TRANSCRIPT OF FIRM RETREAT ARTICLE IN THE SEPTEMBER, 1988 EDITION OF THE “AUDIO LAWYER”

PUBLISHED BY THE AMERICAN LAW INSTITUTE - AMERICAN BAR

(Reprinted with permission of the Audio Lawyer)

By Robert J. Henderson ©

FIRM RETREATS: 

You are the harried managing partner of a small law firm. It’s Monday morning. You arrive at the office late because you forgot to set your alarm. Your desk is a catastrophe because you were too busy to clear it off before you left the office on Friday afternoon. Waiting for you are two younger partners who’ve been feuding over the assignment of cases. They have been unable to reconcile their differences, and are expect­ing you to do so, right now.

In the meantime, your frazzled secretary, who doubles as office administrator, has left you a note saying the two computers which you had intended to replace at the beginning of the year but didn’t because no money had been set aside for that purpose, have broken down and can’t be fixed. Also, the book­keeper, sporting a tell-tale abdominal bulge, is asking for the fifth time whether the firm has a maternity leave policy.

As if that wasn’t enough, your secretary tells you there’s been another glitch in that bargain computer software you thought you got such a good deal on, and you are scheduled to be in three different courts in three different locations at 10:00 a.m., which is a half hour from now. “So what else is new”, you say. 

As you rush out the door, your secretary reminds you that you have a meeting scheduled with your partners this afternoon to decide whether to hire a new associate and take on additional office space. She asks you if you have done the research and prepared the facts and figures you promised you would have for the meeting, so that they can make an intelligent decision. You respond that you haven’t had time, but you’ll try to do it over the lunch hour before your 1:30 appointment, if you get back from court in time.

Sound familiar?

You may say this scenario is an exaggeration, and it may be. But many lawyers in small firms face problems similar to the fictional lawyer I’ve just described, due mainly to the lack of planning and organization.

I’m sure you are asking how you can plan and be organized when there isn’t enough time in the day just to keep up with the normal demands of carrying on a full-time law practice and managing the business of the firm at the same time. The answer is that you may never, especially if you continue doing things the same way.

It should he obvious by now that the only way you will ever be able to do any long-range planning is to remove yourself from the hustle and hustle of the office, go somewhere out of town, and spend some time with your partners on a planning retreat. Having a planning retreat would allow you, in a more relaxed setting, to review where you are and where you want to be, and then to set some long-range goals, and to formulate an action plan to accomplish those goals.

That’s all well and good, you may say, but you and your partners tried having a retreat last year. It degenerated into a name calling contest, and almost split up the firm. Besides, you don’t have the time or the resources to do the necessary prepara­tion for the program.

Many small law firms have tried on their own to have planning retreats, with little or no success. There are good reasons why they have been unsuccessful.

If your firm is among those which have made unsuccess­ful attempts at having planning retreats, or if you’re over­whelmed simply by the thought of the time and effort which would be involved in planning and organizing the program, why not consider retaining an outside person to act as the facilitator for your retreat?

Having a planning retreat with the use of an experienced facilitator can be of great assistance to you and your partners in the process of arriving at a consensus as to the directions and goals of the firm, in several ways. First, someone experienced in the planning process can help keep the discussions on a positive, constructive basis, and help prevent the discussions from degenerating into a negative, destructive confrontation between the partners, which so often happens when firms try to do it themselves.

Secondly, if you have been too busy in the past to do any long-range planning, it follows that you probably will always he too busy to put together a program for the retreat. Using an outside facilitator will relieve you of the burden of putting the program together. An experienced facilitator should also be able to do a better job by drawing on his or her experience in working with other law firms.

Third, the use of an outside facilitator should help secure the full participation by all partners on an equal basis. It should also help to avoid having one or more partners dominate the discussions.

Once you make the decision to use an outside facilita­tor for your firm’s retreat, there are a number of things you should expect to be included in his or her services. To begin with, the facilitator should obtain as much information about your firm in advance of the retreat as possible. Also, the facilitator should personally meet and become acquainted with all of the participants at your offices in advance of the retreat.

At the retreat, the facilitator’s main function should be to keep the discussions moving without unduly injecting his or her own thoughts or opinions. After the retreat is concluded, the facilitator should furnish you with a detailed summary of the retreat, including the goals and objectives decided upon and the action plan formulated to achieve those goals and objectives.

One of the reasons many law firm retreats are unsuc­cessful is the failure to adopt goals which are both specific and measurable. The facilitator’s skill and experience are extremely important in helping a firm to decide upon specific, measurable goals. If the facilitator has done a good job, the partners should he able to look back in six months or a year and say yes, they did accomplish a goal, or no, they did not.

In selecting a facilitator for a retreat, it is important to obtain as much information about the person as possible. Candidates should he willing to provide information about their experience, including names of other firms for whom they have conducted retreats. It is important to talk with as many of the candidate’s references as possible in order to determine whether he or she appears to be the right person for your firm. Obviously, a person with a lot of experience, provid­ing it’s the right kind of experience, should be able to do a better job than someone with little or no experience.

Locating a qualified, experienced facilitator who would be the right person for your firm’s retreat may not be easy. To my knowledge, there is no central source of names to which you can refer. Some of the national consulting firms do this type of work, as do some of the continuing legal education organizations. In selecting a facilitator, however, you should keep in mind the fact that most small law firms are unique. Unlike larger firms which can afford to pay full-time management personnel, they have one person or a group of people trying to carry on a full-time law practice and manage the firm at the same time. For that reason, it may be difficult for someone who isn’t in the same situation to understand and appreciate the management problems of a small firm. Therefore, I recommend finding someone who is or has been a full-time practicing lawyer in a smaller firm- someone who has first-hand experience in dealing with small firm management problems, and is also experienced in acting as a retreat facilitator.

The retreat is only the beginning of the planning process. There has to be regular follow-up, review and reassessment of the firm goals and objectives by the partners on a continuing basis. Planning should be an ongoing process, and it will be a waste of time and effort if no one takes the responsibility to see that people follow through with the assignments made to them at the retreat.

The action plan which is developed at the retreat should clearly state who is responsible for doing what. It should also set forth the deadline dates for accomplishing the various matters which have been decided upon. Your support staff can be of great help in seeing that reminders go out, and deadline dates are not missed, but in the final analysis, whether anything is accomplished as a result of the retreat will depend on the leadership of the managing partner.

A planning retreat using an outside facilitator can help your firm get its act together. However, it is important to remember that Rome wasn’t built in a day, and old habits are not easily unlearned. Therefore, your expectations from your first retreat should he reasonable and realistic. It’s much better to start out with a limited number of attainable goals, and have success in accomplishing those goals, than it is to set a large number of goals which are not realistically attainable.