Modern and professional Law Firm Management: How your law firm becomes a team...
What is the difference between your local Kreisliga club and the national team? None, for starters. The ball is round, it's on the pitch and each game lasts 90 minutes.
Whether it's local heroes or national heroes: they all give it their all. Only when they succeed, everything changes. It has to do with talent, but not only that.
While the volunteer kickers are still loudly discussing how best to score the goal, the striker of the national team is already picking up the ball presented by his team-mate to send it straight into the goal. For the professional player, the passion for playing is at best a means to an end. For him, it's about market value, about economic success. It is measured by goals. And by wins. You don't become world champion alone.
What should interest us lawyers. We like this amateur soccer player.
Anyone who comes to the local kicker on Sunday afternoon behind school wants to have a good time, and that means bolts, roars - and the beer to go with it.
It's different with the professionals. They have to work constantly to stay or become a team. One that is greater than the sum of all individual players.
Do you know the law firms where everyone gets on well with each other, is on first-name terms and is even friends in private? As soon as you enter the office, you feel exhilarated. People joke and laugh, and in the kitchen they meet for a cosy chat over home-baked cake. Even the piles of files on the floor are no problem. Whoever has time to answer the phone will do so. The young new colleague can wait with his request.
And then there are the law firms that meet every Thursday afternoon for a team meeting.
With topics such as business development, training and further education programs and strategic positioning. Areas of responsibility are not described there by their own desks. There is such a thing as office defined work processes, priorities and control systems. Efficiency and effectiveness as far as the eye can see. Everyone gives their best and focuses on their work.
Being a lawyer is not a honeypot - the law firm is not a football field to stay in context. Passion is allowed elsewhere.
A law firm is a business. It is about numbers, about economic success. And about people.
After all, the firm's products are produced by people: from knowledge, skills and life experience. The employees are both resource and capital at the same time. And the products shape human lives.
Just like a team. What does it cost to replace a well-trained and trained employee - especially if you lose her to the competition?
What does it cost to not have made a promising young lawyer an attractive offer - especially when many clients have felt that they are in good or better hands with him?
Today, we can no longer afford to give away or leave unused talents and potential. They have to be discovered, promoted and retained in the long term. A team can do all this.
A good team can do even more: it multiplies the talents bound in this way.
"Those who work alone add up, those who work with others multiply."
But how does a team become a good team?
A strategy is developed in the training camps from the willingness of each individual to be part of something bigger. Skills are coordinated so that they not only complement each other, but multiply.
That worked for the national soccer team in Germany. It will also work for your law firm. After the game is before the game. Our national soccer team, "Die Mannschaft", has had intensive team training:
You don't become champion alone. Nor is a successful law firm.
When was the last time you invested in your team?