July 22, 2026
1:30pm - 4:30pm
Location TBA a short walk from the Loews
Register here
PDC Summer
Conference Pre-Session for Chiefs and Directors
Strategy for Law Firm Talent Leaders: Beyond the Buzzwords
Register to
join your fellow law firm Chiefs and Directors on Wednesday, July 22, for a
half-day of learning and insight-sharing led by PDC Trusted Advisor Carrie
Fletcher. Carrie is a noted expert on professional services firm strategy and
leadership development. She serves as faculty at Harvard Law Executive
Education and the University of Cambridge's Møller Institute, and advises firms
globally on strategy, leadership, and organizational behavior.
1:30 -
3:00 p.m. | Session One: Functional Strategic Thinking for Legal Industry
Leaders
As senior
legal industry executives, we use the words "strategy" and
"strategic" every day. Yet in practice, these terms often mean
different things to different people. At a time of once-in-a-generation change
in the legal industry (driven in part by Generative AI and the arrival of Gen Z
into the workplace), the ability to honestly discuss trade-offs, set and stick
to priorities, and align actions across teams are critical for our firms, our
teams, and our own career sustainability.
In this
session, we will start by going "back to business school basics" and
exploring what strategy is (and is not).
Using
easy-to-understand examples from outside the law firm world, we will see how
strategy can help guide and align the actions of people and functions within an
enterprise in times of rapid operational uncertainty and change. We will bring
these ideas back to the law firm context and discuss
- The core components of a law firm
enterprise strategy – what does “good” look like?
- How to think and act
strategically as a functional leader – whether working from a clear firm
strategy, interpreting scattered signals, or building from the ground up.
- How to connect departmental
priorities to known commercial and talent objectives, even when firm
strategy has not been formally articulated or communicated.
3:00 -
3:15 p.m. | Break
3:15 -
4:30 p.m. | Session Two: Building and Implementing Your Functional
Strategy
Session Two
focuses on how strategy gets created, tested, and implemented at the functional
level. It will give you practical tools for setting a strategic direction for
your team and department, and for connecting that direction to firmwide
objectives.
We will
examine approaches that can help you chart a meaningful strategy process,
including shorter "step-back" workshops or longer, more in-depth work
with your department or firm. We will work through key components of building
and implementing a functional strategy, including:
- Defining and making the case for
your team’s strategic priorities.
- Assessing current capabilities
and resource against those priorities.
- Testing alignment between your
team's work and the firm's espoused or implied strategy, values, and
actions.
- Developing behavioral measures to
ensure consistency between performance and strategic objectives.
Register here