Business & Financial Management

I recently had the pleasure of being on a panel at the P3 conference with Ms Sheri Palomaki. Sheri is the Director of Practice Management at Sutherland Asbill & Brennan LLP, based in Washington D.C. Sheri has kindly shared her thoughts in this post on how to successfully embed LPM.

Sheri:

In my humble opinion (and it has gotten MORE humble in my 16th year in professional services), successfully embedding LPM within a law firm is the same as embedding anything else that may be out of the norm.   Many (or most if we’re talking about Sutherland lawyers!) are very successful lawyers, and have been successful to date without this ‘change’ called LPM.  So, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” is often the response to doing anything different.  In my experience, implementing change (and this definitely applies to LPM) within a law firm requires:

1.     a champion (has to be someone with a solid reputation among the partnership, and a prominent leader with a strong voice);

2.     value-add (you have to convince the champion that this new ‘thing’ is value-add with ROI and he/she has to really see it, feel it and believe in it (which usually means client-buy-in);

3.     a success (and a good one…); that you can then…

4.     communicate the success more broadly, so you can get another champion… and start all over.  One by one. 

And you also have to EXPECT that there will be resistance and nay-sayers.  In implementing LPM at Sutherland, I haven’t tackled the nay-sayers… I’m too busy helping those who see the value.  The others or catch on… or they won’t. 

My diagram below is simple and sweet, but that’s the way I see it.    

Thanks so much Sheri – ‘Find your champion and move them across one by one’ – I like that a lot!

Keep following for more posts on this hot topic as we ask global industry thought leaders to share their views on how to make LPM stick!

Until then,

Michelle