Successfully leading a law firm requires adopting a CEO mindset that is at odds with your lawyer brain. It can also mean sacrificing your own practice for the overall good of the firm. That’s the managing partner’s dilemma.
It’s lonely at the top — an inconvenient reality most managing partners feel but don’t want to admit.
Table of contents
- What Is the Managing Partner Dilemma?
- Eight Tips to Resolve the Managing Partner Dilemma
- 1. Invest in Leadership Training
- 2. Develop a CEO Mindset
- 3. Be Protective of Your Calendar and Intentional About Where You Spend Your Time
- 4. Become an Expert Delegator
- 5. Develop the Ability to Coalesce Partners
- 6. Scale Back Rainmaking
- 7. Have Candid Conversations With Other Managing Partners and CEOs
- 8. Always Be in Learning Mode
- Honing Leadership and Management Skills
- Read More from Wendy on Law Firm Leadership and Growth
What Is the Managing Partner Dilemma?
Being a great lawyer does not automatically equate to possessing the skills and abilities to successfully lead a law firm. In fact, the traits that make for a great attorney often create obstacles to effective leadership.
The best lawyers are driven, focused, champion issue-spotters who protect clients and businesses with a generous aversion to risk. They also face myriad pressures that keep their foot on the cortisol gas pedal and demand a super-human level of attention and effort. Muscle memory dictates that great lawyers channel their energy toward deadlines and client service, with nothing left to invest in management or a higher level of accountability.
So, Captain Cortisol is far from the ideal candidate for being a leader of a law firm, with its requirements of servant leadership, strategic thinking, effective communication, conflict resolving, cat-herding and big-picturing. In fact, the position of managing partner very much goes against the grain of everything good lawyers are taught and encouraged to do. What’s more, managing partners must often wade through the perfect storm of both running the firm and maintaining their practice.
This is why so many partners hesitate to volunteer for the job, and why those who find themselves at the head of the table struggle — usually in silence.
Eight Tips to Resolve the Managing Partner Dilemma
If you are a managing partner and my description hit a nerve, here are eight useful tips.
1. Invest in Leadership Training
Law school does not teach these critical skills, and they are rarely learned on the job. Effective leaders possess a strong skill set that allows them to make hard decisions and tolerate the risks associated with their position.
2. Develop a CEO Mindset
Again, a CEO mindset differs from a lawyer mindset and is rarely learned on the job. The good news is there are qualified professional coaches to guide you. Finding a good one can sometimes be a challenge, however, so proper vetting and finding a personality match are essential.
3. Be Protective of Your Calendar and Intentional About Where You Spend Your Time
Balancing administrative duties and lawyering responsibilities must be well-choreographed and tracked. Managing partners who allow themselves to engage in a daily tug-of-war of competing responsibilities will be ineffective and exhausted.
4. Become an Expert Delegator
Delegation is a challenge for most lawyers. After all, the work is high stakes and when your name is associated with a matter, you want to be sure it is managed well. Failure to delegate certain lawyering tasks and various administrative responsibilities can be disastrous.
Read: “Three Steps to Effective Delegation.”
5. Develop the Ability to Coalesce Partners
Herding cats is impossible. The only way to avoid this situation is to develop the skills necessary to build consensus and enforce accountability. These can include interpersonal communication skills, empathy, active listening, patience, critical thinking and negotiation (a skill that most lawyers already possess, but need to apply internally).
6. Scale Back Rainmaking
This is a big one. If the managing partner is also responsible for the lion’s share of origination in the firm, this puts both the MP and the firm at risk. No one has enough time to be an effective MP, top rainmaker and a good lawyer. Too many law firm leaders believe they can do it all, but something always gets sacrificed.
7. Have Candid Conversations With Other Managing Partners and CEOs
Seek out leaders in similar roles and avail yourself of much-needed support and camaraderie. Lawyers are proprietary by nature, so it may take time and practice before you are comfortable opening up versus reflexively keeping everything close to the vest. Realizing you are not the only one to carry the load, however, is immensely valuable.
8. Always Be in Learning Mode
The best leaders are learners, yet this feels contradictory to what is generally expected of lawyers — to be in knowing mode. To be an effective leader one must be nimble, curious and humble. To do otherwise is not beneficial to the firm.
Read: “Legal Leadership: Future Proof Your Law Firm.”
Honing Leadership and Management Skills
Law firms are, in fact, businesses, and must be led as such. It falls to the managing partner (or executive committee) to fulfill their fiduciary duty to their firm by positioning themselves as savvy executives. These executive skills are not automatic and must be carefully honed and strategically applied to run a successful firm.
Read More from Wendy on Law Firm Leadership and Growth
- “The 3 Most Common Conflicts in Law Firms and How to Resolve Them”
- “To Risk or Not to Risk? That Is the Question for Firm Leaders in 2024”
- “Legal Leadership: How to Future-Proof Your Law Firm”
- “Finding Your Law Firm’s Next Managing Partner”
- “Are You Dealing With Executive Functioning Disorder?”
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