Speaking on a recent episode of The Lawyers Weekly Show, produced in partnership with Evolve Resolve, he discussed the transition from technical proficiency as a lawyer to being a leader – and how the profession can better develop leaders.

The development of leaders within the legal profession, Van Brunschot said, is a “real issue”.

“Law is a very saturated market. It’s very rigorous, and it’s incessant. The practice of law is incessant in a commercial setting. You have to turn up every day, build time, develop technical expertise, solve problems in a saturated market, in a market that’s in many ways still ripe for disruption, particularly with tech. So, sure, there are pressure points, but the reality is that unless this problem can be properly grappled with developing people and people’s skills, you just can’t in any way, shape or form build a business in the law,” he said.

“Because your personal success as a leader in the law is a direct feature of the team. It is entirely attributable to your team. And most lawyers, frankly, are in a bit of denial about that. They forget that really they are inherently capped out unless they develop great team capacity. And they will always hit the issue of how do we motivate people, how do we influence people, how do we get people to turn up and perform, how do we develop people, how can we keep people engaged? And I think that’s the critical issue.”

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In addition to junior lawyers, emerging leaders also need better guidance on how to lead a practice or firm, added van Brunschot.

“As important as that is to develop some insight into how you relate to people, I think lawyers are looking for very practical tips, too, about, how do you turn up every day? What’s the story of leadership? How does it develop in the law? And I’m coming at it, obviously not from an organisational psych perspective, but from the lived perspective of having built and scaled a law firm,” he said.

“So it’s a slightly different mindset, but the people, I find, are crying out for it. They really want to know if you’re practising the law post five years, and if you see that as your career, you want to know how to get to the next level, you want to know what it takes.”

In terms of evolving into a leader, rather than just becoming a manager as the next promotion up, younger lawyers should look to develop their ability to lead a team early on.

“You need to be able to think at the level of the partnership above. What are your boss’s key concerns or pain points, because that’s how you get promoted, and you have to become a trusted adviser to that person as well. You might be able to give your partner insight into team dynamics or other things within the team, and there’s obviously got to be a real level of core competence and problem solving, and you’ve got to have the ability to step up,” van Brunschot said.

“But, really, what a partner wants to see in the promotion, and there are some blind spots, but generally what they want to see is the ability to lead a team. So your practice is growing, or if you’re leaving in safe hands, hopefully, it’s growing. Ideally, what you’d like to do is be promoting partners because you back them to grow a business, because you know you need that support.

“But even if that’s not the case, and that often happens in partnership promotions, that there are vacancies caused by people stepping sideways or moving into semi-retirement or moving into other challenges, the key criteria is someone who can manage your client base, assuming you’re departing. And more importantly, take the place forward and lead the team.”

Lawyers looking to become leaders also need to be more agile than ever before, particularly as the profession evolves and continues to be disrupted.

“You need to be a little bit of a marketer, a relationship developer, a team leader, you know, alive to the dynamics in the marketplace, really motivated by client growth and client development. So, there’s a broader agility. And as a person coming up, what you need to ask yourself is, ‘Hey, how do I embrace that level of agility? Where am I deficient? I’ve got these technical skills, but perhaps I need to be stepping up more, building a brand in the market.’

“The partners of today are already very different at some level, which is a great thing in terms of, say, how we’ve promoted females. There’s a lot more work that we need to do in a profession, but that’s starting to happen, and you can see that happening from an early graduate level onwards. So, I think the reality is that a partner of tomorrow may look entirely different,” van Brunschot said.

“I think the law will be disrupted in terms of its fixation on hourly rates, its billing models [as well as] tech and AI. So all these things you’ve got to be really alive to. And the critical question as a person up and coming is to really look at how you can be different and embrace some of these changes and challenges to stand apart in a very saturated market and to win clients in a very saturated market.”

The transcript of this podcast episode was slightly edited for publishing purposes. To listen to the full conversation with Damien van Brunschot, click below: