Best Practice: Frustrations of a law firm administrator

Asked and Answered By John W. Olmstead, MBA, Ph.D, CMC Q. I am a law firm administrator with a 27 attorney firm in the southwest. This is my first law firm experience. I have been in my position for 8 months and am frustrated. Could you share your thoughts: A. During the past decade the roles of legal administrators have expanded dramatically. Today legal administrators can be found in firms with less than 10 attorneys. In larger firms, as well as many smaller firms, roles have shifted from day-to-day administration to firm wide leadership. A few large firm administrators are functioning as true CEOs. Large firm administrators are devoting more of their time and attention to strategic vs. administrative matters. Recent studies suggest that, in firms with more than 50 attorneys,there is an an uplifting of the role of principal administrators. Roles that have grown dramatically in recent years are strategic planning and practice management. Administrator’s roles in large law firms are no longer restricted to administrative matters. They are expanding and they include partner compensation, associate management, client and matter intake, lateral recruiting, and change management. While administrators have made great strides in terms of role and acceptance during the past decade, administrators in firms of all sizes still remain frustrated with:

• Poor, slow, and ineffective decision making
• Ineffective firm leadership and governance
• Internal politics and infighting
• Micromanaging
• Management by committee
• Lack of influence and ability to effect change

Few things are as important to an administrator’s future as that person’s ability to influence the decision-making process and effect change.  Skills and competencies are important but so are results. In order to transcend to the next level and enhance their value to their law firms, administrators must help their firms actually effect positive changes and improvements and improve performance. This requires selling ideas to partners in the firm and having them accept and actually implemented. To succeed administrators must achieve three outcomes:

• Provide new solutions or methods
• The firm must achieve measurable improvement in its results by adopting the solutions
• The firm must be able to sustain the improvements over time

Click here for articles on other topics Click here for our blog postings on partnership and governance 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.