Top 100 firms fail to give IT chiefs titles they deserve

IT as a role is comparatively new (compared to human resources and finance), and this may be the root cause of a key result of the research - that notably fewer IT chiefs are called 'director' than their senior support counterparts, which may mean IT is not being taken as seriously at the highest levels at top law firms.

Many law firm people admit to an enduring feeling that IT is plumbing, whereas law is about talent (HR) and profits (finance). Only relatively recently has IT in the world of legal business been seen to be central to delivering value and benefiting the bottom line - rather than being something one needed to have, just to get important stuff done. However, the chief IT role in the top 100 is a very mobile position, so opportunity should always be around the corner. But IT is not a position for women to be in, yet - very few are in senior IT positions - and as IT chief hires are now increasingly coming from law firms, that may not change any time soon.

Job mobility and title-holder background

The role of IT director is a highly mobile position: the current decade (which is only eight and three quarter years old) has seen a much more mobile IT chief role, with 54 moves, than the previous decade (which only managed 32 moves from 1990 to 1999). But more important is where these moves are coming from - that is, from law firms or from non-law firm environments. From 2000 to now, 24 moves in the top 100 were from law firms - 30 are from non-law firms. But in 1990-1999, just 11 moves were from law firms, while 22 were from non-law firms.

The shift in moves from law firms away from non-law is striking in this small set of stats - in this as yet unfinished decade, moves into IT top positions come almost half the time from law firms (i.e. almost half of moves are from law firms) - in the previous decade, moves in from non-law firms were double the moves from law firms.

So law firms seem to have 'matured' in this decade in terms of their IT chiefs - they'd spent the previous 10 years generally hiring IT heads in from non-law firms. But those 10 years of hiring from outside looks like it was vita - it produced IT heads at law firms who other law firms eventually wanted to buy.

Iain Hepburn is IT director at Clarke Willmott: "In my opinion, law firms (outside the city perhaps) were late in to the PC and network revolution - but once started it went with a real bang during the 90s and combined with the changes happening within the industry as well it perhaps necessitated bringing talent in from outside.

"However, this always tends to be counter-balanced by law firms' natural conservatism and the desire to deal with the known (and the belief they are special and different from any other type of organisation) - they like people who have already worked in law firms. When still junior in management, I had a director who insisted on any candidate having law firm experience, and it took some time for me to get him to see that we could balance that with talent (bring knowledge and skills) from outside legal."

The upcoming final steps to legal services reform under the Legal Services Act, says Hepburn, may allow for more general business skillsets possessed by non-law firm IT chiefs to be put to good use.
"There are changes afoot that could potentially change the legal landscape again, and we are seeing law firms adopt less industry specific line of business applications, such as SAP. Potentially, if law firms change as organisations, it could be time for external talent to come in again - especially if the experience or the willingness to change does not exist within the current talent pool."As you can see from the numbers above, non-law firm incomers still outnumber law firm people over the whole of this decade - but in the last two two-year periods (2006/7 and 2008/9) law firm incomers have risen back up to over non-law. This switch over has strengthened since 2004 and stayed strong while incoming from non-law has fallen off. Perhaps IT in legal has matured enough to maintain itself?

Tim Salmon, chief operating officer at McGrigors, is not surprised that, though newer than the other roles surveyed, IT people are almost as long-serving as the more traditional titles.

"I am not surprised by the relative length of time in post for the IT function [eight years, on average]. A combination of significantly less understanding amongst law firm management of the IT function, the rapid change (in which the IT head is inextricably involved, almost constantly) and the perception - probably reality - that most firms' systems are heavily dependent on the person who designed and established them.

"It is very rare for systems to be fully documented, and the loss of an IT director can have serious repercussions in terms of future upgrades, changes in configuration, etc., simply because there is no clearly documented system structure. I don't think anyone's to blame for this - but the difference is that at least annually the FD has to close the books, report figures, deal with accounts, profit allocation and tax, and that all has to be documented. There is little incentive to write down how all the servers fit together, how communications links interconnect, etc. The other factor that, I suspect, leads to relative longevity is the comparatively limited amount of face time."

That last comment might be even funnier if it weren't so serious - Salmon says that, for FDs, having to have lots of difficult face time with partners can prove risky to one's career.

Gender in the role

IT is a pretty male area of work in terms of gender split - only 15% of people in the top 100 are women.

You're more likely to find a woman at the top of IT than you would in finance in a top 100 firm, however - but not much more likely: only 12% of FDs are women. Interestingly, the bulk of female IT directors are in the top 25 firms. For FDs, the opposite is true: the top 25 is almost devoid of women. However, only one IT director in the 'second 25' of the top 100 is female.

What might this mean? Certainly IT doesn't compare well to the HR function for the number of women who reach the top - 66% of top 100 law firm HR leaders are female.

"IT is still a man's world," says Hepburn, "but not necessarily deliberately so (and certainly not where I work), but I think there is a wide raft of social issues behind that gender gap that cannot be resolved simply by different recruitment policies or positive discrimination.

"The problems probably begin well before the point I am trying to recruit a new graduate (or indeed someone with experience) look at the statistics about vocational subjects taken. Men are more likely to study vocational qualifications for construction, planning and the built environment (with almost 100% of these awards going to men), or engineering and manufacturing technologies (89% of all awards), whereas women are more likely to study health, public services and care related vocational qualifications (around 86% of all awards)."

In fact, the split between the genders as to who is likely or unlikely to end up at the top in a particular role area begins even before this choice stage, says Hepburn.

"My interest in computing began with home computing, principally around gaming, and developed from there, but look at the games that are developed and sold and the target audiences [they're mostly male, or generally have been]." Perhaps a new generation of Nintendo Wii-addicted girls will grow up to run IT in law firms?

"It is a slow process but things must be changing. In 2003, less than a third of females used games regularly and I am sure that will be much higher and spread across a wide age range now. Hopefully this means that what I and a lot of boys of my generation went through with Sinclair, Commodore and Amstrad etc. is now happening to a much wider and equally distributed audience that should help encourage more women to be interested and pursue careers in IT."

That's some message - Christmas is almost here, and perhaps that new crop of computer games could do more good than you've ever imagined.

However, the increase in hires to IT's top rank in the top 100 from within the world of legal, which bodes well for the role's maturity and respect, could well be a mild preventative to making more women up to top level, unless a high proportion of non-law firm incomers are women.

What's in a name?

The role of IT director is one of the interesting results in this research in terms of role titling and what it might: given a blind choice of IT, FD and HR, which do you think would be the one with the most titles in the mix that didn't say 'director' or an equivalent 'C-level' title? In other business sectors, you'd be hard pushed to guess whether it's HR or IT - but in legal the split is very obvious.

IT has the lowest number of 'director' or 'C-level' titles (e.g. CIO or CTO) in the top 100 roles: just 55 of the top 100 are called "director". Six more are C-level titles handling this role (and one of those is a CFO, which doesn't really count).

Over a third (35%) of people filling the IT chief role are neither called director nor have an equivalent C-level position - the number of people called 'IT manager' is 13% and the number of those called 'Head of IT' or equivalent is a sky-high 20%.

This isn't saying that 'head of IT' doesn't do all the things an IT director does - in fact, he (or she) almost certainly does. But if a top 100 law firm won't call the person running what most people would call a vital element of the business 'director', it may mean that the role itself just doesn't have the power it needs yet even at the top of legal.

Hepburn says it's true that the IT director role really isn't taken seriously enough in a lot of law firms. "It's not - FD and HR sit on the board every month, but I get to go once a quarter and am often not invited to the whole meeting but a brief portion. I am trying to break those barriers down, I have a good working relationship with the FD and my line of report is in to the CEO (formerly known as managing partner) and I try and keep high in their thoughts and on the agenda. Thinking strategically and demonstrating the strategic value of what we do where I can - which is generally whenever I get the opportunity) is what I keep trying."

Chris Ryan, senior director in the global Infrastructure and business process practice at management consultancy Hildebrandt, who works with law firm IT people in implementing cost-reduction and operational solutions, knows the travails of law firm IT heads.

"I believe UK law firms highly value directors, whether it finance, IT or HR, and in many of my client environments these directors sit on the management/executive committees. Thus, from my experience directors seem to have progressed and are key decision makers in the business.

"As I come from a consulting organisation where there is less hierarchy and importance placed on titles, I would reinforce the above by trying to get past the title and determine whether the finance/IT/HR directors for the firm are viewed by fee-earners as having a more administrative role or seen as strategic in nature."

But, Ryan says, in firms where IT chiefs aren't called 'director' but those in finance and HR are given director titles, law firms should act. "In those instances, then, I would agree that we all know the IT chief is a crucial and strategic role at any organisation, whether it's a FTSE, law firm or government institution, and those firms may need to revisit the perception of IT 'head' and empower that role with a director title."

For a detailed analysis of the research and a pdf download of the results, please go to www.legalsupportnetwork.co.uk/top100