Law firms often struggle with accountability. At its core, accountability means taking responsibility for one’s commitments, a concept that should align naturally with the legal profession’s values. Yet, in many firms, the word “accountability” has taken on a negative connotation, viewed as a threat to the prized autonomy lawyers cherish.
This perception creates a fundamental challenge: How can firms encourage accountability without undermining autonomy?
The reluctance to embrace accountability often stems from a misunderstanding—namely, that accountability and autonomy are mutually exclusive. This is a misconception. In fact, accountability is essential for high-performing organizations and professionals, including lawyers. Research published in the Harvard Business Review shows that “people who feel accountable for results are more likely to take ownership of their work and find intrinsic motivation in achieving goals.”
On the other hand, Dr. Larry Richard’s well-known research on lawyer personality traits demonstrates that lawyers score significantly higher than the general public in their need for autonomy. They resist micromanagement and want control over how they work. However, that does not necessarily mean they oppose accountability—so long as they understand the expectations, desire the goals the accountability can help the firm achieve and retain some control over their part of how to meet them.
David Maister, in his well-known book, True Professionalism, makes this point clear:
“In a professional firm, you can manage only what the professionals will let you manage. To get anything whatsoever done, professionals must voluntarily approve and accept new accountabilities. They must willingly vote (or at least consent) to give up their jealously guarded autonomy. They must agree to be managed. …If people are not prepared to be held accountable for what they do, it is unlikely that they will accomplish much. Without accountability, most of us will “cruise along” at a level far below our real potential. The only issue to be debated here is what professionals are prepared to be accountable for. They must decide which performance areas, goals and behavior are critical to success, and then agree that they will be accountable for the execution of them…To choose a goal without being prepared to be accountable for progress towards it is to choose nothing…[people are] foolish to think that they could achieve excellence (in any area) without being prepared to put in a forceful monitoring system to ensure diligent execution.”
This paradox—balancing autonomy with collective responsibility—is the key challenge facing law firm leadership today. The question is not whether firms should implement accountability measures, but how they can do so in a way that respects lawyers’ autonomy while driving firm-wide success.
The Elements of Accountability
For accountability to work effectively, firms need three key elements:
- Clear Expectations – Everyone in the firm must understand what is expected of them. This includes – and should start with – the partners/“owners.”
- Methods for Measuring and Monitoring Performance – Without meaningful metrics, accountability becomes subjective and inconsistent.
- Strong Leadership – Leaders must have the courage to enforce standards and address underperformance.
1. Clear Expectations
While it may seem obvious, many firms fail to set explicit expectations for their professionals. Historically in law firms, this was actually avoided because it was too “corporate-like.” Yet without clarity, accountability efforts can feel arbitrary and unfair.
Expectations for partners typically fall into three categories:
- Firm Citizenship & Culture – Behaviors aligned with firm values, such as collaboration, trust, collegiality, and mentorship.
- Financial Performance – Contributions to firm financial performance/profitability, including client billable work, business generation, and financial stewardship.
- Investment Time – Efforts that contribute to the firm’s long-term success, such as practice group plan implementation, business development, training, and leadership.
Many firms formalize these expectations in partnership agreements or strategic plans. Increasingly, firms define investment time expectations—often 500–700 hours annually for partners—to ensure long-term growth. There are commonly certain expectations for how much investment time firm and practice leaders spend on their roles – but not always how much other partners should commit. In firms that have highly empowered their practice groups for example, there is often an expectation of 100 to 150 hours of investment time devoted to the practice group by each partner member of the group (and often by associates as well though the numbers may be lower).
A major challenge can be ensuring that partners allocate investment time effectively rather than just logging hours. Firms may need to help lawyers understand that using investment time productively, like any other skill, requires practice. A partner who spends little time on business development, associate mentoring, thought leadership, etc. in their early years will struggle to become effective later. The earlier partners start building these skills, the more valuable they become to the firm.
2. Measuring and Monitoring Performance
The adage “what gets measured gets managed” holds true in law firms. However, firms often focus almost solely on financial metrics while neglecting cultural and long-term investment contributions.
For financial accountability, firms analyze billable hours, business origination, realization rates, and overall profitability. But assessing cultural and investment contributions requires a more nuanced approach:
- Leadership Observations – Practice leaders and firm management should actively monitor engagement, teamwork, collaboration and other contributions to firm or practice group culture.
- Peer and Associate Feedback – 360-degree reviews or upward reviews provide valuable insight into a partner’s effectiveness in mentoring, delegation, and leadership. Many firms also use their partner compensation interview process to elicit information about partner behavior by asking partners to discuss those partners who they feel have made exceptional contributions to the firm in the past year (outside of what is evident in “the numbers”) and those who have not acted consistent with firm values.
- Personal Business Plans – If the firm has practice group plans, an additional way to measure performance is with individual partner business plans. Again, there may need to be some training in how to prepare effective plans but this kind of “management by objective” approach has been used for decades in the business world. Partners outline how they will support the goals of their practice group, industry or client teams and the firm strategic plan. This may include thought leadership, innovation, associate training or mentoring and/or business development. At year-end, their progress can be evaluated against these plans. If the firm does not have practice group or industry group plans however, we do not recommend individual plans as they tend to reinforce more autonomy vs. greater collaboration.
Firms sometimes hesitate to track investment time, fearing that partners will inflate their hours on non-billable tasks. But this is a weak excuse. Firms can hold partners accountable by focusing on outcomes rather than just hours logged. If a partner claims 200 hours of involvement in a trade association but has no visible impact—no leadership roles, speaking engagements, or client development—the time is likely not valuable. Another reason firms sometimes don’t track investment time is that leadership isn’t sure how to evaluate it. It does require in-depth review but this is a place where the practice group leaders who are more aware of the impact of the partners’ efforts can weigh in.
3. Effective Leadership
Even with clear expectations and performance tracking, accountability will fail without strong leadership. Leaders must be willing to enforce standards—even when it’s uncomfortable. This starts with firm leadership both holding people accountable and modeling being accountable and progresses to the practice leaders holding their members accountable. But, the practice leaders can rarely do this if the firm leaders haven’t defined the expectations and set the tone.
David Maister captures this challenge succinctly:
“What many firms misunderstand is that their standards and values are not defined by their aspirations but by what they are prepared to enforce…Few firms actually have real operable values. They say they do, but few of the professionals really believe that they’re serious.”
A second challenge for leadership is prioritization. Firms often make the mistake of focusing only on their highest and lowest performers—retaining top rainmakers and dealing with the weakest contributors. However, a major opportunity lies in the middle tier. With proper guidance (and accountability!), many mid-level performers can improve significantly, boosting firm performance and culture. That also results in this middle group having greater engagement and commitment to the firm, like the HBR research indicates, which also enhances firm culture. In most large firms, this is a priority at the practice group level because firm leadership can’t spend time on all of these partners.
And, a third leadership challenges today is managing the partners who overestimate their value to the firm. When firms avoid difficult conversations about underperformance or insufficient performance for the desired compensation, the problem worsens. Ironically, failing to enforce accountability often leads to the departure of top performers, not underperformers. Strong leadership ensures that standards apply consistently across the firm.
Conclusion
Accountability is not the enemy of autonomy—it is its partner. When implemented thoughtfully, accountability enhances professional growth, strengthens firm culture, and drives success.
Firms that embrace accountability—through clear expectations, transparent measurement, and courageous leadership—will not only thrive but will also create an environment where lawyers can excel without sacrificing autonomy.
