It has become a truism when looking at what ails a law firm, particularly one struggling to keep up with rivals, to argue that the solution is simple: be more ruthless. The logic is that if these sleepy firms could only kick the collective rear of their partnership – and kick out a fair chunk of underperformers – then the law firm would achieve its true greatness.

Certainly, the 'don't spare the rod' school is frequently espoused by journalists, who then tend to moan when the suitably toughened firm starts firing staff (I'm sure historically Legal Week has been an offender on this regard – apologies).

Unfortunately, this supposed catch-all remedy is rather too liberally dished out and is often discussed as if the results are far better than experience shows. I've seen plenty of law firms – particularly in the mid-tier and chasing pack – try go get tough, which typically means kicking out partners, pushing up billable hour targets and trying to ditch anything that sounds fluffy, like lunch breaks or intellectual property.

The only problem is that it is not really clear what the success stories are that justify this approach. Some firms have successfully hit an upwardly mobile stride and sustained it, but I've rarely found much evidence that getting medieval on the partnership's back-end has had much to do with improved performance.

And, conversely, I've seen a number of law firms strike a ruthless stance with results that were either mixed or just plain counter-productive (there are two particularly good examples in the City right now).

This can happen because many large law firms whose genuine strengths lie outside transactional law allow their direction to be overly dominated by their corporate and banking teams. These are the very teams that tend to like the 'get tough' approach and that harbour dreams of making their firms a stronger player in the M&A and banking markets.

But on a more fundamental level, it seems that it is too often forgotten that being ruthless is merely a means to an end. Yes, this approach can be successful if intelligently applied to what your business currently is and what you would like it to be in future. But it is not an end in itself, or a substitute for a law firm carving out a sustainable position in the market. And getting high performance out of staff is a notoriously difficult and elusive feat at the best of times.

While there is certainly a role for robust action when employees don't deliver, years of covering business has increasingly led me to the conclusion that less is more when it comes to such tactics. If you are a partner looking at your firm and thinking it needs to be tougher, that's fine. But I'd suggest the real question is: and then what?