Catch a partner at a weak moment—say, in the bar after dinner—and ask them why collaboration at their firm is so hard. You’ll hear something like what I heard recently: “My client is my livelihood. I can’t risk having them like another partner more than they like me. I can’t risk having another partner steal my client.”
This is a sentiment that is as widespread as it is ill-founded. If clients didn’t like you, they would already have found someone they do like. After all, clients are constantly being marketed to by partners from other firms. The real risk to one’s practice is partners at other firms, not one’s colleagues. Despite this logic, and for whatever set of reasons, partners perceive collaborating as entailing risk to themselves personally. Working this linkage in reverse begets the paradox of collaboration: the key to greater collaboration is for partners to take greater individual risk.
