Thought leader

By Nick Jarrett-Kerr, principal, Kerma Partners.

Getting partner priorities right
I have recently become very involved in helping a number of law firms to define their overall expectations of their partners, (including their management and leadership responsibilities) and the criteria by which partners are assessed and rewarded. Time and again, law firm leaders tell me that their partners continue to retreat back into the comfort of their legal work, preferring to treat their management and marketing responsibilities as ‘extras’ to be carried out only when time permits after completion of their legal work.
Every reader of Legal Marketing knows that such partners have got their priorities wrong and a recent survey of law firms throughout the world (conducted by my consultancy) has demonstrated this yet again.
We asked firms to assess the relative importance of a number of factors when assessing partner performance and ultimately in arriving at partners’ remuneration.
In the UK section of the survey, personal billing and revenue performance by each partner was felt to be very or extremely important by only one fifth of respondent firms, while business development and cross-selling achieved a massive 75 per cent rating for high or extreme importance. Additionally, two-thirds of firms felt that client relationship management (CRM) responsibilities had great importance. In other words, the contribution of partners in adding sustainable value to their firms by winning, cross-selling and retaining clients is currently considered as three or more times as important as the revenues which partners can personally deliver from their own desks.
The results were a little different in the rest of the world, in that firms elsewhere seem to place a higher reliance on personal billings than the astonishingly low UK figure, and continue to regard personal billing performance as highly as other client facing activities. In the USA and Europe, for instance, the value of personal legal work achieved a 90 per cent rating for high or extreme importance, with business development just a bit lower.
The overall message is, however, that consistently across the world, firms value the work done by partners in CRM, business development, originations and cross-selling as an essential part both of their ownership role and their time allocations.
I believe there are at least a couple of lessons from this. First, law firm leaders must continue to make every effort to build trust and reduce paranoia amongst their partners. Only when partners come to appreciate that non-chargeable activities are both safe and valued will we see greater priority being given to overall management responsibilities. Second, marketing departments faced, as they often are, with repeatedly having to drag partners kicking and screaming towards marketing activities should take some heart from the growing importance of their work. The evidence shows that the role of marketing directors and the work of their departments in supporting partners in their rainmaking and client care roles are in no way detached from the firm’s other management activities but are central and crucial to the firm’s ability to achieve its strategic goals.