Succession planning shouldn’t be a dirty word for SME law firms
Creating the right culture and charting clear career paths is crucial to succession planning for law firms, according to Rachel Buckley, joint managing director at The Family Law Company.
Strategic succession planning should be on every SME law firm’s board agenda. It is a chance to not only maintain your key resource – legal professionals – by having clear career progression opportunities, but also to make sure the board or partnership are an asset not a hinderance to a business.
I became joint managing director at The Family Law Company alongside the company founder in January as part of our succession planning, but it didn’t happen overnight. As a business, we have been looking at our workforce and the skills that are needed to help our business grow. The Family Law Company actively mentors and works with senior employees to understand their personal career goals and the skills they have or need to develop to help drive the business.
Our culture has meant that we have always strived to have a diverse board, whether that relates to career paths, backgrounds or work patterns. We have had an equal split of men and women on the board for years with a mix of full and part time directors.
Many law firms like ours rely heavily on the partners or directors for leadership, client relationships, reputation and finance, so the loss of these individuals can have a big impact. Yet, many of our peers don’t have succession planning on their agenda.
For any business, the process of finding new director candidates is not easy, particularly when you are passionate about keeping the corporate culture of the business intact. We recognised early on that law firms that plan in advance are in the best position to find the best directors, that is why we introduced our directorship programme. I was delighted to see our first three colleagues complete it and join the board. All three bring different ideas, leadership styles and skills for the future needs of the business.
Having a succession plan and transparent career progression means that you can also anticipate the unexpected. Without a plan, replacing expected or unexpected board vacancies becomes reactive –perhaps replacing like for like and not thinking about better alternative skills for the future. Experience has taught us that this can also dilute the culture of a business and can be counterproductive in keeping stakeholders engaged. This can be business critical for an SME business like ours where our culture truly is our differentiator in the marketplace.
While it is difficult for any of us to think about our mortality, it shouldn’t mean that succession becomes a dirty word. If anything, getting it right means your legacy lives on for many years to come and continues to spark and ignite many more to invest in the business success.
