Leaders
| Author | Randall Kiser |
| Profession | International authority on attorney and law firm performance |
| Pages | 237-268 |
9
Leaders
Leaders embody and advance an organization’s principles, stan-
dards, and aspirations. ey motivate people to honor, animate,
and improve an organization’s distinct features—its vision, values,
practices, and advantages. In the broadest sense, as Microsoft CEO
Satya Nadella explains, leaders are the curators of an organiza-
tion’s culture.1 ey are responsible for its care, enhancement, and
perpetuation.
Law rm leaders generally are not prepared to be the curators of
their rm’s culture. ey usually are selected for their seniority or
success in building a practice, not for their leadership skills.2 Many
are selected because they are self-condent, tall, powerful, talk-
ative, or dominant.3 e convention of selecting successful lawyers
1 Nadella, Satya. (2017). Hit refresh (p.100). New York: Harper Business.
2 Hayse, Roger. e role of leadership in law rm success or failure. e Remsen
Group. Reynolds, Kylie. (2013, December 20). Law rms give oce leader roles
to the next generation. San Francisco Daily Journal, p.3. See Innocenti, Natasha.
(2012, September). e next generation of law rm leaders. Law Practice Today.
(“Your best leaders may not be the biggest rainmakers or most senior people.
Have the courage and business sense to put your most capable leaders in the
most important leadership roles, including practice leadership.”)
3 See Tarakci, Murat, Greer, Lindred L., & Groenen, Patrick J. F. (2015, Novem-
ber). When does power disparity help or hurt group performance? Journal of
Applied Psychology, 101(3), 415. Bottger, P. C. (1984). Expertise and air time as
bases of actual and perceived inuence in problem-solving groups. Journal of
Applied Psychology, 69(2), 214–221. Botelho, Elena Lytkina, Powell, Kim Rosen-
koetter, Kincaid, Stephen, & Want, Dina. (2017, May-June). What sets successful
CEOs apart. Harvard Business Review. (“For example, high condence more
237
without demonstrated leadership skills has resulted in a “discon-
nect between qualities that enable lawyers to achieve a leadership
position and qualities that are necessary once they get there.”4
Law rm leaders often lack the experience, education, training,
foresight, vision, resilience, and communication skills necessary
to direct law rms and optimize the immense talents of their attor-
neys. Although the average large law rm generates gross revenue
exceeding $600 million and accommodates more than 800 attor-
neys, the development of law rm leaders is generally haphazard.5
Since partners must meet billable hour requirements, manage asso-
ciate attorneys, and generate new clients, law rms present “little or
no incentives or encouragement for them to build their leadership
skills or volunteer for early leadership experiences. e leadership
learning mode is therefore high risk and almost entirely sink-or-
s w i m .” 6 Under these circumstances, it is dicult for law rm leaders
to know how to protect, let alone enhance, a law rm’s culture.
Apart from their lack of preparation for law rm leadership
positions, many managing partners are reluctant to separate
themselves from their client relationships and assume full-time
leadership positions. Even when law rms aord leaders the oppor-
tunity to devote all of their time to leadership responsibilities, many
leaders are concerned about losing the nancial power and security
attendant to controlling a large book of business or are simply dis-
interested in full-time leadership.7 As Morton Pierce, the managing
than doubles a candidate’s chances of being chosen as CEO but provides no
advantage in performance on the job. In other words, what makes candidates
look good to boards has little connection to what makes them succeed in the
role.”)
4 Rhode, Deborah. (2011). What lawyers lack: Leadership. University of
St.omas Law Journal, 9(2), 476.
5 See Harris, Joanne. (2016, June 23). Revealed: Global 200 deliver £81 bn reve-
nue in 2015. e Lawyer. (2016, April 25). Firms ranked by revenue per lawyer.
e American Lawyer.
6 Westfahl, Scott. (2015). Learning to lead: Perspective on bridging the lawyer
leadership gap. In Normand-Hochman, Rebecca (Ed.). Leadership for law-
yers (p.80). Surrey, UK: Globe Law and Business Ltd. See Press, Aric. (2011,
November 22). e talent. e Am Law Daily.
7 See Giuliani, Peter A. (2008, December). Best practices for setting managing
partner pay. Law Practice, 34(8), 38. See Walker, Carol. (2002, April). Saving
your rookie managers from themselves. Harvard Business Review, p.97.
238 American Law Firms in Transition: Trends, Threats, and Strategies
partner of Dewey Ballantine who billed 3,200hours while leading
the rm in his “spare time,” commented, “Management is not my
passion.”8
Legal education does not provide the leadership training miss-
ing from law rms’ professional development programs and mini-
mized in their operations and incentives. Law schools, asserts Scott
Westfahl, director of Harvard Law School Executive Education, do
not show law students how to collaborate with colleagues, work
on teams, manage projects, and function as leaders.9 Nor do they
teach students the technical legal skills required to practice law. In
the early stages of their careers, therefore, lawyers “need to focus
most of their attention on building technical legal skills because
they did not learn them in law school. e attention this requires
crowds out the equally important building of professional skills
such as leadership.”10
Considering the lack of leadership training and incentives, it is
not surprising to discover that the quality of law rm leadership
is highly variable. Herb Rubenstein, the author of Leadership for
Lawyers, bluntly assesses leadership quality:
Lawyers think they are leaders, and good leaders, just because
they are lawyers. However, since law students receive no training
in leadership development and only a few, but growing number,
of continuing legal education courses teach leadership develop-
ment, there is a truth that our profession would hate to acknowl-
edge. at truth is that many lawyers are terrible leaders, or
worse yet, not leaders at all. In fact, most lawyers know so little
about leadership theory or good leadership practices, they don’t
have a clue how bad a leader they are.11
8 Koppel, Nathan. Big law rms try new idea: e true CEO. (2007, January 22).
e Wall Street Journal.
9 Westfahl, supra note 6.
10 Ibid.
11 Rubenstein, Herb. Why leadership development is such a hard sell in the legal
profession. See Rubenstein, Herb. (2008). Leadership for lawyers (2nd ed.).
Chicago: American Bar Association.
Leaders 239
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