Human Capital Management

The Holy Grail of assembling the most potent and effective team for a client matter is, simply put, to have the right people in the right place at the right time.  Wal-Mart (and other companies like Toyota) have achieved this with inventory and supplies; what stands in the way of achieving a similar high-productivity, high-delivery-level miracle with people?  After all, in a knowledge organization such as a law firm, talent is your inventory. 

Of course, all talent is by no means equal, so to prepare the groundwork for "human capital management" means identifying and grouping your people by their subject-matter expertise and their level of experience.  In a law firm, much of this work is essentially done:  "senior corporate partner," e.g., says pretty much all you need to know.  But other distinctions are fuzzier, and worth taking the time to delineate.  For example, when is a "senior securities associate" more appropriate for a financing deal than a "junior asset-backed finance partner"?

Again, our friends at McKinsey have done a yeoman job of laying it out. Patterns may emerge that cause you to re-think how you've always done things.  McKinsey offers the example of a $100-million/year "corporate law firm" with undue attrition among senior associates, causing, in turn, an increase in writeoffs.  If it were to turn out that many of the departed, disgruntled associates had been working on a particular class of deals with a particular handfull of partners, that case-assignment pattern could be broken.

So can you run out and buy this software?  Not quite yet; McKinsey estimates another year to 18 months before it shows up in any form remotely resembling off the shelf.  But considering that it addresses the absolutely indispensable core of your competitive distinction—your talented lawyers—you should be thinking about it now.