The following is an excerpt from Gene Commander’s article in the November issue of Colorado Lawyer exploring why and how to foster a magnetic workplace culture for today’s law firms. The article in its entirety is available here.
A perfect storm of demographic, economic and professional trends is shrinking the pipeline of affordable and productive legal talent across the nation and in Colorado. The storm threatens to shake firms to their core by 2030 – which means that law firm leaders have a six-year window of opportunity to adopt future-focused smart-growth strategies that invest in human capital while serving the best interests of the firms’ clients, the profession and the communities in which the firms do business.
Smart growth does not necessarily entail increasing lawyer headcount, but rather encompasses a wide range of strategies that invest in talent and add value to the business enterprise, like nontraditional staffing arrangements, talent-driven mergers and acquisitions, and succession planning initiatives. The end goal is to scale law firms’ business models to ensure that revenue growth outpaces the increased costs of doing business, thereby ensuring sufficient profits per equity partner (PPEP) to sustain the business enterprise.