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Motivating Attorneys to Accomplish Firm Objectives

By Joel A. Rose

Among the more recent trends, it would appear that the mid-sized first-generation law firms today are becoming increasingly aware of the need to develop an effective method of motivating their partners. Generally, these firms were established approximately 30 to 40 years ago by individuals who are still reasonably active in the daily affairs of the practice. As a rule, the founding partners were capable of attracting as well as producing client work. Their success resulted in additional work, which required the recruitment of more lawyers and enabled the firm to expand. Typically, the individual attorneys were bright and competent, and for the most part recruited to produce the work that was being generated by the founding partners. Over a period of time, however, it became evident that many of these second-tier attorneys were unable to attract new business and were unwilling to challenge the founders for leadership of the firm. It was also becoming apparent that the founding partners had bonded the firm to certain important clients by dint of their personality and skill. The founders' influence was particularly evident in relationships with the firm's entrepreneurial business-type and wealthy individual clients. Additionally, over a period of time, additional lawyers were employed to produce the work and meet the firm's growing needs.

As the founding partners reached their early- to mid-60s, some decided to reduce their participation in the practice, others joined their clients in business operations. and some accepted judicial or political appointments. While the founding partners were reducing their active involvement in the firm, the second-tier partners were invariably becoming the “new” first-tier partners. Although these partners had matured, most of them had not developed the requisite business-getting skills, or for that matter had the personalities or breadth and depth of expertise in the law to retain the business from the hard-driving entrepreneurial type clients that had been attracted to the firm by the founders.

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