Anita Wynne is a Director and Co-Founder of beststart HUMAN RESOURCES.
Her HR experience incorporates 5 years in the retail sector at Marks & Spencer, one and half years in manufacturing with GEC Marconi Avionics and 6 years in investment/ professional firms culminating in being a Vice President at JPMorgan.

Her more recent focus has allowed her to combine her broad sector experience of HR in blue chip names with knowledge of best practice in both small and large companies and issues at all levels of an organisation, including law firms.

One of the greatest challenges facing Partners in law firms today appears to me to be the pressure placed upon them to be “Super Partners”.  No longer can a professional, highly technical Partner expect to be left to beaver away in a corner behind mountains of files earning large fees for the Firm.   Instead, to at minimum survive, Firms need Partners to be visionary thinkers, strategic planners, business developers, marketers, external ambassadors and people managers.  As I don’t see many partners wandering around with their underpants on the outside of their trousers, I think it is a tall order that few can live up to.  So what can firms do to help equip their existing Partners for these new demands?

Many Partners will have been made Partners because of their technical capability and most will have received little training or support in people management, business development and strategic thinking.  However, that does not mean that they do not have the potential to be good, the issue is that they are unlikely to be good at, or have the time to do, everything.  As a team of Partners, they should work as such, identifying who has an interest and a potential skill in each of the demands and then play to each one’s strengths allocating additional responsibilities along these lines.   How this works in practice will depend on the size of the Firm but it is not unreasonable to visualize a Firm where people management responsibilities are given to a number of Partners who have skills or enjoy this whilst marketing the Firm’s services and attending business development activities are carried out by others.

As these roles will be new for many, Partners should not feel that they are “too senior” for training.  We would all probably welcome someone to share our issues with, talk through solutions, offer advice and provide objective feedback and that is the type of support that can be critical in helping Partners develop.  This support can be provided by a range of professionals and can be essential in not only providing some of the knowledge but helping Partners to use their natural instincts and skills to best effect.

In my experience, however, the main preventer of Partners achieving these new roles is time or should I say the lack of it.  In many cases, they are still expected to generate the same level of fees in addition to these responsibilities.  These are usually time consuming in their own right and few Partners sit around twiddling their thumbs with copious amounts of spare time.  So without being able to create extra hours, how can this balance be addressed?  Firms should consider defining the role of the Partner and ensuring that responsibilities are divided amongst the team according to talent, this may include relooking at Partners’ fee earning targets.  Every Partner looking at how they spend their time each day can often also be enlightening - how much time is wasted through distractions, how is modern communication methods helping or hindering them?  Then tools being adopted which help Partners to delegate and use their precious time effectively.

I don’t believe that a “Super Partner” can only be found in fantasy comic books, with the rethinking of the traditional role, appropriate support and open mindedness, they could be seen soon in a Firm near you.

Developing tomorrow's leaders today was the focus for the group of partners from across the network attending the recent LawNet strategy and leadership masterclass designed to place law firm leadership development in the context of the Legal Services Act.

According to estimates, less than 20% of the 11,000 law firms in the country have tackled their management and leadership structures and many are being run in exactly the same way as 10 years ago. The partnership model leads to management by committee and vast numbers of firms have ageing partners with no succession planning or exit strategies. More importantly, many have little understanding of the skills required to lead and manage a modern law firm.

Making the transition from exceptional fee earner to an exceptional leader is not an organic process.

LawNet is helping its members address these issues. Firms from LawNet in the UK and the Eurojuris network across Europe, heard from a panel of four leading industry strategists, including Robert Mowbray and Andrew Hedley during a two day residential programme held last week on financial well being, law firm strategy, business development and leadership.

The masterclass was part of LawNet’s specialist Strategic Leadership and Management Programme (SLMP) launched last year. Open to all law firms, not just LawNet members, the course was designed for both existing and up and coming partners, to address some of the leadership and management issues firms face today.

Attacking costs, increasing revenue, strategic planning, people development and differentiation in a crowded market place were some of the big issues covered during the course. Delegates heard from some of the best and most talented strategic practitioners in the legal sector, each focussed on providing practical, easy to implement strategic tools for delivering positive change to their firms.

John Thomas, CEO of LawNet, who led the programme said that it had given the delegates the ammunition to further drive change in their firms ensuring they remain competitive in the challenging times ahead.

A further programme is planned for the Autumn and is proving very popular with firms as they strive for excellence in management.

Leadership is something no firm can afford to ignore.