The significance of leadership in legal practice today lies in the important role it plays in dealing with the complex challenges that legal practices all over the world are facing. From the globalisation of legal markets, to increasing demands from clients and employees, and also narrowing profit margins as more clients merge and others struggle in the economic downturn. By taking a proper approach to developing sufficiently robust leadership at all levels, firms will be better placed to deal with these challenges and achieve and sustain their strategic priorities.

Between July and August 2009, I surveyed the perceptions of legal work of 233 lawyers of varying post-qualification experience levels in 14 countries to investigate the influence of six factors on leadership development and on the effectiveness of firm leadership.

Of the lawyers surveyed, over 75% did not strongly agree that their work possesses the five job characteristics which shape leadership capabilities and lawyers at the 0-4 PQE level ranked the characteristics of their work significantly lower than other PQE levels did; indicating that there is much room for improvement of the job characteristics of the work of lawyers.

Work design emerged as the only significant influence on lawyers' leadership development and the most significant of three factors which influence the effectiveness of firm leadership. The analysis showed that by increasing its mean score for work design by 1 point; a firm could increase its mean score for leadership development by 0.51 and its mean score for leadership effectiveness would increase by 0.54. A full report on the research can be accessed here »

Executive Summary

This report presents research which identifies the factors most important for the development and effectiveness of leadership in legal practice.The aim is to help organisations identify where the gaps in their approaches to developing their lawyers as leaders lie and what they should be focusing on in order to achieve greater effectiveness as organisations.

In the course of this study, I have reviewed management theories on leadership and drawn out six influencing factors for the development of leadership and for its effectiveness. Using a survey of the perceptions of legal work of 233 lawyers of varying post-qualification experience levels in 14 countries, I investigated the influence of these six factors on the leadership actions of lawyers, as a measure of leadership development; and on the outcomes achieved by firms, as a measure of the effectiveness of firm leadership. Of the six factors considered in this research, work design emerged as the only significant influence on lawyers’ leadership development and one of the three factors which influence the effectiveness of firm leadership.

I have designed a model for leadership development in legal practice which shows that while leadership development in legal practice begins with getting the structures, culture and training right, these factors on their own do not have any direct influence on the development or effectiveness of leadership so firms should not look to restructuring, culture change or training programmes for results in terms of leadership. Their importance is in providing a foundation for strategy, work allocation and work design which are the real drivers of outcomes for leadership effectiveness. In the case of leadership development, the model shows that only work design produces a direct outcome, while work allocation and strategy in turn influence work design, and again structures, culture and training provide support for the process.

Recommendations presented in the report for embedding leadership development in legal practice have been embodied in the Lawyer Work Redesign Programme »

Acknowledgement

I am grateful to the lawyers who completed the research questionnaire and to their firms.

Lawyer Work Redesign Programme »

About »

Contact »

 

Download research report »
in PDF

 

Take a free on-line review here and see what you can get out of the Work Redesign Programme.