The era of the free-agent lawyer, and the law firm lateral hiring frenzy that it spawned, is drawing to a close. The rise of the culture-driven law firm is at hand — because the emphasis on individual lawyer priority over organizational commitment simply isn’t working.
Law firms churn young talent. Most associates bolt well before the partnership ring is in sight — they stay long enough to pick up some skills and contacts and to make a dent in their enormous student debt before leaving for more fulfilling opportunities elsewhere. The result: new blood drains away from the firm, leaving it increasingly dependent on lateral hiring, vulnerable to a collapse of leverage, and lacking sufficient numbers of young leaders for the future.
Law firms also churn veteran talent. Partners change firms at unprecedented rates, accepting those offers that promise them the most money and/or prestige. The result: the partnership bond is constantly weakened, longstanding clients head out with departing talent, associates see partners leave for greener pastures and follow suit, and most importantly, the firm’s face and brand are in flux from one year to another, no one knowing who will be the next to abandon ship.
The unmistakable lesson of the last decade of lawyer turnover is this: you cannot win the war for talent when all you have to offer is money. If you’re building your recruitment and retention pitch around cash, then you’ll attract lawyers who care deeply about cash — and you’ll always be vulnerable to a competitor with more of it. Ten years after lawyers began switching firms in earnest, many firms are no further ahead than when they started.
This reality is slowly dawning on some law firms, and they’re starting to look for another real differentiator that can not only draw in the right talent, but also keep it committed to the organization. How can a firm organize itself so that it wins the war for talent before the battles even start?
Simply put: a law firm culture in which every lawyer’s goals, values and objectives are aligned with those of the organization, and in which everyone is committed to the best interests of the firm — because their own interests are tied closely to them. In such a firm, lawyers willingly acquiesce to giving up degrees of independence in service of building an organization to which everyone contributes, from which everyone benefits, and of which everyone can be proud.
The culture in this sense reflects the well-known “one-firm firm” philosophy described years ago by David Maister:
The one-firm firm approach is not simply a loose term to describe a “culture.” It refers to a set of concrete management practices consciously chosen to maximize the trust and loyalty that members of the firm feel both to the institution and to each other.
The key relationship is that of the individual member to the organization, in the form of a set of reciprocal, value-based expectations. This, in turn, informs and supports relationships among members — who often do not know each other personally.
Everyone knows the values they must live by and the code of behavior they must follow. Everyone is commonly and intensively trained in these values and protocols. Everyone also knows that if an individual is in trouble, the group will expend every effort to help him or her.
David compares the “one-firm firm” favourably with the U.S. Marine Corps and unfavourably with what he calls the “warlord” mentality that prevails at many law firms today. It’s that warlord culture that both perpetuates and results from the instability at most law firms.
The objections to this idea are well known:
- Lawyers will never willingly sublimate their own selfish desires to the “greater good” of a firm.
- Lawyers don’t trust each other enough to believe that a partner won’t betray the partnership and bolt with the precious knowledge that’s been shared.
- Lawyers just want to “lawyer” and don’t care about all this leader-follower-training-mentoring stuff.
These are all perfectly valid objections, and they’ve all contributed in one way or another to the free-agent culture and strategic paralysis in the legal industry today. But they’re also self-defeating objections — it’s evident on the face of it that these behaviours and biases hamper law firm growth and talent retention.
It’s time for something new — a law firm that takes organizational commitment seriously and recruits people not just for skills, which are abundant in the talent pool, but also for their willingness to work, share, build, train and innovate as a team. Partnership in such a firm is extended carefully, judiciously, and with the expectation of permanence; associates are brought on with the promise of real participation and the requirement for patient commitment. The firm protects its people in hard times and asks for reciprocal loyalty in good times.
The next truly great law firm that arises is going to look a lot more like this than any of the mega-firms currently dotting the national and global landscape. It won’t happen fast, and it won’t come easy. But it will happen, because it’s eventually going to be clear that nothing else really works.
Jordan Furlong is the editor-in-chief of National, the magazine of the Canadian Bar Association. This article is excerpted from a longer version that appeared at the Law21 blog.