April 5, 2007
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News & Views
LAW FIRM MANAGERS REVEAL ROLES, PRIORITIES, AND COMPENSATION
Developed especially for this issue of ALA Currents and copyrighted by Altman Weil Inc.
For more information, visit Altman Weil’s Web site.
By James Wilber
jswilber@altmanweil.com
The Altman Weil 2007 Senior Leadership Survey for Law Firms has just been released,
providing results on law firm leadership roles, priorities, and compensation for lawyer and
non-lawyer management positions.
Management Roles
In U.S. firms, 93 percent of lawyer-managers (including Managing Partners, law firm Chairs, and
Presidents) report that they maintain client contact and responsibility in addition to fulfilling
management roles. Their time is allocated as follows: 35 percent on firm management, 10
percent on business development, and 45 percent on the practice of law. The amount of time
spent on management varies in direct proportion to firm size, with those in the largest firms
(130 or more lawyers) spending 70 percent of their time on firm management, 15 percent on
business development, and 10 percent practicing law.
“We think it’s important for law firm Managing Partners to nurture and build relationships
with clients,” said Altman Weil Principal Tom Clay. “It’s not a good idea for a firm to have a
leader who is divorced from client contact. And maintaining those client relationships will
make for a softer landing when he or she transitions back to full-time practice after the
leadership tenure ends.”
Strategic Guidance
Fifty-five percent of leaders report having the guidance of a business or strategic plan to focus
their leadership and management efforts. Again, the likelihood of having a strategic plan increases
proportionately with firm size – up to 93 percent for firms with 130 lawyers or more.
“Having a clearly defined, strategic plan is the single greatest tool for a law firm leader who
wants to be effective,” said Tom Clay.
Top Priorities
When asked about key areas of responsibility, all participating lawyer-managers ranked firm
profitability first overall, followed by firm organization, and strategic planning. Managing Partners
in firms with 130 or more lawyers had different priorities, naming mergers and acquisitions as the
top priority, followed by geographic expansion, and firm profitability.
All non-lawyer managers (Executive Directors, Administrators, and Chief Operating Officers)
ranked their key responsibilities as: personnel management first, followed by facilities/equipment
management, and office technology. Those priorities were identical in firms with more than 130
attorneys.
Compensation
The survey reports that median total compensation for Managing Partners in 2006 was $500,000.
The median for Managing Partners at firms with 130 or more lawyers was $725,000.
Non-lawyer managers received total compensation worth a median $155,000 annually, while
those in the 130+ lawyer category received $450,000. In firms with 25 or more lawyers, top
administrator compensation fell between that of the lowest paid partner and the average partner,
while in smaller firms the administrator earned less than the lowest paid partner.
Job Satisfaction
When asked about their major sources of satisfaction, top lawyers most often said having a role in
the success of the firm gave them satisfaction. Administrative managers valued the authority and
autonomy of their roles most highly.
On the flip side, Managing Partners complained most often of two things: a lack of cooperation
from their partners and time constraints imposed by the job. Administrators also named lack of
lawyer cooperation as their chief source of dissatisfaction.
About the Survey
The Altman Weil 2007 Senior Leadership Survey for Law Firms (formerly the Managing Partner and
Executive Director Survey) is based on data collected from 267 law firms from November 2006
through January 2007. The survey is available from
Altman Weil Publications.
SURVEY: SENIOR EXECUTIVES SEEK WORK-LIFE FLEXIBILITY
By Phyllis Weiss Haserot
A mid-2006 survey by the Association of Executive Search Consultants (AESC) of 1,311
senior executives globally, mostly age 35-54, found a strong desire for more work-life flexibility
for themselves. They (55 percent) went as far as to say they were likely to turn down a
promotion if it threatened to reduce what balance they had currently. Other key findings include:
- Work-life balance considerations are critical to decisions to stay with or join a company
said 87 percent of respondents.
- While 50 percent had considered taking a sabbatical at some time, only 7 percent of their
employers had sabbatical policies.
- Work-life balance has worsened in the last five years for 46 percent of respondents.
- Only 7.5 percent said their companies had a program to improve work-life balance.
Implications
Senior Vice President of global human resources at American Management Association Manny
Avramadis observed a clear trend in the last five years of executives’ asking about work-life issues,
a formerly taboo subject in those ranks. It’s not unusual for candidates interviewing to ask about
flexibility in scheduling, he reported. That is a good time to exert leverage; the supply of experienced
executives in the 35-50 age range is smaller than the cohort over 50. They are becoming more
difficult to find and retain.
This means the winds of change are blowing. Employment retention experts advise that since
one size does not fit all, companies should train their leaders both on the issues of flexibility and
how to implement policies effectively. Given the need to address a range of issues and needs of
people at various levels and age groups, firms should have a flexibility expert who can see to it that
senior executives are treated as individuals and arrange schedules in ways that benefit both the
individual and the firm.
Flexibility can be built into schedules with telecommuting, minimizing travel, vacation policies
(some firms insist that executives and professionals take their vacation time), and sabbaticals, for
example. In some cases, people can be offered a trade-off of some reduction in compensation in
exchange for more personal time.
While there may be the wish to treat these findings as challenges only presented by a thriving
economy, both demographics and the attitudes about life and work indicate a more permanent shift,
certainly among the younger generations, but also increasingly among the Baby Boomers, ages 50
and over. Those organizations that devote the attention to get it right on flexibility will become the
preferred destination for talented and needed executives and professionals who rightly insist on
sanity in their lives.
© Phyllis Weiss Haserot, 2006. All rights reserved.
Phyllis Weiss Haserot is the president of Practice Development Counsel, a business development
and organizational effectiveness consulting and coaching firm working with law firms for more than 20
years. A special focus is on the profitability of improving inter-generational relations and transitioning
planning for baby boomer senior partners (*Next Generation, Next Destination*). Phyllis is the author of
The Rainmaking Machine (Thomson/West). E-mail her at:
pwhaserot@pdcounsel.com, and visit her
Web site and blog.
Management Innovations
URGENT: ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE
To manage change successfully, author and Harvard Business School Professor
John Kotter says organizations need to improve in eight specific ways: They must
create a sense of urgency, build guiding teams, get the vision right, communicate for
buy-in, empower action, produce short-term wins, never let up, and make change stick.
"That formula has proven to be both a good way to conceptualize the process and a
useful action plan," said Kotter.
If there is one place to focus, it’s creating a sense of urgency, convincing people
they're facing a dire problem and must do something about it now. Leaders routinely
think their people understand how important it is to solve this problem.
"But when I talk to people two levels down in the organization," Kotter said, "I
discover that the sense of urgency is about one-fifth of what it should be." And the
ones who do see the problem clearly often point to someone else in the organization.
"Their personal sense of urgency is often zero."
The people at the top may think there’s a big sense of urgency, but dig down and
you discover it’s not nearly high enough to sustain change through the whole process.
"Without an organization-wide sense of urgency, it’s like trying to build a pyramid on a
foundation of empty shoeboxes."
Management Consulting News
CUSTOMER-DRIVEN INNOVATION
Want to tap into an almost endless source of ideas for new offerings and processes that
will differentiate you from your competition? Attract customers who see themselves as
connoisseurs or experts in your field. Patricia Seybold, author of "Outside Innovation: How
Your Customers Will Co-Design Your Company's Future," studied more than 30 companies
worldwide that harnessed customer-led innovation to become industry leaders. The one thing
they had in common was a vibrant online customer community. Each company encouraged
customers who used the sites to compare notes and obtain support and acknowledgment
from their peers, and asked for their best ideas, suggestions, even product designs. In return,
customers expected top vendor executives to value their input. Specialty retailer Karmaloop,
for example, allows its hip customers to spot new fashion trends, model the clothes, engage
in guerrilla marketing, sell the company's gear, even create their own clothing designs and
peddle them on the company's "Kasbah" e-market.
"Customers are itching to help design better products and services that will help them –
and thousands of others like them – get things done," said Seybold. Smart executives are
getting in front of this "engaged customer" parade in order to provide the leadership, tools,
and resources to let their companies reap the rewards of customer-led innovation.
Optimise, February 2007
Building Buy-In
GENERATING IDEAS
By Paul Trout
Tracy Thirion is the Owner of Bamboo Worldwide, an experiential branding agency. She describes
her profession as one that creates “a world around a unique brand persona that is both introspective
and outward looking to the consumer.” We recently caught up with Thirion to discuss her ideas and
find out how professionals within organizations should think strategically to create support, and how
one must “let go” to build true buy-in.
Q: So how much of what you do relates to ideas?
A: Everything.
Q: I would love to know what your definition of an idea is.
A: I define an idea as being a theme or concept that serves as a foundation for action.
Q: Can you expand on that?
A: I think that ideation is part of everyday life. The problem is most of us do not have the
luxury of enough time to let things digest or understand their potential. Most of the time we
have to look at low-hanging fruit and what is logical and easier to execute than what is ideal
and potentially more dynamic and innovative. Particularly in Western cultures, there’s a more
competitive business environment that has valued ‘doing’ more than ‘thinking.’
Q: What tools do you use when clients say: “I really need to generate some good ideas.
I’m stuck; our company doesn’t know where to go.”
A: The first step is to define the problem and the objective before you start problem-solving.
When you think about coming up with a good idea, if you define the problem accurately with your
team, you can get to a stronger set of ideas and build from there.
For instance, if a company says, “we need to have more loyal customers,” you might dig more
with your team to determine the real problem. You might ask whether the real problem is customer
loyalty or that the company needs products that are more relevant to the customer base to keep
them engaged.
Q: So anyone in the company who comes up with an idea should start at the same place?
A: If you have an idea and you think it solves a problem for the company, I would start by asking
myself two questions: “Is this problem a strategic issue for the company?” and “How can I connect this
idea to a strategic issue?” If it does, then you can begin to find cheerleaders inside the company to
support you.
Q: What about when cheerleaders support you, but your Managing Partner still has not bought
the idea?
A: When you’re in a certain level in a hierarchy and you can’t go over someone’s head and sell
upward, you have to figure out other ways to build buy-in. You go through a different process.
Sometimes you feel you are doing all the right things to talk to upper management to keep them
excited in terms of internal videos and internal party announcements and newsletters and things like
that, but often you need to be more aggressive in generating internal buzz.
Q: Why are good ideas not implemented and conversely, why are bad ideas implemented
sometimes, in your opinion?
A: Ego, politics, and sometimes a lack of collaboration or a lack of resources. There are all sorts
of reasons but those are the big buckets for me. Either there’s a big idea that didn’t have enough
resources behind it so it just fizzled, or it was just an idea spark, or there wasn’t enough collaboration
to get everyone else on board, or the politics of someone owning an idea or politics of an idea
happening were just too inconvenient for a company or a group.
Ego is tied to politics and collaboration and resources. Ego is probably the big one, in terms of who
came up with the idea, in terms of who executes the idea, in terms of who will look good if this idea
comes through. All of those things affect how many resources you get; they also affect collaboration
and whether people will play nice together.
Q: So ego plays the largest role. It’s important for anyone who is introducing an idea into an
organization to consider that bucket first.
A: Yes, I think so. If you’re selling an idea to someone who is really difficult, you have to make it
their idea. And if you can get group ownership of an idea, it’s easier to sell that idea to a difficult person.
If you can have lots people of supporting an idea then get the person with the big ego to contribute
some insight or build on to the idea, it’s a lot easier to make it happen.
Q: So a key then is to not make ideas personal within a company. A person should say, “it’s a group idea,”
continuing to solicit feedback so they build buy-in to the idea and it gets larger, and larger, and larger and eventually
becomes unstoppable at some point.
A: There always has to be someone who is the champion but being a champion is different than being the
creator. Someone has to take responsibility for pushing an idea through but that idea should and could be built by
lots of different people. That’s when you lose collaboration: when you’re not willing to bend because you have ego
and ownership of one particular idea and you’re not letting it change or be molded by the rest of the group.
Paul Trout is a Partner with Akina – a firm that helps clients improve their sales, marketing,
and leadership effectiveness. This column is an excerpt from a book he is writing on Building Buy-In.
He encourages readers to submit case studies, learnings, or questions about Building Buy-In, which
may become part of the book and appear in a future column. Contact him via
e-mail or by phone at (312) 224-8028.
Peer Points
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professionals who staff this help desk explore resources and share information about hot law-office management
topics like the one addressed here. If you have a question, call ALA Management SolutionsSM at (847) 267-1252 or
e-mail infocentral@alanet.org.
JOB SHARING ADVICE FOR ADMINISTRATORS AND HR MANAGERS
I’m looking into job sharing at my firm. Can you provide resources to help me determine
whether or not this would be good for us?
The ALA Legal Management Resource Center (LMRC) has
articles from associations, consulting firms and government agencies, as well as ALA sources. Log in using your ALA
username and password for access to all ALA Members-only materials. Enter “job sharing” in the search box to review
results from the Human Resources Management content area.
The U.S. Department of Labor offers
valuable information on job sharing.
SHRM, the Society for Human Resource Management, provides the following white papers, magazine articles
and more resources on this topic. Please note that these articles are available for SHRM members only.
These sample job sharing policies are from:
The Law
Society of Alberta, CA, offers guidelines for law firms considering alternative work arrangements.
These articles pertain to successful job sharing, and include situations in law firms:
Special Note: ALA members have free access to the ALA Reference Desk. Send any question on legal
management here. Staff will conduct
personal research on each question.
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