Insight from a disruptive leader in legal
Joanna Kingston-Davies
Joanna is Chief Operating Officer at the Jackson Lees Group, an award-winning (large law firm of the year) legal services provider in the North West. Before moving to the Wirral in 2006, she spent seven years at Hogan Lovells in Paris where she transitioned through the ranks from bilingual legal secretary to heading up the HR function through a period of rapid expansion, acquisition and change.
In her role at Jackson Lees, Joanna has responsibility for the Group’s operating infrastructure and for all non-legal functions, including HR, client experience, IT, facilities and marketing. She also sits on the Group’s strategic board.
“A major challenge in the law industry is that there is often such a lack of transparency. Traditional models mean that law firms tend not to share information with their people about their plans which can create a culture of secrecy and unnecessary hierarchy. So many law firms could reap massive rewards by moving away from the model of “the way we’ve always done things”, encouraging more creative thinking, empowering people and allowing people to develop into their “best selves”, rather than meeting all of the requirements of a very rigid role description.
All too often, law firms force their people down the more traditional career paths of law into management rather than allowing them to continue doing what they’re really good at and recruiting in professional managers. Conversely, some lawyers are better leaders than they are lawyers and it’s important to remember/almost guaranteed that it’s not always the best lawyer who makes the best manager.
At Jackson Lees, we invest a tremendous amount of time in developing every individual from Board through to apprentice. We launched a training academy last year to help develop the whole person, rather than simply the technical lawyer, and we encourage our people to find their “why” and to continually thrive and develop. We have a relentless focus on ensuring that our “why”, articulated through our core value of making a positive difference (#MAPD), is embodied at every level of the organisation and in everything we do.
An engaged team is a more productive team and we recently appointed an award-winning outstanding Family lawyer to Head of Culture and Engagement. We may have lost the fee income she generated but the wider value she brings to our business is worth significantly more. This has been borne out in our “In Touch” survey amongst staff where we have seen double-digit increases across all engagement metrics.”
For over 27 years, award-winning Matrix247 have delivered telephony systems, low-cost landline solutions, mobile call-routing, mobile devices, connectivity and SRA compliant cyber security solutions to hundreds of law firms and currently have thousands of users deployed utilising on-premise and hosted telephony, mobile devices, data connections and video conferencing solutions