Column: Law firms bristle at letting outsiders lead. Will Dentons change that?
The opinions expressed here are those of the author, a columnist for Reuters.
By Jenna Greene
Aug 13 (Reuters) -When former EY global vice chair Kate Barton takes over as global CEO of 6,000-lawyer Dentons this fall, she’ll join a very small club: outsiders brought in to lead large law firms.
No one thinks twice if a corporation hires a CEO from another company — Starbucks, for example, just poached the head of Chipotle Mexican Grill — but law firms generally keep to their own when choosing top leaders, who almost invariably come from within.
At the handful of law firms that decided to go with leaders outside their ranks, some newcomers told me they faced headwinds in convincing independent-minded partners to back their plans. But it also strikes me that there’s a solid case for moving beyond the traditional (or as one ex-boss put it, “provincial”) approach of law firms in selecting leaders of what have increasingly become multi-billion-dollar, far-flung operations.
Barton, who starts work at Dentons in early September and takes over as CEO from Elliott Portnoy in November, said in an interview via email that the rise in technology and AI, increasing client demands and the globalization of legal services requires "a fresh perspective" that she's bringing.
A Massachusetts native whose father was a policeman and mother was a nurse, Barton got her J.D. from Boston College Law School in 1987 and an LLM in tax from Boston University School of Law in 1990. But she’s never practiced at a law firm.
Instead, she joined accounting behemoth EY as an intern and rose through the ranks, where as vice chair and CEO of Tax, Law, and People Advisory Services, she led a global workforce of 70,000 people generating more than $11 billion in revenue, according to the Dentons press release announcing her selection.
Was her lack of law firm experience a concern to Dentons?
“No,” said Portnoy by email, adding that her “previous role provided her with the relevant skill set needed,” including managing people, technology and client services. “Law firms have much to learn from competitors outside the legal sector,” Portnoy said.
Dentons, a Swiss verein with international branches that operate under a shared banner but as largely separate legal entities, says it serves clients from 167 locations in 82 countries and is the largest law firm in the world by headcount.
The firm’s diffuse culture may help Barton dodge some of the potholes that other non-homegrown leaders encountered.
“Law firm leadership historically turned on being well known to and respected by other partners — a ‘big hitter’ in relation to client work,” said Tony Angel, who joined DLA Piper as global co-chairman and senior partner in 2011, exiting the firm when his term expired in mid-2015.
Reached via email from his home base in London, Angel, who before joining DLA spent 29 years at Linklaters, including nine as firmwide managing partner, said he “felt the challenge of not having decades of relationships with key partners” at DLA.
“The issue is that without that credibility you can’t be effective, as (law firm) management structures are more diffuse and relatively weaker than in the corporate sector,” said Angel, who is now chairman of 4C Biomed and Jnetics and a visiting professor of practice at Bayes Business School.
A DLA Piper spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment.
The problem for firms that pick their most accomplished lawyers to lead is that it takes them away from their proven strength: practicing law.
The top business generators at a big firm might pull in $50 million to $100 million a year of work, legal consultant Lisa Smith, a principal at Fairfax Associates, told me.
There’s an “opportunity cost” in moving such high performers into management, she said. Sure, they might have the credibility to command consensus from their colleagues, but the question remains: Is this the best and highest use of their talents?
It strikes me there’s also a certain amount of ego at play. Just because a lawyer is a whiz at trying cases or overseeing corporate mergers doesn’t mean they’ll excel at law firm management.
At some firms, especially the largest ones, the answer is to empower a chief operating officer to run things. A top partner is then anointed chair, mainly to serve as the “face of big decisions, particularly controversial ones,” legal consultant Kent Zimmermann of the Zeughauser Group told me.
A handful of firms have gone further, bringing in non-lawyer business pros as fully-empowered CEOs. Husch Blackwell, for example, hired Jamie Lawless from Baker McKenzie last year to serve as its leader, charged with overseeing the 1,000-lawyer firm’s overall performance, including its six legal “business units” — aka practice groups. Lawless took over as CEO in February from Paul Eberle, who is also not a lawyer.
Every big firm likes to tout its “unique” culture, but to my mind, the St. Louis-founded Husch can legitimately claim outlier status. For example, about one-quarter of its lawyers work remotely as members of a virtual office dubbed The Link.
Husch’s approach to management allows lawyers to “focus on what they’re best at, which is practicing law,” Lawless told me.
More than a decade ago, Pepper Hamilton also caused a buzz by hiring Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr executive director Scott Green, a Harvard MBA, to serve as its CEO, prompting articles with headlines like “Non-lawyer CEOs: Part of the New Normal?”
(The answer, with the benefit of hindsight: No.)
Running a law firm “is a relationship game,” Green, who worked at Pepper from 2012 to 2015 and is now president of the University of Idaho, said.
Anyone who attempts to lead via command-and-control, issuing orders and expecting them to be followed, “is going to fail,” he said. “You’ve got to convince people to come along with you.”
Reporting by Jenna Greene
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