"As global law firms begin to take on the size and reach of some of the
world’s most notable multinationals, it is not unreasonable to assume
that they should be run with a more commercial management structure."
—Nigel Knowles, Joint CEO of DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary, writing in Legal Week.
This is prelude to Knowles describing the week-long executive education
immersion program DLA Piper organized in conjunction with Harvard Business
School last October. It’s a ground-breaking program, as is
Reed Smith University, and I’ve written an article to be published soon
in a variety of media about "Innovation in Law Firms," citing both DLA
Piper’s initiative and Reed
Smith University. [Regular readers: Stay
tuned—you’ll see it here first. And non-regular readers: Here’s
a reason to become a regular, or subscribe to my monthly newsletter at
the very least.]
But back to DLA Piper’s post-merger integration
issues, and why should we care, with or without Harvard Business School’s
involvement?
Essentially, Knowles and his colleagues at the top of DLA realized
that, while law firms may excel at developing—or at least at throwing
out those who don’t develop—leadership and business generating
skills, we’ve entered a new era. It’s no longer sufficient to
promote the gorilla rainmakers or (conversely) the non-controversial
glad-handers to the executive committee.
Firms that want to play
on the national or the multinational stage today need to develop leaders, on
purpose. It does not tend to happen by accident, at least
statistically speaking. And I assume you do not want your firm
to be a statistic. Knowles again:
"One of the major personnel challenges for law firms is identifying
and nurturing its potential leaders. The identification is often easy,
but turning these talented legal professionals into the corporate management
of the future is less straightforward."
The DLA Piper/HBS collaborative retreat lasted a week and ran from 7:30
am to 8:00 pm or later, and included 56 senior people, including the
joint chief executives and senior partners from 11 different offices
in nine countries. If nothing else, this demonstrated the
firm was putting its money where its mouth was.
Topics?
- developing strategy and aligning the firm to achieve it;
- professional development (in alignment, to be sure, with the firm’s
strategy); - leaders, culture, and managing change;
- and all of the above capped off by and illustrated, made concrete
by, business case studies.
My view?
The DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Carey merger is perhaps the most audacious
of the last five years, if not longer. They have an "integration"
challenge beyond the scope of what any firms have previously tackled. Given
lawyers’ instinctive immune-system response rejecting the foreign antibodies
of professional firm management (read: HBS), one should, by rights,
be skeptical.
But I’m actually a believer; I think they’ll pull it off, and that they’ll
set a new bar by doing so.
What’s your bet?
