Editorial
“
Strategic plans help
to motivate lawyers
”
It’s a good idea for a law firm to have a strategic plan.
That’s the view of most partners in Spain and Portugal.
However, despite this widely held belief, new research
by Iberian Lawyer suggests that the adoption of strategic
plans – documents that detail an organisation’s goals
and the actions it will take to reach those goals – is not as
widespread as lawyers would like.
As we report in our News Focus (on page 16), four
out of ten of the partners who responded to our survey
said that their firm did not have a strategic plan – this
was despite the fact that 92 per cent of participants
in the survey thought their firm should have such a
document. And even at those firms who do have a
strategic plan, there are serious doubts about the extent
to which the plan is adhered to. Less than half of the
survey respondents who said their firm had a strategic
plan believed the plan had been implemented “very
successfully”.
Why do firms that have strategic plans struggle to
implement them? Time constraints was the most common
reason given, though other common complaints included
the plan being too abstract and lacking in clear guidance
and partners failing to buy into the concept.
Why should law firms consider adopting strategic
plans? As our feature highlights, partners working at law
firms that have these documents tend to enjoy a clarity of
purpose that helps to increase the motivation of the firm’s
partners in the sense that they are building the firm they
want.
Also in this issue, we present the results of some
additional research into the lives of associates at firms
in Spain and Portugal. Among the key findings (see
News, page 8) was that, although most associates support
the idea of having tailored career plans, it seems that a
sizeable proportion of law firms are failing to offer them.
Ben Cook
Editor
Iberian Lawyer
[email protected]
Twitter: @BenCook_Iberian
www.iberianlawyer.com
May / June 2016 • IBERIAN LAWYER •
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