Following Chilli IQ’s Leader to Leaders conference last Thursday (18 November), where Mr Rigotti delivered a roundtable discussion on leadership, he spoke to Lawyers Weekly about what he learned transitioning to and from a management position.

“The first thing I learnt on transitioning was to go and ask people what they’re thinking about, what’s worrying them. You need to assess whether people are ready to follow, so my first [act as managing partner] was learning to stop and ask and listen,” he said.

“Try and work out what to focus on. In law firms, there’s a lot of focus on today and profitability and how that compares to the market and competitors, yet what you’re paid to do as a manager is to think about the longer term – what tomorrow is going to look like. And how do you position the firm to take advantage of that?

“As a leader, you need to learn to do a bit of both, look after today and think about tomorrow.”

Mr Rigotti added that as a new CEO, it was important to him that staff felt comfortable raising issues with him and trusting him as a leader – something which comes down to the culture of a firm.

“If you’ve got a good culture, which allows people to speak up and trust that they won’t suffer as a result of that and as an individual you can be open and listen to what’s said to you, everything will work pretty well,” he said.

“Having said that, there’s still a level of hierarchy. I personally think that you’ve got to pave the way for people to make their voices heard – I tried to make sure that I was available to individuals, but I’m sure some people felt more comfortable speaking to their direct manager or partner or someone in HR about issues.”

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After coming from the Australian legal market, navigating the global sphere as well as other markets around the world was one of the main learning curves when Mr Rigotti became CEO, as well as learning about the staff in each office and how they respond to issues.

“What was similar is that lawyers tend to work hard, so there’s similar mental health and wellbeing issues across the industry in different places. But at the same time, there were differences – for example, some of the ways that we might engage with regulators was a bit different. So, trying to work out what was similar and what was different and understand the differences rather than trying to say to different parts of the firm, ‘you need to conform to what it’s like in Australia’. Because usually there are pretty good reasons for those differences,” he said.

“I think the second thing I learnt was just how concentrated the industry is in Australia compared to leaders in other markets. In particular, just the number of very good, very competent US law firms that are competitors in different markets.

“For example, in Germany, you could have 50 or 60 US law firms to compete with as well as global firms and local German firms. In Australia, we’ve probably got about 25 or 30 firms that compete for the top tier of work – in other places, it’s well over 100. And that was something I had to get my head around – who your competitors are was a much broader class of businesses.”

HSF staff in different countries also had different interests and were passionate about different things, Mr Rigotti added – diversity being a mainstay around the world.

“I was really surprised that, while diversity is a big topic everywhere, in France, for example, there was less focus on gender and much more focus on social equality and people coming from disadvantaged backgrounds,” he explained.

“Diversity came in many different disguises in different parts of the firm, kind of pushing one agenda wasn’t good enough, you had to let diversity take a little bit of its own shape in the different offices.”

Whilst equality initiatives and targets are continually improving within the legal industry, Mr Rigotti said diversity must continue to improve as we move into a post-pandemic world.

“I think diversity will continue to be worked on. And it will continue to be worked on for two reasons. It makes business sense to try and access as much talent as you can, and to do that, you need to be inclusive and have an environment where people from diverse backgrounds feel comfortable, where they can come and do good work and create careers and futures. So, I think there’s a big economic imperative,” he said.

“The second thing is that it’s clearly the right thing to do. And it’s in step with community attitudes. Law firms don’t exist on their own island by themselves; they’re part of the broader community. I think, hopefully, we’ll continue to make progress in different areas. I don’t think it will drop away, but the focus may change in intensity.”

Whilst leaders and firms will never be perfect, “adopting a mindset of learning from what works and what doesn’t work and trying to constantly refine what you do and the various programs and initiatives that take place” will result in positive change, Mr Rigotti added.

This feeds into an organisation’s culture, which has been a topic of discussion within the legal industry for decades, according to Mr Rigotti.

“Culture has always been important. Culture is what helps you compete in the market, be a little different from your competitors so that clients come to you because of what you represent. Culture can harm you, too, if you’re perceived as aggressive or unhelpful,” he said.

“People join you and stay with you if they’ve got a culture that they relate to and can feel they fit in. I think it’s become more difficult to create that culture – so culture has become more important in the pandemic, but because we are changing the way we work and evolving. Things will be different; it’s up to you to make them better.”