Best Practice: How law firm administrators can achieve success

Asked and Answered

By John W. Olmstead, MBA, Ph.D, CMC

Q. I am the firm administrator with a 27 attorney firm in Detroit. We have 15 partners and 12 associates. I have been with the firm and in this position for eight months. I replaced another administrator who was terminated because the partners did not believe he lived up to their expectations. This is my first law firm and I want to be successful. I feel that I am struggling and am not sure of my priorities. I would appreciate your thoughts.

A. 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 improve performance. This requires selling ideas to partners in the firm and having them be accepted and implemented. To succeed, administrators must achieve three outcomes:

• Provide new solutions or methods
• Achieve measurable improvement by adopting the solutions
• Sustain the improvements over time

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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.