Felicity and Justine speaking at FLIP conf

Change leadership for a dynamic profession

We often hear that lawyers are not well-equipped to manage change, a sentiment supported to some extent by research findings. Yet the profession faces increasing pressure to adapt and innovate, creating a need for law firms to apply the lessons of change management. How can lawyers be better at leading (and receiving) change within their own practices? And how well do general principles of organisational change translate to the legal context? These are the questions explored in FLIP’s current (2019) research project, titled ‘Change Leadership for a Dynamic Profession’.  

Recently, FLIP research stream’s Deputy Director, Dr Justine Rogers and Research Fellow, Dr Felicity Bell presented a model for change leadership at the Law Society’s annual Future of Law and Innovation in the Profession (FLIP) Conference. Their presentation stepped through each part of the change process, from contemplation and planning, to action and maintenance. Referencing interview findings with change leaders from within the legal profession, the key messages focused on effective leadership styles and how to make change part of the organisational culture. Many of the interviewees talked about change in relation to new technologies. Yet, as one explained, “I noticed that quite often big technology projects go wrong. But they don’t go wrong because of the technology, they go wrong because of organisational and change factors.”

Leadership is important when it comes to achieving change. There has been a shift away from the ‘old model’ of leadership – centred on a single, ‘visionary’ leader who inspires trust and leads change – to a more adaptive, connective and relationship-focused style. This style is generally seen as fitting better with contemporary organisations, which are less hierarchical, more open and more responsive to their external environments.

At the same time, interviewees emphasised the need for everyone to take responsibility for, and be involved in, change. Having the capacity to dedicate certain staff to change projects is valuable, but not at the expense of change becoming solely their responsibility whereby change is something that occurs alongside regular work activity and outside work teams.

In a legal context, it’s important to plan for lawyers’ typical qualities, which include a heightened awareness of risk and a sense of perfectionism. An interviewee suggested that lawyers need “a healthy relationship with failure” but suggested that this can be challenging for “the traditional type of lawyer”. Rewarding lawyers in a concrete way for their work on innovative projects was also a recurring theme of interviews – whether this was through billing credits or other means. Lawyers are time poor, and without structural incentives, will lack the space and freedom to engage in creativity and innovation.