If you didn’t already know it, I’m a massive fan of Gapingvoid Art. Over the years I’ve purchased way too much of their stuff. But, what does this have to do with law firm business development you may be asking?

Well, the answer to that is that one of their pictures that I have not bought (to-date), also happens to be a picture I believe should be hanging from the boardroom wall of every law firm:

but not for the reason you may think – namely that practice areas and service lines in law firms don’t speak to each other.

For what it’s worth, my own view is this (partners speaking to partners) has actually improved in the past 10 years (although admittedly from a very low base).

Nope, my reason for say this picture needs to be hanging in the boardroom of every law firm is because law firm’s support services increasingly act with silo mentality.

As we have become bigger, we have lost the art of talking with each other.

We send 100s of emails a day, but we don’t pick up the phone and speak to each other.

We go to more meetings than is good for us, but we rarely invite the people who matter or, more importantly, could bring a useful and different perspective – HR, IT, KM, Marketing, BD, Operations, and the list goes on – to those meetings.

It’s my view that part of what is crippling Big Law (firms of more than 50 partners) is the fact that its support services are not talking with each other.

And, given we are the ones supporting the firm’s strategic directions, this is also happens to be why we cannot move to the next level.

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NB: anyone looking for a copy of this should contact Jason Korma, CEO of Gapingvoid Ltd