Driving a Rolls-Royce approach to training principals

The rapidly changing nature of modern legal practice is putting the blow torch on law firms to ensure their principals receive adequate and contemporary management training, writes Greg Dwyer.

Practice management training for new law firm principals has been compulsory in NSW and Queensland since the late 1980s and early 1990s and, more recently, in the ACT.

The rationale was that the training would help new principals run their practices more effectively and deliver better outcomes for clients. Other Australasian jurisdictions have now brought it on to their agendas, and practice management has been introduced as a component of mandatory continuing professional development (CPD).

However, have the roles of law firm principals and the environment in which they operate changed so significantly in the past 20 to 30 years as to cause regulators and educators to take a fresh look at this issue? What will responsibilities of law practice principals look like after the implementation of the National Legal Profession reform package, with the proposed audit and management directions powers? How does the partnership concept work in the 21st century?

These were some of the big questions discussed at a half-day forum in Sydney in June that was organised by the Centre for Best Practice at The College of Law.

The big issues
The format of the forum involved presentations from two keynote speakers - Ronwyn North, a legal education and risk management specialist; and Stephen Macliver, the national executive officer of Sparke Helmore. A broad panel of legal practice experts offered additional commentary.

North's paper summarised practice management education since the 1980s, and raised questions about the strategies for educating lawyers in this area. In particular, she asked whether the training should be ‘minimalist', with a single intervention at the time of becoming a new principal, or a ‘Rolls-Royce' approach involving a coordinated set of interventions at relevant career stages.

Macliver's paper provided a detailed review of the skills and attributes needed for lawyers to make a successful transition from lawyer to principal and, more importantly, re-invent themselves over the course of their career. From these speeches and factoring in ideas from panel members, a number of key themes emerged.

1.      Management training for new principals should be compulsory
Jenny Duxbury, the compliance, regulatory and corporate affairs director at ninemsn, commented as a ‘consumer' of legal services, saying that Australian lawyers were "really great at providing high-quality technical legal services, but I don't come across that many really great legal managers". She concluded that the profession still does not truly value such skills highly enough.

Steve Mark, the NSW Legal Services Commissioner, added that "everybody in (a) law firm manages something to some degree". He suggested that compulsory aspects of the profession's educational program should instil an understanding of what constitutes professionalism. Mark added: "Professionalism includes management; it's a must, it's about culture and it's about delivering an ethical service, and that's what management supposedly tries to promote."

2.      A one-size-fits-all approach to training will not work
A clear message to come out of the forum is that training needs to be tailored to suit different needs. There was agreement from three panel members - Martine Barclay, national learning and development manager at Norton Rose; Dunstan de Souza, managing partner of Colin Biggers & Paisley; and Warrick McLean, general manager of Coleman & Grieg - about the importance of training. They concurred that even though their firms were quite different in terms of scale, they all had well-developed training programs for their aspiring principals. From their perspective, such training was part of the way they did business, irrespective of whether it was compulsory or not.

Barclay noted that Norton Rose sees "our leadership and management or practice management training as part of our competitive advantage". De Souza said that "whether it's leadership or management or administration, supervision or governance, all those issues are covered in (our) training along the way". And McLean espoused the view that "firms (of) our size really need to be innovative to attract quality people, and part of that gets back to training and development".

Wearing his hat as national president of the Australian Legal Practice Managers Association (ALPMA), McLean added that such training needed to be compulsory for smaller firms which did not have the resources to manage their own training. This would assist them to remain competitive because the pace of change in the profession otherwise threatened to "leave them behind". His view was echoed by practice consultant Ted Dwyer, who noted that sole practitioners constituted more than 80 per cent of law firms in NSW.

3.      Management training should be a whole-of-career concept
The consensus at the forum was that management training should not be confined to a one-point-in-time intervention - for example, when a lawyer becomes a partner or principal.

From a regulator's perspective, Steve Mark commented that the main issue with some firms was a "failure to communicate" with clients, and he also saw "real problems in supervision".  As a result, he believed "you have to go way back if we're talking educationally about trying to resolve these issues ... We need to really rethink our whole educational approach to legal education".

John Briton, the Queensland Legal Services Commissioner, agreed that law firm management training needed to be ongoing to encourage "continuing reflection" on such issues. The experience of auditing incorporated practices led him to argue that it was an "incredibly useful way to get managers in law firms to be reflecting upon how to run a more competent and ethical legal practice".

Giles Watson, a practice management specialist at the Queensland Law Society, said the society had both a business support and regulatory focus for its members in its quest to help them make a success of their practices. "We also want to offer support to them in maintaining and pursuing ever-higher professional standards." To that end, the QLS was developing "a competency framework for solicitors at all stages in their career so that this doesn't come as a massive shock to them when they (decide) to become partner". Watson added that he did not think it was possible to teach aspiring principals "everything they need to know and understand in one hit".

In concluding statements at the forum, there was consensus that discussion about management training needed to be maintained as part of the National Legal Profession reforms over the next 12 to 18 months in order to avoid the risk of the issue "slipping through the cracks".

 

Greg Dwyer is director of the Centre for Best Practice at The College of Law.
www.collaw.edu.au

Note: videos of the two key note presentations are on the The College of Law's website. Click on this link: http://www.collaw.edu.au/Future-Students/Legal-Practice-Management-Courses/Management-Training-Needs-Forum/