Vol. 29, No. 4 #5 (August 2006). Choosing Your Managing Partner: Common Mistakes.

• Author: By Henry Dahut

Wyoming Bar Journal

2006.

Vol. 29, No. 4 #5 (August 2006).

Choosing Your Managing Partner: Common Mistakes

WYOMING LAWYERAugust 2006/Vol. 29, No. 4Choosing Your Managing Partner: Common MistakesBy Henry Dahut

Choosing the next managing partner has historically been a knee-jerk response in most firms. Usually the choice is between either trying to fill the void by promoting the next best rainmaker, or going with a firm workhorse or a partner with particularly strong administrative and financial skills. Some choose a copycat of the previous managing partner. But, filling the most important leadership position in your firm is not a decision to be made lightly or frivolously. Finding a new leader with the right combination of clout and charisma to reshape your firm is a tremendous challenge which is critically important to the firm's future. Don't fall into the common trap of seeing the incoming managing partner as merely a replacement of the old one. The Copycat

The copycat works on filling the big guy's shoes by maintaining the status quo. A few personality changes here - a tuck, a fold - and soon everyone believes the "Great One" has been resurrected. Or so it seems. But, replacing a managing partner with a copycat is destined to fail. Cloning personalities is impossible, even in laboratory rats. The reality is that only the predecessor can be the predecessor - and that person has left the building. Pretending that his persona lives on through his successor is unhealthy, and it will polarize a firm.

The Super Administrator

Perhaps the most distracting of management personalities is the super administrator. For this partner, great management means great administration. Leadership is measured by the proper allocation of yellow-pad spending or the cost savings found in recycling case folders. Like an office manager on steroids, this personality busily works at forming new committees, rewriting hiring policies, penciling budgets, and relocating water coolers.

When firms choose a super administrator to lead them, at first everyone is relieved because someone has finally taken control of the details. But, people soon realize that the changes being made are superficial and, in some cases, downright childish.

This type of managing partner tends to apply Band-Aids to firm-wide problems, rather than getting at the root of the problem. Super administrators rarely rock the boat, and their own style of leadership (or lack of it) will not bring about the hard changes that are fundamental to...