Legal Silos – Where to Next?

It is often said that the hardest “products” to deliver are those which require cross-functional collaboration. [1]

This is as true of professional services, like legal services, as it is of other complex products.

Of course, there are still many single-issue problems that clients bring to individual lawyers and which individual lawyers can deal with alone. However, the issues clients bring to their lawyers are increasingly multi-dimensional.

Interdependence between lawyers in law firms has intensified significantly because of the increasingly complex demands of clients with problems requiring specialized advice of many different kinds, the increasing complexity of the law and regulation, ?and the degree of specialization of lawyers in law firms.

This increased interdependence has presented significant challenges to law firms and individual lawyers in those firms because the vertical and horizontal relationships between groups and lawyers in law firms do not easily adapt to and accommodate such interdependence. Some firms and individuals have responded to those challenges better than others.

It has been nearly 10 years since Heidi K Gardner published her seminal research on the value of collaboration in professional practices in “Smart Collaboration” ?(2016, Harvard Business Review Press) ?yet even today collaboration in many law firms remains elusive.

As technological innovation increasingly threatens to level the playing field in legal practice other sources of competitive advantage like collaboration are becoming even more important.

Collaboration is a major source of real competitive advantage to those firms, and lawyers who master it, over those firms that do not. It’s a source of real competitive advantage because it results in diverse expert legal services being delivered in an integrated, seamless, efficient, and cost-effective way that responds to the needs of the client in a superior manner to those firms that do not collaborate or do it as well they should. ?In simple terms, collaboration produces a better “product” for the client and it is more profitable for the firm.

Moving from an internally competitive environment to effective collaboration within law firms, inter alia, requires alignment of:

• organizational culture;
• organizational structure;
• operational processes and systems (including compensation); and
• great team management at all levels.

The point is that it is not just about one thing but many things and it is not easy to achieve the necessary balance in all the required elements.

However, the starting point and critical pre-requisite for effective collaboration in law firms is strong leadership from leaders who have:

• the persuasive skills to achieve real “buy-in” across the firm;
• the courage to implement change and all that is required in the face of criticism, complaint, and protest that inevitably follow and to make difficult decisions about essential changes; and
• the resolve to stay the course in real adversity for however long it takes.

?Only with such leadership do you have a chance.

[1] Professor Amy Edmundson “ Fostering Collaboration Across Silos” | https://hbr.org/webinar/2019/09/fostering-collaboration-across-silos