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While legal knowledge, experience, and accolades once defined who got hired, law firms are now rewriting the rules, elevating cultural fit and workplace alignment as the deciding factors in who gets hired and who gets left behind.
Speaking on a recent episode of The Lawyers Weekly Show, Luke Zadkovich, managing partner at Floyd Zadkovich, underscored the growing importance of cultivating a cohesive workplace culture within legal teams, arguing that cultural alignment is increasingly the deciding factor in whether a hire succeeds or fails.
While it may break from the traditional playbook of legal hiring, Zadkovich stressed that this heightened focus on workplace culture and cultural fit is now “absolutely essential on a number of fronts”.
As he began to build his legal team, Zadkovich shared that the key deciding factor he and his co-founder returned to was simple but non-negotiable: any growth had to be built around bringing in people they genuinely enjoyed working with.
“When we set up the firm, it took us a good year before Ed and I accepted that we should actually bring some other people in,” he said.
“But once we started having that conversation and growing the team, it was really important that we bring in people that we like to work with.”
While acknowledging the philosophy may sound simplistic and cliché, he explained that it becomes unmistakably important in practice, particularly when challenges inevitably arise, and the strength of mutual support within a firm is put to the test.
“I know that sounds a bit cliché or what have you, but it’s so important. When issues arise, when problems happen in the firm, to know that you’ve got the support of each other is absolutely critical, as I see it,” he said.
Zadkovich emphasised that this hiring philosophy has remained the overriding criterion, noting that even highly credentialed partners with significant client books and experience have been passed over when they were not considered the right fit for the team.
“Through the growth that we’ve experienced, the most important criteria, absolutely most important criteria, is whether that person is going to be a good fit in the team,” he said.
“So we’ve had opportunities where a partner with a big book of business may want to join. We’ve gone through a process of getting to know them, and the reason we didn’t go forward with that hire was fit. We didn’t think they would fit well in the culture of the firm.”
However, Zadkovich noted that the approach has not been without its challenges, pointing to instances where new hires ultimately proved not to be the right fit and have since moved on.
“We’ve kept leaning into that, and we haven’t got it right every single time. Of course, there have been people who have joined the firm, haven’t been the right fit, and have moved on,” he said.
As the firm has grown, he emphasised cultural fit as a central foundation for building a team, which has only grown in importance, evolving from an early preference into a core business principle that now sits at the heart of every hiring decision.
“But as we’ve kind of grown, it’s just become clearer and clearer to me that that is a central premise upon which to build a team,” he said.
“It’s something that kind of came out of wanting to work with people that we like, but actually became much more central as a business premise as well.”
