The Legal Executive Institute, in collaboration with the Association of Legal Administrators (ALA) and the Georgetown Center on Ethics and the Legal Profession recently conducted a survey of law firm leaders of primarily U.S.-based law firms in the midsize to large law firm market to examine where those leaders saw the greatest potential threats to their law firms, how they plan to confront those threats, and how their law firms are approaching institutional change.

We spoke with Jim Jones from Georgetown and Oliver Yandle from the ALA to hear their take on the initial findings in this section of the report. They shared insights from their many years of experience to help interpret the significance of the findings and advice for how law firms can begin to position themselves to work through partners resistance.

Here are a few key insights they shared:

While strategies for dealing with partnership resistance will vary from firm to firm, it is vital that firms not stand still on driving change while waiting for the firms to draw near enough to the precipice of calamity that the partners finally feel compelled to act;
Start with younger partners to build a culture that accepts change and the younger partners and future leaders of the firm will feel empowered to drive it forward;
Compensation can play a key role in how effective change efforts will be at a given firm because lawyers, by and large, will do what their compensation system tells them is important.

The full audio of our interview with Jim and Oliver is available below. The full report on the findings from this survey will be available through our website on October 24. Please consider subscribing to the weekly Legal Executive Institute Newsletter to be sure you don't miss out on the report when it's released.

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