Best Practice: Characteristics of successful Law firms: Basic building block No. 2

Asked and Answered By John W. Olmstead, MBA, Ph.D, CMC Last week I discussed the characteristics of successful law firms and introduced the basic building blocks that successful firms typically have in place. These are:

• Partner Relations
• Leadership
• Firm Management
• Partner Compensation
• Planning
• Client Service
• Marketing
• Last week we focused on partner relations as a core foundational building block.

The second basic building block is leadership. Successful firms have good leadership in place. This may be a single individual or a core group of individuals. Leadership does not always come from the formalized management structure of the firm. Leadership is one of the major problems facing law firms. Leaders are needed for managing partner posts, executive committee chairs, and practice group heads. Leadership behaviors include:

• Developing people
• Being able to influence others
• Encouraging teamwork
• Empowering people
• Using multiple options thinking
• Taking intelligent risks
• Being passionate about work
• Having a strong clear vision.
• Leadership skills will need to be included in compensation systems.

Seven traits of effective leaders include:

1. Make others feel important
2. Promote a vision
3. Follow the golden rule and establish trust
4. Admit mistakes
5. Criticize others only in private
6. Stay close to the action
7. Walk the talk.

Leadership is what makes things happen and propels the firm forward, facilitates new directions and attainment of strategic goals, and provides the firms the resiliency needed in today's challenging competitive climate. Law firms without leadership are easy to spot. They are the firms that are "stuck-in-a-rut", unable to reach agreement or consensus on new ideas, experiencing stagnating profitability, witnessing partner defections. Firm must pay attention to this key area and develop leaders for all roles mentioned above. I will address each of the other building blocks in upcoming postings. John W. Olmstead, MBA, Ph.D, CMC, (www.olmsteadassoc.com) is a past chair and member of the ISBA Standing Committee on Law Office Management and Economics. For more information on law office management please direct questions to the ISBA listserver, which John and other committee members review, or view archived copies of The Bottom Line Newsletters. Contact John at jolmstead@olmsteadassoc.com.