How often have you interviewed someone who wants to move firms not in order to earn more money but rather for a collaborative, supportive, collegiate environment with collective, long-term goals in which the candidate’s contribution will be recognised? Perhaps you have sought those characteristics yourself in a new firm, or even promised them to prospective joiners believing or hoping you can deliver.
The one-firm ideal is commonly espoused by law firms but rarely achieved. Some bemoan its passing for a more aggressively individualistic culture. But did the one-firm ideal really ever exist, or has the force of competition simply opened the joins? In Managing the Professional Services Firm, David Maister argues that all work moves inexorably from expertise, through experience to efficiency, and finally, potentially, to extinction. And now, in his recent report, Sir David Clementi urges new structures and fresh ideas to open up competition. Considering how mobile the legal market has become, if younger lawyers are denied interesting work and opportunities, they are more likely than ever to vote with their feet.
