Legal feedback

How John Soroko builds Duane Morris LLP by building relationships both inside and outside the firm

By Erik Cassano

The story of John Soroko’s leadership at Duane Morris LLP actually begins years before he took over as chairman and CEO of the law firm in January 2008.

For nearly a decade before Soroko assumed the firm’s top post, Duane Morris had been transitioning from a local Philadelphia law firm with a centralized base of lawyers and clients into a national firm with offices in most major markets throughout the U.S.

By the time Soroko took over, Duane Morris employed 650 lawyers and 1,400 total employees, reporting $375 million in 2007 revenue.

Soroko needed to continue growing Duane Morris, and he needed to do it with a firm that had vastly increased its locations, its employee numbers and, perhaps most dauntingly, the miles in between.

“That was my big challenge, to keep that [growth] going, to move on to the next plateau and do it all while maintaining the culture that we very much value, a culture of collegiality and cooperation,” Soroko says. “Then, just to make things a little more complicated, do it all in an economic environment that is far from ideal.”

To make it happen, Soroko has placed an increased emphasis on hiring people who fit the culture, utilizing feedback to fuel growth and staying accessible.

It’s been a complicated process involving risk, but as with any business, the consequences of inaction are potentially more severe.

“The thought process was that if we stuck with the former, the best that could come out of that would be a fairly moribund institution,” Soroko says. “Therefore, it was a good gamble to take. We felt we could leverage our existing firm and culture to attract outstanding lawyers to help us build offices everywhere from San Diego to New York to Miami.”

Hire people who fit your culture

When searching for new players for your team, you need to find people who will fit your culture. At Duane Morris, the cultural fit is the most important fit for a newly recruited lawyer.

“If the cultural fit is there, then we’ll delve into the economic issues of how that lawyer joining us would affect his or her practice,” Soroko says. “We certainly won’t sacrifice the cultural fit in pursuit of a business fit.”

Finding the right cultural fit for your business can take some time, particularly when hiring for the management level. You need to formulate a hiring process in which multiple people in your company get to know a job candidate over the course of a series of interviews.

Soroko has potential new attorneys at Duane Morris interview with executives both in the markets they will serve and at the headquarters in Philadelphia.

“We have a process where if we’re talking about hiring for an office outside of Philadelphia, a potential candidate will be reviewed by a partner or the head of the office in that market, then come back and meet with a hiring committee within that market,” Soroko says. “Ultimately, that person will come to Philadelphia for a day of interviews and all of our reactions to that person will be carefully considered.

“At the end of the day, you’re getting a reaction from an awful lot of people involved in the day-to-day operations, and the track record in evaluating the candidates is usually pretty good. It’s something in which we’ve done very well.”

At Duane Morris, the firm’s leaders are looking for lawyers and staffers who are, above all, client-focused, open to collaboration and teamwork, and against the creation of internal territories and fiefdoms.

Culturally, you need to know what you want in a job candidate. But you also need to know what candidates want from the culture of their workplace.

Soroko says that one of the most important aspects of a work environment from an employee standpoint is the knowledge that he or she can speak up, voice concerns and share his or her ideas.

Utilize feedback

Listening is a critical leadership skill. As the head of your company, you are always obligated to keep yourself in the loop with regard to what your employees and customers are saying about your company.

“One of the things I stressed upon taking over the firm as chairman was my realization that, even though I have spent my entire career at the firm, the biggest mistake I could make was to not listen to the ideas, insights and perspectives that our partners have,” he says. “That includes partners who were newly arrived at the firm.”

But it’s not just you. Anyone in a management position in your company needs to listen. They need to hear what their subordinates are saying and what your customers are thinking. If those channels of communication wither, your company could stagnate.

Listening is not something that simply happens with employees, clients or customers. It has to be a conscious decision on your part.

“I decided to be a good listener,” Soroko says. “I’ve communicated that openness to our partnership, and there has been a largely positive response. To have meaningful client relationships in business, you have to realize that this is too big of a job for yourself alone. In this business, the key for me is, ‘Will my partners come through for me and treat my clients like their own in terms of giving them the most outstanding service they can?’ That’s the best story I can hear as the chairman, that a client is raving about the service from a new lawyer. Then, I know our relationship with that client will be stronger than ever because of the teamwork we exhibited.”

After Soroko took over the top post at Duane Morris, he and his leadership team began to formulate a plan for collecting feedback from clients, then using that feedback to improve the way the firm does business.

“We decided that this had to be attacked in a way that is more systematic than simply waiting until we got anecdotal evidence of client satisfaction or dissatisfaction,” Soroko says. “We decided that what we needed to do was reach out to clients by sending a team out to visit them. That team would then help us assess what we were doing right or wrong.”

Many companies distribute client satisfaction surveys. Duane Morris took it a step further, with the surveys taking the form of in-person interviews, conducted on the client’s home turf whenever possible.

“It’s been a great learning tool,” Soroko says. “We’ve found out much about our clients’ needs for the services we provide and their relationship with our firm.”

The feedback is then disseminated throughout the firm so lawyers can take the information that is relevant to their practices and use it to improve their client service. They might even get some ideas for new services to offer.

During the in-person survey interviews, clients have expressed a need for other legal services, helping Duane Morris increase the span of its service.

Soroko says you must take the good with the bad when seeking feedback. Customers might criticize parts of your business that need improvement, but you might also find new ways to serve your customers.

“It’s one of the most interesting things that we’re learning from those interviews,” he says. “Areas in which clients are indicating a need for legal service, areas the clients are not currently having addressed by Duane Morris. In many instances, we could be the answer for a client’s needs.

“For instance, we might have a client for which we were largely doing construction law. But the client satisfaction survey might indicate a pressing legal need in another area, possibly an area in which the partner we have serving the client was too busy and really hadn’t inquired with the client about it. That’s how this client survey interview process has been an excellent way for us to assess the needs of our clients on more of a 360-degree basis. It’s really been a win-win situation.”

Flying around to visit each one of your customers might not be practical in every case, but the need to gather feedback in some form and use it to improve your business is constant and something about which you should be vigilant.

Stay accessible

Employees won’t be able to help your business grow if you don’t give them a platform to communicate with your company’s decision-makers. You can have formal methods of interaction, such as monthly or quarterly meetings. But communication in any form is a step toward building and maintaining a culture in which employees feel involved and valued.

At Duane Morris, Soroko likes to walk the halls whenever possible — but when walking the halls doesn’t cover enough distance, he relies on technology to bridge the distance. Many CEOs dislike the absence of personal engagement when communicating by e-mail. Soroko says that while e-mail can’t sustain a communication strategy alone, its ability to reach many people in a short period of time and its ability to allow people to reach you just as fast shouldn’t be overlooked. E-mail can’t substitute for in-person communication, but it can fill the space until you are available to meet in person.

“I am a walk-the-halls kind of person, but in a law firm that has almost 700 lawyers, 200 of which are in Philadelphia, you have to walk the halls in a cyber method,” Soroko says. “I send a lot of notes to people. I use e-mail a lot. When I read about a partner in our San Diego office having published a very timely client alert, I’ll stick it in my briefcase, read it, give the person an attaboy or attagirl and add some comments.

“In the aggregate, it has had a very positive effect in two ways: I get a good sense of what our partners are doing, and they get a good sense that I’m following it all.”

But electronic communication only works as a supplement to communicating in person. Soroko visits all of the Duane Morris offices on a rolling basis. As with the in-person client interviews, it’s a time commitment, but if you want to make yourself into a good communicator, it’s time you have to mark on your calendar.

“It’s simply about prioritizing,” he says. “Communicating is at the top of my list. It might mean that you sacrifice some time or attention for other functions, but you have to make up your mind that your people are important enough that you are willing to do that.

“When I first addressed our partners as the newly installed chairman last year, I stressed that if there was one thing I understood very clearly, it’s that I did not then and would not over time have all the answers. I was relying on them to give me input, suggestions, complaints and feedback about what steps we could take to make Duane Morris the strongest firm possible.

“If you have that openness to the ideas of others while at the same time having a good vision in your own mind about how you are going to lead, that will prove to be a winning combination. But if you think you have all the answers, and it’s a matter of you leading and people scrambling to follow you, that is a far less successful approach.”