Nigel Knowles on DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Carey & Harvard Business School

"As global law firms begin to take on the size and reach of some of the world’s most notable multinationals, it is not unreasonable to assume that they should be run with a more commercial management structure."

—Nigel Knowles, Joint CEO of DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary, writing in Legal Week.  

This is prelude to Knowles describing the week-long executive education immersion program DLA Piper organized in conjunction with Harvard Business School last October.   It's a ground-breaking program, as is Reed Smith University, and I've written an article to be published soon in a variety of media about "Innovation in Law Firms," citing both DLA Piper's initiative and Reed Smith University.  [Regular readers:  Stay tuned—you'll see it here first.  And non-regular readers:  Here's a reason to become a regular, or subscribe to my monthly newsletter at the very least.]

But back to DLA Piper's post-merger integration issues, and why should we care, with or without Harvard Business School's involvement?

Essentially, Knowles and his colleagues at the top of DLA realized that, while law firms may excel at developing—or at least at throwing out those who don't develop—leadership and business generating skills, we've entered a new era.  It's no longer sufficient to promote the gorilla rainmakers or (conversely) the non-controversial glad-handers to the executive committee. 

Firms that want to play on the national or the multinational stage today need to develop leaders, on purpose.  It does not tend to happen by accident, at least statistically speaking.  And I assume you do not want your firm to be a statistic.   Knowles again:

"One of the major personnel challenges for law firms is identifying and nurturing its potential leaders. The identification is often easy, but turning these talented legal professionals into the corporate management of the future is less straightforward."

The DLA Piper/HBS collaborative retreat lasted a week and ran from 7:30 am to 8:00 pm or later, and included 56 senior people, including the joint chief executives and senior partners from 11 different offices in nine countries.   If nothing else, this demonstrated the firm was putting its money where its mouth was.

• developing strategy and aligning the firm to achieve it;
• professional development (in alignment, to be sure, with the firm's strategy);
• leaders, culture, and managing change;
• and all of the above capped off by and illustrated, made concrete by, business case studies.

My view?

The DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Carey merger is perhaps the most audacious of the last five years, if not longer.  They have an "integration" challenge beyond the scope of what any firms have previously tackled.  Given lawyers' instinctive immune-system response rejecting the foreign antibodies of professional firm management (read:  HBS), one should, by rights, be skeptical.

But I'm actually a believer; I think they'll pull it off, and that they'll set a new bar by doing so.

What's your bet?