off problems.

Legal Services for Law Firms

The firm might need the help of Madison attorney F.A. (“Tony”) Brewster, of the Brewster Law Office. He is an emeritus lawyer who has created a unique practice concentration of law-firm coach with an emphasis upon the legal aspects of managing a law firm.

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“The increased demand for leadership training is driven by this whole ‘whitewater environment’ we’re in, of rapid change and unpredictability.”

Larry Richard

In the mid-1990s, Brewster was a trial lawyer and a managing partner for a mid-sized Madison firm. When the firm dissolved, he finalized many of the details of that closure, including accounts receivable. In that process, he listened to many of the former firm’s clients talk about what they liked about it and what they didn’t. He took it to heart, and combined it with his then-four decades of legal and management experience, to start his own solo part-time practice devoted to helping law firms succeed.

For just about every law-firm malady, the trouble either emanates from its governance or its culture, Brewster explains.

Governance refers to whether the firm is a partnership, a service corporation, etc., and who makes the decisions: a board of directors, a management committee, etc.

Closely related within this inquiry is what the firm values when making compensation decisions. How does it treat the rainmaker, versus the lawyer who “nurtures” existing clients, versus the “grinder?” Sometimes, morale problems, which might blossom into production and ultimately cash-flow problems, stem from poor communication about the firm’s expectations in this regard, Brewster says. Or maybe the firm has been inconsistent in its remuneration decisions, leading to resentment.

Other times, problems stem from a firm’s culture, which refers to how the lawyers and staff interact with each other. Is there a rigid hierarchy in place? Do the lawyers and staff enjoy coming to work each day?

Brewster comments, “The bottom line with culture is, do you treat your colleagues as well as you treat your clients? If not, there’s a problem.”

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“By promoting management systems and policies that enhance the quality of one’s professional life, that helps each person achieve his or her full potential, and provide ongoing support and assistance when people need it.”

Lisa Walker Johnson

One of his themes in his legal practice is emphasizing to his law-firm clients that he will zealously represent what’s best for the enterprise. The firm’s members need to have or must adopt that mindset as well, or Brewster can’t work with them. Another central theme is that the law firm’s clients come first.

Brewster says that most of his work is with firms suffering from some sort of organizational dysfunction.

Occasionally however, he is called in when an individual is experiencing a performance problem. If that problem doesn’t involve alcohol, drugs or serious mental health issues, he might be able to help. Sometimes, that person is simply feeling depressed or burnt-out — maybe it’s the previously mentioned rainmaker who recently lost a lucrative prospect, and that has taken its toll on his psyche. The challenge for Brewster is to help him heal and get him back in the saddle.

Happily, Brewster can report that not all of his practice is with firms in crisis. Sometimes he is called upon for his expertise when a firm is planning a merger or reorganizing. His major task is to help with the “people” aspect of managing significant change.

Brewster, 77, works about two-thirds’ time. He is as busy as he wants to be, turning away work from out-of-state law firms occasionally, or from Wisconsin firms whose members’ expectations are not attainable, in his estimation. All of his clients have sought
him out through word-of-mouth only.

The practice of law has changed substantially since Brewster entered the field. One of the major changes has been the increased emphasis upon the business aspect of practicing law — a fact that many lawyers of his generation bemoan, he notes. But to him, it’s not an “either-or” proposition; professionalism leads to business success, as long as people are not forgotten along the way.

“I’m an old Marine, a Korean War veteran, and that’s where I learned that we didn’t leave anyone behind,” he says. “A law firm really is just a microcosm of that.”

Leadership Training Taking Hold

When attorney Larry Richard left the law after a decade of practice as a trial lawyer, he told his father, also a trial lawyer, that he planned to get an advanced degree in psychology with a career goal of applying organizational behavior principles to the legal profession.

His father, supportive but from the old school, seemed puzzled by the whole notion of mixing psychology with the law. Sure, lawyers had been using forensic psychology in their criminal and family law cases, but not within their own profession with regard to law-firm management.

Richard knew his father meant well. He was merely expressing a sentiment that many held at the time. But he also knew that, in his new career, as long as he could find one or two law-firm clients here and there, he’d be fine.

“I knew that organizational psychology — which is a bit like doing therapy with an organization rather than an individual — had been used in business and industry. It appealed to me because it seemed more interesting and complex than working with just one person,” he says. “I had this vision of how I could translate what works in the business world in a way that would be adaptable to law firms.”

For awhile, his father seemed to be correct. But so was Richard. He did secure a few forward-thinking law firm clients upon his 1981 graduation. For the better part of the 1980s, this handful of clients enabled him to make a living.

Then came a recession in 1989, he recounts. Law firms of all sizes took a financial beating, with the large and medium-sized ones in particular dealing with personnel issues. Many had over-hired earlier in the decade and were now paying inflated salaries they could no longer afford. People had to be let go. Some were replaced — but this time, the law firms decided to be much smarter in their hiring. They could no longer afford frequent turnover.

At the same time, a sizeable number of the recent law graduates, many of whom might have been raised as “latchkey” kids, were starting to ask for more from their employers. They were no longer content to simply be employed; they wanted a comfortable work environment — one that feels like “family” — and one that matched their values.

In sum, a new era, where psychology would play a central role in the hiring process, and where law firms started to pay closer attention to their own workplace cultures, was borne. For Richard, it signaled the development of a whole new group of potential clients.

The 1990s then ushered in yet another new era for law firms, with the advent of technology. While many firms managed to harness technology to their advantage, it nonetheless additionally brought stress.

He says, “As the changes in the marketplace started speeding up and technology increased, everything started to get faster, and that led to a lot of change and unpredictability. And anytime you have unpredictability, you have an increased demand for leadership. That upped the ante with regard to an interest in developing leadership.”

Richard recalls that no one retained him for leadership training prior to 1995. These days, it’s how he spends the bulk of his time.

Leadership training might mean identifying potential leaders within a firm, or helping existing leaders by developing feedback systems for them, he explains. Many times, he administers tests to facilitate the process, such as personality tests, emotional intelligence tests or group dynamics tests.

Richard, now with Hildebrandt International, a law-firm consultancy based in Bound Brook, N.J., works with law firms in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. “The increased demand for leadership training is driven by this whole ‘whitewater environment’ we’re in, of rapid change and unpredictability,” he says.

Helping the Partner in Crisis

Rapid change, coupled with the inherent competition in both the legal profession and the law-firm setting are facts of life for attorneys these days. A fairly common consequence is that a partner might develop some sort of personal crisis and/or performance issue.

That’s according to Lisa Walker Johnson, a Miami, Fla.-based psychologist with Walker Clark, a law-firm consulting firm. She heads that firm’s Performance Recovery service, a multidisciplinary program that helps individual lawyers and their firms address sensitive problems arising from abusive or otherwise inappropriate workplace behavior.

Crises happen and there is actually very little that a law firm can do to prevent them, she says. But law firms can and should anticipate and prepare for crises.

For example, law firm leaders should educate themselves about the early warning signs for a partner who is entering a personal or professional crisis, and they should plan in advance a set of responses that the firm is ready to take when a crisis appears. She points out that when a partner is already in crisis, it’s too late to start trying to figure out what to do.

And, when crises do occur, law firms need to respond promptly and with a clear message that the partner has a problem, that it must be corrected and that the firm is willing to provide support.

She cautions that “do-it-yourself” quick fixes are seldom successful. The problems that c
ause or contribute to a partner’s crisis typically are deep-seated and complex, and usually require outside expert intervention.

Walker Johnson works with lawyers and law firms exclusively, on an international basis. She started this phase of her practice in 1996 and has been busy from day one, she says.

She foresees more U.S. law firms turning to psychologists in the future to enhance their productivity. In fact, she says that it’s already happening with some frequency in Europe and Latin America, and that some firms there even have in-house psychologists.

Why?

“They recognize the critical importance of protecting their most important asset — their people — by promoting management systems and policies that enhance the quality of one’s professional life, that helps each person achieve his or her full potential, and provide ongoing support and assistance when people need it,” she says.

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