Why do so many lateral hires fail to make the desired impact? Mark Brandon, MD at Motive Legal Consulting examines how hiring a head of integration could improve lateral partner success.

Lateral partner hiring is a key plank of strategy for 96% of law firms, but many laterals are failing to meet expectations, according to a forthcoming report into lateral partner integration undertaken on behalf of partner integration coaching specialists IntoGreat Coaching.

My own research back in the 2010s found significant attrition of lateral hires, and while the number of outright failures has reduced considerably since that time, many of the participants in this research study reported that despite quite sophisticated integration processes, a significant proportion of lateral hires – 25-50% – undershoot expectations.

If laterals can be integrated more successfully, this not only improves their financial performance but also assists in them ‘belonging’ to the firm – perhaps the greatest challenge for any partner moving firms – and reduces the chance of them leaving.

Improving integration, as the IntoGreat Coaching report shows, is a complex task with no ‘right’ answer, and one for which there is virtually no market-standard best practice. Rather, every firm’s integration process is a reflection of its own culture and business model and so the relevant fixes will vary from firm to firm (and even within firms).   

Common issues in the integration space include:

• Continuity of experience from recruitment through the integration process   
• The challenges faced by laterals in building a network in the new firm, often underestimated by incumbents, especially if they’ve been there since training   
• The consistency of sponsorship, a real problem in some firms with significant partner autonomy and a relaxed attitude to monitoring
• Determining success and Return on Investment (ROI), in particular where monitoring is fairly informal or is influenced by political considerations
• Variances in the integration support on offer, with the lateral sometimes left to effectively coordinate their own integration

Practical ways to tighten up integration include improving sponsorship and monitoring, a deeper dive into performance issues, exploring incentive and appraisal systems tied to successful integration, and active interventions such as training for sponsoring partners and employing dedicated integration coaching resource for incoming laterals.

Integration leadership

But a number of firms are also exploring the idea of appointing dedicated business support resource at manager or director level. 

One US firm already has a highly successful global head of integration, while a few other UK-based firms already have dedicated managers in the US or globally.

In the US firm in question, the London-based head of integration stewards the integration process, helping laterals to build their internal networks via introductions, coordinating resources such as training and coaching and staying in close contact to ensure everything is on track.

Crucially, this role is genuinely firm-wide, with no vested interest except to improve the integration of lateral partner hires, in close cooperation with the firm’s other business support professional teams and group heads. A very important factor is that this role is ‘cradle to grave’, beginning in the middle of the recruitment process and continuing until the lateral is fully integrated.

While this feels like a good template for a head of integration role, the detailed job description for such a role will be as individual as the firm itself. The challenge of integration will be very different in a collaborative firm with well-established cross-connections to that of a firm where partners are highly autonomous and expected to ‘eat what they kill’.

Who leads who?

It’s an open question is why more firms haven’t hired their own head of integration to date, and the precise answers are difficult to determine.

Some feel they cannot justify what they see as another business support cost item, and may feel they already have this role covered by their current processes. One practical issue is also where such an individual would sit, who they would report to and – crucially – out of which budget they would be funded.

Part of the issue is that integration involves a large number of stakeholders – sponsoring partners, group heads, other partners in the group, HR, BD, recruitment, L&D etc – but it is not the core function of any of them. This can, in some firms, lead to integration falling between stools or varying wildly depending on the interest and availability of sponsoring partners.

My own view is that if lateral hiring is genuinely a strategic priority – rather than just a departmental turn-and-turn-about to grow fiefdoms or replace leavers – then the core job function of a head of integration should be to assist with the delivery of the firm strategy.

That means they need to be reporting into the executive at least, most likely directly to the managing partner, be funded centrally and not be tied to – and therefore interfering with – any group or business support function (such as HR or BD).

Candidate profiles

The successful individual has to understand not just how partners function day-to-day, but how they develop practices, how each partner interrelates with other partners and teams and what part they play in the firm’s strategy.

The ideal person for this kind of role will, I think, be a jack-of-all-trades, possibly a partner or senior lawyer, with experience of recruitment, business planning, marketing and BD, HR and even L&D. Temperamentally, they’ll be positive and opportunity-led, passionate about the firm, a natural connector and communicator with, ideally, no ego or embedded allegiance to one particular support function, group or department. A coaching qualification may also be helpful.

It is an open question as to whether a head of integration should come from within the firm or not. The obvious answer is to pick someone already in the organisation – they’ll know the turf, know the personalities and systems. However, they may also be biased, unconsciously or otherwise, and even if not, may be perceived to be.

Conversely, appointing an outsider to this role might be beneficial because the first task that person will face is having to integrate themselves. This should give them a unique feel for levels of enthusiasm in various teams and the political pinch-points, and allow them to map out areas of concern which an insider might not see, discount or dismiss.

Seniority will, of course, be key. The role will involve being able to wield some clout when things go awry, and appointment of a manager-level individual may be too low in the pecking order and give the role too much of an administrative feel, while the key benefit of a head of integration is surely strategic. A partner is a logical choice and addresses the seniority issue, but will likely be more expensive than a business support professional, if cost is a big issue.

Demonstrating ROI

One question hanging over the appointment of a head of integration would be Return on Investment, especially if appointing a senior individual who is necessarily more expensive. To those enthused by the idea, the benefits might be seen to be self-evident, but ROI has to be a key consideration in appointing such an individual, over and above any ‘political’ concerns, such as any of the business support functions feeling a head of integration was treading on their ‘patch’.

ROI is unlikely to be very easy or quick to demonstrate. While it would be nice to imagine a general uplift in the performance of all laterals in a firm with a dedicated head of integration in place, this is something of a Holy Grail, and an uplift could be due to any number of factors. Rather, ROI would have to be judged in the fullness of time, hopefully in the figures – though this is fraught with problems of measurement and data collection/attribution – and in feedback from laterals and sponsors. Notwithstanding the challenge of measuring ROI, the onus will have to be on the head of integration to prove themselves and demonstrate value in all areas.

Ultimately, it is for firms to decide how they manage the integration of laterals, but there is no doubt that improving how they do it has a range of benefits, not least in the successful recruitment of more lateral partners.

With that in mind, firms should think carefully about a range of interventions, including dedicated integration coaching, better monitoring of sponsors, a greater focus on ROI and the potential appointment of a dedicated head of integration.

‘Lateral Partner Integration’ authored by Mark Brandon on behalf of IntoGreat Coaching, available soon.

For more information on moving into or recruiting your next head of integration, contact [email protected]

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