Law Firm Governance and the human hands metaphor

The human hands, along with the brain, are the main units that are responsible for the differentiation of the human beings and of our dominance on Earth. With its 27 bones and 35 muscles, it can hold, push, hit, pull, carry, make gestures and signs, besides having a huge sensorial expertise. It is a wonder of the evolutionary engineering!

And what does it have to do with the Law Firms Governance ?

In my humble vision, I will make an analogy between these two elements, as the rational and efficient management of an office (and virtually any company) should basically have a thinking and decision-making element (the brain) associated to a very capable, flexible, efficient, sensitive and adaptable performer element (the hands).

The human brain finds its analogous element in the decision-making rational structure that every office should have: the founding leader/entrepreneur, for example, in those small-size ones up to the most complex organizational structures containing CEO’s, boards, executive committees, managers, etc, in the large-size ones.

For this organizational structure to work properly, it is necessary to have a tool (two, in the human case) which is able to perform the tasks correctly and efficiently. For this to happen, each one of these elements should have specific functions or features combined to properly perform all its functions (like picking an object up).

For the management of an office to be efficient, the same way as our hand picks an object up, it is necessary to have the existence and the proper distribution of the job posts for each one of its elements (the fingers), and this way I devise the following characteristics as shown below:

Note: the distribution of duties was merely casual. There is no specific function for each finger!

1- Technical quality, accuracy and production capacity: in this “finger”, we can place the technical and legal level of the Law Firm (as a last resource of its members) which will be the responsible for the capacity to assist the clients as well as more complex matters, to add value to their solutions with the consequent efficiency in collecting its fees and also in its image in the market.

2- Client attraction capacity and institutional marketing: In this “finger” we place  the capacity to attract clients and all the initiatives of institutional marketing that are responsible for feeding the company’s growth.

3- Support to clients and quality in the rendering of services: in this “finger” (one of the most important in the current scenario), we can associate the ability to support, fulfill and, if it is possible, to amaze the customers with pro-active and innovative approaches in the rendering of the services. It s important to point out that good services go from the telephone assistance (call center), e-mail, whatsapp, etc, surely going through the legal services themselves, up to the expertise in the emission of invoices and their monitouring.

4- Work and Team management skills: in this “finger”, we place the way with which the office components organize their works, manage their teams (under the technical and motivational viewpoint), those matters under their responsibility as well as their contacts.

5- Business Vision: in this “finger”, we should place the capacity to understand the causes and the consequences of all the attitudes and decisions made internally and that will affect the governance of the office, that is, finances, management, growth, investments, strategy, image, etc.

In this metaphorical figure, we can also fit the ideal characteristics of the composition of the society (of its partners) or otherwise, the individual characteristics of each partner. Being aware that every person has its own professional profile, we can guess that every individual may have only some (usually one or more) of those innate or more developed characteristics and the combination of those people in a company means art.

It is important to highlight that, like the human hand, in order to obtain a good operation of the office, the existence of all fingers is necessary, with their own, combined and balanced characteristics, and not only the set of several equal fingers. Could you imagine what it would be like if we have 5 index fingers or 5 ring fingers? It would not work very well!

José Paulo Graciotti, is consultant and founding Partner of GRACIOTTI ASSESSORIA EMPRESARIAL, engeneer by Escola Politécnica Universidade de São Paulo, with Financial MBA at FGV and specialized in Knowledge Mnagement by FGV. ILTA Member since 1998 (International Legal Technology Association) and ALA (Association of Legal Administrators), with more than 28 years managing Law Firms in Brazil – www.graciotti.com.br