What you'll learn

Identify and apply personal leadership strategies to better balance your complex responsibilities as a leader within your firm.
Understand the drivers of innovation and learn how to foster innovative thinking within your firm.
Build your team leadership skills by learning to develop and lead your team more effectively.
Understand the importance of developing an organizational strategy as a driver of strategic decision making and gain the tools to analyze and/or create a more clear strategy for your own organization.
Navigate within the changing legal profession.

Course description

Leadership in Law Firms (LLF) is a six-day, intensive study of a cross-section of professional service firms to help you develop the perspectives and skills necessary to be an effective law firm leader. You will learn frameworks and strategies for balancing professional responsibilities, strategic planning, improving organizational alignment, managing growth and change, and motivating people and teams.

Course outline

Curriculum Topics
- The need for balancing their professional responsibilities as lawyers and leadership responsibilities in their firms
- The importance of having a clear strategy for long term success
- The power of alignment among firm strategy, organization, and professionals
- Drivers of economic performance in different segments of legal services
- Recruiting the right professionals and developing them effectively
- Incentive systems in law firms, including compensation and promotion
- Governance of professional service firms
- Leading change in law firms

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Instructors

Scott Westfahl
Faculty Director, Harvard Law School Executive Education; Faculty Chair, Leadership in Law Firms; Professor of Practice, Harvard Law School
David Wilkins
Faculty Chair, Leadership in Corporate Counsel; Vice Dean, Global Initiatives on the Legal Profession; Faculty Director, Center on the Legal Profession; Lester Kissel Professor of Law
John C. Coates
Faculty Chair, Mergers & Acquisitions: Structuring and Leading Deals; John F. Cogan, Jr. Professor of Law & Economics, Harvard Law School; Research Director, Center on the Legal Profession and Vice Dean for Finance and Strategic Initiatives, Harvard Law S
Michele DeStefano
Affiliated Faculty, Harvard Law School Center on the Legal Profession
Hillary Sale
Faculty Chair, Women’s Leadership Initiative; Professor of Law, Georgetown Law; Affiliated Faculty, McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University