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, something van Brunschot said is a “real issue”.

Being a leadership coach, van Brunschot said that while “broad mentoring” in the profession is important, as well as having proper pathways to leadership for junior lawyers, a journey to leadership is also very individual.

“I think it’s about really a sense of recognising where you’re at as an emerging leader in your own story and how you leverage your strengths. I think that’s really important. I mean, as much as you can talk about developing that agility, you’ll get more bang for your buck, so to speak, if you really are prepared to leverage your strengths as well and be really honest about that. And that doesn’t mean you don’t need to develop a broader skill set and also kind of try to address and offset some of your weaknesses. But a key issue is really leveraging your strengths,” he said.

“So, when I work with emerging leaders one on one, we really look closely at where their strengths lie and really, at times, double-down in that area. Are you more extroverted, market-facing, client-driven? Are you the technician in the team? You know, teams come in a variety of shapes and sizes, and there are different roles, and so you’ve really got to work out how you play to your strengths.”

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However, there are also specific “weaknesses” within the Australian partnership model within firms, added van Brunschot.

“People hang on for far too long. They have a revenue base, and they hang on for far too long. We’ve got to be a bit more creative, I think. And I was alive to that. I’m 53, and I was alive to the fact that it’s time for me to get out of the way, really, and I’m only 53, but that’s the reality of the new generation in the firm that I was at. And I think, sadly, that doesn’t happen enough because there’s too much financial incentive for people to stay,” he said.

“I’d like to think that we can really embark more proactively on the conversations around succession and development because that mindset of just holding on for dear life and protecting your revenue base, which has been the traditional partnership model, in some ways just won’t grow a business and won’t bring the next generation of lawyers through.

“It’s interesting that the big four were really alive to this dilemma traditionally, and they provided levels of financial incentive and otherwise because they understood that you need to create a model where people do promote leadership of the next generation. And while there’s too much financial incentive to stay, often that just doesn’t, practically speaking, happen. And I think lawyers, we’ve got to look at that more creatively.”

Legal businesses also need to facilitate more learning opportunities around leadership – and develop leadership skills – “a lot sooner” than is currently the norm.

“I see this happen a lot, where you have someone who’s ripe for promotion because of their technical skills, and someone might say, yeah, they’re pretty good, but they need a bit of work on X, Y and Z. And so off they go to get work on people skills or some other leadership-type issues. And you think that’s a real wasted opportunity. There should have been earlier intervention and honest conversations. I think, at times, we often just don’t have the hard conversations we need to with people earlier,” van Brunschot said.

“So, I think the story of career development should start a lot sooner, should start from as early as two to five years post-admission to get people thinking about that. And I think that often, while law firms come to it, they come to it far too late in the day to effectively solve problems that they’ve known about for some time, or they’ve perhaps been in a level of denial about for some time.”

Looking ahead in a changing market and with a new generation of lawyers coming through the ranks, van Brunschot added that agility will be an important skill to have, as well as a drive to continually improve.

“What makes a good leader in the law is that level of agility and that mindset. So when I talk about agility, it’s being able to not just be technically proficient, which is a credibility piece, but really bring people with you, inspire and influence people, create a culture with how you turn up every day, how you deal with emotions are a contagion,” he said.

“So how you deal with yourself and how you manage yourself has a huge impact on setting tone and culture. So, I think good leaders of tomorrow are really alive to that. They’re in a mindset of continually learning and development. They’re in a mindset of improving how they show up every day to bring out the best in people.”

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