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Post #321 – Monday, June 16, 2008
Most Admired Firm Leaders
In the Spring of 2007 we initiated a rather ambitious study to identify the most admired law firm leaders of the day. Over 60 firm chair and managing partners responded to our personal request asking of them to identify which leaders, from firms other than their own, they admired the most for their management and leadership competence.
 Rather than repeat our survey this year, I’m delighted to contribute to LawDragon’s 100 Managing Partners You Need to Know, which showcases some of “the hottest names in firm management from around the nation.” According to LawDragon, the firm leaders idenitifed were selected through a combination of submissions from firms and Lawdragon's own editorial research. I am told that they contacted over 50,000 professionals for input on the lawyers making news in firm leadership.
Have a look at the results of my latest research: Where New Leaders Spend Their Time. In an attempt to examine where new leaders have spent their time, I surveyed and interviewed the new managing partners of 19 law firms, between 100 and over 500 attorneys in size. My objective was to determine specifically whether there were any identifiable patterns for where these leaders spent their time, how productive they viewed their initial efforts, and now in hindsight, whether there was anything they might have done differently.
For me the most striking feature of the LawDragon roster was both in seeing Latham’s Bob Dell once again recognized as one of the most admired firm leaders; and in seeing a couple of freshman managing partners identified among the 100 that not that long ago participated in my First 100 Days Master Class. A huge congratulations to master class alumni Dave Baca from Davis Wright and Russell Gertmenian at Vorys Sater.
The upcoming First 100 Days: Master Class For The New Managing Partner is scheduled for August 26th at the University of Chicago Gleacher Center. Those attending this program may expect to receive:
• 24-page Monograph – “First 100 Days: Transitioning A New Managing Partner”
• 50-page WorkBook includes Case Studies, Exercises and Discussion materials
• Copy of 140-slide Power Point presentation
• 20-page personal and confidential (Hogan) personality assessment with recommendations
Now I can’t guarantee you a place on the LawDragon top 100 list, but here is what Richard Nix from McAfee & Taft had to say about the experience ONE YEAR LATER: Your seminar really did help me to prioritize my goals and objectives for the first 100 days. As I look back, I really didn’t know what I didn’t know leading up to taking on this new responsibility as the Managing Partner. The guidance and suggestions I took away from the seminar (and reading materials) were extremely helpful. I had a much better understanding of what to expect. I really do appreciate all of your help.
Post #320 - Friday, June 13, 2008
How Do You Staff Major Matters?
 My very brilliant London-based partner Dennis Sherwood (and his team) was just acknowledged in The Lawyer for his pioneering work with London-based, 1100-lawyer Herbert Smith in designing a new system to ensure that work is efficiently allocated between and among practice teams. The system is currently being piloted by the firm’s competition lawyers until July.
When handling a major client matter, your decisions about which associates to assign directly impacts client service, quality and cost (externally) and materially affects each associate’s career development, morale and work-life balance (internally). One would hope that a firm has some kind of thoughtful and sophisticated system to manage their workload, but unfortunately most do not.
Many clients are asking for fixed fees or imposing a cap – in which case planning the resources to be used for the matter (and hence the costs) is a business necessity. When handling a significant transaction or major litigation matter, how do you track the progress of each matter and who is doing what? You need to drive an absolute consistency of methodology and approach.
A number of firms are attempting to grab more of their client’s work (their wallet-share), achieve uniformity across practices, across offices and sometimes across other firms who may be a part of your service delivery network, to complete a specific deal without assembling the means by which to properly manage files and client projects of major magnitude. What Dennis’s team has done has been to develop an internal system, with web and computer support, to effectively address these kinds of situations.
Herbert Smith senior partner David Gold said: “This is designed to make us move closer to being the firm of choice and employer of choice. “It’s about making sure we’re efficient in the way we put teams together and making sure we have the best person working on particular projects.” The system allows practice heads to chart exactly who is available and when, with the intention of planning workloads over short-term and long-term periods. Managing partner David Willis said, “The people in competition seem wedded to it – they’re enthused. It’s an extension of the wider excellence program that we’re involved in.”
You may expect to be reading much more about this system in the next issue of our EIR magazine. Meanwhile, Dennis and I are working out the logistics to launch this new initiative in North America this fall. If your firm is interested in serving as a test site, please shoot me a quick note.
Post #319 – Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Keeping Practice Groups Market-Focused
 It has been my honor to have been of service to the folks at Shearman & Sterling, most specifically to Herb Washer, Chairman of the Litigation Department and Emma Cibelli, their Manager of Practice Development.
One of the most common questions (it was raised once again at my Practice Group Leadership Forum last month in Chicago) asked about practice groups, is how large groups should be allowed to grow. And nowhere is this more of an issue than with the typical Litigation Department, where in larger firms, it is not unusual to see groups of anywhere from 80 to 200 or more attorneys trying to work together effectively.
I’m always reminded of a premiere Chicago client that I worked with many years ago who instinctively recognized that it needed to do something with it’s huge Litigation group, as it’s size made it the 800-pound gorilla in the firm. Their answer was to divide all of the litigators into smaller (but still homogenous) groups, such that there was a Litigation Group A and a Litigation Group B and so on. (Believe me, I couldn’t make this up!) If someone actually asked some young associate which practice group they were in, they just might respond “I’m in Litigation Group E.”
Thankfully many firms are evolving a more sensible structure for their groups largely based on the types of clients that litigators might commonly serve. Litigation has been the focus of US firms since last summer with firms reorganizing partners and associates so that they can benefit from the influx of litigation that market volatility has created. Today’s more market-focused Litigation Department is being divided into client-focused practice groups, such as: White Collar, Antitrust, Securities, Intellectual Property, International Arbitration, Complex Commercial Litigation and so forth. (I know that Duane Morris has just overhauled its Litigation structure to target seven key practice areas.) Once having better defined these discrete practice groups, leaders appointed in each group can then get down to the more far important task of working with their people to develop a meaningful strategic direction for the team and specific action plans to concentrate on the higher-value client work.
Post #318 - Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Having Performance Standards
Here is the latest question posed to our Managing Partner Leadership Advisory Board (The LAB):
 We're considering adopting performance standards (including billable hours, effective rates, billings / business development contributions) for shareholders. While we have fairly precise standards for an associate to become a shareholder, and we really only have one class of shareholders, we don't have standards to remain a shareholder.
I'm wondering if:
• you have a feel for the percentage of firms our size (say, 100-300 or so) which have performance standards; and
• you have any advice for me on this subject.
Assuming we adopt written standards, I'd think the next two key items are:
- implementing them, including dealing with shareholders who consistently under-perform and perhaps creating certain exceptions; and
- deciding if there will be specific means to deal with those who don't meet the standards (e.g., not eligible for bonus, must give up equity and go to Of Counsel, or other status.)
Read the entire question and response: Having Performance Standards [PDF Version]
The LAB was formed as a resource to provide pragmatic advice to assist new managing partners with their critical burning issues and help them succeed. The LAB is comprised of the following distinguished current and former law firm leaders: Angelo Arcadipane (Dickstein Shapiro LLP); John Bouma (Snell & Wilmer LLP); Brian K. Burke (Baker & Daniels LLP); Ben F. Johnson, III (Alston & Bird LLP); John R. Sapp (Michael Best & Friedrich LLP); Keith B. Simmons (Bass Berry & Sims PLC); William J. Strickland (McGuire Woods LLP); Harry P. Trueheart, III (Nixon Peabody LLP); together with Patrick J. McKenna (Edge International).
Post #317 – Monday, June 9, 2008
Hit The Ground Running
I am delighted to welcome John Wm Butler, Jr. as co-presented at my next master class for new practice group leaders scheduled to be held August 27th at the University of Chicago.
 Jack is partner and global leader of the corporate restructuring practice at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP. His group serves corporations and their principal creditors and investors by providing value-added legal solutions in troubled company M&A, financing and restructuring situations. He was the recipient of the first-ever Chairman’s Award from the Turnaround Management Association in 2001 for his contributions to and standing in the corporate renewal industry; and has been listed in all editions of the K&A Restructuring Register, the peer group listing of the top restructuring attorneys and financial advisors in the United States.
In addition, Jack was profiled as one of the “Dealmakers of the Year” by The American Lawyer in its 2004 Corporate Scorecard issue and was named to BTI’s Client Service All-Star Team for 2004 based on interviews with more than 200 corporate counsel at Fortune 1000 companies. Jack is co-Chair, The American Lawyer’s Best in the Business: Annual Practice Leaders Conference (2004-present) and was a highly regarded speaker at my 3rd Annual Practice Group Leadership Forum last month in Chicago.
For further information on our Hit The Ground Running program, shoot me an e-mail.
Previous registrants have included new practice group leaders from firms such as: Arnstein & Lehr; Edwards Angell Palmer & Dodge; Gray Plant Mooty; Kirkland & Ellis; Lowenstein Sandler; Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton; Sutherland Asbill & Brennan; Womble Carlyle; and Weil Gotshal & Manges.
Post #316 – Friday, June 6, 2008
Senior Leadership Transitions
According to some research from the UK-based Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), making the transition to a senior leadership role comes second (behind divorce) in the list of traumatic life events. We tend to underestimate just what is involved in making the transition to firm chair or managing partner within our profession. It is still too often the case that firms do not allow managing partners to give up (entirely) their billable hours in order to manage the firm. And often, the firm leader is either 'the best of a bad lot' or 'the one least likely to rock the boat'! To be a managing partner is to be a leader – and requires skills not deliberately developed by lawyers as they grow from students to associates, to junior partners.
 I participated in an interesting telephone conversation the other day with Executive Coach Pat Wheeler and Institute For Executive Development founder Scott Saslow. We spent an hour talking about leadership transitions and our respective research.
Here is some interesting factual data: While internal transitions (like moving from being a practice group leader to becoming the Firm Chair) are typically viewed as less challenging moves (than someone moving to your firm from some other firm), because we tend to think that the partner making the transition already has the skills, knowledge and confidence to get the job done. However, the Institute’s survey of over 150 executives and professionals found that one in five (21%) do NOT succeed (meet the expectations set) by the two-year mark.
What leads to this leadership failure? As has long been suspected, it’s not for lack of technical or business skills; these were cited as causes of underperformance by only 15% of the survey respondents. The real offenders are lack of interpersonal leadership skills (68%) and a lack of better self-management, focus and drive (45%). New leaders coming into the role (of firm chair or managing partner) already have a reputation and they don’t know when that may be getting in their way.
Making the obvious explicit, helping new professionals transition successfully into new senior leadership roles is not about refining their strategic planning skills. It is about assisting these leaders increase their self-awareness, manage interpersonal blindspots and navigate through their transitional challenges. You can once again see that the “soft stuff” drives the hard results!
Now (on a lighter note) to the joys of being new . . .
Most lawyers who take on a senior leadership position know that the most productive time of their entire tenure can be the first 100 days they are in office. Why is that?
• The problems of your firm did not start under your leadership (however, should these problems persist, you will own them in fairly short order!)
• Early and small successes will seem so much bigger and more important now, than they will a year from now.
• Your fresh perspectives will stimulate ideas that seem more creative than what has been thought of in the past. You may be looking at things differently, using new terms or repackaging old ideas, so your ideas seem “fresh.” After a few months of hearing the same terms, phrases and ideas from you, trust me, to most of your partners, it will all seem quite trivial.
• This is your honeymoon period where your partners generally leave you alone and love everything you do. During your first 100 days there is minimal second-guessing, and minimal snipping about why you made this decision or decided to do things that way. You are the new energetic Firm Chair with great vision and ideas. Give your partners until Day 101 and then they will be more apt to question . . . where the heck you think you’re going.
• There is far too much happening in today’s complex law firm not to make mistakes. At some point you will have to take a side on some disagreement, which will make your other partners angry. You will have to correct some partner who is wrong, in something they are doing. These are the unpleasant realities of leadership.
So for now . . . enjoy your first 100 days. Problems? Not your fault. Creative ideas? You have plenty of them. Made a mistake? Sorry, you’re new in the role.
Post #315 – Friday, June 6, 2008
European M&A Outlook
I received a nice note the other day from Andrew Pearson who works in the emerging markets space giving me an update on his survey results from tracking the European M&A market.
Optimism is a fragile thing and, given the recent high-profile adversity faced by the UK and US banking sectors, it is hardly surprising that a more cautious note is being sounded in our latest survey regarding the M&A outlook.
Other predictions include:
• Energy and Financial Services predicted to feature prominently in European M&A
• Fewer 'mega deals' in 2008 and an increase in mid-size transactions
• Over 60% of respondents believe Sovereign Wealth Funds will play a greater role in European M&A markets
In this challenging environment, savings in time and money become even more important, with technology a key element of deal optimization. Nine out of ten survey respondents that have used a virtual dataroom (VDR) believe it reduces the due diligence timeframe by at least 10%, with almost two-thirds suggesting time savings of more than 25%.
Post #314 – Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Passing The Baton
 Whether as a result of your firm having set term limits or your personally deciding to step down from office, sooner or later every firm leader will be the central player in a leadership transition. It is an issue that many firm chairs and managing partners grapple with … when is it time to move on, and how do you create a sensible departure plan and manage the transition in a way that enhances your reputation?
I am honored to announcing the publication of my latest monograph: Passing The Baton: The Last 100 Days (Ark Group, 2008). This is a sequel to my 2006 e-book, First 100 Days: Transitioning A New Managing Partner that I’m pleased to report earned glowing reviews and has been read by leaders in 83 countries.
You can obtain your copy of Passing The Baton - from Ark Publishing or via 
Passing The Baton features the advice and commentary received from a dozen prominent U.S. law firm leaders including:
Ben C. Adams, Jr., Chairman and CEO of Baker Donelson
Angelo Arcadipane, retired Managing Partner at Dickstein Shapiro
Brain K. Burke, Chairman Emeritus at Baker & Daniels
John J. Hern, Chief Executive Officer at Clark Hill
James M. Hill, Chairman Emeritus at Benesch Friedlander
John P. Langan, Managing Partner of Hiscock & Barclay
Don G. Lents, Chairman of Bryan Cave
Wm. Leighton Lord III, Chairman of Nexsen Pruet
Richard Mark, retired President at Briggs and Morgan
Robert F. Millman, Chairman of the Board at Littler Mendelson
Lois Van Deusen, retired Managing Partner of McCarter & English
Raymond J. Werner, Chairman at Arnstein & lehr
After all, the last impression you make in your leadership tenure may be the most important to capping your legacy!
Post #313 - Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Stupid Leadership Mistakes
Tony Morgan is a pastor and Chief Strategy Officer at NewSpring Church where he develops creative solutions for communications, technology and NewSpring Ministries - - the church's ministry that equips other church leaders. He recently authored a great article on the “10 Stupid Leadership Mistakes I’ve Made.” Tony shared these mistakes in the hope that we don’t repeat them in our leadership:
Mistake #1: Hiring too fast and firing too slow. “When a position is open that you know needs to be filled and the right person isn’t available, it’s hard to wait. The tendency is to fill the role with the best available person, but sometimes that’s not the right person . . . On the flip side, I’ve made the mistake of waiting too long to let someone go."
Mistake #2: Trying to fix the problem rather than the process. "There have been too many times in leadership roles when I’ve found myself reacting to a problem, rather than addressing the process to prevent the situation from occurring in the first place.”
Mistake #3: Putting the projects before the people. “Good leaders find that perfect balance between getting the job done and embracing the relational component of doing life as a team.”
Mistake #4: Delegating tasks instead of responsibility. “When pushed into a corner, I naturally revert back to my perfectionist tendencies. I know in my mind the way it should be done. And, if I let myself, I’ll fall into the trap of thinking I’m the only one who can get it done.”
Mistake #5: Assuming it’s always black and white. “The reality, of course, is that much of life isn’t black and white.”
Mistake #6: Not following my gut. “In an effort to make the best decision, I sometimes get stuck trying to acquire information, rather than seeking God’s direction and taking action.”
Mistake #7: Dwelling on the worst-case scenario. “Again, this is what happens when I let my focus wander to the circumstances around me . . . I’ve wasted way too much time worrying about challenges that never happened.”
Mistake #8: Waiting until there’s a problem to provide feedback. “One of my biggest mistakes as a leader has been withholding encouragement when the team delivers, and only speaking up when expectations aren’t met.”
Mistake #9: Staying busy. “I tell myself if I’m busy, I’m adding value. The reality, of course, is that our busyness can get in the way of effectiveness. We can be busy about the wrong things.”
Mistake #10: Spending too much time on the details rather than the dreams. “Here’s the reality; dreams usually come when the pace of my life slows enough to do stuff like read, rest, experience new places and meet new people.”
This is a great list with many mistakes which I've made. How about you? Any mistakes that are missing from our list?
Post #312 - Friday, May 16, 2008
Practice Group Leadership Forum
I’ve just returned from Chairing, once again, this year’s Practice Group Leader’s Forum at the University of Chicago.
Each year’s attendance grows and this year I was privileged to welcome over 55 participants from across North America, including leaders from firms like: Baker Donelson, Borden Ladner Gervais, Bracewell & Giuliani, Frost Brown Todd, Haynes and Boone, Katten Muchin, Ropes & Gray, Skadden Arps, Wilmer Hale and numerous others.
As promised, here  are the Polling Questions used in my Introduction of the day’s activities.
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