6 Elements For Practice Group (and Practice Group Leader) Success

Practice management is the tool law firms need to address many of their most significant challenges of today, both externally and internally. Recently, I spoke with a firm’s management about training needs for their practice group leaders. They argued that they didn’t have enough good people for all of the leadership roles projected. I respectfully disagree. And that’s not bad news for anyone.

I’ve worked with nearly half of the AmLaw 200 on some aspect of their practice management structure. In my experience, most firms have enough leaders for these roles, as long as they have the right structure and incentives in place.

In most firms, effective practice management is critical to the firm’s strategy, profitability and overall success. As a managing partner and top leader in your firm, you can ensure the success of your practice groups and their leaders. Following are six of the most important elements that set them up for success.

How to Create a Successful Practice Group

Partner Buy-in to the Practice Management Approach

The most effective practice groups are empowered. It’s up to firm management to make the business case for empowered practice groups. The best business case provides a WIIFM – what’s in it for me – to the partners. What is in it for them? When partners operate within a strong practice group structure, they function as real teams – engaging and inspiring talent, leveraging resources efficiently, attracting better quality clients, and enhancing the firm’s profitability. Moreover, when a firm has strong buy-in, they don’t require a partner with a large book of business and forceful personality to lead the practice groups. Suddenly, there are many more viable leadership options.

However, partners cannot be expected to fully buy in to practice management if they do not know what will be expected of them, the practice leaders, and firm management under the new structure.  Partners are energized by practice management when they fully understand these connections and believe the firm strategy is compelling – not to mention that this is a more rewarding and collaborative way to practice.

Once partners buy in to the collective practice group goals, the job of a practice group leader (PGL) is not only much easier but much more enjoyable. It is then about harnessing a lot of great energy toward common goals, rather than reining in the autonomy of individual partners who are begrudgingly working toward group objectives.

Clear Roles and Responsibilities

In law firms, there can be a dismissive attitude toward job descriptions, roles and documentation as being overly corporate and bureaucratic. But, in fact, research shows that it is clarity of roles and responsibilities that drives performance in most organizations. For effective practice groups in law firms, we start by defining three main areas.

First, provide leaders with a thorough understanding of what is expected of them and what authority vs. responsibility they have. This means having a job description for each of these leadership roles, i.e., department heads, PGLs, industry or client team leaders. These job descriptions provide transparency so that the roles are understood firmwide.

Second, set clear and measurable expectations in order to drive the desired outcomes. Of course, not every practice group and practice leader can be expected to perform at the same level or achieve the same objectives. The role of the managing partner should be to work with each practice group leader to set a small number (no more than three) of realistic performance goals that are aligned with firm objectives, practice strengths and opportunities, and market realities.

Keep in mind that practice group performance and practice leader performance are not necessarily the same. A group may have certain goals and the leader may have different, and, perhaps, more confidential goals set by firm management. For example, you may have a practice group that has internal dissension issues that require significant practice leader time to resolve. Assuming the group leader does the right things to work on these issues, they would be rewarded for this, even if the group does not see an immediate improvement in areas like financial performance.

Third, clarify expectations for contributions to other groups or teams. Leaders and future leaders should work to develop others. For example, some firms specify the investment time that partners and associates are expected to put toward their primary practice group and any secondary industry or client teams to which they belong. Without this, the full weight of running the practice group falls on the PGL, who is typically one of the busiest partners in the group with a personal practice to maintain, as well. Moreover, the PGL has strengths in some areas and not in others.

It is important for the PGL to be able to delegate part of their role to other partners and that those partners will be involved in and committed to accomplishing these roles or tasks. This involvement, or shared leadership, helps ensure superior accomplishment by the practice group and creates greater partner buy-in to collaboration. Associates can also play important roles in the group’s success. They will only do so, though, if partners consistently model the desired shared leadership practices.

Alignment of Compensation Incentives to Support Group Performance

Regardless of what you discuss at firm retreats and partner meetings, partners will do what gets rewarded. When the reward structure primarily emphasizes individual performance, i.e., production and bonus generation, few will spend time on group activities, training and development, teamwork and other collaborative efforts.

Practice groups are most successful when lawyers put a significant part of their investment (non-billable) time toward group activities and implementing the group’s plans. This means that the compensation system should reward the activities involved in practice management. These include:

• Working toward the group’s business plan goals;
• Training and mentoring of junior professionals;
• Sharing work and resources;
• Working on group projects and targets;
• Developing new services or products;
• Innovating approaches to their area of work, etc.

Also, review the questions used in your annual partner compensation interviews. Ensure that you ask questions like:

• “What have you done to contribute to the practice group’s success?”
• “How have you supported others in the practice?”

But remember, despite reports to the contrary, measurement is not the magic panacea to improved performance. You need to ensure that investment time is properly acknowledged and “valued” or appreciated.  Lawyers want to feel like the time they spend is valuable and valued by the firm.  If we call it “non” billable or denigrate or fail to recognize it, few will want to invest in it.  Compensation questions like those above only serve to reinforce a holistic performance system.

Regular Practice Group Meetings

It is nearly impossible to have a truly cohesive practice group working toward goals together if it does not have regular meetings. Regular means at least once a month. Many times, I hear PGLs say that they feel like there are too many meetings or that people are not attending regularly so they cut back on the number of meetings. This is the wrong solution and a mistake. Practice group meetings are critical to group engagement and cohesion. If people don’t prioritize them and participate actively, something else is wrong.

First, ensure that your meetings are focused on the right things. The goal of the meetings is to make the members feel engaged, informed and valued. In the most effective meetings, members feel that the group can achieve synergies that surpass individual accomplishments. When properly executed, group meetings will enhance the engagement of group members, create greater cohesion, and set the stage for the implementation of the group’s plan.

However, to have an effective meeting requires a significant amount of prep time to ensure that the topics are of interest, that you have active participation, and that numerous individuals are speaking during the meeting. Regular practice group meetings are not about training or tactical implementation like the conference the practice group is organizing or speaking at next fall.  For more ideas for effective practice group meetings, see these blog posts one and two.

A High Functioning Practice Leadership Team

The firms with the most successful practice management structures have regular meetings with the PGLs and other related roles, i.e., industry team leaders, client team leaders, etc. In most firms, this practice leadership team meets at least quarterly for several hours. It may also be a day-long meeting.  These meetings provide a critical forum that allows leaders to:

• Share best practices;
• Discuss market and client intelligence;
• Explore new business and client service opportunities;
• Address common cross-group management issues.

The latter point, in today’s market, often relates to talent concerns, such as retention, training, mentoring, and diversity, equity and inclusion. It may also deal with the historic issues regarding conflict or financial management.

During these meetings, managing partners or firm chairs can also relate important firm developments on behalf of the Executive Committee and test the waters on strategic matters for which the buy-in and support from the practice leaders are needed. Although managing partners typically preside over these meetings, they should not degenerate into monologues. The most effective meetings are dynamic; structured to promote active participation by all practice leaders.

You can optimize this meeting by having one-quarter to one-third of the practice leaders present their annual goals or discuss other opportunities with the other members at each meeting. This has three critical objectives:

1. It helps group leaders to understand the key priorities of other groups and how they can support them;
2. It provides a level of accountability. As each leader presents their group’s goals and priorities, they are holding themselves and their group accountable to follow through.
3. It results in the inevitable discovery of cross-practice group opportunities and productive brainstorming.

I find that the leaders leave these meetings inspired and more connected to each other.  These regular meetings of all practice leaders with firm management also send the message that the practice leaders are truly an important part of firm management and they gain confidence that their contributions are important to the success of the firm.

Accountability to Firm Management

In addition to meetings of all practice leaders with firm management, managing partners should meet with practice leaders periodically to track progress against goals, address issues that may be affecting performance, discuss resource needs, and make sure their duties are being fulfilled according to plans. We recommend that managing partners have formal meetings with practice leaders quarterly so that impediments to performance goals can be minimized.

Managing partners should be visible and available to practice leaders in their locations on a regular basis. If you can’t physically walk the halls, do it virtually. This may mean bi-weekly virtual check-ins by video call with your practice leaders. It’s an opportunity to monitor progress, coach and offer guidance, troubleshoot, and simply lend a hand to the firm’s practice leaders as needed.

Managing partners must impose a level of accountability on their practice heads to not only motivate the desired behavior but also to demonstrate the firm’s commitment to high-performing groups and successful practice management. In return for high levels of empowerment, practice leaders are expected to be accountable for performance goals and metrics. This means having consequences for falling short.

A 2018 Harvard Business Review article, entitled “The Most Common Type of Incompetent Leader,” identified the “absentee” leader as the most damaging kind – worse than a nasty one. There are a significant number of practice leaders in law firms that do little in their roles. There is a huge opportunity cost to the law firm when a leader fails to perform, particularly in the midst of our current “war for talent” where having a “boss who cares” and “knows me” are driving factors in retention.

In addition to progress meetings, there are various ways that firms hold their leaders accountable. Some firms use an “upward review” where the group members and firm management provide feedback to the practice leader on their performance. This kind of feedback is critical to enable practice leaders to enhance their leadership effectiveness. Other firms go a step further, factoring the results into the leader’s compensation.

In the past, most firms shied away from dealing with an underperforming practice leader, not wanting to alienate the partner. But, today, law firms can’t afford to lose talented associates or cause other risk management or client issues. So, more firms are implementing 360-degree review processes and collecting feedback from all levels. This provides the hard data necessary to help coach a practice leader into better behaviors.

It has been our experience that most, if not all, practice leaders want to perform at a high level. They may be ineffective, however, for one of several reasons:

• The practice leader has not been provided clear job descriptions and expectations as well as adequate leadership training and coaching.
• Partners have not truly bought into the empowerment of practice groups and their leaders, and thus the practice leader struggles to get the practice group members to actively participate and “spread the load” of the group’s work.
• The practice leader does not have or cannot learn the relevant characteristics, behaviors, or skills to be effective.

The latter, on its own, is rare. More often, it is a combination of two or all three factors that undermine the overall effectiveness of practice leaders.

Leaders Needed

In today’s increasingly competitive environment, many of the old rules do not apply. This is, in part, due to more demanding clients and associates with different values and priorities. That’s before we even consider the hundreds of “alternative” providers or law companies that are chipping away at the traditional value chain.

A solid practice management structure is key to generating the accountability needed to create high-performing practice groups. With active involvement, support, and guidance from the managing partner, practice leaders can be better prepared to meet and even exceed performance expectations and create the successful practice groups needed for the future.