Feature

posted 1 Oct 2007 in Volume 10 Issue 5

Case study: Towards a new title

Michelmores LLP devised an associate development programme in response to changing legal career expectations. Reluctant to relinquish direct control, partners required persuading of the business benefits.

By Andrew Lovell, practice director, Michelmores LLP

Michelmores LLP is a rapidly growing South West regional firm with some areas of national practice. The past eight years have seen turnover rise by 300 per cent and staff numbers double, with most of this growth generated organically aside from a few lateral hires. In the past two years, the establishment of a London office in the Piccadilly area has enhanced the firm’s client offering and is now helping to continue these strong growth trends. Clients include The Arts Council and The Bank of England, and there is a large private-client team that services largely high-net-worth individuals.

As a firm, Michelmores has never been particularly hung up on job titles. In spite of the fact the associate title has been commonplace throughout the profession, we have never felt the need to create titles for the sake of it and have not, perhaps, employed enough lawyers to make a distinction necessary. However, as we have grown, the need to create a clearer career structure for our lawyers has become greater. At the same time, more recent debate surrounding the role of associate has seen the arguments in favour of a review become stronger and more widely accepted.

In reality, we had always relied on the ‘white cloud’ principle that saw newly-qualified solicitors enter an undefined period with no clear career steps to aim for. Rather they had to apply themselves to their legal work and rely, eventually, on a tap on the shoulder to invite them to consider becoming a partner. Some would make it and others would not, and while this could mean no one had their aspirations clearly encouraged or dashed, it did not lend itself to clarity of opportunity or encouragement of self-development to assist progress along a clearly-defined route. Equally, the target could only be partnership, and not a host of other valued and well-rewarded stepping stones or final destinations below that ‘magic’ level.

Undoubtedly there are a number of really good lawyers around, but not that many who are also natural rain makers, managers or leaders, or necessarily possessed of considerable business acumen. Keeping abreast of legal developments is essential to being a good lawyer, but much less recognised is the value of acquiring the soft skills that will make the real difference to an individual’s career and contribution to organisational aims and objectives.

Soft skills rarely come naturally. They are often undervalued, can be hard to acquire and, in the real world of the profession, are frequently subordinated to legal work, particularly when training programmes and budgets are set.

Like many ambitious firms, Michelmores is in the thick of the fight for every bit of the legal talent available. As demand continues to outstrip supply, it has become imperative to look at the depth and quality the firm already has, assessing the value of developing associates who would add more to the business while simultaneously helping their colleagues and subordinates.

A written job description for partners, including a range of enhanced responsibilities, has long been established with performance measurements in place. However, it has always been made clear that becoming a partner at Michelmores means more than ‘just’ being a good lawyer. It requires candidates to offer other major skill areas such as rain making, people development or business leadership.

Few individuals are likely to be brilliant across the whole job description, but the practice should be capable of putting together and maintaining a team of partners that cover all these skill areas between them. We like to think we have, but the world is fast changing – when standing still, in modern parlance, means going backwards.

As a result, the partnership began looking at the firm’s succession requirements and the strategic desire to grow as many of our own future partners as possible. Providing legal training and experience, but little else, was not going to enable us to grow the three-dimensional partners of tomorrow – those that could run the business; manage departments; lead; manage and grow people; and develop the practice; as well as execute excellent legal work.

We therefore accepted that we could, and should, do more to help future leaders and partners develop skills earlier – and train them in these areas rather than expect them to pick it up naturally upon achieving partner status.

Generating impetus

In late 2006 the firm’s recently appointed head of human resources, Carol Carpenter, added real impetus to the debate about career paths and, in particular, the benefits of creating some definite steps that would enable ambitious solicitors to have career targets to aim at. These would also provide milestones against which they could measure themselves and assess their own progress. For these reasons, it soon became apparent that the aims and objectives of the firm would not accommodate a job title associated with a certain level of legal experience alone. Instead, we wanted the title of ‘associate’ to be a sought after and meaningful accolade and also lead to a programme that would genuinely help individuals develop further and achieve their personal goals, whether below or at partner level.

The thinking behind this was fairly straightforward. The firm wants to continue growing and have the very best people working for it, but the question was how to attract, retain and make the most of the quality lawyers we have and hope to recruit in the future?

Having decided to create the role, we then had several issues to consider and manage:

Who could apply and what would the application criteria be?
What would the application process be?
Who would make the selection?
What would the selection criteria and process be?
How would we manage unsuccessful candidates?
What would the development programme consist of?
How would we go about deciding all these things?

To take the last issue first, it was agreed at executive committee level that the whole task should be delegated to a small group consisting of three partners, the head of HR and the practice director. This group was felt to have a suitably diverse range of skills and experience to be able to ensure the project would be successful.

This delegation required considerable trust from the partnership, however, as they were delegating significant control of important decisions about some of their staff to individuals (and some non-partners) outside their immediate department for the first time. Traditionally, departmental partners, and particularly heads of department, have had a very strong influence over such decisions and it is reasonable to record that ceding this control was not undertaken entirely without angst.

Additionally, there was a real understanding that, although the programme would not definitely lead to partnership, future partners from within the firm were highly likely to come from the associate ranks. This meant that partners would find their protégés were not in the ultimate mix for promotion to partner if they had not successfully completed the associate selection process and then benefited noticeably from the subsequent development programme. After expressing discomfort with these aspects, the partners of Michelmores agreed the perceived benefits of the scheme and the suggested modus operandi outweighed this perceived loss of control. However, ability to express personal reservations, but still see and support the overall corporate picture and advantage, is a large part of why I enjoy working with this group of partners so much.

The process

Once created, the panel set about outlining the application criteria, the selection process, the standards against which we would measure success and the headline content of the development plan that would follow selection.

Candidates have been invited to apply by completing a deceptively simple form that asks questions designed to see the quality of thought, analysis and effort that would be applied to the task. This was expected to be the candidate’s own work and not coached by the supervising (or any other) partner. At the same time, the relevant head of department was asked to complete an assessment of the individual against a variety of performance measures, which included quality of legal work, financial performance, commerciality, and management experience and skills, among others. Completed, these written applications were then reviewed by the panel so any weak ones could be weeded, although it was pleasing that this was not necessary – all made the cut.

The process continued with candidates being invited to an assessment centre that comprised a presentation on a business topic and a structured interview, both involving the full panel. The business topic was again widely phrased in order to see just what each candidate could make of it in terms of research, analysis, content, preparation, structure and ability to engage with the audience. This was followed by a question and answer session in which the panel investigated aspects of the presentation in depth and candidates had the chance to expand upon, and on occasion defend, their views.

A day or so later, the interviews were conducted against a grid of prepared questions designed to assess each candidate’s current understanding and the scope for further development of their commercial, management, leadership and business-development skills.

Thereafter, each member of the panel scored and ranked performance, as well as summarising their individual views on each candidate. We were clear that there was an absolute standard that needed to be achieved, and while individual panellists’ scores varied a little, there was a remarkable consistency in the ranking.

The final parts of the process were to produce feedback – first presented verbally by two members of the panel, and then followed up in the form of a brief written report that sought to highlight the panel’s perceived development areas for the candidate to focus on, as well as the highlights of their performance during the selection.

Devising the programme

There was also an obvious need for some specialist training between the compulsory management course for newly-qualified lawyers and the arrival at partnership level. A gap analysis was instigated with reference to the partner job description, more clearly identifying the experience potential partners might be short of and what could be done about it.

An examination of existing training provision from training-contract level up also showed we had to do more to help people develop for two very good reasons. First, because we understood the standards and range of skills required for partnership, we had to identify individual’s emerging skills and help them in the appropriate areas before they arrived at that level. Second, we needed to provide these lawyers with some real clarity about the career opportunities available to them at the firm.

The partnership accepted that such a programme would be beneficial provided staff were really motivated to participate and truly proud of the title on attaining it. It had to mark the start of a development opportunity rather than the arrival at a goal.

This programme included modules to identify and develop management and supervisory skills; the ability to communicate and motivate; client care; leadership qualities and team orientation; business management and awareness; strategic thinking; practice development; understanding the business; being a trusted business advisor; general business awareness and understanding, in particular how a law firm works; time management and managing complex matters; and client care.

Motivation and momentum will be maintained throughout the programme by delivering short but frequent training sessions using a combination of internal and external presenters. Self learning will also be important, as will the opportunity to work informally within the associate development programme (ADP) group. Each candidate is provided with coaching and mentoring support to assist the process. Our first annual associate away weekend has also been organised for mid-October – in the foothills of Dartmoor – to offer a more strategic workshop, together with recreation and team bonding/building.

Lessons and challenges

In the event we had lots of successful candidates but also a few that were not on the inaugural ADP selection. These individuals were clearly disappointed and it is fair to say that on this first occasion we learnt a lot from this part of the process. Many of the reasons for these results were that any existing appraisal system needs to be open, honest and quite robust, as well as being closely aligned to the qualities and values being sought during the assessment and selection process. We have learnt, for example, that the two processes in the firm are not as close as we would have liked, and some wider aspects of performance may have been overlooked when providing feedback in the past. This could clearly disadvantage a candidate who felt, through regular praise during appraisals, that being an excellent and highly commercial fee-earner would be sufficient, when in fact we were looking for a wider range of attributes. Needless to say, we are addressing this issue as a matter of urgency to ensure future candidates have an equal and realistic chance of recognising and demonstrating the skills required.

Another issue we were aware of from the outset was that we would have a backlog of colleagues that would have been considered to become associates in previous years if the role had existed. This meant the scheme had to be able to cope with a wide range of entry positions, and we were clear that some successful candidates might be on the development programme for as little as a year; others for a significantly longer period.

Additionally, partners made great efforts to avoid reverting to type, and it was pleasing that there were no real attempts to influence the results, especially when someone’s candidate had not been selected. Thereafter, they were also a key part of the process of managing the expectations of all candidates, with different skills displayed according to whether they were dealing with an associate or not. A lot of time has been spent with each individual, and this emphasised the need to have a first-class communication and support system planned before the event.

The aims of the Michelmores ADP are certainly ambitious, and are accompanied by the ongoing challenge of maintaining support for candidates within each department, ensuring they get the right supervisory experience; more complex work to undertake; and the necessary time for the training programme modules. The need to provide this exposure and experience must be accepted and planned for by the departments.

Finally, it is fair to report that in our eagerness to get the ADP moving and to coincide its launch with the conversion of Michelmores to LLP status on 1 May 2007, we stretched our resources somewhat, leading to some poor communications with our staff. We could, and should, have made far more of the launch of the programme and provided a longer lead-in period for communications and to deal with queries and concerns (from potential candidates and partners) before commencement.

The route following the ADP was also a subject that generated debate, and one to which there are many possible answers. The decision we have taken at this stage is that some associates will become partners and some will not. Those that don’t will still have meaningful and well-rewarded roles to play at a management level, retaining the associate title. Alternatives, such as promotion to senior associate or associate director, were considered, but it was felt that these distinctions were not currently required by the business.

Final thoughts

To progress as a firm Michelmores needs ever-more talented lawyers, and the ADP reflects the firm’s decision to tackle the debate about the changing career expectations of those entering the legal profession head on. Many recent surveys have clearly shown that a rising proportion of lawyers are aiming at roles that do not result in partnership status and others indicate that access to this level, and in particular equity participation, is likely to be more closely controlled as competition increases and margins are put under pressure.

We need to impart and reinforce a real understanding of the way the business model works; the pressures it is under; the balance between income and expenditure; and the firm’s ability to meet the expectations of staff - realistic or otherwise. If partnership is not the goal for an individual, we are asking what is, and how can we help them achieve it?

Perhaps the greatest challenges arising from the ADP are counterbalanced by the goal of getting candidates to really understand that senior positions below partnership level are valued, valuable, well remunerated and interesting, while simultaneously supporting partners in the face of bright, sassy, ambitious and trained associates who might just reveal some gaps in their own armoury. The obvious response to this possibility is that much of the material in the ADP is now finding its way into a parallel partner development programme that is likely to prove highly popular.

Andrew Lovell is practice director at Michelmores LLP. He can be contacted at abl@michelmores.com