Flat hierarchy: Why your law firm needs an inclusive culture

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Key takeaway points:

1. Treat people in your firm as adults who can be trusted.

2. Ask yourself why you shouldn’t share information rather than why you should. If it’s relevant, share it; your people will perform better and understand – and care – more about their jobs, their colleagues and their firm.

3. Communicate openly and honestly, especially if explaining an unpopular decision; test yourself by thinking about whether you could answer questions challenging what you have said.

4. Find lots of ways to communicate, lots of times; nothing beats face-to-face communication.

5. If you seek feedback, listen to it and respond to it.

6. If you have core values, ensure your communications and decisions are in line with them.

7. Don’t trust blindly; listen to the warning bells and then act on them.

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One of the things I care about most as Kingsley Napley's managing partner is our culture. Having a set of values that everyone understands and which permeates everything we do means we have positive engagement rates and low attrition. We have also scored highly in The Sunday Times' annual 'Best Place to Work' survey for two years running. I firmly believe in open communication with all members of the firm. So, unless there is a good reason not to share something, we share it.

This article is about how we built Kingsley Napley's open and inclusive culture, the challenges we faced, the lessons we learned and the benefits we derive.

Open communication

My starting point in achieving open and inclusive communication is trust - treating everyone in the firm as an adult who deals daily with confidential, often highly-sensitive information about our clients, and who can therefore be trusted to deal with sensitive and confidential information about the firm.

Historically, the decision about what - and what not - to share, was based on where someone was in the firm's hierarchy. Full equity partner? Junior partner? Lawyer? Support staff? Now, I only ask the question: is there any reason not to share this information? If not, it's shared with everyone to whom the information is relevant.

I believe that this approach makes our people not only better informed to perform their roles, but more involved with the firm and its fortunes. So, everyone gets a monthly email summary of our financial performance (activity levels, billing, collections and cash movement), together with a link to team and partner key performance indicators. We also send weekly emails: one week, our management update 'The KNowledge'; the next, our marketing update 'The Buzz'.

In response to feedback that we could communicate more and better, we established network groups to cover every role in the firm: lawyer, secretary, manager, support. This is in addition to the partner groups. The network groups meet regularly and each has its own committee. The firm's senior partner, Jane Keir, and I meet each group, and its committee, twice a year. The committees are also regularly invited to management team meetings.

We encourage the network groups, through their committees, to give feedback and ask questions and to give me advance notice of these, whenever possible, so that I can give better, more well-informed, responses. We consult with the groups on topics such as changing the lawyer career structure, changing pay review dates, the bonus system and refurbishment plans. Each network group also has its own modest social budget.

The principle that we share information on the basis of relevance rather than hierarchy applies to everything that we do and has become an important part of our culture. Of course we have a hierarchy - we need it - but we aim to be as flat as possible and, more importantly, do not define people by their position in that hierarchy.

This comes through in the day-to-day life of the firm. For example, you can see it as you walk through reception and the working floors, as well as in major moments in the life of the firm and in the way we undertake our projects.

Take our AGM. Everyone is invited and we reduce to a skeleton service so that everyone can attend. We share all of our key financial information - PEP, overall and team profitability, the factors that are going to influence whether there is a bonus and, if so, how much it will be. We celebrate our successes, as well as the teams and individuals that have helped us to achieve those successes.

But the news we share at the AGM is not always all good. I explain which targets we have not met and why, while ensuring no-one feels singled out for blame. For example, in 2013, I explained that, for the first time, we would not be paying a firmwide bonus because we had decided that it was more important to maintain a steady PEP figure (of about £400k). I also explained the reasoning behind that decision - the need to invest in the firm and its future, to maintain market confidence in the firm, to attract and retain the best people, and to manage our cashflow.

This information could easily have landed as "you, a secretary earning a modest salary of £ xx,xxx, will not be getting a bonus of £y, in order that I, your managing partner, can earn £400k". In fact, the feedback we had (from questionnaires sent to everyone after the AGM) was very positive. The decision was to the personal financial detriment of our employees that year, but they understood why it had been made and why it was in the firm's, and therefore their own, longer-term interests.

At the AGM, we also try to ensure the presentations reflect our core value of teamwork and demonstrate that everyone contributes to our success, and that it is not just about the lawyers.

This year, eight members of the firm gave the keynote presentation 'Defending Rebekah Brooks, A Team Approach'. The Brooks team up on stage were: a partner, a member of office services, the head of knowledge and information services, a marketing manager, a trainee, a paralegal and two secretaries. We all learned something that afternoon about what had gone on behind the scenes to bring that case to court and achieve a successful outcome for our client and felt more involved in that outcome. It illustrated brilliantly - and truthfully - that everyone, at every level and in every team, has a really important role to play in our work and in our success.

In 2014, the firm embarked on a branding project. We did so with some trepidation since, as a firm with diverse practices and individuals, we had never been able to define or articulate a brand behind which everyone could unite. We knew that we had to get real buy-in, and not only from the lawyers. This directly affected how we managed the project.

We chose the branding agency which recommended that the absolute first step was to look at ourselves internally before we looked outside. We then insisted that, rather than speaking to five per cent of the workforce, as was standard, the agency's representatives met with 50 people - or 20 per cent - of the firm. Each of these one-to-one meetings lasted between 30 and 90 minutes, and everyone who volunteered was interviewed.

Once we had some concrete, substantive ideas to share, we held branding workshops which everyone in the firm attended. Role-play exercises were mixed and matched so that our secretaries and support teams were involved and 'got it' as much as our lawyers did. Partners from the strategy group led the sessions and acted as brand champions beyond the marketing team.

This was not a branding exercise dreamed up in a classroom and imposed on members of the firm. Instead, everyone rolled up their sleeves, contributed to, wrestled with and embraced the project and its findings.

Core values

A similar approach to internal introspection shaped the way we built our core values. Our values, unveiled some eight years ago, of 'teamwork, respect, integrity, fairness' are again not just token words, but were arrived at because they are meaningful across the firm. Everyone bought into these values and I believe our determination to adhere to them and make decisions by reference to them contribute more than anything else to our open culture.

Those decisions are sometimes hard - several members of the firm, including senior people, have had to leave because of behaviour inconsistent with our values. However, there is now a high degree of trust that we really do live by them.

As managing partner, I often use and am judged by our fairness principle - which is how it should be. Now that we have firmly embedded those values, we feel confident in adding two more client-focused values - commitment and understanding - to them.

Challenges and lessons

Having the open, friendly and inclusive culture that we do is great in many respects, but it does bring its own challenges. In particular, managing unprofessional behaviour or poor performance is hard if the staff member is not simply a colleague but also a friend, often of some years. Spotting the signs of a breach of trust and acting on those signs can also be more difficult given the values that form the foundation of our culture.

To deal with these unintended consequences, we now have 'hot spots' as a standing item on our compliance committee's agenda. Under this item, we air 'niggles' any of us might have about anyone in the firm, with the aim of ensuring that any worrying patterns (rather than one-off mistakes) come to light and that the decision as to what to do about that pattern does not depend on the judgement of just one person. We have found that this is also a good way of ensuring that we do have those difficult conversations because, at the next meeting, another member of the compliance committee will ask how it went.

Another challenge of working within an open culture is that, not unreasonably, it creates high expectations about the level of information sharing. People want to know why a colleague has 'suddenly' left and why they weren't told about it. We deal with this by being honest about the fact that, with some decisions, you cannot be entirely open, because the confidentiality is not yours to break. What I don't do is abuse the trust that (I hope) I have won by giving a false explanation.

Some colleagues thought it was a mistake to tell everyone at the 2013 AGM that we would not be paying a bonus in order to maintain a good PEP and that I should have stuck to cashflow reasons. But I knew that, if challenged, I could not have justified that line.

Similarly, if I ever cite a cost-of-living index in explaining factors behind the level of pay rises, I ensure that it is the index which most closely reflects our employees' costs (which include mortgages and travel), not a conveniently lower index.

I know that if I lose my credibility and reputation for honesty, fairness and truthfulness, it could be lost forever. The next time I have to explain why I have made a difficult, potentially unpopular, decision, I may not be believed.

A foundation of trust

I believe that it is because we have an open and inclusive culture which is based on trust that we also have a low attrition rate (of about 10 per cent), combined with a very healthy alumni network. Many of our best referrals of work come from former members of the firm. We also tend to recruit people who fit with our culture and will live by and uphold our values, which helps with maintaining the culture and creates a virtuous circle.

By no coincidence, we have very positive engagement rates. The best measure of that is what our people say about us when they know their comments are anonymous. In 2014, we applied for the first time to be a Sunday Times top-100 (mid-sized) employer, which involved staff completing confidential feedback questionnaires. We went straight in at position 49 and, in 2015, rose 11 places to 38th place.

In both years, we achieved an 'outstanding' accreditation for our impressive levels of staff engagement, fulfilment and motivation, and our commitment to creating a positive working environment for our people.

The three categories in which we scored highest were:

1. my company - where 93 per cent of respondents agreed "I feel proud to work for this organization";

2. leadership - 84 per cent agreed "the leader of this organization runs it on sound moral principles"; and

3. personal growth - 85 per cent agreed "this job is good for my own personal growth".

I believe the responses reflect that, when people work in an open culture, in which they feel well informed about the things that affect them, they perform better and care more about their business as a whole.

One employee gave the following comment in the 2014 survey, which brings together all of the themes I have tried to describe in this article: "The Managing Partner…deals with difficult situations in a balanced way. She is firm but fair. The firm values making KN a good place to work (teamwork, respect, integrity, fairness). The firm values its support staff. The firm is constantly trying to improve and look to the future. It tries to deal with all issues fairly. There's a big focus on staff welfare and we enjoy socializing. Communication and feedback is welcomed at all levels. There is a real sense of team."

Linda Woolley is managing partner at Kingsley Napley (www.kingsleynapley.co.uk)