Leadership is often cited as a key success factor in most legal service organisation. Do you agree with this assertion or not? What’s the evidence for your response? In what ways could legal services improve their leadership capability and impact?
PREFACE
In life, medals are given to people who are willing to sacrifice themselves so that others may gain; they are leaders. In business, bonuses are given to people who are willing to sacrifice others so that the business may gain. It would seem that business has it backwards when it comes to recognising leaders. But where do people who put others first come from? Are they better people? Do these people exist in legal service organisations? This paper will argue that it is not that people are better or more willing to serve than others to lead, but it's the environment in which they operate that directly affects their behaviour that allows them to develop leadership skills and ultimately become leaders. When asked why they put others ahead of themselves, leaders all say the same thing: ‘Anyone in my situation would have done the same thing.’ If you get the environment right, the capacity for people to do remarkable things is fostered and it’s creating these environments that will improve leadership capability and impact in legal service organisations.

INTRODUCTION
This paper is about leadership and the business environment that can facilitate leadership in legal service organisations. The term ‘legal service organisations’ is used loosely throughout the paper as a reference mainly to private practice law firms but also to any organisation that delivers a legal function such as a government department or in-house legal team. The term ‘employee’ in this paper is a reference mainly to lawyers within legal service organisations but also to support staff that are directly involved in supporting the delivery of legal services. This paper is not concerned with the merits (or otherwise) of different business models of legal service organisations but rather the business environment within the organisation that allows the effective deployment and engagement of its employees. The paper will provide a brief overview of the concept of leadership and how it differs from management in the legal services context. The paper will then detail five key competencies that are central to leadership capability all of which can and should vary in terms of emphasis given to each competency according to organisational structure, context and culture: all related to the business environment within a legal service organisation. The paper will then give a brief outline of the challenging landscape in which legal service organisations operate and show that by adopting a competency-based model along with future of work practices like motivational design and collaboration, legal service organisations can improve their leadership capability and impact.

WHAT IS LEADERSHIP?
Not a hard question to answer at a glance but in fact a remarkably complex question and, after decades of research, a definition that remains elusive particular with respect to what leadership means in legal service organisations. This section will define leadership in a legal service organisation context by reference to what it is not in the first instance, and then explore the key differences between a leader and a manager. By distilling common threads across a few definitions proffered by business management and leadership experts, the paper provides a definition of leadership in the context of legal service organisations.

Successful legal service organisations need a variety of people to play different roles at all levels. Some of these roles are easily defined while others do not have set boundaries or clear key performance indicators. Employees in a legal service organisation can be both managers and leaders at the same time however; a good manager does not guarantee them to be a good leader, and vice-versa.

Leadership is not management

Leadership has nothing to do with seniority or a position in the hierarchy of a legal service organisation. Leadership does not automatically happen when an employee reaches a certain pay grade, nor does leadership have anything to do with job titles. A leader does not need a title to lead. Often in legal service organisations leadership is referred to as the ‘partnership’ but actually they are just that, business partners that does not necessarily make them leaders. In fact, a leader can be at the most junior level of any organisation. Further, leadership has nothing to do with personal attributes. Leadership is not an adjective yet a reference to a leader in a legal services context often has the connotation of a domineering, take-charge charismatic individual. Leadership is not management nor are these concepts synonymous. There is no question that good management in legal service organisations is pivotal to success but managers are not always leaders. Managers need to plan, measure, monitor, coordinate, solve, hire, fire, and so many other things whereas leaders empower and inspire people and set a clear vision with a focus on results rather than process.

The leader innovates whereas the manager administers. This means that the leader is the one who comes up with new ideas and moves the rest of the organisation into a forward-thinking phase setting a unified vision and strategic outlook. This person anticipates trends and develops new strategies and tactics for processes in the organisation, the practice group or the legal service organisation as a whole. They need to be knowledgeable about the legal industry, latest trends, studies and skill sets required by employees. On the other hand, a legal manager maintains the system and processes that have already been established. The manager monitors the bottom line and maintains control of employees within the legal service organisation. A manager establishes appropriate targets and yardsticks, and analyses, appraises and interprets performance. Managers understand the employees and know which person is the best person for specific tasks.

The leader inspires trust whereas the manager relies on control. A leader is someone who inspires employees to be their best and knows how to appropriately set the pace for the colleagues they work with. The point at which employees are inspired and believe in an organisation’s mission is when leadership has created a bond of trust, which is essential especially given the rapidly changing legal landscape. A manager’s job is to maintain control by helping employees develop their own skills and attributes and expose characteristics that are aligned with the mission. To do this effectively, a manager must know the people they are working with and understand their interests and passions. The manager then "creates a team out of his [sic] people, through decisions on pay, placement, promotion and through his [sic] communications with the team."

The leader asks "what" and "why," whereas the manager asks "how" and "when." In order to ask "what" and "why," employees within a legal service organisation have to be able to question others about why certain decisions were made or what lead to a particular outcome—and sometimes this involves challenging superiors. Further, if a legal service organisation is experiencing a downturn in profitability or the loss of a significant client, a leader's job is to question what was learnt from the situation and how the practice group could use the experience to clarify goals, targets and avoid similar circumstances reoccurring. Instead, managers do not consider what the failure means but rather they’re tasked with asking "how" the failure may have occurred and "when" and to make sure they execute the established plan accordingly. Drucker wrote that managers accept the status quo and are more like soldiers in the military. They know that orders and plans are crucial and their job is to keep their vision on the company's current goals. Although a manager within a legal service organisation may also be a leader, it takes time and the right environment to cultivate leadership capabilities.

A novel definition of leadership

Some of the most respected business thinkers of our time define leadership in general business in a limited way that does not capture the full breadth of what leadership means, particularly in a legal service organisation. For example, Peter Drucker defines a leader as “… someone who has followers.” Drucker’s definition of leadership is too simplistic as there are managers in legal service organisations that instruct employees to follow instructions yet they do not empower action. Bennis says, “Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.” This definition in part recognises the need for leaders to have a vision yet it does not recognise the critical aspect of inspiring and rallying others to see and follow the vision in an organisation. Bill Gates focuses on empowerment and states, “… leaders will be those who empower others.” This definition includes the aspect of “others” but Gates’ definition lacks the vision element. John Maxwell distils leadership to “…influence – nothing more, nothing less.” Although there is merit in identifying the core principal in any concept, Maxwell’s reduction goes too far. For example, a manager has the power to terminate employees, which provides a lot of influence over others, but this influence does not make a leader out of a manager. Taking elements from each business leader, this paper proposes a definition of leadership in a legal service organisation to be: a process of influence, which maximizes the efforts of others, towards the achievement of a goal or vision. The key elements of this definition recognises that leadership stems from influence, not authority or power that is typically associated with senior employees in legal service organisations. The definition also identifies others and not just other senior employees thus implying there need not be direct reports to senior management for there to be influence and the environment in which employees operate. The definition provided by this paper makes no mention of personality traits, attributes, or a job title. This is in recognition that any employee can demonstrate effective leadership that empowers others within legal service organisations. The definition recognises the importance of an organisational goal or vision that employees can aspire to and does not merely reference influence of others for the sake of influence. Lastly the inclusion of maximising the efforts of others directly relates to employee engagement, and engaged employees give discretionary effort that will ultimately lead to improvements in leadership capability and impact in legal service organisations.

Providing a general definition of leadership in legal service organisations does present several challenges. Firstly, there is no single profile of what a successful leader is as there is no single definition of the successful legal service organisation. Indeed leadership in legal service organisations share no consensus about how, apart from profits, success should be measured. Although there is agreement that profitability is important, there is a frequent disagreement about how important it is, how profits should be distributed, and how other values should affect decision-making within the legal service organisation. Questions such as what importance the legal service organisation should assign to growth, diversity and work/life balance often impact on the decision-making process. The second difficulty in discussing leadership in legal service organisations is the importance of context. There is no single set of leadership traits or styles that works best in also circumstances and in all organisations. Some commentators note that the key to success can be put down to adaptability of leadership to organisation culture, goals, and market conditions. That, in turn, requires an ability of leadership to help capitalise on the distinctive strengths and competitive advantages of their employees to meet the demands of the legal services landscape.

Despite these limitations, and although there is no single definition of effective leadership, there are some widely shared criteria of successful legal service organisations, broadly identified as satisfaction among internal and external stakeholders and sustained profitability. These general organisation-wide success factors coupled with the definition of leadership proffered by this paper, provides the context in which to explore ways legal service organisations can improve their leadership capability and impact.

LEADERSHIP CAPABILITIES
The requirements of leadership may vary by industry and context but there are certain competencies that are central to leadership capability. This section of the paper focuses on five key competencies: decision making, influence, innovation, conflict management, and communication. Although these competencies are not specific to any particular job, profession, or undertaking, they are useful in understanding how leadership is a key success factor in legal service organisations and will form the basis of the more detailed discussion relating to improvement of leadership capability and impact within legal service organisations in later sections of the paper.

Decision-making

A key leadership skill is the ability to make sound decisions and to develop decision-making processes that will enable employees within the legal service organisation to reach similar outcomes given similar parameters. Generally, decision-making has two key objectives: the quality of the decision and how widely accepted that decision is within the organisation. Both outcomes are subject to external constraints, such as time and cost, and trade-offs between the objectives and the constraints are often necessary. For example, broad participation within the legal service organisation often enhances the quality, acceptability and legitimacy of decisions, but this broader participation comes at a cost of effort and expense. Therefore the key task of leadership is to create a system or environment for decision-making that it is most cost-effective and least subject to distortion or variability. In order to implement a system that allows individuals to reach similar outcomes and to make decisions that are in line with a company’s vision, a basic understanding of the ways individuals make decisions and the impact of cognitive biases is critical. In most decision-making processes, the process is intuitive rather than deliberative. That is, when individuals receive information from various inputs, they attempt to make decisions based on existing knowledge structures imposing their own preconceptions allowing them to organise the information into predictable patterns. These existing knowledge structures and preconceptions often lead to inaccurate or misinformed outcomes.

In order to avoid such errors and create a scalable decision-making process across an organisation, decision-makers must introduce a deliberative process that can override initial preconceived responses. Essentially, resolving, identifying and prioritising the relevant values, interests, and objectives of any decision from the outset establishes a sound process of decision-making. The most legitimate response based on those factors is then chosen and later assessed in order to determine the real impact on the organisation. Although beyond the scope of this paper, in creating appropriate decision-making processes, leaders also need to be conscious of the cognitive bias of the decision-maker as they can negatively impact the outcome.

Influence

Influence can come in many forms and leaders can exert their influence in a number of ways at all levels of an organisation. They can compel, intimidate, pressure, persuade, negotiate and inspire. Research has shown that leaders adopt four primary strategies in exerting their influence: authority, reciprocity, social influence, and association. Authority is the most obvious source of influence that usually stems from a person’s title or position and confers authority to reward or punishment. Authority can also originate in the credibility that is associated with a particular status. A second form of influence can stem from reciprocity that relates to the obligation to return favours. A further strategy of leaders in exerting their influence is to capitalise on influence to reinforce desirable behaviours without creating cultures of conformity that stifle constructive dissent. As leaders are influenced by those around them, particularly in contexts where all the relevant information may not be readily available, individuals rely on the behaviour of others for cues or social proof about what is appropriate and which decisions they should make. As such, harnessing that influence to reinforce desirable behaviours remains a significant challenge for leaders. Association also plays a part in leaders exerting their influence. Whether employees embrace a message delivered by an individual may depend on the message or the messenger being associated with positive or negative perceptions or circumstances. An effective strategy of influence involves lifting and maintaining employee engagement by providing greater opportunities for employees to partake in autonomous work and receive timely credit where it is due.

In addition to the primary four strategies that leaders adopt to exert their influence, to be effective, they must also understand why employees within the organisation follow their leadership and what makes that relationship productive. Common motivating factors of employees include rewards and sanctions; desires for stability, security and community; admiration, identification, and respect; and the appeal to values and a vision of the future for their organisation. Bennis notes that the qualities of the best followers are not too dissimilar to those individuals who show leadership qualities. These individuals are informed, engaged and innovative yet the structures and environments within the organisation do not encourage or foster these qualities. Effective leadership therefore creates channels for internal dissent, and invites constructive criticism from all levels of the organisation about the most effective solution to any problem. By creating such an environment, leaders begin to earn the trust of their teams positively affecting satisfaction and performance. In building this level of trust leadership within an organisation can adopt certain strategies that may include offering employees opportunities to share critical feedback, by providing positive recognition and reinforcement for constructive criticism, creating a climate of transparency, responsiveness, and mutual respect, and by involving individuals into decisions that will have a direct impact their job and performance.

Innovation and change

Any successful legal service organisation needs to adapt to social, political, legal, economic and technological developments. Innovation, which can be defined as the collective practice of a group of people leading to adaptation, is particularly important in the context of rapidly evolving technologies or shifting stakeholder expectations often the result of better informed and educated stakeholders. It has become widely accepted that contemporary legal service organisations are in a rapidly changing environment. Evolving technologies has replaced many routine tasks previously undertaken by lawyers at lower prices and greater efficiencies. Although leaders in legal services organisations need not be the individual source of innovative ideas, they are required to create a culture that anticipates and adapts to change in order for their legal service organisation to sustain profit and maintain the engagement of employees.

The reason why legal service organisations are required to innovate and change varies. A genuine crisis for example, involving an erosion of market power, a merger, technological developments, or financial and governance problems can heighten the need for change and create a sense of urgency that often leaves legal service organisations with no choice other than to make drastic changes or seek innovation. Change management research identifies three stages at which leadership can guide an organisation towards change. The initial phase is to identify the obstacles to change within the legal service organisation and overcome any existing inertia to create a compelling vision for the future. Legal service organisations have become complacent and rely too heavily on few senior individuals who often have invested personal time and effort in business strategies and models that are no longer relevant in this rapidly changing landscape. In order to improve leadership capability and impact within legal service organisations, leaders must develop objective strategic planning processes that allow them to identify problems or opportunity costs within the current structures of the organisation. In order to inform these processes, leadership should consult and survey clients, peers, and outside advice so as to identify the necessary and most advantageous reforms for their legal service organisation. Although it is commonly excepted that the legal service industry is experiencing rapid change, another way of creating a sense of urgency that might inspire innovation and change, offered Maister, suggests that a leader create standards for their own performance and ask others to rank their performance against those self-imposed standards, the results of which would be disclosed publicly. A pledge would be made that their position would be untenable if they didn’t achieve significant improvement with in a set period of time. Although a high-risk strategy, Maister argues that that level of accountability by leadership sends a powerful message about the organisations’ commitment to change can drive motivation and participation towards innovation and acceptance of change.

The next phase requires leaders to develop a realistic strategy for moving forward and gathering broad support for that strategy across the organisation. Seeking buy-in from key stakeholders will minimise any opposition in introducing the new strategy. Often the most effective approach is to seek short-term visible improvements that can be realised immediately that can establish the foundations for broader change and innovation. Where there are individuals that may inhibit the implementation of any strategy, leaders need to address their concerns and performance problems head-on. The immediate impact of change can be difficult to deal with and the potential rewards at some point in the future hard to appreciate. As such, opposing change by way of threats to status, power, autonomy, competence, comfort and job security are issues is that leaders must be able to overcome within a legal service organisation. By engaging with employees and adopting techniques like collaborative problem-solving and setting a transparent strategic plan are all essential to realising the benefits of innovation and change.

The third pillar towards change according to change management research is to assess and consolidate the change required and to identify the right time and metrics to evaluate progress. Leaders within a legal service organisation need to be able to measure the outcomes of their strategic vision and institutionalise what works. In order to achieve this third pillar, reward structures that reinforce progress that continue to reinvigorate the change and innovation processes are required.

Conflict management

Another critical leadership skill that will result in improvements to leadership capability and impact within legal service organisations is the ability to manage conflict. A failure to deal with conflict successfully can carry substantial costs to the organisation and as such, particular attention is given to this leadership capability below. Unresolved conflicts within the workplace can lead to stress, mental health issues, high turnover of staff, absenteeism, lack of cooperation, engagement and communication. The fear of conflicts within legal service organisations can also inhibit constructive criticism across the organisation. The costs to the business can be significant; the potential impact on the individual may lead to loss of reputation, and could have a great negative impact across the organisation. Conflict managed well however can be a source of necessary communication and change. It may serve as a catalyst for innovation and challenges to preconceived ideas and processes and may also signal problems in employee relationships or organisation-wide practices that need attention. An established body of knowledge explores conflict resolution in law related contexts, including negotiation, mediation, alternative dispute resolution and management. This body of knowledge can provide leadership within legal service organisations general insights into the dynamics of conflict and strategies for managing conflict.

The definition of conflict can vary with some saying it is “any situation involving apparently incompatible interests, goals, principles or feelings” while others define conflict as “a struggle over values, resources, status and power”. Although the causes of conflict may vary between legal service organisations there are certain common patterns that have been identified by the literature. Ongoing differences and repressed animosity between employees are common traits, and left unresolved, have a tendency to flare up in response to an event of change in conditions within the working environment. Circumstances within a legal service organisation like insufficient resources, or incompatible interests as well as subjective perceptions such as incomplete information and miscommunication may all have a part to play in the root cause of the conflict. Improvement in leadership capability and impact within legal service organisations can largely depend on how leadership deals with the conflict.

Generally there are six strategies that have been identified by the literature that can be used to avoid conflict: avoidance, contention, collection, appeasement, compromise and collaboration. Although these theories are applicable beyond just the legal service organisation there are certain general points to note that apply across all types of conflict. Avoidance is often the easiest approach as open confrontation risks unpleasantness, stress and retaliation and may seem pointless if the other side has a history of unresponsiveness. It is commonly accepted however that avoidance as a general strategy should be avoided as a meaningful process to resolve conflict.

Contention is considered a more direct response to conflict which calls for an open airing of grievances or imposing a solution. However, if one of the parties in the conflict feels as though there needs have not been met, this may lead to further resentment, resistance or recurring conflicts. As such, competitive and coercive approaches to dealing with conflict often for short of identifying opportunities for a more creative and mutually acceptable solutions. A similar outcome may result in the case of dealing with conflict via appeasement. As the adage goes ‘the leader who always appeases is like someone who feeds crocodiles hoping that they’ll eat him last.’ Compromise on the other hand, may lead to productive outcomes particularly with respect to zero-sum trade-offs in which no party can be better off without the other party suffering. This approach however comes with risks in leaving both sides of the conflict dissatisfied, which may fail to promote a fair outcome. The greatest impact and improvements in leadership can be realised by adopting a process of collaboration in dealing with conflict. Under the collaboration approach of resolving conflict, party’s work together to identify a win-win outcome that is focussed on shared concerns, mutual respect, and positive outcomes. As discussed earlier in the paper, the ability to collaborate to resolve conflict requires an understanding and exploration of the underlying needs, objectives and expectations of all the parties involved. Although the advantages to resolving disputes via collaboration can be positive, it is recognised that collaboration can be time-consuming and unlikely to be effective if the differences between the conflicting parties is vast.

Leadership within legal service organisations must play multiple roles in managing conflict by using a combination of the strategies identifying above. Leaders must negotiate, mediate, facilitate and create organisational structures and the environment that is designed to prevent, resolve, or creatively use conflict in favour of the organisation as a whole. An effective resolution to conflict often depends on learning as much as possible about the goals and concerns of everyone involved from multiple and objective sources to resolve the conflict. Leadership must also develop positive techniques like restating the points made by the parties to be sure there is a common understanding of the issues, paying attention to body language and facilitating meaningful communication, avoiding accusations or moral judgement and probing appropriately the underlying reasons, concerns and offering creative solutions. When parties to a conflict have identified and agreed solution, they then need to agree on specific remedial steps, which may include strategies for avoiding problems in the future. As such, leaders must carefully select the time, place and manner in which the conversations between the conflicting parties may occur in order to facilitate a productive dialogue. Ultimately, the overarching goal of leadership with any conflict within a legal service organisation should be to reframe the conflict as an opportunity for collaborative problem solving and to create the conditions that will enable this to occur across the organisation. By fostering organisational cultures that value trust, stability and constructive disagreement will provide multiple channels for leadership to deal with dispute resolution. Often a sense of trust and fairness of the dispute resolution process is even more important than the substantive outcomes.

Communication

Another key competency that leaders must adopt in order to exercise influence within a legal service organisation is communication. To affect change by way of influence, leaders must communicate with the number of key factors in mind: objectives, substance, presentation and preparation. The need for clarity of purpose is paramount and leaders with in legal service organisations must be clear about their objectives. The objectives identified must be worthy of support and maintain a level of legitimacy within the organisation. Leaders must also look for ways to establish credibility and an authentic connection with employees within a legal service organisation either collectively or individually. In having a clear objectives and understanding the audience, leadership must then articulate the message in an engaging and effective way.

As outlined in this section, the core competencies of leadership, the characteristics of effective leaders, the strategies adopted by leaders towards innovation, change and engaging their workforce are pertinent to lawyers who assume leadership roles and responsibilities. The next section of the paper considers how these competencies, characteristics and processes when aligned with the work of employees within a legal service organisation can improve leadership capability and impact.

LEADERSHIP IN LEGAL SERVICES ORGANISATIONS
Challenging landscape of legal services

The legal landscape is changing rapidly with increases in competition together with mergers of local and international law firms and technological innovations has transformed the way which employees operate within the legal service organisations. Technology has reduced the demand for routine and commoditised legal services that are now performed by computers and support staff such as paralegals. Businesses seeking legal advice are facing their own pressures with respect to shrinking markets and have become more sensitive to price and efficiency. Larger businesses seeking legal advice have increasingly moved routine legal work in-house and have become savvier with respect to engaging outside counsel on short-term contracts with flexibility on price and expertise, rather than establishing long-term relationships with any particular legal service organisation. Corporate clients are becoming more educated with respect to engaging outside legal advice and often insist on discounts or write-offs of any fees that do not appear to be adding any value. The changing landscape has required legal service organisations to standardise services to meet their clients’ price sensitive approach. These emerging technologies and outsourcing possibilities have questioned traditional models and legal service organisations that are best able to adapt accordingly to the radically transforming landscape will be those that survive and thrive.

The shifting landscape external to legal services firms has also intensified the competition between employees within legal service organisations. Legal service organisations are increasing in size and geographical dispersion with a heightened focus towards short-term profits. This has resulted in less collegiality between employees as more internal and external pressure is applied increasing the rivalry between employees. Within larger legal service organisations, partnership or senior level positions have become less accessible and less attractive to employees. There are fewer lawyers becoming capital or full equity partners as the perks like job security that once existed are no longer. High rates of attrition within legal service organisations have also meant that there is less continuity and engagement with organisational values and strategic vision. In order to maintain profitability, legal service organisations have increased billable hour expectations of its lawyers leading to overwork and inefficiencies with disproportionately high rates of stress, substance abuse, and mental health issues. Excessive attrition with in legal service organisations, especially those employees with the best credentials, imposes heavy recruitment and training expenses. Recent economic downturn has also accelerated these challenges with reduced demand for legal work and increased pressure to cut costs leading to downsizing, layoffs, demotions of capital partners, and closure of established legal services organisations. Commentators have noted that the traditional law firm profit models are unsustainable with increased scrutiny and accountability of all employees at all levels within legal service organisations. The decrease in demand for legal services has meant that there are more capable lawyers then there is work available exacerbated by the increased number of law school graduates.

In this challenging landscape, it is the central task of leadership within legal service organisations to promote a strategic vision that can attract consensus and serve it’s long-term values. Further, a critical leadership skill is the ability to adapt the organisations culture, capacities, and constraints to meet these challenges. A necessary focus on the financial well-being of a legal service organisation has meant that leadership capabilities are often overlooked. The underlying question of how to reconcile financial priorities like profitability, demand, pricing and deficiencies with other values like a clear strategic direction necessary to sustain engagement of its employees is no longer a focus. In order to strike a balance between these competing interests, leadership must confront these challenges on a number of levels. For example, at senior partner level within legal service organisations, there is a feeling of scepticism of governance structures based on shared credit, collaboration and sacrifice of personal interests to the benefit of the legal organisation as a whole. These challenges are exacerbated by the increasing global nature of lateral hiring and mergers. Geographical constraints lead to significant decrease in a face-to-face contact and an alignment of shared strategic vision, which makes consensus difficult. As such the current business environment within legal service organisations makes its difficult for leadership to establish a level of confidence that allows individuals to make concessions in pursuit of common goals. As noted, underlying these challenges is the devaluation of leadership skills and responsibilities. The emphasis placed on financial performance has led to undervaluing the key leadership competencies outlined in the previous section of this paper. Typically, high performing lawyers rise to leadership positions because of their financial performance and capabilities as lawyers, and not because of their leadership abilities. The lack of establishing a sustainable competency model has resulted in strategic paralysis and internal friction. Further, the focus within legal service organisations on financial performance and capabilities of its employees as lawyers has resulted in inadequate priority given to leadership capability. Senior partners are often required to maintain client relationships and often continue to maintain their own billable hour thresholds. Coupled with the significant governance obligations and managerial responsibilities leaves insufficient time to improve leadership impact and capability.

Legal service organisations now dealing with these competing demands make it increasingly difficult to invest in improving leadership capability and impact within the organisation. Programs tailored toward investing in leadership capabilities such as mentoring and evaluating and recognising non-financial contributions have all negatively affected workplace efficiency and satisfaction of employees. The next section of this paper outlines some strategies that can be adopted by leadership with in legal service organisations to meet some of the challenges outlined above.

Leadership strategies to deal with a challenging landscape

Commentators note that strategic planning is the most critical factor in dealing with challenges within an organisation. Strategic planning involves identifying a central mission and direction of an organisation, articulating the steps necessary for achieving its organisational goals, and establishing governance structures that advanced those goals and ensure accountability for the results positive or otherwise. Essential to achieving an effective strategic plan is wide consultation within the organisation and the ability to reach consensus on the definition of success and the measures that are required to achieve them. A realistic assessment of the firm’s strengths, limitations, and market position coupled with the introduction of initiatives aligned with the organisation’s vision and getting buy-in from internal stakeholders is also required. A vision over-emphasising profit maximisation has the risk of overlooking the relative importance of collegiality, intellectual challenge and diversity. Legal service organisations attempting to maintain profitable outcomes at all costs often expand quickly through mergers and lateral acquisitions that can lead to difficulties in sustaining a common culture aligned with a strategic vision. How leadership meet the competing interests and objectives within legal service organisations can vary depending on size, culture, governance structures and financial circumstances of the organisation. Despite the differences in these areas across legal service organisations, a process towards establishing a strategy vision that is transparent, widely accepted and responsive to competing interests is crucial and will be most effective in achieving an inspirational and realistic vision.

Another key strategy that can be adopted by leadership within legal service organisations to meet the increasing challenges is to cultivate potential and future leaders within the organisation. The common assumption with in legal service organisations is that leaders will naturally emerge. Yet as noted above, promotions are often given to lawyers who perform financially well, which do not necessarily translate to that employee having the necessary leadership skills to make a positive impact in the organisation. Legal service organisations must recognise the need to improve leadership capability and impact and should introduce programs and competency models to identify potential leaders and to provide the necessary training and mentoring that will help support that element of professional development. For legal service organisations to realise improvements in leadership capability and impact, a focus beyond just sustained financial performance is required whilst at the same time fostering individuals’ growth whose ambition is not always personal but aligned with the strategic vision of the organisation.

Competency-based models recognising leadership skills

This section of the paper argues that by establishing a competency-based model that recognises the core competency of leadership as a key proponent of success within a legal service organisation allows for a transparent and objective process of measuring tangible output that will lead to improvements in leadership capability and impact. Historically, legal service organisations have relied on lockstep compensation regimes to reward and retain its lawyers. Increasingly though, legal service organisations are departing from the lock step model and approaching a skills-based approach to developing talent, and the ability to demonstrate key leadership competencies, has been identified as a core competency required. These organisations are implementing competency-based performance measures for recruiting, retaining and compensating its lawyers whilst recognising the flexibility of adapting to future of work trends.

Adopting a competency-based program, legal service organisations identify core competencies relevant to each legal service organisations mission; culture and organisational goals then consider and document the skills and traits of performance aligned with those competencies. As outlined in the early sections of this paper, key competencies often include decision-making, influence, innovation and change, conflict management and communication as well as any other skill relevant to the legal service organisations vision. For each competency, the organisation needs to identify elements that are aligned with the specific skills and behaviours that collectively describe the behavioural dimensions of that particular core skill. The next step in establishing a competency-based management model within the legal service organisation is to identify the specific behaviours or activities that demonstrate whether employees have developed the necessary skills in order to satisfy those specific skills identified. By introducing levels of proficiency that are attributed to the development of that core competence allows a legal service organisation to identify criteria or measures of success and progress. Through this process, legal service organisations have a transparent, reliable and consistent method over awarding its employees in line with the values and mission of the legal service organisation as a whole. Further, employees are provided with objective expectations that are required in order for that individual to realise progress within the organisation. Consistency and transparency is also realised when it comes to assessing individuals against each core competency that may result in performance efficiencies and buy-in of employees in line with the strategic vision. By refining the competency-based model within a legal service organisation, and recognising leadership as a core skill within the competency model, will allow legal service organisations to improve efficiencies by objectively measuring leadership capabilities.

IMPROVING LEADERSHIP CAPABILITY AND IMPACT
Adopting a competency-model

This section of the paper brings together the competency-model and the key characteristics of leadership to explain how legal service organisations can improve their leadership capability and impact.

A legal service organisation must recognise leadership and the key characteristics of leadership as a fundamental competency in order for it to realise improvements in leadership capability and impact. As discussed previously in this paper, the key characteristics of leadership are not necessarily attributable to any particular type of employment and as such often cover a broad-range skillset. In order to focus the concept of leadership within a competency-model in legal service organisations, the performance indicators must be aligned with the actual work that its employees are expected to perform. In doing so, the measured outcomes can be specifically aligned with the strategic vision of the organisation. The corresponding performance criteria are identified by the legal service organisation as a result of internal processes recognising the skills, abilities and characteristics of other staff that demonstrate leadership capability. Those demonstrated skills should then be aligned with those with agreed characteristics of leadership (decision-making, influence, innovation, conflict management, and communication) and the strategic vision.

For example, a key performance indicator that can be attributed to all five key characteristics of leadership could be the level of credibility the individual possesses both within the legal service organisation and with external stakeholders. Credibility consists of other peoples’ assessment of an individual’s integrity, expertise and competence, and the ability to influence and motivate others. If an individual cannot demonstrate subject matter competence, others may not be willing to follow the decisions of that individual. Similarly with external stakeholders, external parties must be able to recognise and accept these performance indicators before they can confidently rely on the lawyer’s professional judgement.

A performance measure that can be attributed to the communication and influence competencies of leadership is the ability to understand the skills, experience, and capabilities of other team members in order to maximise effort towards achieving an outcome. Further an evaluation of how effective that individual is in promoting and communicating their teams’ successes and supporting career development within a practice group should feature in as performance measure. At a higher level of the same competency, a performance indicator might include how an individual demonstrates their ability to empower their team by mentoring and coaching individuals in a particular task or process. At yet a higher level and building on the foregoing performance measures might be how an individual increases the overall performance of their team, how well they maintain motivation and engagement levels and the ability to align their team towards engaging and committing to the pursuit of a clear outcome or even the organisations’ vision. Inherent in this performance indicator is a high-level written and oral advocacy skill, along with the ability to articulate the reason and purpose of an action or change. In evaluating an individual’s ability to communicate, factors such as the ability to listen and correctly interpret the meaning and importance of the received information, and formulating clear and appropriately timed responses would play a part. This competency would also require employees to be able to manage their time, adapt to time pressures to allow them to effectively prioritise competing interests.

Legal service organisations that use a competency-based model should also recognise in individuals the ability to demonstrate creative thinking and problem solving in the resolution of internal and external problems. In demonstrating these skills, the capacity to form a shared vision that will motivate others to engage with a necessary action leading to positive change is paramount. Performance indicators of this innovation leadership competency might include identifying creative solutions to existing problems, putting in place new strategies to resolve those problems that lead to efficiencies going forward, and contributing novel approaches to organisational-wide management and governance challenges. Another key performance indicator that should form a part of a competency-based program is recognition of conflict management ability. Employees need to be collaborative and interact with others in positive and effective ways in order to realise effective conflict management strategies. As noted in the previous section of this paper, a measure of this competency might include an assessment of whether the professional working environment is one that fosters trust, stability and constructive disagreement via a transparent and fair dispute resolution process.

Legal service organisations that adopt a competency based model must include leadership ability is a key component to success. In doing so, leadership capabilities should be identified and measured both for the purposes of development and training and for performance evaluation. Adopting this approach will go some way in improving leadership capability and in impact in legal service organisations.

Motivational design and the competency-model

This section of the paper will argue that adopting future of work practices can be used to create an environment that can help improve leadership capability and impact within legal service organisations. As identified in the preceding sections of this paper, the legal service industry is facing significant challenges relating to internal issues of fostering leadership capabilities and attrition as well as external factors such as decreased demand for legal services and cost pressures, among other challenges. Future of work practices are concerned with how an organisation can motivate its staff and sustain that motivation to allow them to perform efficiently and contribute value beyond just job descriptions and billable hours. By adopting future of work practices a legal service organisation can create an environment where the right motivational dynamics are used to influence behavior, drive progress and shape culture towards the organisations’ vision. By introducing a competency-based framework along with creating an environment that inspires employees to sustain high levels of effort towards innovation, improvement and excellence, they can meet the challenges facing legal service organisations and improve leadership capability and impact.

As identified earlier in this paper, the current approach to work practice within legal service organisations is no longer applicable to the complex challenges and competing demands placed on employees. The intellectual labour of routine legal work has been commoditised and the formulaic tasks previously undertaken by lawyers that once resulted in predictable outcomes are being outsourced and farmed-out to processing centers where highly intelligent and capable people are living in countries with a substantially lower cost of living. As such, the landscape has changed and legal service organisations are required to adapt and adopt much more collaborative and creative environments to keep its employees engaged. To achieve this, a different approach to legal services along with a new tool set is imperative in order to sustain, build and amplify motivation. Management structures within legal service organisations are going to need to become much flatter and less hierarchal with more reliance on self-driven autonomous work as employees are tasked with more complex problems. How legal services organisations get collaborative, creative, forward-focused progress and sustain the motivation of its employees is explored below.

Leadership within legal service organisations should aim to make progress towards an agreed goal or organisational vision as transparent and visible as possible. Leadership should aim to short circuit feedback loops so that team members receive valuable constructive feedback as soon as possible after the performance of a task. Leadership within legal service organisations should also have the capacity to anticipate any setbacks and allow the team to work towards their goals unhindered by external factors that are not important to the outcome. In building a predictable and transparent environment within legal service organisations, leadership should avoid shifting agreed goals autocratically and maintain structures that provide context and visibility of the key competencies and desired behaviours. A clear sense of progress correlates with the highest levels of motivation within legal service organisations. Given the time constraints and limited capacity of employees, the default position is often to resort to activities that provide the richest sense of progress. As such, a clear sense of progress is most effective when feedback is objective and succinct. That is, any subjective element is removed and the feedback is grounded in data or evidence that allows an effective and efficient response to the feedback. Feedback should also be proximal to the behaviour where it is most relevant and useful. Employees should also expect to receive feedback frequently and that feedback readily available when needed to provide a further sense of progress. Often, the reasons that are attributable to a lack of progress or a shift in positive behaviour is not the lack of motivation, but rather a friction between the current progress of an employee and the expectations set by colleagues and management, referred to as the ‘constructive discontent’. By removing that friction and focusing on communicating transparently and setting achievable milestones towards an agreed outcome, progress and motivation is likely to increase. Pursuing objective, timely and frequent feedback as well as limiting the constructive discontent of an employee will allow leadership to engage in behaviour-based conversations with those employees that demonstrate leadership competencies. By providing the context and the forum for informed conversations between employees, an organisation can significantly increase engagement of its employees.

Motivation and mastery, autonomy and purpose

A competency-based program coupled with motivational design as outlined in the pervious section goes some way in recognising key characteristics and creating transparent and object goals set around those competencies. How leadership can motivate employees towards achieving those objectives within legal service organisations is the topic of this section.

Setting clear objectives and providing a financial incentive to employees aspiring to reach those goals will not bring about sustained motivation. The nature of the legal service industry has changed with formulaic tasks with predictable outcomes no longer the routine. Legal service organisations need to adopt a revised approach to motivation that fits more closely with the self-determination theory developed by Dan Pink. Self-determination theory proposes that human beings have an innate drive to be autonomous, self-determined and connected to one another, and that when that drive is liberated, people achieve more and live richer lives. Legal service organisations should focus on these drivers when managing employees by creating settings which focus on autonomy, the need to learn and create new things (mastery), for a purpose, often for the benefit of the individual and others collectively. There a number of initiatives using the self-determination theory outlined below that can be implemented by legal service organisations in order to motivate its employees that have leadership competencies within their goals. By motivating staff towards achieving the key competencies of leadership, the legal service organisation will improve its leadership capability and impact.

Autonomy

Legal service organisations should provide employees with autonomy over some (or all) of the four main aspects of work: when they do their work (time); how they do their work (technique); who they do it with (team); and what they actually do (task).

Legal service organisations can consider switching to a results-only work environment which focuses more on the output and results rather than billable hours or time spent on a matter, allowing employees to have flexibility over when they complete tasks. For particular clients or project based matters that may have a capped billable amount or fixed fee, employees within a legal service organisation can be given the autonomy to decide how long and when they complete the tasks required to delivery on the project. Legal service organisations should also focus on quality rather than style. Instead of dictating how employees should complete their tasks, partners should provide initial guidance and then allow their employees to tackle the project in the way they see fit rather than having to follow a strict procedure. In delivering the advice to the client, instead of a partner signing the advice, its signed by the team or the lawyer that had written the advice with note confirming that this has been approved by a partner. The other limb of autonomy is letting employees decide with whom they work with to deliver on an objective. Although this can be the hardest form of autonomy to embrace, allowing employees some choice over whom they work with can have an impact. Rather than have siloed practice groups, legal service organisations can establish a pool of skill that can be drawn on whenever that skill is required across any the organisation and for any deliverable. The nature of the work legal service organisations undertake makes it difficult to satisfy the fourth limb of autonomy: allowing employees to decide what they do. Notwithstanding the inherent difficulties, employees may still be given an opportunity to have ‘creative’ days where they can work on any project or problem they wish. There is empirical evidence that shows that many new initiatives are often generated during this creative free time. Annual partner retreats could be a good forum to allow some creativity to foster “light bulb” moments by “opening partner minds to fresh perspectives and methods.” This may be particularly important to employees who are undertaking leadership development in pursuit of improving any of the key competencies of leadership and allow them to focus on any area of improvement or identified gaps in skills all in line with the legal service organisations vision.

Mastery

Legal service organisations should aspire to create an environment where mastery is possible. Mastery involves allowing employees to become better at something that matters to them by providing tasks that are neither overly difficult nor overly simple. These tasks allow employees to extend themselves and develop their skills further. In approaching mastery, a good level of individual understanding is required and so a key leadership competency in knowing and understanding the skillset within a team or function area is a further strengthened. There are risks, which can include providing tasks that fall short of an employee’s capabilities that may result in boredom, or providing tasks that exceed their capabilities that may result in anxiety. Legal service organisations should be encouraging employees to collaborate and foster skills that allow them to empower their colleagues towards the organisations vision.

Purpose

The third limb of understanding motivation in modern legal service organisations is purpose. This is closely related to the concept of strategic vision explored earlier in the paper. It relates to an organisation taking steps to fulfil employees’ natural desire to contribute to a cause greater and more enduring than themselves. In order for legal service organisations to fulfil this limb, they must communicate the purpose and make sure employees know and understand the organisation’s vision not just short-term profit maximising and monetary targets. Employees, who understand the purpose and vision of their organisation and how their individual roles contribute to this purpose, are more likely to be satisfied in their work. In articulating and communicating the vision, the organisation should then build-in a reward structure within the competency-based model placing an emphasis on fulfilling the strategic vision. Research shows that the attainment of profit goals has little if any impact on an employees’ well being and actually contributes to disengagement and apathy. Historically, legal service organisations have focused heavily on the bottom line as the purpose, however in adopting these future of work practices, they can shift the focus towards using profit as the catalyst to pursuing a strategic vision purpose, rather than profit being the objective. In communicating the purpose, close attention should be paid to the rhetoric used with an approach that speaks about the organisation as a united team by using words such as “us” and “we”. This may go some way in inspiring employees to talk about the organisation in the same way and feel a part of the greater cause.

If legal service organisations adopt an approach to work and build working environments that facilitate autonomy, provide clear goals via a competency based-model, give immediate feedback pursuit to motivational design and provide suitable tasks to allow for development, they will create an environment where mastery is possible and ultimately improve leadership capability and impact within their organisations.

CONCLUSION
Building a competency-based model with clear performance indicators and identified behaviours allows for more visibility around progress. Taking the competency-model and creating transparent and clear progress markers towards achievement will encourage motivation and collaboration towards an agreed outcome or organizational goal. The lower the latency between effort and meaningful feedback, the more likely employees are to put in more effort. By communicating progress and how an individual’s work is contributing to something bigger, that is, the achievement as a collective of agreed performance criteria or an organisational vision, employees are more likely to maintain their motivation towards achieving the vision. Combine this approach with the goals aligned with the key leadership competencies, regular and informed feedback, and an understanding of motivation, mastery, autonomy and purpose, then legal service organisations can design a working environment that is collaborative and motivational that will lead to improvements in leadership capability and impact.

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