Best Practice: Conducting meaningful heart to heart discussions with firm attorneys and staff
Asked and Answered
By John W. Olmstead, MBA, Ph.D, CMC
Q. I am the sole owner of a 12 attorney firm in downtown Chicago. With staff we have a total of 23 people in the firm. Managing people is my toughest challenge. I am having problems with people not following firm policy and doing what they should not be doing. It is driving me crazy. What should I do? I am interested in your thoughts?
A. Tell them to stop. Seriously. As owner of your firm you can't beat around the bush and be sheepish concerning your expectations concerning desired performance and behavior in the office. Confront the performance or behavioral problem immediately. Manage such problems in real time. Don't wait for the annual performance review and don't treat serious problem as a "self-improvement" effort. Tell them how you feel about the performance or behavioral issue, the consequences for failure to resolve the issue, your timeline for resolving the issue, and the follow-up schedule that you will be using to follow-up and monitor the issue. If they must resolve the performance or behavioral issue in order to keep their job tell them so. They may need this level of confrontation to give them the strength to be able to deal with their issues.
Being a wimp does not help you or them. Tell them like it is and conduct a heart-to-heart discussion. You will be glad you did.
P.S. It gets easier with practice!
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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.
Member Comments (3)
Unless you have a human resource or management background, I would just hire someone who does to handle managing people.
You must want to lead people if you expect them to follow you. Olmstead's advice is right on the money -- but what if the lawyer does not want to do the hard work of management? Then Natalie's suggestion should be taken to heart. Hire someone, even on a part-time basis, to take over the "management" if you don't want to do it yourself.
Don't forget to inject a high dose of the ethical considerations that differentiate the practice of law from other businesses. Most attorneys employ assistants in their law practice. Such assistants include secretaries, investigators, interns and paralegals. These assistants act on behalf of the attorney in carrying out the attorney’s professional services. Every attorney must make reasonable efforts to give these assistants appropriate instruction and supervision concerning the ethical aspects of their employment, particularly as regards the obligation not to disclose information relating to the representation of any particular client. In law firms, lawyers with managerial authority must make all reasonable efforts to establish internal policies and procedures which are designed to provide reasonable assurance that the non-lawyers in the firm will act in a way compatible with the applicable Rules of Professional Conduct.