Developing future partners in a leading law firm
Centred around a typical law practice, this digital simulation offers a fully customisable solution for leadership assessment that can be run in-person or virtually, and delivered in short 2-hour bursts to minimise time away from billable work.
Audience: Associates and Legal Counsel
The project
A top-tier law firm wanted to strengthen its partnership pipeline. While associates demonstrated strong technical expertise, many struggled to transition into the broader leadership and commercial mindset required of partners. The firm’s leadership team sought a more experiential way to assess readiness – one that reflected the realities of partnership, client management, and commercial awareness.
The solution
We partnered with the firm to design a Partner Business Simulation – a flexible digital simulation that could be run in 2-hour chunks across a period of time, so as to minimise time away from the workplace. The simulation offered an immersive experience that replicated the pressures and dynamics of senior leadership within a professional services environment. Participants were placed in an evolving realistic partner scenario – managing and resourcing a new client assignment, managing a potential team conflict, handling an unexpected change in project scope, and making decisions that affected firm profitability and reputation. All scenarios were tailored to reflect genuine organisational context and performance measures, and the digital simulation included an intuitive performance dashboard that collated all data to be utilised as part of the assessment process.
The session had to be delivered by internal HR professionals, so we provided comprehensive Train-the-Trainer sessions and trainer notes to enable the effective delivery of the simulation as well as guidance around observing key leadership behaviours such as influencing, negotiating, delegation, and strategic thinking, as well as structured feedback and guided reflection around leadership identity, emotional intelligence, and commercial awareness.
The impact
The simulation helped the firm distinguish between strong performers and true business leaders. Several associates were fast-tracked into partnership readiness programmes, while others received precise coaching on influence and strategic decision-making. Feedback from participants described the experience as “a genuinely authentic preview of partnership responsibilities, offering great insights into areas of growth and development”.
Past and present clients include…
