According to Ms Pomare, there are a number of expectations that need to be managed with employees as well as relationship building with outside stakeholders.

“Isn’t that the most exciting part of practising and managing a law firm? Particularly when you’ve got junior lawyers and support staff coming through, it’s important to take time out and listen to them. The biggest thing for me is listening and communication. If all my time was spent on billable hours and working on client matters, I probably wouldn’t have any staff,” she said.

“The main thing is setting aside time every day, communicating, finding out what are the needs of my staff, what are they having issues with, how can I help them, what can I do better as a leader? I don’t know. I’m learning every single day. And particularly as a younger partner, that collaboration of thinking between staff and partner or leadership within the firm is really important.”

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In terms of expectation management for her staff, Ms Pomare said that things like changes in billable hours and managing hybrid working have been important things to be able to communicate openly about within Norton Law Group.

“It’s really important when we look at things like the billable hour, and there’s been a big change in that over the years, but from a business perspective, it’s important that we do look at whether you call it billable hours or the time people are doing or how long it’s taking to do a task, that’s important. From a running a law firm perspective, we need to make sure obviously we are making money and we’re viable, but at the same time, work can’t take over one’s life,” she explained.

“It’s managing work/life balance. It’s managing work from home. What principles or practices do my staff need to be able to perform at their best to make clients happy, but at the same time to keep them happy, to make sure they’re balanced, their mental health is in check, and we’re all on the same page in terms of productivity and moving forward and growing as a firm?”

This also has to be a proactive thing for leaders to be doing, particularly approaching the end of the financial year and in the midst of a global economic downturn — and Ms Pomare said that leaders should be checking in regularly with their teams.

“For me, it’s checking in with staff throughout the year. If you wait and do it once a year, you will have expectations which are shot. You’ll have upset staff members, people out looking for new jobs. My view is [to] have regular check-ins. I like to do monthly meetings or quarterly meetings. We say, ‘Where are you up to? How are you progressing? How can you improve?’

“You want to set staff up to know what they can do to improve to get the pay increase or the promotion or whatever it might be. And that’s not always just billing as well, that’s getting out there and doing something more for the firm, whether it’s meeting with referrers, it’s networking, it’s doing some blogs, it’s doing some social media. There’s more to an employee these days, I think, than just sitting in a seat and doing the work. It’s being an active part of our firm and wanting the firm to grow. That’s what I’m all about anyway,” she said.

Ms Pomare also checks in with herself regularly — as well as with external stakeholders and her own professional network.

“Every single day, I think I’m always learning. And there are things I’m picking up from other professionals, from other leaders where I say, ‘Wow, what a great idea.’ And I think it’s that need to be open and adaptive to change. We don’t know it all, the firm’s continuing to grow. I mean, it used to be a sole practitioner, grew to two partners, more staff coming on board,” she added.

“I think I’ve got to be really open to listening, working out what works in other practices, how are other firms growing, what can I implement, how can I keep my staff happy? And I need to check in on a daily basis. I do get it wrong. I need to listen to staff a lot more. And I think it’s really just being in tune and saying, ‘How are people going?’ It’s not only do they look happy, but are they being productive? What are their hours like? Do they seem happy? What can we put in place to keep that balance going? And that’s so important.

“It’s about wearing different hats, and we’ve all got limits as well. I can’t do everything. I can’t be every person. And that’s where it’s really great to also have dad or Franco as a partner because we can rely on each other. We certainly give different tasks to each other, and we work out who’s better at what. He probably is better at mentoring some days, and I might be better at business development, and it’s working out how we can work off each other’s advantages and each other’s strengths to continue the growth of the firm.”

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