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Ladder climbing without a law degree
Swaab Attorneys
- Phone:
- (02) 9233 5544
- Fax:
- (02) 9233 5400
- Email:
- Contact this firm
- URL:
- http://www.swaab.com.au
From chemist to office manager, practice manager and finally, CEO of Swaab Attorneys, Angela Priestley finds that Bronwyn Pott has taken the road less travelled – and that’s made all the difference
Bronwyn Pott is busy with her firm’s performance reviews. At Swaab Attorneys the process can be long and arduous but is one that Pott considers essential to her role as CEO of the firm.
The other ten months of the year, Pott is no less busy; she coaches the fee earners and supervises the admin teams, while working with the senior partner on Swaab’s strategic path and commercial opportunities.
The road to CEO has been a steady one for Pott, and one that proves you don’t have to be a lawyer to make it to the top rungs of Australia’s best firms.
Pott has been with the firm a long time and has used the years of experience to climb the ladder of management as far as possible without a law degree.
Pott joined Swaab & Associates in 1986 as a bookkeeper/office manager. After a period away from the firm for family reasons she joined again in 1991 as the practice manager; five years later moving into the role of General Manager and setting up the new practice of Swaab Attorneys. It was a role, she says, that equipped her with “an appreciation and understanding of the roles that our functional specialists have”.
By 2001, she was studying an MBA part time before taking most of 2003 off to study full time. On returning to the firm in 2004 she was appointed CEO – a job function that involved appointing functional specialists and having a visible input into the strategic direction of the firm.
But any crystal gazing about the idea that Pott would one day become the CEO of a law firm must have seemed an unlikely proposition when she was a student studying Agricultural Science.
Pott formalised an early career as an industrial chemist, before realising that “life in a lab wasn’t for me”. It was then that she moved onto a secretarial course and discovered she was “the worst secretary known to man or woman”. She also realised however, that she had a knack with numbers and returned to university part time to study commerce.
These days, Pott deals with the challenges of a law firm from the perspective of a non-lawyer, and the challenges, she says, are numerous.
The talent shortage is a continuing frustration: “I heard someone say the other day: ‘Did you hear the talent war is over?’ We all agreed that the talent must have won,” she says.
Meanwhile, she says, balancing lawyers’ demands for significant salaries and a work/life balance, meeting the needs of partners with young families, fast-tracking young lawyers to fill voids in the market and dealing with the pressure from clients to bill only when value is added – as opposed to just putting in the time – are also prime challenges requiring management solutions.
But as a non-lawyer, Pott admits that sometimes life on the management side of the firm can be a little isolated. Networking with likeminded individuals is a must, says Pott, and an industry association such as Australian Legal Practice Management Association (ALPMA) can provide the support network to help.
“As a generalist, or someone who has grown up on the job, you can gain exposure to the other functional specialties – like HR, IT, marketing, finance or general management – through the education offered by a professional association,” she says.
While the fight for talented lawyers is one thing, Pott believes firm managers are just as necessary for a successful law firm. “I truly believe that raising the professionalism of the management in our law firms can only enhance the legal profession, and will also go a long way towards increasing the industry’s appreciation of professional legal management,” she says.
Pott says the consolidation of the legal market and growth of big law firms over the last decade has highlighted the necessity of management professionals – and the challenges that face all industries have been far from absent fom law firms.
“The employment market is tighter, our clients are more demanding, whole areas of practice have disappeared or been decimated by legislation changes, there is more fluidity within the market as whole teams move between firms, and, at the same time, there are more opportunities as new markets open up to the profession,” says Pott.
And as for those performance reviews, Pott says she might be buried in work, but being on the leading edge of a successful firm and putting words into action makes it all worthwhile.
20-Jun-2008
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best practice , Swaab , best of us
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