The paradox of this book is that it provides lawyers with an excellent guide to the techniques they will need if they are to manage a law firm, while demonstrating why the task will be beyond most of them.

First impressions are often misleading and rarely more so than with this book. The title, coupled with the fact that it is published by the Law Society, suggests that it is one of those volumes that the lawyer with an interest in management will want to display on his bookshelf, but will neglect to read.

It is in fact one of the best and most useful overviews you will find of the various elements that make up the process of law firm management.

In 18 detailed (but always readable) chapters, the author covers essential topics such as Leadership, Teamworking, Performance Management, IT and Business Strategy, and Client Care.

This is not a theoretical work but is practical throughout, combining a knowledge of the problems faced by law firms in a rapidly changing commercial environment with useful lessons that can be learned from academic and management studies.

For example, Matthew Moore points out that, in reality, we do not have a unified solicitors' profession, but rather one in which there has been a polarisation of firms into a number of distinct groups (such as sole practitioners and commercial firms) which bear little relationship to each other.

I would have thought that it is the partners in the 'small-to-mid-market' who would gain most from this book and who the author had in mind when he wrote it. They are likely to regard their firms as business organisations which face the same threats as their clients, but they may not have an array of non-lawyer managers to help them.

The chapter on Marketing, which explores key issues such as branding, strategic marketing and databases, will be particularly useful to partners who acknowledge the central role marketing can play in the development of their firms, but who are not supported by professional marketing teams.

I found the chapter on Firm Culture to be extremely illuminating, particularly Charles Handy's categorisation of firms into the Greek Temple — where the sections or departments of the firm are represented by columns which stand parallel to each other and only come into contact at the senior level of the organisation — and the Spider's Web — where there is a central point of control with the powerbase radiating outwards by degrees and knowledge power is often a defining issue of the culture.

There are a number of references in the book to academic studies and the results of research, so that if a reader wishes to explore further any of the topics the author covers (and it is likely that he will), he will be led to the appropriate source material.

If I have a criticism of the book, it is that is constructed like the Greek Temple, with a number of columns, each representing an essential element of modern law firm management and the author does not reflect sufficiently on the factors which combine the elements together into a comprehensive, overall structure. I would like to have seen a chapter dealing with the dynamic – how the manager should, while exercising the skills described in the book, get the firm to gel as one.

One of the hardest tasks currently facing law firm managers is that of achieving real change within their firms.

While partners in the largest firms may have little control or influence over the business decisions of their firms, those in smaller firms may try to exert those factors over those they have employed or elected to undertake the task of management. The tradition of partners wanting to hold onto control of their own firms dies hard even where there is evidence that it stands in the way of firms achieving sustained profitability.

While the book may not address this issue in the depth it requires, it is clear that the problem would be greatly reduced if 'recalcitrant' partners were to read it.

Peter Jay is senior partner at Finers Stephens
Innocent.