FOCUSED SUPPORT FOR THE PERSON LEADING THE GROUP
Law Firm Practice Group Leader Coaching
Work through the decisions, relationships, and responsibilities of practice leadership. Individual coaching for chairs who want to lead peers and move their groups forward more effectively.
WORK ON THE CHALLENGES IN FRONT OF YOU
Your group’s challenges.
Your leadership choices.
LeadWise Group provides individual coaching for law firm practice group leaders, practice chairs, and department leaders. We focus on the leader’s goals and the real situations affecting the group: building commitment among peers, navigating difficult conversations, developing people, and turning priorities into action.
A chair’s responsibilities often extend beyond direct authority. Colleagues have their own clients, goals, and ways of working. Coaching creates space to examine how you influence the group, where your approach is helping or getting in the way, and what to do differently.
The work is tailored to your remit, the firm’s expectations, and the outcomes you want to support.
WHO WE COACH
Support as the role
and its demands evolve.
New practice chairs
Clarify expectations, establish key relationships, and decide where to focus first. Build a deliberate approach to leading people who may previously have been peers without a leadership relationship.
Experienced group leaders
Work on recurring challenges, a stalled initiative, difficult group dynamics, or a change in the practice’s direction. Examine habits and choices that may need to evolve.
Co-leaders & leaders in transition
Prepare for a broader remit or a leadership handover. Clarify your contribution, decision responsibilities, and working relationships where leadership is shared or changing.
WHAT COACHING CAN ADDRESS
Bring the leadership situation
into the conversation.
These are examples of the issues a chair may work on. The coaching agenda follows the individual’s goals and the group’s context.
Influencing peers & building commitment
How do you gain support when colleagues have different priorities? Prepare for conversations, consider whose perspectives are missing, and develop ways to build commitment to shared decisions.
Strategy & follow-through
Why has a group priority lost momentum? Clarify what needs your attention, how responsibilities are assigned, and how you can create a useful rhythm for progress and accountability.
Difficult conversations & group dynamics
How do you address tension, resistance, or an issue people are avoiding? Examine the relationships involved, prepare your approach, and reflect on what happens when you act.
Developing people & leadership capacity
Where does the group need more capability or ownership? Consider how you set expectations, provide feedback, support other partners as leaders, and create opportunities for emerging talent.
Client growth & collaboration
How can you encourage colleagues to act on shared opportunities? Work through the leadership and relationship challenges behind cross-practice collaboration and group business development priorities.
Role clarity & competing demands
What should you lead personally, and what should others own? Make more deliberate choices about the chair role, your own practice, stakeholder expectations, and where to invest leadership time.
HOW COACHING WORKS
Choose a focus.
Apply it. Reflect and adjust.
We agree the scope, duration, and meeting rhythm around the leader’s goals and the support needed.
Clarify the goals
Discuss the practice, the chair’s remit, the firm’s expectations, and the situations that need attention. Agree development priorities and what useful progress would look like.
Work with real situations
Use coaching conversations to explore perspectives, prepare for decisions or discussions, and choose practical next steps. Apply those choices in the work of leading the group.
Review the impact
Reflect on what happened, what you learned, and what to adjust. Revisit goals using concrete examples of changed leadership behavior and any feedback or measures agreed for the engagement.
PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT IN A FIRM CONTEXT
Clear expectations
for the work together.
Align firm sponsorship and confidentiality.
For firm-sponsored coaching, the leader, coach, and sponsor should agree the goals, confidentiality expectations and limits, and what information will be shared before the engagement begins. Progress reporting and sponsor involvement are clarified as part of that agreement.
Use feedback when it helps.
Assessments or 360 feedback can provide another perspective on leadership style and impact. They are selected around the coaching goals and the information that would be useful.
Explore assessments & feedback ↗
Connect with the firm’s development approach.
Coaching can stand alone or reinforce practice group leader training, a group retreat, or a broader partner development pathway. The focus remains on how the individual leader applies learning in their own circumstances.
Explore practice group leader training ↗
Explore retreats & facilitation ↗
CHOOSE THE RIGHT SUPPORT
Training builds shared skills.
Coaching supports individual application.
A firm may want several chairs to learn a common approach to leadership and management. That points toward training or a cohort program. A chair working through a specific challenge or seeking to change how they lead may benefit from individual coaching.
For a leader whose priorities are primarily developing a personal book of business, explore Business Development Coaching for Lawyers. For broader partnership and leadership goals, see Executive Coaching for Law Firm Partners & Lawyer Leaders.
INSIGHTS FOR PRACTICE LEADERS
Explore leadership
in a practice group context.
Leading colleagues who want to follow
Explore trust, self-awareness, and the leadership and management capabilities practice chairs need.
Moving strategy into action
Consider how shared priorities, practical plans, and accountability support group execution.
Developing the group’s people
Connect individual development with the capabilities the practice needs to deliver on its goals.
COMMON QUESTIONS
Considering coaching
for a practice group leader?
What is practice group leader coaching?
It is individual leadership development focused on the responsibilities of a practice chair or department leader. Coaching uses the leader’s actual goals, decisions, and relationships to support more effective leadership of the group.
How does it differ from practice group leader training?
Training develops shared knowledge, frameworks, and skills through structured learning and practice. Coaching focuses on an individual chair’s priorities and situations, including obstacles to applying those skills. The two can be combined.
How is this related to executive coaching for law firm partners?
Practice group leader coaching is a focused form of executive coaching, applied to the responsibilities of leading a practice group. It emphasizes peer leadership, group direction, people development, collaboration, and execution within the chair’s remit.
Can coaching help with difficult partner relationships?
Coaching can help a leader examine the situation, consider different perspectives, prepare for a conversation, and choose an approach. Where a facilitated discussion involving several people would be more useful, we can discuss that as a separate part of the support.
Is coaching useful when there is no immediate problem?
Yes. A leader may want to prepare for a new role, strengthen a particular capability, create more strategic leadership time, or develop the group’s next generation. The starting point is the leader’s development goals.
How are duration, confidentiality, and progress reviews agreed?
We agree the engagement scope and meeting rhythm at the outset. For firm-sponsored coaching, the participant, coach, and sponsor should also clarify confidentiality expectations and limits, sponsor involvement, and what will be shared. Progress is reviewed against the agreed goals.
LET’S DISCUSS THE WORK AHEAD
What would help you
lead your group more effectively?
Tell us about your role, the group, and what you want to accomplish. We’ll explore whether coaching is the right fit.