#494 How Law Firm Leaders Can Grow Their Business and Still Have a Life
How Law Firm Leaders Can Grow Their Business and Still Have a Life
A Leadership Conversation with Gary Mitchell and Niels Brabandt
Leadership in the legal profession is often misunderstood. In many law firms, leadership is reduced to one metric: billable hours.
The lawyer who generates the highest revenue is frequently assumed to be the strongest leader. Yet the realities of managing a
modern law firm reveal a far more complex challenge. Leadership in professional services requires the ability to build organisations,
develop people, manage growth and create sustainable systems that allow both performance and personal freedom.
In a recent interview on The Leadership Podcast, leadership expert Niels Brabandt spoke with business coach and author Gary Mitchell
about one central question that many legal professionals quietly ask themselves: Is it possible to grow a successful law firm and
still have a life outside the business?
Gary Mitchell has spent nearly two decades working with law firm owners. His work focuses on helping entrepreneurial lawyers grow
their firms while building operational structures that prevent them from becoming prisoners of their own success. The conversation
with Niels Brabandt reveals that the greatest barriers to growth are rarely legal expertise or business development. The real
challenge is leadership.
From Political Campaigns to Law Firm Leadership
Gary Mitchell’s path into the legal industry began in an unexpected place. After working in politics and running a parliamentary
campaign in Canada, he discovered his talent for coaching professionals who possessed strong intellectual capabilities but limited
experience with people leadership. A campaign he supported became the turning point. Watching a candidate evolve through coaching
revealed something powerful. Mitchell realised that leadership transformation can occur rapidly when highly analytical professionals
are given structured guidance in communication, influence and strategic thinking.
This insight eventually led him into the legal sector. After extensive research into the Canadian and American markets, Mitchell
identified a striking gap. Lawyers receive exceptional technical training but almost no preparation for running a business. Yet many
lawyers eventually become entrepreneurs when they establish their own firms.
The result is a familiar story. Brilliant legal professionals suddenly find themselves responsible for hiring, leadership,
operations, marketing and strategy. Few are prepared for these responsibilities.
The Leadership Challenges Inside Law Firms
During the conversation with Niels Brabandt, Gary Mitchell highlights several leadership mistakes that frequently prevent law firms
from scaling successfully.
The first mistake is hiring based purely on academic credentials. Prestigious universities and impressive grades often dominate
recruitment decisions in the legal profession. Yet Mitchell argues that attitude, discipline and work ethic matter far more for
long term success. Some of the most effective hires are not necessarily top of their class but individuals who have demonstrated
persistence and resilience while building their careers.
The second challenge is poor onboarding and training. Many senior lawyers delegate tasks without explaining the process behind them.
Young associates receive limited guidance and are left uncertain about expectations. This creates frustration on both sides and
slows organisational development.
A third obstacle is ineffective delegation. Experienced lawyers often assume that tasks are self explanatory because they have
performed them for years. Yet without clear instruction and structured processes, delegation becomes a source of confusion rather
than empowerment.
According to Gary Mitchell, the solution begins with leadership discipline. Law firm owners must build systems that allow capable
people to perform independently. When the right individuals are hired and properly trained, micromanagement becomes unnecessary.
Building Firms Around Strengths
One of the most compelling insights in the interview between Gary Mitchell and Niels Brabandt concerns the importance of building
organisations around individual strengths.
Some lawyers are natural entrepreneurs who enjoy business development and growth strategy. Others are exceptional advocates who
thrive in the courtroom but have little interest in administrative leadership. Rather than forcing founders to perform every
management function, Mitchell encourages firms to design leadership structures that complement the strengths of the owner.
This may involve creating management teams or partnerships that provide the missing capabilities. The principle echoes a famous
statement often attributed to Steve Jobs: organisations should hire smart people not to tell them what to do but to allow them to
contribute their own expertise.
When law firms adopt this mindset, leadership shifts from control to collaboration.
The HR Challenge
Human resources remains one of the most difficult aspects of managing professional service firms. Lawyers are trained to analyse
details, avoid risk and strive for perfection. These traits are essential in legal practice but can become obstacles in leadership.
Gary Mitchell emphasises that perfection is an illusion. Effective organisations focus on excellence rather than perfection.
Developing hiring systems, onboarding frameworks and ongoing training programmes can dramatically improve firm performance even
though no system will ever be flawless.
Ultimately, people represent the most complex element of any organisation. Technology evolves quickly and markets change, but
managing human relationships remains the central leadership challenge.
Technology, AI and the Future of Law Firms
The interview also explores the future of the legal profession. Artificial intelligence and automation are increasingly influencing
legal processes, particularly in research and administrative functions. Gary Mitchell and Niels Brabandt agree that lawyers
themselves are unlikely to be replaced by AI. However, legal professionals who refuse to adopt technology may struggle to remain
competitive.
Mitchell summarises the situation with a simple observation. Artificial intelligence will not replace lawyers, but lawyers who use
AI effectively may replace those who ignore it.
At the same time, the future of work is changing expectations about flexibility. Remote work models introduced during the pandemic
have demonstrated that productivity does not depend on constant physical presence in an office. Firms that adapt to these changes
may gain significant advantages in talent retention.
Leadership in a Changing Profession
Perhaps the most important insight from the conversation between Gary Mitchell and Niels Brabandt is that leadership in law firms
requires a shift in mindset.
Legal expertise alone is not enough to build a sustainable organisation. Law firm leaders must develop the ability to recruit the
right people, delegate responsibility, design systems and embrace technological change. They must also learn to let go of excessive
control and trust capable professionals to contribute their strengths.
For many lawyers, this transformation is uncomfortable. Yet those who embrace it often experience rapid growth both professionally
and personally.
The message is clear. Law firms can grow successfully without consuming the lives of their founders. Achieving that outcome requires
leadership, strategic thinking and a willingness to rethink traditional models of professional work.
As the conversation between Gary Mitchell and Niels Brabandt demonstrates, the future of legal leadership belongs to those who are
prepared to evolve.
Niels Brabandt
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More on this topic in this week's videocast and podcast with Niels Brabandt: Videocast / Apple Podcasts / Spotify
For the videocast’s and podcast’s transcript, read below this article.
Is excellent leadership important to you?
Let's have a chat: NB@NB-Networks.com
Contact: Niels Brabandt on LinkedIn
Website: www.NB-Networks.biz
Niels Brabandt is an expert in sustainable leadership with more than 20 years of experience in practice and science.
Niels Brabandt: Professional Training, Speaking, Coaching, Consulting, Mentoring, Project & Interim Management. Event host, MC, Moderator.
Podcast and Videocast Transcript
Niels Brabandt
Lawyers and leadership. When you know think, "Oh yeah, you heard that one." Yeah, TV series have been created around this, and you wonder, how can anyone make them do better than they do right now? We have an expert on the matter with us here today. Hello and welcome, Gary Mitchell.
Gary Mitchell
Hello Neil, it's great to be here with you.
Niels Brabandt
Thank you very much for taking the time. So you focus on working regarding leadership with law firms, and the first question I have is, why? Why did you because lawyers are notorious for focusing on what's leadership work? Well, leadership is someone brings in billable hours, and I hope they bring in as much as they can, and that is how I lead them.
Gary Mitchell
Right. Okay, so it's kind of a long story, and I'm going to make it as brief as possible, but it is interesting because, yeah, it's interesting. So I'd always been involved in politics. Everything I've ever been done since I was a kid was always about people: sociology, history, politics, all that. I ran for Parliament in Vancouver in 2004, and I lost, thankfully. Thankfully. And in the subsequent campaign, I was called upon to help a lawyer win a nomination campaign and then go on to run the campaign for him.
Gary Mitchell
So I was coaching him, and he was a blank slate, double masters, geology and law, so double the intellectual brain, right? No experience whatsoever, like zero, okay? Blank canvas. It was so much fun, Neil. So all of a sudden, it was an aha moment in my life, personally and professionally, where I had been the guy, and now I'm the guy behind the guy. And I loved watching the transformation, right?
Gary Mitchell
And so one day after a campaign meeting, his friend, former lawyer who had left the industry to run a family company, he said, "Gary, I've noticed what you've been doing with Canada." I won't mention his name, "and how you've been able to distill soft skills, people skills, into highly intellectual people. You have a real talent for it. The legal industry really needs help with marketing and business development." And after I picked my job off the sidewalk, right, thinking lawyers have been around for as long as time, they haven't figured that out.
Gary Mitchell
So I subsequently did about nine months of research online. This is back in 2006, so 20 years ago. And I mean, there were no coaches in the Canadian market doing business coaching. There were maybe a sprinkling in the United States. I met with lawyers. I met with marketing directors. I did the online research to what was going on in the States, and clearly there was a need. So it started out with business development and marketing.
Gary Mitchell
Over the years, one way or the other, I started to attract more entrepreneurial-type lawyers, small firm owners. So then the breadth of my mandate expanded dramatically. Then we're talking operations, HR, leadership. And of course, nothing happens without leadership. It's all leadership. So my new not new, but my re-refocus is now I'm exclusively working with small law firm owners who want to grow and also create freedom in their life.
Gary Mitchell
And so my fourth book is coming out, Neil, in June, and it's called The And Approach: Grow Your Law Firm and Gain More Freedom. I'm very proud of it. Some people look at me like I'm from Mars. What? Grow a law firm? Freedom? Are you kidding me? I'm 80 hours away from it.
Niels Brabandt
How to make a department without using your private life? Well, quit the industry. That's the usual answer you get. Yeah.
Gary Mitchell
Well, I've got oodles and oodles and oodles of examples over the years of proof that it can be done. And so this is a manifesto, I guess, of 20 years of work, this book. And it's everything I'm focused on now. I'm focused on helping law firm owners. Now, why? I guess because I feel a sense of sadness almost. There's so much carnage in the legal industry.
Gary Mitchell
These people have put so much time and effort into their studies and then crafting and continually crafting their skill as a lawyer. And like other because I don't want to single out lawyers, like other professionals, they're never taught how to run a business, start a business, run a business, grow a business, manage people, systems, none of that. So you've got, on the one hand, you've got a brilliant lawyer and probably even a rainmaker, right, who goes out, starts their own firm, hires some staff, thinks it's going to be la-di-da, and then all hell breaks loose.
Gary Mitchell
And of course, they're now doing a million. They're over a million in revenue. Money's coming in. That's not the issue. Business development is not the issue. It's managing the growth and taking it to the next level, while still having some semblance of a life, right?
Gary Mitchell
And freedom means different things to different people. I just had a request for consultation, and in the questionnaire, I think the person used the word time five times, like more time, less admin, more time, less billable hours, more time, more time, more time, more time.
Gary Mitchell
So the challenge here is, in the leadership thing, is letting go of control. That's one of the biggest issues, perfection and control. Those are the two biggest issues I work with my clients on: slowly moving them, kind of moving the goalpost, moving the comfort zone, not pushing, because that never works with any human, including myself, right? I've had many trainers and coaches throughout my life, and it's like, you don't go from here to here overnight, right? And with lawyers, you have to show proof, right? Strategy, implement, show proof. Strategy, implement, show proof.
Niels Brabandt
So what would you say what leadership mistakes are the most commonly done? What are the most common leadership mistakes these people make preventing law firms from scaling successfully and having a life?
Gary Mitchell
Okay. One of the first mistakes is hiring the wrong people, hiring for marks or the resume looks amazing. I've always maintained.
Niels Brabandt
Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford.
Gary Mitchell
Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Neil, I've always believed that attitude accounts for 99% of everything. I'm serious. The older I get, the more experience I have in life and in business. It's proven over and over again.
Gary Mitchell
You know something that's interesting? I actually read an article back maybe in my second or third year about a top-tier law firm in the US, okay? And its hiring strategy was amazing, and it supported my belief. It skipped the top-tier law schools looking at hires. It went to the second tier, and it skipped the A students. It went to B students. And here was the reasoning. Every single time they did that, they found that those students were working themselves to pay through law school. That spoke to work ethic. It spoke to discipline. It spoke to attitude, right? They hired them on. They're going to do whatever it takes. Whereas Yale, Princeton, Harvard, they're entitled. They got the top marks at the top.
Niels Brabandt
Well, especially when you of course, these are excellent universities. Still, of course, there are lots of people who are privileged, who grew up in a rich family and didn't have to start.
Gary Mitchell
I'm not putting down the university.
Niels Brabandt
All the money's just there, and now please open the door to my amazing six-figure job.
Gary Mitchell
Well, it's an experience. I'm not even putting down those individuals. They were given this, right? I'm not judging. We are a product of our environment, our upbringing, and our experience, okay? So when you look at one person and their attitude and another person and their attitude, it's not like one person's better than the other. Who am I to judge, right? I'm just talking about how does that transpire?
Gary Mitchell
So hiring the right people. The second mistake they make is not properly getting them set up, onboarding them, training them. The third mistake is improper delegation. And this is because the lawyer has done this task a million times, and in their brain, it's like A to Z, right? And they've got 2 million things in the air juggling, right? So they go to their young associate, and they hand it over, and the associate's lucky if they get a few words of instruction, right? This deer in the headlights associate is like, "Oh my God." They're afraid to go and ask for help. They're afraid if they get stuck. So all kinds of problems pile up along this misroad.
Gary Mitchell
So I teach them how to first of all, the better they get at hiring, the less they're going to have to manage people because these people don't need to be babysat. The ones with good work ethic and discipline, they have it. They have the work ethic. They have the discipline. And if they get stuck, they're going to figure it out or find out where they can learn how to, right? They're going to figure it out. They're going to do whatever it takes. So that's the number one thing.
Gary Mitchell
The other thing I teach them is to build from strength. So let me give you two examples. A lawyer in Toronto, he's Mr. Entrepreneur. He could leave the legal side tomorrow, okay? He wants to grow, right? He's got some natural-born skills too in that area, right? He's entrepreneurial. He's got an entrepreneurial bent. So he definitely could leave the legal side. The opposite of that is a client in Vancouver who loves to advocate for his clients. I mean, he is happiest when he's in the courtroom defending or on the other side for his clients. And he wants nothing to do with the day-to-day management of the firm, but he wants to grow the firm because he sees the opportunity.
Gary Mitchell
So we have to build different models, but the approach is the same. We build around their strength, okay? So we build management team, partnership, whatever it is, or a combination of both. And we're not duplicating the owner or the founder. We're looking for complementary skills. I always bring up one of my favorite quotes from Steve Jobs: "We don't hire smart people so we tell them what to do. We hire smart people so they tell us what to do." So that's the encouragement I give them is, "Yeah, you're a smart guy or smart woman. You're a smart professional. Now let's find some other smart people with complementary skills who can fill out the puzzle," right? And to me, this stuff comes naturally. It's not rocket science. It's not that difficult, but these guys struggle with it so much. HR is one of the I mean, they don't like marketing, but I think they hate HR even more, right? And let's face it.
Niels Brabandt
And that's my next question because when you say you want to grow a law firm and you want to have a life besides all of that, as soon as you drop the term HR, people go like, "Okay, here we go." That's another big issue.
Niels Brabandt
When you look at HR, how do you deal with all of that without running either legal risks or not getting the best talent or doing errors which are costly? So how can you deal with HR issues as well while growing your law firm sustainably and still having a life?
Gary Mitchell
Okay. Well, first of all, there is no perfect. Let me start with that.
Niels Brabandt
That is something that some lawyers will not accept, but hopefully, they see it in the normal world.
Gary Mitchell
Well, Neil, I'll be perfectly frank to your viewers. I'm a recovering perfectionist myself. And one thing that helped was writing books because you have to let it go, right?
Niels Brabandt
It's never perfect. You always think you could do one more and one more and this bit and that. There's just one point. Just get it out.
Gary Mitchell
There's a very famous book, although not written for lawyers, that every lawyer should read, and it's called The Artist's Way. And it talks about this. I think it's 30 years old now, 35 years old. It talks about how this is very common among artists as well, songwriters, right? They're writing something the right they always go back. It's like one little that one note or that one cadence or one bridge or whatever. And it's like, nothing will ever be perfect.
Gary Mitchell
Let's shoot for excellence. Let's always shoot for excellence. Absolutely. But there will never be perfect.
Gary Mitchell
These systems and processes that I've helped develop for law firms, for strategy, for hiring, onboarding, ongoing training, I'm not going to ever profess you're going to get to a perfect, but it's going to take you up quite a few notches. And of course, you're never going to be able to grow unless you have a team because you have to let them do the work.
Gary Mitchell
So again, I go back to the control, right? When you get the right people, you're setting yourself up for success. There's many more steps along the way, clearly, right? But when you get the right people, you don't have to micromanage them. You don't have to you don't even have to have FaceTime. You can be on the mountain, climbing a mountain, or on the beach with your spouse, traveling one of the UNESCO sites in the world, whatever gets you going, right? And your law firm is churning like a well-oiled machine.
Gary Mitchell
And there's steps. I didn't say this is easy. I just don't find it difficult. I find it like the approach is simple. The execution is where, right? I've always also believed that the most challenging part of your business is your people, by far. Technology, it's always we're always learning, right? We may scoff at it when it first comes out, but we adapt. We learn, right? I know some people in their 80s that can text way quicker than I can, right?
Niels Brabandt
Yeah. Absolutely.
Gary Mitchell
It's not technology. It's the people part of the business. And I mean, what is a law firm without the people, right?
Niels Brabandt
Absolutely. Absolutely. When we now look into the future of law firms, to wrap this interview up, when we focus on, let's say, the biggest strategic opportunities that law firms have in your opinion in the next decade, regarding leadership, talent management, business growth, but also in the context of AI that is now, of course, coming more and more into the legal industry as well, what, in your opinion, are the biggest strategic opportunities that they face in the future?
Gary Mitchell
Well, it's always going to be HR, for sure. It's always going to be people, right? And I want to use COVID as an example. COVID taught people how to work from home, right? And I'm talking on a broad level. I've been working from home, by the way, since 2006, so this was not new to me. I love it. I can't imagine going into an office and being constrained by that system.
Gary Mitchell
Anyway, so after a couple of years of self-training, you have these owners of businesses demanding FaceTime again, demanding people back in the office. And I'm shaking my head. What are you thinking? These people have designed their systems, their discipline, their work-at-home schedule, sometimes balancing caregiving of children, caregiving of elders, their parents. I mean, there's a whole gamut, right?
Gary Mitchell
Why would you then demand them to come back into the office paying for overhead that you don't need to when they're actually more productive and happier at home? Because, see, retention's always going to be one of the top challenges.
Gary Mitchell
Now, AI, I'm not an expert, but I will say this. The first thing they need to do is stop saying, "Oh my God. Oh my God. No, I'm so afraid of this." No. You need to learn how you can incorporate. You need to learn how you can incorporate it into your practice. I heard this somewhere. I've heard it both for coaches too. AI will not replace lawyers, but it will replace lawyers who don't use AI.
Niels Brabandt
Absolutely.
Gary Mitchell
And I've heard the same thing about coaches, right? AI will not replace me, but if I don't adopt and bring AI into my practice, which I have done, then I will be replaced, right? Definitely.
Niels Brabandt
Gary Mitchell
So I mean, again, that's a whole other that's a whole other episode and two and three and ten on AI, right? But the bottom line is don't fear technology. Embrace it. Learn it, understand it, and see how you can adapt it and what policies you can sorry, procedures and approaches you can take from AI to make the smoother running of your law firm.
Gary Mitchell
And yes, there's going to be disruption. We're going to see some of the lower-level law clerks, paralegals. We're going to see less and less of those, obviously. I do not see lawyers being replaced by AI. I do see lower-level legal assistants, things like that, eventually in the next couple of years.
Niels Brabandt
There might be an exposure to AI there where there might be significant changes. Absolutely.
Gary Mitchell
That's right. But lawyers are pretty safe as long as they know what's going on and they don't fear it and they look to embrace it. The other thing, the most important thing, I was watching something the other day. I can't remember what it was. And they're saying, "Well, how do you manage this?" And the person says, "We have to be nimble." And I'm like, "I've been saying that for over 10 years."
Gary Mitchell
We absolutely, all of us, not just lawyers, we have to be nimble. Things are changing at such a rapid pace. Now, that's for some reason, I don't know, I'll maybe go and see a therapist and find out where it came from, but I don't mind change. I get bored, actually, when things are stagnant. I don't mind having to be on my toes and look around the corner and go, "What's coming next?" What's in front of me? What's behind me? What's beside me?
Gary Mitchell
Lawyers tend to be very controlling in their box. I mean, when you look at the traits of lawyers, and it's exactly the reason we hire them. They're analytical. They're critical, very, very critical. Perfectionists, we want a form of that, right? We want attention to detail. But all of those things that make them an amazing lawyer hold them back from growing in a business. And so those are the traits that I focus on, right?
Gary Mitchell
I always make a joke. I always make a joke. The left brain has been binging Netflix on the couch. And sorry, no. The left brain has had Olympic-level training, and the right brain has been binging Netflix on the couch. And it's like, I like to use analogies. I get their ass off the couch, and I start getting them into training with the right brain functions. And we all have them. We all have them, but they've not been shown that path, right? Now, the exciting thing, Neil, yes, as frustrating as lawyers can be to work with, and I will admit because they are stubborn, they always know the answer.
Niels Brabandt
They always know the answer. They always know better. They've seen it all. They've done it all, and they know it all how to do it.
Gary Mitchell
But when I come across that open one who's willing to listen and willing to follow, like the very first candidate, my first client, then they learn very, very quickly, and they can improve and implement and innovate. You can see the growth in them very, very quickly. That's the exciting part that keeps me motivated with all the challenges. Sorry, go ahead.
Niels Brabandt
Yeah. And I think that's a very good segue to my final question. When people now say, "I am that one. I am the one who wants to learn. I am the one who wants to change something, grow my firm and still have a life," the question is, how can they get in touch with you?
Gary Mitchell
Gary, 1r@ontrackcoach.com. No K in on track on purpose for branding. Gary, at ontrackcoach.com, let's have a chat. Let's talk about where you're at now, what's holding you back. I know what's holding you back. You know what's holding you back. So let's talk about it and how we can get over it, move through it, and help you get to where you want to be.
Gary Mitchell
I mean, it's up to you. I don't tell people what their dreams or what their freedom or what their life should be. I help them get to where they want to. That's my job.
Niels Brabandt
Perfect. I think these are the perfect final words. So when you have a law firm and you think, "I'd like to grow my business and still have a life," Gary is the person to talk to. So, Gary Mitchell, thank you very much for your time.
Gary Mitchell
Thank you, Neil.