Seyfarth Shaw has learned a lot about lawyers and their resistance to change as the firm embraced Lean Six Sigma, a management approach emphasizing process improvement and efficiency in legal work.

Seyfarth Shaw chairman J. Stephen Poor outlines the lessons learned in an article for the New York Times DealBook blog. “Never underestimate the resistance to change from lawyers,” he writes. “Even more likely, never underestimate the ability of lawyers to describe virtual status quo efforts as revolutionary change. Working through a change management process intended to deal with that push-back has been a core element of our challenge for years.”

Resistance came not just from lawyers in his firm, Poor says. Most of the firm’s clients are also lawyers, and they also showed reluctance. The firm has learned that it had to build a business case for change, working in collaboration with clients.

Two other lessons learned:

• Law firms do need to change how they manage their businesses, with a focus on client demands for better value. Except for a handful of law firms, “the status quo will not drive long-term success,” he asserts.

• Don’t settle for half steps. "Marketing efforts are lovely; certainly, we all do marketing," he says. “But if one is to truly evolve a business model, the only way to avoid having it become simply a marketing effort is to recognize that it must drive through all parts of the organization."

Re-Engineering the Business of Law

J. Stephen Poor is chairman of the international law firm Seyfarth Shaw.

True long-term success requires businesses to improve continually and reimagine how they operate in the face of changing competition and market forces. Yet this innovative urge, which drives so much of the rest of the American economy, is largely absent from large law firms.

Instead, the measures become balancing rate growth versus discounted fees, lawyer productivity measured in tenths of hours, recruiting the partner with a book of business from one firm to another and similar yardsticks.

These address the traditional measures of law firm profitability. The need of the purchasers of legal services — at least from large law firms — continues to change, however. The pressure on in-house counsel to deliver better services using fewer resources has never been more intense. In order to meet business demands, corporate counsel are increasingly looking for firms that deliver greater value. Looking out on a landscape that includes a wider variety of choices than ever before – regional firms, national firms, global firms, virtual firms, legal outsourcing providers and contract firms, among others — their purchasing decisions continue to evolve.

If the recent recession teaches anything for the legal industry, it is this: The changing demands of our clients require the legal services profession to find different paths to deliver value to those who buy our services. Lawyers today should be asking themselves nontraditional questions: how to apply resources more effectively, to shorten cycle time and lower the cost of their work product and other deliverables, while raising the level of service. In the end, your client will reward you by giving you more work across more areas, and your relationship will deepen.

The ground on which we walk has been altered. Traditionally, large law firms fit into largely homogenous business models. Whether we recognize it or not, that has changed and will continue to shift. As we navigate a different world, our experience presents three core lessons:

Be Prepared to Examine and Reimagine the Business Model.

Our firm has been on its own, unique path for years. Over the past seven years, we’ve used a version of Lean Six Sigma borrowed from the manufacturing sector to redesign core elements of how legal work process is measured and deployed. This has resulted in a variety of tools, analyses and process improvement techniques intended to drive efficiency into the delivery of legal services – at all levels of the practice. More important, it aligns a way of thinking with the needs and requirements of corporate purchasers of legal services.

What works for us, however, may not work for every firm. Culture, current firm composition and many other factors should drive the way any firm responds to the market. The point, however, is that — other than for a handful of firms — the status quo will not drive long-term success. Change, particularly one involving lawyers, is a painful, prolonged process. Nevertheless, change, driven from innovation and a consistent focus on client needs, must drive how we look at and manage our businesses. Learning from our colleagues in the industry is important, but adapting that learning and innovating in the delivery of our services is critical.

Don’t Settle for Half-Steps.

Too often, I see firms start down a path only to stop at partial implementation or inconsistent philosophies. At Seyfarth, we realized that trying to drive different behaviors would require us to restructure things like associate evaluation (which we did by putting our compensation and advancement structures into a pure competency model) and re-examine our staffing models (for example, we eliminated a traditional summer program and replaced it with an education-based fellowship program). The global reach of our clients and their need for integrated, efficient service delivery across multiple countries, led us to create the largest multijurisdictional international employment practice, among others.

The point is not that our path is for everyone. The point is that the willingness to change and adapt business models must anticipate and address the variables that drive organizational success.

Marketing efforts are lovely; certainly, we all do marketing. But if one is to truly evolve a business model, the only way to avoid having it become simply a marketing effort is to recognize that it must drive through all parts of the organization. This will result in changes and modifications that were not anticipated but which make sense and should be adopted in order to have the overall change work properly.

Never Underestimate Resistance to Change.

Never underestimate the resistance to change from lawyers. Even more likely, never underestimate the ability of lawyers to describe virtual status quo efforts as revolutionary change. Working through a change management process intended to deal with that push-back has been a core element of our challenge for years. We consciously developed methodologies that linked to the history and culture of our firm or used client voices to support and build the business case for change. As we were able to demonstrate success on smaller scales, we were able to build agents for change that effectively permeated the firm.

What we did not anticipate was the resistance from other crucial stakeholders – especially clients. Much of what we’ve done is most effective when deployed in a collaborative change process with clients. What we overlooked at the outset is that, by and large, our clients are lawyers, too, and many of them are the products of the culture of their own business. Understanding the various viewpoints and building the business case to involve this crucial constituency was something we learned along the way. The nature of the process requires a continuous, but slow march toward improvement and adaptation. Some things we tried worked and some did not. Nevertheless, the continuous move forward takes persistence and, perhaps, a bit of stubbornness.