Managing Change In Law Firms

If you don’t have time to watch the video just now, here are some highlights:

Edward O’Rourke: from the mistakes I made, probably I think the big thing that we all don’t give enough attention to and possibly take a little for granted is the people piece. Systems and processes tend to behave in a predictable fashion, people very much less so. There’s an emotional side to a change that people will go through, whereas process and systems don’t have that emotional attachment, so it’s the people piece, in particular, I think often gets partially overlooked and not understood enough in dealing with change.

That need to avoid change is incumbent in all human beings. What change then does, of course, is when you’re having to go through that change process and learn how to redo something or learn something new, it makes you slower and more inefficient. I think, as I say, that’s a challenge for all human beings, but I think lawyers in particular struggle with that feeling of inadequacy.

I don’t think conflict is necessarily a bad thing in business provided you understand why you’re going through that. You won’t get everybody agreeing with everything you do all of the time. You’ve got to allow them the voice to express their concerns or their disquiet about what you’re trying to achieve, but ultimately, if a majority want to go in a direction, you shouldn’t allow a minority to prevent or act as a veto on that process.

Graham Moore: What are your thoughts on the use of measurement and ultimately the use of data when it comes to implementing change programmes?

Edward O’Rourke: Absolutely essential. The reality is that there’s an old mantra that’s certainly been used in law firms for a number of years of what gets measured gets done, and I truly believe that. Or rather I should say, what people perceive is being measured is what gets done.

Graham Moore: Were there any specific challenges that you faced with being able to measure what was going on, the outputs of your change?

Edward O’Rourke: Occasionally, we use metrics that conflict with each other. I’ve often used the example that if you want a firm that is more collegiate in terms of the work-sharing, that people are not dabbling in areas of work outside of their expertise and are asking to work across different themes because that’s where the specialisms lie, then the one thing you shouldn’t be having is a performance metric that’s based purely on billing performance.