Law Firm Practice Groups

Asked and Answered

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

Q. I am a partner and a member of our three-member executive committee. Our firm is a 25-attorney litigation defense firm in Kansas City, Missouri. We handle matters such as personal injury, medical malpractice, professional malpractice, products liability, and health care law. Each attorney handles and manages his or her own cases and operates in isolation of the other partners in the firm. Other than attending a quarterly partnership meeting there is little interaction among the partners. We have been discussing whether we should form practice groups. We would appreciate your thoughts.

A. Practice groups can be excellent vehicles for enhancing communications, attorney and staff skill development and training, practice management, and marketing. Practice groups should share the mission and vision of the firm as well as goals of enhancing services to clients by developing the skills of the members of the group in a particular legal specialty or industry niche and developing business for that particular group. Practice groups should not operate as isolated islands but should be structured and integrated with the firm. Specifically, functional practice groups should:

• Maximize cross-selling opportunities between practice groups.
• Develop a cohesive “firm-first” attitude that we are all in this together.

Practice groups can be structured around legal specialties such as personal injury, product liability, and professional malpractice. Other practice groups can be structured around industry niches such as energy, health care, etc. In cases where a firm has a very large client a practice group can established for that specific client.

While practice groups can have their advantages, I have found that in many firms they are dysfunctional. They do not meet on a consistent basis, have no goals, or direction, poor leadership, and seem to accomplish little. To be effective practice groups must:

1. Be setup by the executive committee with specific goals and have a written charter developed by the executive committee.
2.  Effective leaders should be appointed by the executive committee to serve as chair of the practice group assigned. Specific roles should be identified as well as expectations.
3. Practice group chair leadership effectiveness should be a factor in the compensation system.
4. Practice groups should have written strategic plans that integrate with the firm’s strategic plan.
5. Practice groups should meet monthly.

I believe a practice group would be a logical direction for your firm. You might want to start slow and try a “pilot” test group where there appears to be significant interest and see how it develops. 

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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 and author of The Lawyers Guide to Succession Planning published by the ABA. 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.