Start a training program
Schlaybaugh needed to begin drilling his employees on the fundamental economic principles that drive successful law firms, and then link those principles to the demands that purchasers of legal services are making in the marketplace.
With the need identified, Schlaybaugh and his leadership team organized a series of training sessions that dealt with topics such as price, profitability and how a top-line dollar finds its way to bottom-line revenue.
“We significantly invested in our finance area to help our lawyers become better businesspeople,” he says. “We have a lot of partners and lawyers in the business, many of whom have significant client relationships and are involved in taking on work every single day. That is who we needed to take the time to educate on becoming smarter, better businesspeople, because they really become the sales, marketing, pricing and finance department for that piece of business. So the more we can help them understand the economics of a big law firm, the better they’re going to be as businesspeople.”
In addition, Schlaybaugh and his leadership team developed a partnership with the Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan.
“We worked with their business school to develop a proprietary program where we took our young, up-and-coming lawyers, as well as a group of the people who serve our largest clients and run our practice departments, and ran them through a leadership management program,” Schlaybaugh says. “It’s all part of our view that, overall, we need to be more sensitive about what our clients are wanting and more sophisticated in the way we manage our business.”
But training programs are only the beginning. You need to reinforce your focus on foundational business principles through consistent communication that continues to drive home the core message that you want your people to hear.
At Dykema Gossett, Schlaybaugh reinforced the firm’s focus on solid business practices by repeatedly placing emphasis on client services. Schlaybaugh wanted every lawyer and staffer to realize that whatever is good for the client will be good for the firm in the long run.
“It’s about the commitment of the organization on the matter of communication,” he says. “Constantly communicating and sharing information is critical. That means you need to share information from the top. In our case, it all comes back to the fact that these are changes to the historical model of law firm management. We need to understand what our clients want. In the past, law firms didn’t really do that. They’d say ‘We have a real estate department, and if you have a real estate problem, come to us and we’ll take a look at it.’”
Cross-functionality has become an issue of increasing importance in law as it has just about everywhere in the world of business. It is a major aspect to effective client and customer service, and as part of his ongoing communication strategy, Schlaybaugh wanted all of the leaders at the firm to examine the organizational structure for opportunities to provide cross-functional services — and as part of that, to build familiarity among various practices within the firm by developing opportunities for lateral communication and team building.
“We realize that we need to invest in everybody who works on a particular client,” Schlaybaugh says. “We need everyone who works on a particular client to know what is going on in the firm. Who is providing services and what services are we providing? That type of communication, information sharing and knowledge building among the people who are serving a particular client or customer is extremely important if you’re going to be as efficient as possible in providing services and achieving your desired outcome.”
