Death of a Law Firm: Staying Strong in the Global Legal Market by Jaap Bosman

Author:Jaap Bosman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: American Bar Association
Published: 2017-03-17T16:00:00+00:00

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Merely sending junior partners on business training will not ensure a pool of partners ready for succession

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Law firms tend to think of succession as a matter of the right training in terms of technical skills and business awareness. Increasing resources are employed to this end, and MBA institutes across the world are reaping the profits. But there is more to prepping your successors than that. Merely sending junior partners on business training will not ensure a pool of partners ready for succession. This is not how you breed the trusted boardroom advisor. Although some skills of tomorrow’s lawyers will be new and different from those possessed by partners made a decade ago, the core qualities remain the same.

It can best be explained as two ends of a spectrum, both of which need to be present in a good partner of today. On the one end are technical skills, which have become increasingly demanding. Most prominently, the pace has increased. The speed at which matters were handled two decades ago is not acceptable today. On the other side of the spectrum is what can best be described as personal skills; how a good lawyer acts. Effectively solving problems and getting what you want from people is not something that is always defined or explained. The best way to learn these unuttered, subtle yet important personal skills is to observe and copy someone who is better than you. If you want boardroom advisors, then they must have had a chance to access the boardroom and observe how it works. If you want skillful litigators, then young litigators must have had a chance to observe how the seasoned litigator achieves seemingly unattainable outcomes.

One of the best partners I know is the trusted advisor of the boards of several large corporations. He learned his skills as a very young lawyer from two senior partners who were then what he himself is now. He started by literally carrying their bags to and from meetings and, in doing so, could follow them into the places where strategic corporate decisions were made. He had the chance to observe what it is assumed that new partners are just supposed to know: how the most impactful decisions are made. No management training made him into the person whom a chairman phones when a company is about to bet the farm. And yet, the partners who are about to fill his shoes and the shoes of partners like him are left to swim on their own with the silly flotation-aid of a two-week MBA. How is anyone supposed to become a good partner without first having seen what that looks like?

Many of the partners made two decades ago would not have been made partners by today’s standards and are not suitable as role models. A well-managed long-term process ensures not only that the successor is ready to fill the shoes of a profitable partner but also that the clients are prepared as well. As argued earlier, the higher up the ranks of complex legal work, the more tied to individuals it becomes.

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