Senior partners may have lost some of their executive influence to upstart managing partners but, as new research confirms, many commercial lawyers still hanker to take on the profession’s classic ambassadorial role. The latest Legal Week/ EJ Legal Big Question survey shows that 85% of lawyers believe that senior partners take a secondary role to managing partners in modern law firms, compared with 15% who cite the former role as the more influential.
However, respondents are evenly split when asked whether they would rather take the senior or managing partner brief, with 50% citing each roles. The ambivalent response apparently reflects lawyers’ general unease with the management and administrative duties associated with the managing partner role.
As such ‘nurturing clients’ was cited as the most important part of a senior partner’s job by 37% of respondents, compared with 39% who cited ‘over-seeing strategy’ and 24% who cited ‘dealing with partners’.
The response reflects the recent election of Linklaters’ new senior partner, with the winner, David Cheyne, pledging to put a major emphasis on client work, rather than focusing on internal matters.
Bird & Bird commercial partner Felicity Reeve told Legal Week: "Senior partners are the public face of the firm. Most partnership issues are dealt with by managing partners and firms have a number of client partners who deal with most of the day-to-day client issues.
She added: "Being in a managing position limits the amount of time that can be spent on client issues."
One partner at a top 50 UK firm said: "So much depends on the firm. As long as someone is covering each of the roles, the title is not important. As a general rule, the traditional senior partner has a more global and removed view."
When asked how the collective profile of senior partners at leading firms has changed over the last decade, the vote was divided.
Thirty-nine percent of respondents said the role has become more high profile, whereas 36% said that senior partners were now less prominent than before. A quarter of lawyers believed that the role had the same standing as before.
CMS Cameron McKenna managing partner Dick Tyler said: "The role has become more complicated because organisations have become more complex. There is a higher expectation for them to have genuine management skills rather than just to be a figurehead."
