Collaboration in the Firm: Do we really need it?

In my interviews with partners across Latin America, one of the more common complaints about their firms is that partners do not collaborate among themselves. These observations are usually described as lack of interest in other partners´ needs, inefficiencies produced by duplication of efforts, elimination of knowledge and information sinergies, lack of crosseling and loss of business opportunities, and more generally a firm´s environment where it is difficult to find a common purpose. The interesting thing is that when you find several partners from the same firm complaining about the same issue it becomes obvious that many, if not all, the complaining individuals are also part of the problem. In other words, partners expect other partners to collaborate … but not the other way round.

I have mentioned in previous articles why lawyers have such an individualistic perspective and why they see the legal profession basically as a personal endeavor with more or less losely-coupled ties to other lawyers in the same or other firms. Off course that won´t be officially recognized by the majority of members in law firms, but you can tell by their intuitive behavior that it is the basic paradigm with which they face their daily challenges. From this perspective, collaboration becomes mostly an organizational climate affair. It´s good to collaborate because it helps to create a nice firm´s environment where people feel confortable to work in, as opposed to more negative –or “toxic”, as it is now described- cultures where workers live in tension and fear of what is going to happen next. Such negative environments affect productivity, innovation and retention, with obvious undesirable effects for professionals and the firm as a whole.

I won´t argue with this previous line of thinking. In fact, it results from extensive and unquestionable research across all industries and geographies. Most people –at least healthy ones- work better and more productively in collegial and collaborative environments. So climate is important, but still it does´nt get to the heart of the matter in law firms. Why? Because it is hard for lawyers to see how this problem essentially affects their business. Although it is true that a non-collaborative workplace may have some negative impacts, many lawyers don´t think that changes much the final results of the firm. Some of the negative components of this analysis –like excessive tension and pressure- might even prove beneficial in terms of boosting productivity and a heavy workload. So collaboration might be okey for other industries where people need all this emotional support, but not in the tough world of lawyers, where the darwinian sink-or-swim culture seem more efficient to select who should be the winners and losers.

Following this line of thinking, collaboration would mostly be a personal –almost philosophical- choice of some partners and firms. Some will choose collaborative cultures because that represents better their personal values and emotional needs, and others will not. But both can become successful. In my view, this approach presents two flaws:

• Although there are always extreme cases, the individualistic bias of lawyers is present everywhere, including in those firms that have collegial and agreeable styles. Being nice does not turn you automatically into a collaborative professional. In some cases, this produce a bigger problem, because partners create the illusion that they have a collaborative culture because they are nice to each other and some of them are even friends, but still they are very poor at collaborating. So recognizing the problem in these firms –and working with it- is even more challenging.
• The second flaw, and this lies at the heart of the matter, is to consider collaboration a purely climate but not a business issue. In my years of managing partner I experimented the difficulty of convincing lawyers that you can always get a better result when you work in collaboration with others. In an increasingly competitive and sophisticated environment, you cannot expect to do everything by yourself. A high-quality service usually comes from an efficient combination of roles and expertizes. The way in which the required knowledge, information and experience is mixed becomes essential in the result product that firms provide. And that can only be produced in a collaborative environment. Collaboration rejects dominance and isolation, and it requires a clear vision that all contributions are necessary. The goal of serving the client is at the center of the task, and egocentric and unproductive attitudes are rejected for their negative implications towards that goal. Collaboration might be a philosophical choice, but more importanly it is a business imperative for those firms that want to excel in the legal industry..

One of my frustrations as managing partner was to find that it was difficult to provide hard evidence that collaboration was good for the business. I was gladly surprised when I came across Heidi Gardner´s research about collaboration in professional service firms. Mrs. Gardner is a Distinguised Fellow at the Harvard Law School´s Program on the Legal Profession. She has been studying for quite some time how collaboration pays in professional service firms and recently published two fine articles about the subject (“Why it Pays to Collaborate”, The American Lawyer, March 2015, and “When Senior Managers Don´t Collaborate. Lessons from Professional Service Firms”, Harvard Business Review, March 2015). The conclusion of her research is blunt: having great stars is not enough. If you want to have a competitive advange and increase you profit growth, partners need to collaborate. She provides five reasons why collaboration pays back:

• Your firms makes more money and have stickier clients.
• Even rainmakers profit.
• You benefit even if it´s “someone else´s client”..
• Service work leads to business development.
• Collaboration means higher rates.

Mrs. Gardner provides some advise that would help to develop collaboration in the firm: (i) stop hiring jerks; (ii) manage talent at all levels; (iii) reduce coordination costs; (iv) showcase collaboration; and (v) hold partners accountable. Her insights after doing extensive research are highly valuable for law firms in any jurisdiction. Mrs. Gardner will be the main speaker at the up-coming IBA conference organized by the Law Firm Management Committee in Sao Paulo next August 19-21 titled “Law Firms as Businesses: Option or Necessity?”, which will focus on how do law firms need to organize as a business organization. Heidi Gardner´s perspective will provide an excellent standpoint of why law firms and partners need to collaborate if they intend to keep sustainable and successful in the next decade and beyond, and how to do it. If you want more information about the conference, please visit the following link conference brochure ..