Also discussed was Pistilli’s takeaways from the hit television show Ted Lasso, which wrapped up its run after three seasons on Apple TV last year (although there are rumours abound about a fourth season being produced).

Speaking about his role as the head of one of the biggest legal practices in the country, he touched on the myriad workplace challenges facing law firms, including and especially ensuring that lawyers and professional staff alike have the right kind of working experience.

To this end, Pistilli mused, those at Gadens often hear him talk about how he and the firm’s leaders “try to run a law firm as if Ted Lasso was running it”.

When pressed about this – somewhat due to this writer having adored watching Ted Lasso during the COVID-19 lockdowns – he outlined that this idea permeates into a lot of the firm’s policies.

“What we say to our people is that we’re trying to create an environment [that] allows them to be their best selves within the firm and for their careers, but also in their lives outside of the firm,” he said.

“[It’s] about ensuring that it’s an attractive place for people to work at, because there’s still a shortage of good lawyers.”

Pistilli draws broader motivation for such an approach from a desire to create an environment whereby lawyers enjoy coming into the office.

VIEW ALL

As chief executive of Gadens, he detailed, he takes a strategic approach to the firm’s priorities and approaches each day as it comes.

“I don’t need to get into the weeds, I just need to ensure, like Ted Lasso does, the firm has the right players and the right settings at various levels,” he said.

This necessarily involves, Pistilli continued, working with the partners and others at the firm “to see geographically where we should be represented, what kind of practice areas we should present to market, what are likely to be the areas in future which will contribute to Australian GDP and economic activity, [and] ensuring we get the right cultured people into our firm”.

And, he added, “a bit of that is also being responsible for ensuring that the wrong cultured people don’t stay in the firm”.

Historically, he observed, “that has been a real challenge for our industry, that we have protected what we perceive to be high-value people who are poor culturally, and we do not tolerate that at Gadens”.

“It’s very easy for law firms to measure revenue from high-performing partners. But it’s very difficult to measure cultural impact. So, if you’ve got a bad cultural partner, how many people are not joining the firm because of that partner, how many people are leaving because of that partner, and how many people are unhappy in your environment? We know we can’t measure that cost, but we know it’s probably going to be higher, so we just won’t accept that in our environment,” he said.

On other aspects of being a firm leader, Pistilli noted that when you lead law firms and practice, one of the priority conflicts that he struggled to resolve was whether one gives an urgent firm matter priority over an urgent client matter or vice versa.

“I think lots of managing partners struggle with that,” he said.

In evolving his approach to that quandary, he again brought it back to the “Ted Lasso way”.

“I’m always happy to learn from what I do and the mistakes I make,” Pistilli said.

“I’m happy to own them. And everyone in the firm knows [that] just everyone in the firm can tell me when I’m doing something that they think I can do better.”

The transcript of this conversation has been slightly edited for publishing purposes. To listen to the full episode with Mark Pistilli, click below: