This article first appeared in law.com in July 2024
As the former co-founder and CEO of a global legal search consultancy, I’ve seen the difference hiring great talent can make to the trajectory of a law firm. I’ve also seen the financial and cultural damage that hiring mismatched rainmakers causes.
I’ve recruited my fair share of rainmaking partners. From hiring standalone star partners for the global elite to game changing teams as well as launching European offices for several U.S. firms, I’ve had a seat at the top table.
As an ex-recruiter, I don’t want to spoil a party I helped create ($20m for a lateral hire would make some party). But as a business and leadership coach now, I can’t help wondering if the current focus, sometimes obsession of achieving financial growth through hiring rainmakers is the right one.
The Rainmaker Myth Versus Reality
The heroic rainmaker is often viewed as the magical answer to law firm transformational growth. With a bit of integration and a spoonful of sugar (aka guaranteed bonus), the rest will follow.
It seems common practice these days, even for the most conservative of law firms to bet on this high-risk strategy.
The assumption is these larger-than-life individuals can single handedly transform a department or even a firm’s performance. Law firms are not alone. The cult of the heroic individual has become a dominant feature in our society, one in which we too often worship our corporate and political leaders.
The reality is the metrics of proving whether lateral hires are accretive are mixed at best, partly due to the difficulty in measuring success. These rainmakers often enter the partnership at a senior level and re-enforce the top-down leadership model, which is already part of the private practice structural problem.
Rethinking Leadership
There is a prevailing view that the problems facing the world today cannot be met by any single individual. Whether it be climate change, the geo-political situation or perilous population growth, today’s problems are too complex and inter-connected for individuals to solve.
The same may be true for law firms. Their challenges can’t be fully met by a series of individuals or rainmakers, often seen as revenue knights in shining armour.
I’ve spent the last 30 years being in and around law firms, as a lawyer, then as recruiter and now as a business and leadership coach. In my opinion, law firms are not skilled at creating or nurturing high performance leadership teams. Instead, they unintentionally create silos within silos. Few join the dots between those silos, such that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
The future for law firms to survive and flourish in today’s VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous), world lies in not in their ability to parachute in the rainmakers but in their ability to create successful leadership teams.
Law Firm Leadership Teams
Teams are small groups of people who come together with a shared vision and complementary skills and who are committed to a common purpose, shared performance goals and an approach for which they are mutually accountable.
Law firms are good at grouping together lawyers who do similar work and labelling them as teams. But there is often no team leader, no clarity of vision or purpose, their very structure impedes team performance, accountability is often low and conflict high. They are groups of people masquerading as teams. If firms can harness lawyers to work and lead as teams, it might add more revenue than any rainmaker.
Now, can you imagine what peak performance could look like if law firms could add some purpose, structure and accountability to the mix? I was trained as a team leadership coach by Sir Peter Hawkins, a guru in this field. He cites research that the average intelligence of most professionals is120 but the team functions at a collective intelligence of about 60.
We advocate that real teams operate on the premise that the interfaces and relationships between people, teams, functions, and different stakeholder needs are what defines the characteristics of a team. That’s the challenge for law firms. Move away from poorly bonded silos and create high-performance leadership teams by strengthening these interfaces and relationships.
When meeting a team for the first time, I ask them a handful of basic questions. Why do they exist? What is it that they are called upon to do together that they could not do apart? Who are they here to serve? If they cannot easily agree and/or answer such simple questions, it is an indication that they are not operating as a team and de facto at their best.
When was the last time a private practice team sat down to identify the multiple stakeholders it serves and then met with those stakeholders to form a team charter that defines and drives performance? (Stakeholders might include the board, HR, business development, IT, clients, its own lawyers and so forth).
The Red Herring
Consultants and business and leadership coaches like me are often called in for negative reasons, specifically to resolve internal team conflict rather than help co-create high-performing teams. Removing conflict will help (although some conflict is necessary and welcome) but it is often not the solution to achieving growth. Not many firms say “Gavin, we’ve got something good here. Can you help us make it better.”
Conflict is often a red herring. My work often lies in helping teams function as teams, not silos. There is often confusion over strategy, a lack of collective goals, inadequate or unclear internal processes and various market factors pressing down. These need to be identified and understood as they will directly and/or indirectly influence team dynamics.
Conclusion
Rainmakers are tempting. Some are worth pursuing. Some are not. It would be ridiculous for firms not to want to hire top talent. But it’s not where I would start to achieve transformational growth. If I had a message to law firms, it would be this. Don’t just buy talent. Nurture talent. More than that, don’t just nurture individual talent. Create and nurture teams. Not any teams. Create high-performance leadership teams. They are the future.
Gavin Sharpe is a business and leadership coach, business psychologist, wellbeing expert, and international speaker. (www.gavin-sharpe.com)
