Speaking recently on The Lawyers Weekly Show, Ms Aitken – who recently joined SLF Lawyers to head up its national workplace and safety practice – said that the “great joy” of making partner was having autonomy to run her files and practice in the ways she wanted to, given her new duties pertaining to budgeting and staff supervision.

“I loved that responsibility and liberation,” she recalled.

“As an idealistic senior associate, though, I had hopes that partnership would also offer me the chance to have more impact and more influence over things like culture in the legal profession and change in the way that legal businesses operate, and how we’re perceived as an industry. And I still have that hope.”

As a new partner, Ms Aitken outlined, one has to realise that one may not have the kind of involvement in the operational side of the business that one might have expected, which “can lead to a blinkered mindset about what your purpose is as a partner”, she said.

“So, that’s the point at which I got itchy feet and decided to make a leap, when the years ahead looked like the years that had been, because for some traditional partnership is the end game, but it’s never been that for me,” she explained.

What such realisations have taught her, she surmised, is that one has to extrapolate from their workplace environment and deduce what kind of partner they want to be.

“We shouldn’t underestimate the depth and the colour that we can have from various experiences, no matter how linear your career is, there are always opportunities to grow and learn if you’re looking for them,” Ms Aitken submitted.

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Further to these initial deductions, financial management is going to be one of the most arduous challenges for new partners, she warned.

“At a high level, the hardest part about financial management is how you choose to involve your staff, because I found it quite depressing and demotivating in the course of my career to have my performance centrally measured on my billable hours, and people have been saying for years that focusing on billable hours encourages inefficiency and a mistaken value being placed on the time that it takes for completion of a task, and I find it equally gruelling now to see partners focused solely on financial performance as a KPI for their team members,” she said.

This is a key concern for Ms Aitken, who has found that every candidate she has interviewed recently said they were leaving their current jobs because they felt that they were valued only for how much they billed each day.

“To me, that is absolutely no way to win hearts and minds, or support a growth mindset in our lawyers and achieve the best outcomes for our clients. I don’t think clients are going to thank us for it, and they’re the ones that we’re aiming to please,” she argued.

Ms Aitken said she subscribes to the notion that billable hours are an “artificial indicator” of success.

“There’s a lot more value that a lawyer brings to the table than what they bill, for instance, things like the quality of the service that they’re providing to clients, their contribution to the firm’s brand and conversion of clients, and their positive influence on culture and productivity in general,” she said.

“Performance of staff members shouldn’t be measured in hours, but in the outcomes,” she argued, adding that “finding that happy medium between setting and achieving financial management goals whilst able to foster a culture that values growth and quality of client outcomes” is a quandary that doesn’t have an immediately available solution.”

Those who have just joined the partnership also have the corresponding pressure of assuming a leadership role in the turbulent age of coronavirus.

“They have had new demands on them that we never expected,” she mused.

This, she reasons, is an exercise in crisis management.

Partners, myself included, have had to make very quick decisions about difficult matters, internally as well as on behalf of clients that we’re advising facing things like operational shutdowns, laying off staff, reducing hours and pay, and also supporting a workforce that overnight started working remotely,” she recalled.

This said, Ms Aitken went on, “whenever there’s a crisis there’s also an opportunity to grow, and to learn, and emerge stronger on the other side”.

“So, for leaders that have been future-focused, this has driven a lot of business innovation and personal growth. We’ve seen businesses and leaders that are re-inventing themselves and setting new benchmarks for other players in the legal industry. These are the real shapers,” she said.

This past year, Ms Aitken also noted, has been an important exercise in self-awareness for partners – something new partners can learn from.

“Knowing ourselves better as leaders means that we’re able to navigate a team successfully through very challenging times, communicating effectively and empathetically to make sure that everyone’s aligned on the other side of it,” she said.

Furthermore, increased consideration for the idiosyncratic wellness needs of staff is fundamental, she added.

“I think that there are certain things that we can do from a staff management perspective, from a practice management perspective, to really ease that burden on staff members, and one of those ways, of course, is how we’re measuring an individual’s performance and not focusing so heavily on their input, but rather on their output, because that is very gruelling day in day out, to be valued based on how many hours you have billed and to not have your other measurable contributions to the team and the firm recognised,” she said.

When asked what else those who have just made partner should be doing right off the bat to keep their heads above water, Ms Aitken said to “lead your own way”.

At a time in which the legal marketplace is undergoing so much changes, she mused, it is critical for new partners to develop their own style. She spent too much time trying to mirror the styles and methods of those she’d observed as a junior lawyer, she noted, but the profession “doesn’t need a repeat of what we’ve seen before”.

“We need points of difference and fresh approaches,” she proclaimed.

“There is a major shift occurring post pandemic – law firms have invested very heavily in technology, they’re moving to more collaborative service models, and our workforces are much more mobile.

“And practitioners – whether they’re Millennials, or Gen X, Gen Z, whatever – who combine strong legal skills with dynamic business thinking are going to be very highly valued in law firms now and into the future.

“These are the practitioners that, I think, will be highly sought after for partnership.”

The conversation on The Lawyers Weekly Show followed Ms Aitken’s advice for how emerging leaders in law can reach partnership at an early age, as well as the need to better value the junior lawyers in one’s team.

The transcript of this podcast episode was slightly edited for publishing purposes. To listen to the full conversation with Elizabeth Aitken, click below: