David Maister confesses: 

"I have spent twenty years trying to say
all professions look similar and can learn from each
other, but I’m finally prepared to concede that lawyers
are different – and it has nothing to do with economics."

In a piece titled "Warlords and Dickensian Factory
Owners," David compares the modern day law firm to
both feudal peasants terrorized by the warlord into
paying tribute, and the Dickensian factory
where you can, in fact, make an awful lot of money
if you work people to the bone, slash costs, and have
a heart of stone at the mere mention of phrases like
"work/life balance."  

Partners defend this approach by appeal to economic
necessity in the short run:  "If we don’t keep
PPP up, we’ll lose our rainmakers and the firm will
be devastated." 

Doesn’t this fly in the face of what by now are mountains
of research showing that genuinely engaged and energized
employees, sharing a firm-wide vision, are the strongest
driver of profitability known to management science?  Yes,
it does:   But it takes years of consistent vision,
and action, to get to that point.  What’s worse,
none of the energy expended in creating that environment
shows any financial return until, essentially, the
environment has been transformed.  Wall Street’s,
or your partners’, insistence on performance this
quarter is hard to square with that time-consuming
and uncertain investment.

This is also where "lawyers
are different" comes
in. Consider that lawyers are socialized
unlike members of any other profession or followers
of any other discipline:

"Martin Seligman [writes] in his book
AUTHENTIC HAPPINESS: “Lawyers
are trained to be aggressive, judgmental, intellectual,
analytical and emotionally detached. This produces
predictable emotional consequences…he or she will be
depressed, anxious and angry a lot of the time”."

Or, consider a psychographic test measuring "sociability,"
with the median American defined as scoring 50 on a 1—100
scale:  Lawyers’ mean score was 8.  Put 250
Type A’s with that personality profile in charge of a
$100+ million/year enterprise, and you should not expect
a touchy-feely environment to spontaneously emerge.

But we’re serious here, folks. 

Is the only way to create a high-performance organization
to yell, chastise, berate, intimidate, and generally
treat your "colleagues" as enemy aliens?  It
is most assuredly not the only way;
but it has an indisputable track record of being a way.  And,
not to discount its attractions, it has the virtues
of simplicity, directness, and economy of action.  As
everyone from NFL coaches to Parris Island drill sergeants
would testify, it dispenses with the need to painstakingly
psychoanalyze what subtle combination of persuasive
buttons need to be pushed—in different combinations
for each person, of course—to motivate your troops. 

I will further grant there are times and places where
peremptory and unilateral emergency injunctions are
called for:  Maister
uses the examples of a combat
unit or a small child nearing a hot stove.  But these
are surely far removed from towers in Manhattan’s canyons. 

But back to the short-term pressure cooker vs. the
longer-term vision needed to escape this inhumane
behavior pattern.

In Practice
What You Preach, Maister reports the results
of a survey of 6,500 people in 139 offices of 29 firms
in 15 countries, which demonstrates conclusively (to
me at least), that employee attitudes drive profitability,
and not the other way around.   What "attitudes"
would those be, precisely?

• A palpable sense of engagement is
  number one.  Are people "turned on" by coming
  to work? Can they tell you, without prompting
  and in a convincing fashion, what the firm stands
  for?

If this describes your firm, congratulations!  (And
I’m available for interviews.)  But skeptical
responses to the call for such a vision, in places
where it doesn’t exist, are far easier to come by:

• We don’t have the luxury of thinking long-run.
• Not everyone can be engaged, or wants to be; some
  just want to put in their time and get paid.
• Whatever time we spend trying to move the firm
  in that direction is time not spent developing new
  clients and billing hours.
• …and you can fill out the list.

And lest you think I’m casting aspersions on people
who think that way, or that I believe it’s only partners
who have these attitudes, let me hasten to add that these
attitudes are understandable, they’re
not intrinsically abusive, and clients and associates
often feel very similarly, albeit from their own perspectives. 

Associates can feel that they’re only in it to pay
off their law school loans, or to get enough experience
to be able to credibly interview for inhouse positions.  Clients,
increasingly, issue RFP’s and sponsor "beauty pageants"
before awarding work; institutional relationships of
longstanding are increasingly rare.  And to firms
that do win work from sophisticated clients:   Be
careful what you wish for!  Requests for discounts,
volume billing, and Procrustean itemization of activities
and expenses (the better to micromanage their costs)
are on the way.

Can any of this be changed?  Can we, in fact,
ever get back to the days of longer-term thinking,
and a willingness to invest both time and money to
build an enduring firm with a distinctive identity?  Maister
is pessimistic:

"I’ve tried logic. It hasn’t worked
well on non-believers. I’ve tried presenting conclusive
data. It hasn’t worked well on non-believers. I’ve
tried appealing to matters of principle, standards,
values, and meaning. It hasn’t worked well on non-believers.

"I no longer believe people can be “converted” on
this topic."

For those still willing to try, because the cause is
as worthy as they come, try these steps on the road to
change:

• Ignore the skeptics; you’ll never win them over
  anyway.
• Start with the believers, and talk to their needs.
• Enlist allies.
• Celebrate small wins.
• Spread the word.
• Win a few more.
• Keep telling the story.
• Welcome the converted fence-sitters who decide
  you must be doing something right.
• And keep telling the
  story.