A large international law firm had gone through a rapid international expansion with extraordinary success in the last decade and although the London office had a solid talent architecture in place, some of the offices in continental Europe needed to upscale their approach to deal with the specific organisational challenges that the rapid growth had entailed. The leadership team and partners of one of the newer offices sought to redesign its talent architecture and to shape a new leadership culture.
Rebecca started the collaboration with a deep review of the organisational challenges. The data was fed back to the leadership team and then to the partner group. She designed a partner retreat to work through the challenges and plan an approach to collectively overcome the barriers. The strategic pillars of the work were defined during the retreat. Various small partner group initiatives were put in place around two themes: building greater integration between the partners and shaping the management culture to better attract, develop and retain talent for the Firm’s next stage of development (in line with their ambitious growth plans). The review, planning and implementation phase over two and a half years allowed the partners to work closely together on the Firm’s strategic goals and to implement their ambitious growth plans.
A leading international law firm was looking to build greater consistency and integration among its offices in the EMEA region. The London office is one of the biggest and strongest English law firms and while some offices in EMEA had been established for 50 years, others dated back only 10 or 15 years. The different levels of office maturity meant that the London office had challenges in establishing a consistent approach to support organisational development in some of the offices. Rebecca worked with the EMEA managing partner, local leadership teams and HR leaders to build a stronger platform to support some of the local offices and achieve a higher level of integration and organisational consistency in the region.
The concerns raised by the EMEA managing partner and HR leaders in London were of different nature. A number of offices had performance issues. Some had senior talent retention challenges. Others had partner integration issues. A large number of offices lacked sufficient talent development capabilities to support the Firm’s strategic growth plans in the region. Rebecca’s initial review enabled the leadership teams to identify the barriers to greater integration and alignment, she then worked through the planning phase with the partner groups in various offices through retreats, workshops, meetings and one to one support, to shape an approach that was tailored to each office’s history and culture. The implementation phase took over two years and the various initiatives deployed in some of the offices led to a greater level of integration and alignment across offices in the EMEA region.
Senior Level Development
A magic circle firm was looking to increase the support that it provided to its partners to better grow and retain senior talent in their teams in one of their offices. Rebecca worked on putting in place two senior level talent development initiatives. She also worked at organisational level to strengthen and expand a culture of talent development.
The collaboration started by exploring the retention issues and through focused interviews across the firm, evaluating the likelihood of key talent leaving the Firm in the next 12 months. That initial diagnosis revealed a very high probability that the Firm would lose key talent in the short term, so Rebecca started by designing a counsel and senior associate development programme to quickly address some of the major individual concerns. One to one coaching, assessment and talent development workshops were put in place. Rebecca also designed an international mentoring programme aimed at partners to strengthen their ability to guide and grow talent at senior level. After nearly two years, a greater number of partners were using coaching and mentoring as developmental tools. The talent development culture started to become more ingrained in the office’s culture which as a result, enabled partners to better develop and retain senior talent.
An elite US law firm was encountering partner integration issues in one of its EMEA offices. High caliber laterals were attracted to the firm who had a premier reputation and client base, but very few lateral partners and lateral teams remained at the firm after three years. The firm had ambitious growth plans which were compromised by this lateral partner integration issue.
The initial Inquiry and discovery phase review revealed like in many cases three main reasons that led to the partner integration failure: lack of proper due diligence done at the outset, superficial business planning prior to partners joining the firm and lack of organisational ability to integrate partners both on the client side and in building strong internal networks. Rebecca worked with the leadership team on a structured approach for the three phases of the integration process (due diligence, business planning and integration). She also worked on helping partners become aware of the integration challenges and the signs which reveal that partner integration is not going well. Time is of the essence in partner integration. Anything that is not initiated within 6 months becomes more difficult to succeed after that. The first year showed an increase in the success rate in partner integrations and the second year confirmed the firm’s ability to better integrate partners as the success rate had significantly increased (from below market rate to higher than market rate).
A leading international law firm was looking to increase collaboration across the EMEA offices.
The work started with a deep review of collaboration in the firm which included looking at how much collaboration was taking place and where. The review also included looking at ways to significantly improve partner behaviours in relation to collaboration. A new framework was put in place and rolled-out in the EMEA region.
The initial in-depth review looked at what collaboration really meant in the Firm, and where it was happening which enabled the leadership teams in the various EMEA offices to identify the main barriers to greater collaboration across offices. The review asked all EMEA partners to take the Collaboration Accelerator Assessment developed by Dr Heidi Gardner (distinguished Fellow at Harvard Law School) and her team at Gardner & Co. This assessment revealed partners their individual preferences and natural styles towards collaboration in 8 dimensions such as for example a preference to work individually or in a team, a tendency to trust or not etc. These assessments were individually debriefed and a series of workshops were designed and delivered to increase collaboration behaviours across the Firm. After 12 months, the collaboration was measured and was shown to have increased (in some areas significantly). Regular monitoring is carried-out and the increase is still taking place.
A leading US firm was struggling to build a pipeline of future partners and leaders in one EMEA office. With the long-standing managing partner also planning to retire in the next 3 years, the Firm was seeking assistance to build a stronger pipeline of emerging leaders and to structure a system that allowed the Firm to have a number of potential partners and leaders ready to take on managerial responsibility in the next few years.
Rebecca’s initial review showed that the history of the Firm, its current leaders’ styles, the Firm’s culture and politics were making it difficult for new senior talent to emerge and thrive. A combination of high achievers’ strong personalities as well as the level of their personal involvement in the Firm (which were the reasons for the firm’s success) were also barriers to the new generation of partners finding their place in that context. The work involved working with the leadership team and leading partners, individually and together to help them become more active in supporting others' success by focusing on the Firm’s long-term strategy. Rebecca also put in place a framework to support senior talent (in their entrepreneurship and leadership potential) as well as regular talent reviews to identify future leadership potential on objective criteria. A few years on, the Firm now has a talent pipeline and the local managing partner, who had delayed his retirement date, now feels ready to let other partners lead the firm.
© Rebecca Normand-Hochman 2023