Why Firms Don’t Collaborate — and What You Can Do About It
A client development program that pays for itself must focus, not only on securing more work, but on pursuing better work — the kind of matters that generate and create a non-transactional, trusted advisor relationship between lawyer and client. These matters arise from client needs Dr. Heidi Gardner describes as, “VUCA” — Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous. Often crossing offices, practices, and borders, VUCA™ problems by definition require a collaborative approach to craft successful solutions.
Because of the increasingly deep, narrow and specialization in law firms, there is a clear and large gap in the ability of individual lawyers to proactively pursue VUCA™ needs and related high-value work. Dr. Heidi Gardner, author of Smart Collaboration: How Professionals and Their Firms Succeed by Breaking Down Silos, has identified and ranked the top six impediments to collaboration. In consultation with Dr. Gardner, we have designed specific training methods that directly address each one.
1. Know (and Value) Others’ Expertise
The larger the firm, the more difficult it is for a lawyer to fully understand what we call “Firm Capabilities.” Even if a lawyer has reasonable knowledge of the firm platform, in many instances they do not know specific capabilities of its partners. And because they have not worked with those partners, they cannot value their expertise from a client’s perspective.
Our program teaches groups of highly diverse attorneys how to build a more robust, sophisticated internal network across offices and practice groups. Partners practice having substantive conversations about each other’s clients, industry focus, and current trends, building comfort and increasing the chances that the lawyers will find ways to work together. During one exercise, we uncover specific examples of potential collaborative opportunities that often yield new business during the program and thereafter.
2. Build Trust
Inter-partner trust is critical for proactive collaboration with partners in other practice groups and offices. This trust most often develops when lawyers work together on a common project and “experience” the others’ competence. For this reason, developing trust can be difficult for new lateral hires who lack firm matter opportunities. Our training puts partners together in teams of four to prepare for, meet with, and discover sophisticated legal needs of a real or mock client. Using a common process and group meeting format — recorded and reviewed on video — also helps improve trust.
3. Develop Selling Skills and Implementation
Confidence comes from the ability to use the correct selling skills at the correct time. We teach partners a proven business development process to advance the prospect/client relationship to the desired outcome: engagement. However, we do not believe that partners can become confident and competent at sales skill without applying them in real time. That is why we do not train without implementation. Our highly-trained consultants conduct monthly individual follow-up calls to support “learning in the field.” Our goal is to win profitable and sustainable business, not to deliver a program that merely provides awareness and knowledge.
Our goal is to win profitable and sustainable business, not to deliver a program that merely provides awareness and knowledge.
4. Refine Interpersonal Skills
CCD is the only company that uses the Everything DISC Sales® Profile with law firms. This diagnostic workplace behavioral tool (not a personality test) directly and positively impacts a lawyer’s understanding of the communication preferences and priorities of others. We use this tool to help lawyers create interpersonal familiarity and trust with colleagues and clients. Each individual receives a 25-page report that explains their own DISC® style, how to identify another person’s style, and how to better adapt to that person’s style.
5. Reduce Inefficiency and Time Pressure
All partners face significant and urgent client demands, which in many instances overwhelm the need for regular and persistent business development efforts. The efforts that are made often include discrete, disconnected “marketing” activities with a low probability of winning high-value work. Teaching a common business development process — from identification of opportunity, through the steps necessary to get to engagement — reduces wasted time on unproductive and costly efforts. We focus partners on a smaller number of opportunities to develop relationships, understand legal needs, collaborate on specific solutions and get a decision — all reducing the time needed and yielding better results.
6. Provide Compensation/Rewards
Compensation and related rewards are important to fostering collaboration with colleagues and clients. We have worked with law firms that use everything from heavily-weighted individual lawyer production to closed book systems. We support and encourage sharing new client and new matter credits where possible. This “sharing is more” mentality supports significant collaboration in managing and growing existing clients and developing prospective clients. However, we have never asked a firm to adopt any particular compensation metric or system. Rather, we find that lawyers who participate in our program are more likely to share credit because the impediments to collaboration are reduced, or removed, when they understand and trust the value their partners bring.
Cochran Client Development has been working with law firms for over 25 years to help them meet their financial and strategic goals with best-in-class collaborative, team-based, business development skills. We have the solution.
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