We expect too much of law firm partners

Yes, I know, but step away from the world's smallest violin and humour me...

In The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith describes the manufacture of pins to illustrate the idea of division of labour. Dividing tasks among specialists yields a greater number of pins than the sum of each individual labourer producing a pin end to end

Its principle lesson; of greater role specialisation leading to greater efficiencies is one I've seen play out (and indeed, had a hand in) in law firms over the years:

• through disaggregation of tasks to individual specialised lawyers rather than one lawyer running a matter end to end; and

  
  

• with new roles in law firms (legal project managers, practice managers, pricing specialists, etc)

In my experience, these tend to (but not always) yield higher quality work product for the client through standardisation, lower unit costs in producing delivering the work due to economies of scale, and greater profitability for the law firm

But despite Wealth of Nations being written ~250 years ago, and more recent trends within legal, there is one role that stubbornly refuses to divide its labour

That of the law firm partner

To be a law firm equity partner typically requires one to:

1. Be a qualified lawyer - whether a hard legal requirement (US) or a soft cultural one (UK and Australia), and

   
   

2. Be good at delivery of legal work. Either directly or in overseeing and managing others, and

   
   

3. Be a decent sales person capable of originating sufficient new instructions to both earn one's place in the equity ranks and to maintain it, and

   
   

4. Have access to capital to buy into the partnership; and

   
   

5. Be proficient in the business law, especially where one has a formal managing partner type role

This strikes me as (a) a lot to expect of any given individual and (b) a rather inefficient division of labour when looking at the law firm as a whole

To be good at all of 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and (possibly) 5 is statistically challenging to say the least. It is far easier to be good at some combination of 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 or (maybe) 5

Beyond opening up the ownership of law firms to non-qualified lawyers (to 1 and 4 above), isn't it time to stop expecting law firm partners to be these improbable superheroes?

Would it be better to disaggregate the individual attributes such that one partner can be a sales person (3), another partner a matter manager (2), and a managing partner unencumbered by a full fee earning portfolio (5)?

Adam Smith would likely contend that the five-partner practice with a super specialist in each of these areas would be more efficient than the five-partner practice where each attempts 20%

Small violins aside, I'm inclined to agree

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