Filling a C-suite position at a firm means looking beyond the law degree. What matters is business knowledge and deep experience of it inside a legal environment. If you are looking for an executive who will shape the firm’s future, search wider. A strong C-suite depends on several skills, hard and soft:
Ethical Leadership
The ability to create a vision, inspire the rest of the staff to connect to the vision, and then implement it with integrity.
Authenticity
Personal insight, knowing who you are and then living by those standards, the courage to be real.
Legal Fitness
An understanding of law firm structure. Having a keen understanding of the legal mind and methods, and the ability to work within those realms.
Business Development
A comprehensive grasp of the firm’s own numbers, the ability to connect them to growth, and the skill to explain them to lawyers so they can build their own practices. Support for client pitches, and the client communications that follow.
Marketing
Integrating business development into the workflow. Executing events, building a brand, generating new business, spotlighting the firm in the client arena.
Financial Strategy and Pricing Skills
The ability and insight to see beyond the billable hour. Understanding of the value of experience, knowledge, and skill.
Strategic Thinking / Communicating Skills
The ability to understand a problem, set and interpret goals, communicate the reasoning and the expectations, and then execute across levels.
Time in the Trenches
Experience, years of it, is often more crucial than education. Knowledge that was gained by application.
Technical Knowledge and Skills
A keen comprehension of technology, its impact on operations, and how to capitalize on the advantage it brings to the legal world.
People Management and Client Relations
The ability and insight to connect with staff as well as with clients.
Identity and Cultural Perception
The ability to perceive a firm’s culture, and then enhance it, establishing a unique brand and strategically building on it.
Searches for the people who run the firm
Securing an executive of that caliber takes time. OnBoard Legal understands the legal field, and our understanding of what a law firm needs is backed by legal and recruiting experience on our own team. Contact us to learn more.