The troops are getting restless. The first signs of this occurred as long as five years ago, when the towering figure of Bill Tudor John was ousted in Allen & Overy's (A&O's) first contested senior partner election. Lovells' veteran senior partner, Andrew Walker, suffered a similar fate last year. This week, we report calls within Denton Wilde Sapte's partnership that it would be healthy for chief executive Virginia Glastonbury to be challenged when she comes up for re-election in February. This is not necessarily because she has done a bad job, but because it might be time for the firm to choose a new type of leader.

It stands to reason that as partners come under more pressure to perform from management – and Dentons' partners have had as tough a time as any – they in turn, as shareholders, have a periodic right to deliver their own verdict on their leaders. And to do that they need a choice.

There is a group of firms, which includes Lovells, A&O, and Eversheds, that have made a virtue out of holding open leadership elections. But this is not a given. There are still plenty of firms that prefer rubber-stamp votes involving a single candidate. This has the unfortunate tendency of exaggerating the politicking, arm-twisting and score-settling that accompany any leadership change by relegating it to office corridors and the metaphorical smoke-filled rooms. It is also a system that favours the incumbent.

Evidence of a growing consensus that a proper vote every four years or so is the least partners at the top firms can expect comes from the notoriously conservative Herbert Smith.

It is poised for the first time to join the 'open vote' camp as it prepares to choose its next senior partner – with head of litigation David Gold and worldwide practice partner Richard Fleck 'minded' to put their hats into the ring. At this critical stage of the firm's development, it is important that the firm holds an open debate on both who should lead it and what their strategy should be.

This begs a final question. Is it really so sensible for firms with a turnover in the hundreds of millions of pounds to restrict their choice of leader to their own partnership? What if, heaven forfend, there real-ly is not anyone at Herbert Smith, or Lovells, or Dentons, who is up to the job? After all, it is always going to be a bit of a risk choosing someone new who has, by definition, no experience of running a firm.

Why not poach somebody from a rival who has already done it all and might be tempted by a new challenge? Someone like Berwin Leighton Paisner's Neville Eisenberg, for example, or DLA's Nigel Knowles. Now that really would be fun…