Tag Archives: Harvard Business Review

LESSONS FROM THE BUSINESS WORLD

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The current issue of the Harvard Business Review has an article that every big law leader should read, “Manage Your Work, Manage Your Life,” by Boris Groysberg and Robin Abrahams. Unfortunately, few law firm managing partners will bother.

It’s not that big law leaders are averse to thinking about their firms in business terms. To the contrary, the legal profession has imported business-type concepts to create the currently prevailing model. Running firms to maximize simple metrics — billables, leverage ratios, and hourly rates — has made many equity partners rich.

The downside is that the myopic focus on near-term revenue growth and current profits comes at a price that most leaders prefer to ignore. Values that can be difficult to quantify often get sacrificed. One example is the loss of balance between an individual’s professional and personal life.

Looking at the same things differently

The HBR article contradicts a popular narrative, namely, that balancing professional and personal demands requires constant juggling. Over a five-year period, the authors surveyed more than 4,000 executives on how they reconciled their personal and professional lives. The results produced a simple recommendation: Rather than juggling to achieve “work-life balance,” treat each — work and life — with the same level of focused determination.

The most successful and satisfied executives (they’re not mutually exclusive descriptors) make deliberate choices about what to pursue in each realm as opportunities present themselves. In other words, they think about life as it unfolds.

According to the authors, the executives’ stories “reflect five main themes: defining success for yourself, managing technology, building support networks at work and home, traveling or relocating selectively, and collaborating with your [home] partner.”

Professional success

Defining professional success is the key foundational step and not everyone agrees on its elements. That’s no surprise.

But some gender distinctions are fascinating. For example, 46 percent of women equated professional success with “individual achievement,” compared to only 24 percent of men. Likewise, more women than men (33 percent v. 21 percent) defined success as “making a difference.” The gender gap was even greater for those defining success as “respect from others” (25 percent of women v. 7 of percent men) and “passion for the work” (21 percent of women v. 5 percent of men). (Respondents could choose more than one element in defining success, so the totals exceed 100 percent.)

On the other hand, more men than women thought that success was “ongoing learning and development and challenges” (24 percent of men v. 13 percent of women), “organizational achievement” (22 percent v. 13 percent), “enjoying work on a daily basis” (14 percent v. 8 percent). More men also saw success in financial terms (16 percent) than did women (4 percent).

Personal success

For men and women, the most widely reported definition of personal success was “rewarding relationships” (59 percent of men; 46 percent of women). (Surprised that more men than women picked that one?) Most other definitions revealed few gender-based differences (“happiness/enjoyment,” “work/life balance,” “a life of meaning/feeling no regrets”).

But big gender gaps again emerged for those defining personal success as “learning and developing” and “financial success.” In fact, zero women equated “financial success” with personal success, but 12 percent of men did.

Putting it all together

After defining success, the next steps seem pretty obvious: master technology, develop support networks, move when necessary, and make life a joint venture with your partner if you have one. But few law firm leaders create a climate that encourages such behavior. Short-term profits flow more readily from environments that a recent Wall Street Journal headline captured: “When The Boss Works Long Hours, Do We All Have To?” In most big law firms, the short answer is yes, even if the boss doesn’t.

In general, the HBR strategy amounts to tackling life outside your career with the same dedication and focus that you apply to your day job.

A few examples:

Are you becoming a prisoner of technology that facilitates 24/7 access to you? Then occasionally turn it off and spend real time with the people around you.

Are you concerned that you’re missing too many family dinners? Then treat them with the same level of importance that you attach to a client meeting.

These and other ideas aren’t excuses to become a slacker. After all, the interview respondents are high-powered business executives. Rather, they comprise a way to anticipate and preempt problems. As one survey respondent said, people tend to ignore work/life balance until “something is wrong. But,” the authors continue, “that kind of disregard is a choice, and not a wise one. Since when do smart executives assume that everything will work out just fine? If that approach makes no sense in the boardroom or on the factory floor, it makes no sense in one’s personal life.”

That’s seems obvious. But try telling it to managing partners in big law firms who are urging younger colleagues to get their hours up.

Here’s a thought: maybe attorneys should record how they spend their hours at home, too.

AS CLIENTS SPEAK, WHO’S LISTENING?

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Many big law firms pursue a path of mindless growth through mergers and lateral hiring, but few managing partners seem to question the wisdom of that strategy. Growth for its own sake gets protective cover in false rhetoric about serving clients. But contrary data continue to accumulate on the subject of what clients really want.

Challenging traditional views

Two recent articles ought to send a chill down the spine of big law partners everywhere. The first is a recent article for the Harvard Business Review Blog, “Why the Law Firm Pedigree May Be a Thing of the Past,” by Dina Wang and Firoz Dattu.

As the title suggests, the authors argue that clients are increasingly searching for value and efficiency at the expense of big law firms that rely on their brand alone to attract and retain business at premium rates. Insofar as the authors believe that truly elite law firms may be in mortal danger, I think they overstate their case. The most sophisticated clients with the most complex problems will continue to seek top legal talent. Much of that talent will reside in elite firms that will retain their stature, provided they create environments that appeal to the best young lawyers.

But it’s more difficult to quibble with the authors’ survey of general counsel at 88 major companies. In matters that were high-stakes (but not necessarily bet-the-company), 74 percent were less likely to use an Am Law 20 or Magic Circle firm than a less-pedigreed firm, provided they achieved legal cost savings of at least 30 percent. (The article suggests that the actual cost savings in such situations could exceed 60 percent.)

Follow the money

Now couple that finding with these recent Counsel-Link survey results:

“Among the firms with 201-500 lawyers, referred to as ‘Large Enough’ firms in this report, the share of U.S. legal fees paid by clients has grown from 18% three years ago (July 1, 2009 – June 30, 2010) to 22% in the trailing 12 months that ended June 30, 2013.”

Who’s lunch are the “Large Enough” firms eating? The megafirms’:

“Simultaneously, the share of U.S. legal fees paid by clients with more than 750 lawyers, the ‘Largest 50,’ has gone in the opposite direction — from 26% to 20% over the same period.”

The shift is even more dramatic in higher fee legal work: “‘Large Enough’ firms have almost doubled the share of high fee litigation matters — those matters generating outside counsel fees totaling $1 million or more (High Fee Work). ‘Large Enough’ firms grew their portion of U.S. High Fee Work from 22% three years ago to 41% in the trailing 12 months.”

Disruption as a powerful market force

How are the “Large Enough” firms doing it? Here’s a partial answer: “‘Large Enough’ firms billed nearly twice as much under alternative fee arrangements as did the ‘Largest 50’ firms over the trailing 12 months.”

None of this should come as a surprise. For years, law firm management consultants have been saying that there are no economies of scale in the practice of law once a firm reaches about 100 attorneys. In fact, maintaining the infrastructure to support continuous expansion at the largest firms actually produces diseconomies.

Embedded interests die hard

Firms engaged in aggressive lateral hiring and law firm mergers might be adding top line revenues, but most are also adding disproportionately more costs. According to the 2013 Hildebrandt Consulting Client Advisory, 60 percent of law firm managing partners said (in an anonymous survey) that their lateral hires had been financial successes. If 40 percent are willing to admit to deploying a strategy that is “break even at best,” imagine how worse the reality must be.

Perhaps the accumulating intelligence about clients’ actual desires and the true costs (both financial and cultural) of a growth strategy will cause some managing partners pursuing that strategy to pause. Maybe they’ll reconsider the construction of global behemoths that serve their own egos but little else. Don’t count on it.