Lawyers often struggle with customer satisfaction issues.  Time after time surveys suggest that they get client relationships wrong.  Often a law firm’s response to relationship problems is to limit access to clients and increase controls.

An article I came across recently in Management Today suggests that this is the wrong solution.

The “Happy Manifesto” by Henry Stewart gives ten guiding principles to making staff more engaged, happier and more productive.  I won’t repeat all of his ten principles here, you can follow the links above, but I will highlight one in particular, which really struck me as a great, simple idea for law firms.

Select managers who are good at managing. Make sure your people are supported by somebody who is good at doing that, and find other routes for those whose strengths lie elsewhere. Even better, allow people to choose their own managers.

Let the partners who can mentor, teach, manage and develop junior members of staff, specialise in that and create the culture of learning and knowledge-sharing necessary for a well-leveraged law firm with happy productive staff who delight their clients (and let the partners who are best left alone to get on with their work (and charge like the light brigade), do that without negatively affecting the culture).

What do you think?

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