As part of The Managing Partner’s Table, we recently spoke with Shann M. Chaudhry about what it takes to build a law firm that doesn’t depend on the managing partner doing everything. Here are the key takeaways.
Growth can create an uncomfortable contradiction for a managing partner. You hire more people, add capacity, and build a larger firm, but somehow more decisions still find their way back to you.
Shann M. Chaudhry has experienced that shift firsthand. As his firm grew, his role moved increasingly away from practicing law and toward managing people, sales, operations, and the direction of the business. That required more than hiring. It required changing how work, communication, and responsibility moved through the firm.
Delegation needs to include ownership, not just tasks
One of Shann’s most important changes was giving his Director of Attorney Operations greater responsibility for areas Shann had historically managed himself.
That includes working with attorneys on matters and accountability, overseeing billing processes, and handling conversations that once would have landed on Shann’s desk. Shann described realizing that some work was actually being completed faster and more efficiently without his involvement.
Another way to look at it? A task isn’t fully delegated if the managing partner still has to review every step, answer every question, or make the final decision.
The goal isn’t just to distribute work. It’s to create actual ownership where the right person has enough context and authority to keep that work moving.
Protect leadership capacity with communication rules
One of the hardest things for an attorney to justify can be time that doesn’t immediately produce a billable result, a completed consultation, or a cleared inbox. Yet that’s the type of work that needs to happen to grow a practice.
Shann’s approach to protecting his time here is two-fold. To start, his system for client communication is very structured. He doesn’t keep email on his phone, receive client text messages, or spend his day taking unscheduled calls.
His calendar follows the same principle. Meetings have buffers, and certain work happens in blocks. Tuesdays are largely protected for production, and Shann reserves the hours when his focus is strongest for key work.
But even without 24/7 availability, his team can keep things flowing. They’re tasked to assess incoming requests and schedule calls when his involvement is needed. Clients are also given clear expectations about response times and what to do when something is genuinely time-sensitive.
The result is predictable communication and protected brainpower.
For managing partners, the broader lesson: focused time doesn’t survive unless there’s an operating system built around it.
Build roles around strengths, not just an org chart
Shann also challenged the idea that every hire has to fit neatly into a predefined seat.
The role for his Director of Attorney Operations developed in part because he recognized where that person’s strengths matched needs inside the business. Rather than forcing a talented person into a standard role, the firm shaped responsibilities around what needed to get done and who was best equipped to do it.
That doesn’t mean every position should be improvised. But it shows that firm leaders can miss opportunities when they focus only on filling conventional job descriptions instead of looking at the work creating bottlenecks and stress inside the firm.
The FocusWorks Perspective: Marketing Can Expose an Owner Bottleneck
This matters for marketing, too.
Generating more demand helps only if the firm has the capacity and processes to handle it well. If every new consultation requires the managing partner, every intake problem comes back to them, or every growth decision waits for their approval, successful marketing can add pressure faster than the firm adds capacity.
Operations doesn’t have to be perfect before a firm grows. To make it work successfully, marketing plans should account for what happens after demand arrives. That means identifying who owns intake, who handles consultations, how follow-up works, and whether the team can absorb additional matters without routing everything through one person.
Growth becomes more sustainable when marketing capacity and operational capacity develop together.
Shann’s full conversation on The Managing Partner’s Table goes deeper into the systems, boundaries, client experience decisions, and leadership changes behind that transition. Watch or listen to the episode for the full discussion and additional examples.
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🎥 Watch the full episode here → The Managing Partners’ Table
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