ABOUT TALENT AND THE “BONDIOLA” ON THE GRILL

“Ser delicado y esperar, dame tiempo para darte todo lo que tengo”. Lento, Julieta Venegas.

Talent is always a center topic in law firm discussion for the simple reason this business depends entirely on people. Management thinking has been trying from the start to figure out how to manage and influence the behavior of this frequently unpredictable and erratic resource. The tremendous challenge of professional service firms is that, unlike other type of organizations, they rely completely on people’s performance.

The beginning of the legal profession, when it’s small size did not qualify as a business, understood quite well what developing talent meant. It all began with the apprentice model where the more experienced lawyer trained his/her young lawyer to become a competent professional and probably his/her successor. This process took time and effort, knowledge of each other through a long socialization interaction, and many hours of explaining what books simply could not teach. That was the only way of raising good lawyers and is still the principal manner to do it right.

Growth, learning from the outer world and development brought more structure and tools to law firms. Structured career paths, detailed processes for hiring and evaluating associates, training programs of different sorts, etc. Large numbers of associates required a set of organization and homogeneous practices to seek more and faster quality in their work. This certainly was necessary in order to develop a professional platform that could provide an efficient and lucrative service to clients. Since law firm business has been built mostly on billing hours to clients, the whole system worked very well. Young lawyers worked very hard billing hours to clients, while learning the legal profession in the process. However, something may have been lost in this journey.

Every weekend Argentina explodes into thousands of “asados”, where family and friends gather around the grill and cook different cuts of meat (the best in the world!). It’s a time of sharing events of the week, politics, news of friends and family, and of course soccer! One of the best cuts for me is the “bondiola” (which is pork meat), but it is not frequently used. You know why? It takes a lot of patience and time. You have to put on the fire early in the morning if you want guests to have the bondiola at normal schedule, since the whole process might take up to 4 hours. That would include pre-toasting of the meat, then spreading a special sauce with abundant species and wrap it up in aluminum paper and getting it back to the grill for at least another 3 hours. After that you can get one of the most delicious pieces of meat you can imagine. Other more popular cuts can get to your plate in a shorter and simpler process, but it will never taste like a bondiola.

Watching my son preparing a bondiola last weekend (you thought it was I doing it?), I thought many partners in law firms like to prepare the faster cuts when providing service to clients and developing talent. If clients are the guests in the asado, they might be satisfied with normal cuts. After all, this is the usual option you get. But if you give them a bondiola that -quite literally- disintegrates in your mouth with this exquisite flavor, and they know you have spent time and effort in preparing that for them, wouldn’t they value such commitment and delicacy? Same thing happens with talent. Training excellent lawyers requires time and effort. If billing hours become the main purpose for lawyers, then time of both teacher and apprentice in this essential process becomes an expense and it loses an essential part of its meaning. And with that goes away the essence of what a good law firm should look like.

The increasing pressure on partners to produce income, no matter what, is taking a toll on the ability to produce bondiolas above normal cuts. Unfortunately, this dilemma will only grow since clients have been paying for the bondiola for a long time (accepting junior hours that were more dedicated to training than to service clients), but they are becoming more reluctant to accept this arrangement. They just want to eat the final bondiola, and if they like it, pay well for it. I know what you are probably thinking: “Jaime, clients want the bondiola but not to pay for it”. But is that really true? How many deep conversations have you had with clients to discuss real value in your service? The problem is that some law firms don’t even have the bondiola to offer to their clients, since preference for profits have grown faster than a strategy to develop great talent in the long term.

In my opinion law firms are getting to a crossroads where they will need to take a deep look at what they really want to achieve in the future, including an honest view of their values and aspirations. In a way, all these changes that afflict us and create uncertainty into the future, do not modify the very basics of how our business is built: great talent that is cultivated and nurtured over time, with love and effort, and clients that are looking for that bondiola and -believe me- willing to pay for it if you can prepare it really well.

The song of Julieta Venegas just fits so well into our topic. It could have been written by an associate. Talent, like love, requires time and a detailed dedication. You cannot rush it seeking a result. You enjoy its process by observing its development. We need to understand that below the anxiety and rush of our legal practice, service to clients and need of income, lies the bondiola we are cooking for the future, that is saying to us -quoting the song- “give me time to give you all that I have”.