Knowledge

Challenge at the Top: Time to Walk the HR Talk

People issues are increasingly becoming the hot issues for law firms: attracting the best, or at least suitable candidates, recruiting them, retaining them amid fierce competition and aggressive lateral hiring efforts from competing firms, allowing them to be successful and still have a life outside the office, developing a positive spirit throughout the firm, spending time to listen to people at all levels, from junior associates to partners, offering clear career path options, keeping people focused, energised, and enthusiastic, training and developing people, enhancing leadership, clarifying values, creating effective teams... Ask any managing partner, I bet they will recognise in this list some of their top priorities. If they don't, their firm may be at risk (many partners are indeed so much focused on client development and client work that they don't see the HR elephant in the corridor). 

Which leads me to think that the next generation of managing partners will have to be "people's people". Individuals with a strong background and proven interest in social skills, in the human dimension of organisation and strategy. People with as much insight into emotional intelligence, interpersonal communication, and group dynamics as into business development, financial management, and IT architecture. 

Law firms have forever claimed that people are their top asset, and rightly so. Law firms who will be the success stories of tomorrow understand that the time has come to walk the talk. 

Antoine Henry de Frahan | 6 December 2006 |