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COO Group Roundtable Meeting
Post-Event Briefing Note
Key topics of concern for COOs
15th March 2016
For March’s event we invited attendees to submit their key areas of concern in advance, to establish
the focus of roundtable discussion for the group. The Chair, Ian Harvey distilled these down to five
key priorities:
Engaging partners in BD activity to support topline growth
Partner behaviour
Pricing
Sector groups vs. Service lines
Brexit
ENGAGING PARTNERS IN BD ACTIVITY FOR TOPLINE GROWTH
Challenges:
Changing behaviours – particularly lawyers
Share of profit vs. Remuneration – Long-term vs. Short-term
Managing successful lawyers who are non-compliant with culture
Lawyers often the hardest to shift behaviour
Wide-reaching negative impact across the firm – particularly successful partners
Solutions &
perspectives
offered:
Set out what you want to see from the partners
Aligning BD to appraisal process/balances scorecard
A career framework supported by all partners measuring key objectives including BD
Financial reward coupled with internal recognition – ensure that what is expected is
measureable and rewarded
BD training for all associates level lawyers at ground-level to ingrain in culture during career
progression*
PARTNER BEHAVIOUR**
Challenges:
Lawyers often the hardest to shift behaviour
Prime example was appalling behaviour demonstrated by an exceptional fee-earning partner.
After 3 days of debate the Managing Partner decided that little could be done as his billing
was so high and he would have taken exception to his behaviour being questioned
Wide-reaching negative impact across the firm – particularly successful partners
What are the genuine options?
Solutions &
perspectives
offered:
Successful partners with non-compliant behaviour – is it best to let them carry on? No
definitive solution
Ingrain behaviours earlier in career* (see above note on ingraining behaviour in early career)
Risks of compromised billing for better/different behaviour to great?