Collaboration has been a major strategic theme within law firms over the past several years. While some have made progress, there seems to be a ceiling on how far these efforts can actually go. My sense is that it comes down to incentives and motivation. I propose an approach to driving collaboration that uses the natural motivations of lawyers within a firm to stimulate better results.

How Good an Idea Is Collaboration?

In her terrific book, "Smart Collaboration," Harvard Law School's Heidi Gardner makes a compelling case for greater collaboration within law firms, detailing how more, smarter collaboration leads to substantial benefits for law firms and law firm partners alike:

• Outsized revenue growth;
• More engagements per client;
• Lower discounts on billings;
• More practices serving each client;
• Stronger client relationships;
• Greater success rate in lateral integration and retention;
• And significantly bigger books of business for individual lawyers.

Seeing the wisdom of the business case made by Gardner, many firms have sought to implement policies to stimulate and motivate more collaboration among their lawyers. Unfortunately, to-date this approach has met with generally modest, if any, success. This isn't due to a lack of effort, commitment or communication. Rather, it seems that the common, long-standing motivation of lawyers to protectively ensure that their clients are never disappointed in the quality of service they receive remains a major barrier to introducing new areas of service (and new lawyers) to clients. And the very real and honest motivation to collaborate doesn't seem to be enough to consistently break through this gatekeeping barrier.