When Great Attorneys Make Terrible Managers — And What To Do About It

Law Firms Keep Making the Same Mistake

A firm grows.
It hires more attorneys.
The founder or managing partner becomes overwhelmed.
There’s more work, more people, and more responsibility than one leader can hold.

So the solution seems obvious:

Promote your best attorney into a management role.

It feels logical—until it derails productivity, disrupts culture, and creates tension across the team.

Here’s the truth law firms rarely say out loud:

Being a great attorney and being a great manager require completely different skill sets.

And promoting the wrong person is one of the fastest ways to create:
• turnover
• resentment
• cultural drift
• lack of accountability
• inconsistent work quality
• partner misalignment
• stalled growth

This is a structural issue in nearly every boutique and mid-sized firm, and it becomes by far the most damaging when the team reaches 10–20+ people.

Why Great Attorneys Often Make Poor Managers

Let’s break down the mismatch.

1. Attorneys are trained to solve, not develop

The attorney mindset is:
• identify the issue
• solve it fast
• move to the next thing

The management mindset is:
• develop people
• empower them to solve problems
• reinforce expectations
• slow down to teach instead of fixing

Those two approaches live on opposite ends of the behavioral spectrum.

Attorneys who “jump in to fix” often disempower the team—even with the best intentions.

2. High-performers often have low tolerance for inefficiency

Top attorneys are used to performing at a high level.
When they see someone struggling, they tend to:

• take the task back
• redo the work
• micromanage
• bypass processes
• assume authority
• solve instead of lead

This leads to frustrated teams and burned-out managers.

3. Legal expertise doesn’t equal leadership expertise

Management requires:
• emotional intelligence
• coaching skills
• prioritization
• conflict resolution
• delegation discipline
• meeting structure
• accountability enforcement
• communication clarity

Most attorneys are never trained in these areas.

4. Attorneys often struggle to let go of work

Even non-founders cling to work because:
• handing off tasks feels risky
• they fear poor-quality work
• they believe it’s faster to do it themselves
• they don’t trust the firm’s systems
• they never learned structured delegation

Management demands letting go.
Many attorneys never learned how.

5. The skills that make attorneys successful often make managers ineffective

Attorneys excel at:
• issue spotting
• argumentation
• critical evaluation
• risk management
• independence

These traits can create friction when applied to people leadership.

• Issue spotting → feels like criticism
• Argumentation → feels combative
• Independence → reduces collaboration
• Risk management → slows decisions
• Critical evaluation → discourages team autonomy

These behaviors are useful in law.
But destabilizing in leadership.

How Poor Attorney-Management Shows Up Inside a Firm

You’ve seen this in dozens of firms:

• Team members avoid their manager

• Delegation is inconsistent

• Quality varies wildly

• Paralegals feel unsupported

• Associates feel micromanaged

• Decisions bottleneck at the wrong level

• Performance issues go unaddressed

• Culture erodes quietly

• Partners complain about inconsistency

• Staff turnover increases

• Attorneys burn out from trying to do two jobs

Most concerning of all:

People begin to resent the attorney-manager personally, not just the role.

That resentment quickly spreads to the partners and the entire firm.

Why Firms Keep Making This Mistake

Because the firm NEEDS a manager.
But they don’t have one.
So they promote the closest person who looks qualified:

• The top biller
• The sharpest attorney
• The founder’s right hand
• The longest-tenured employee
• The most vocal associate

The problem isn’t the person.
It’s the assumption that strong legal skill equals strong leadership skill.

The Real Fix: Build Management Intentionally, Not Reactively

Firms don’t need accidental leaders.
They need operationally designed leadership.

Here’s what that looks like:

1. Create a real role description for attorney-managers

Not “lead this team.”
But:

• what decisions they own
• what authority they have
• how they delegate
• what KPIs they track
• what meetings they run
• what escalations they handle
• how they support paralegals
• how they develop associates

Without definition, people manage based on personality—not structure.

2. Train attorneys in leadership, not just management

Leadership training should include:
• coaching methods
• running an effective 1:1
• how to delegate without micromanaging
• personality and communication styles
• giving feedback
• removing ambiguity
• recognizing burnout
• aligning team goals

The legal industry treats leadership as optional.
It isn’t.

3. Shift responsibilities off attorneys so they can lead

Most attorney-managers fail because they’re balancing:
• high billable expectations
• complex client work
• leadership responsibilities
• internal decisions

This workload is structurally impossible to succeed in without support.

4. Introduce middle management (the missing layer)

You wrote about this in Week 30:
Without team leads, senior paralegals, or department managers, attorney-leaders simply carry too much.

Middle management absorbs operational issues.
Attorney-managers should not be resolving every admin or workflow problem.

5. Install a COO or operational leader to support attorney-managers

This is the part most firms skip.
Firms expect attorney-managers to:
• create systems
• enforce accountability
• design workflows
• conduct performance reviews

But attorneys don’t have the skillset — or the time.

This is exactly where a COO makes the role possible.
The COO builds the structure.
The attorney-manager leads within it.

Real Examples From Your Clients

Example A: The Attorney Who Was Brilliant… and Miserable

Great attorney.
Great client rapport.
Terrible manager.

Once management duties were transitioned to a department lead and COO oversight, the attorney’s performance skyrocketed — and turnover in that department dropped to zero.

Example B: The Senior Associate Who Held All the Control

They were unintentionally suffocating their paralegals.
By shifting decision authority and implementing clearer workflows, the entire team became more productive.

Example C: The Partner Who Was the Wrong Person in the Wrong Seat

They were promoted to a leadership role because of tenure.
After a restructure, they returned to pure legal work — and thrived.
The department thrived too.

This is the EOS-style concept you’ve referenced indirectly (without naming it), and it applies perfectly: Right Person, Right Seat.

The Bottom Line

Firms don’t fail because they lack talented attorneys.
They fail because they don’t have strong leadership structures.

Promoting the best attorney into management isn’t a solution — it’s a shortcut.
And shortcuts at the leadership level create long-term operational damage.

Great attorneys deserve to be great attorneys.
And firms deserve leaders who know how to lead.

If your firm is struggling with inconsistent leadership, frustrated teams, or attorney-managers who are stretched too thin, I can help. I build leadership structures, define roles, and develop operational systems so attorneys can lead effectively — or return to the roles where they thrive.