Linklaters

Our shared values guide how we conduct our relationships with one another and our stakeholders, while working towards achieving our aim of being the leading global law firm:

• We strive for excellence, value teamwork and encourage imagination.
• We are determined – whatever the challenge, we will deliver.
• We do all this exercising commercial judgement and integrity.

In a firm of 486 partners and 4,725 people across 27 offices, how do we foster this culture and leadership?

One direction

Most of our 486 partners across the world own the firm; they are the firm’s owners, its leaders and its managers. How do we make sure they are all pulling in the same direction?

Shared values, strong governance and firmwide decision-making support the firm. For example, when identifying future leaders, we look for people who live the firm’s values, whatever their background. We discuss our vision in depth at leadership training courses and in our annual appraisal and their respective performance measurements. And our “lockstep” profit sharing structure motivates partners to make decisions for the benefit of the whole firm.

Initiative and innovation

The nature of our work means we often find ourselves creating a path through unexplored territory. Innovation is an important part of our offering to our clients, but it also creates challenges. How do we make sure our people have the confidence to try new things? And how do we encourage innovation while expecting technical excellence and ensuring prudence?

We believe in creating an open working environment where people understand that there is room for honest mistakes and that learning from them is part of being an innovative firm. Junior lawyers share offices with senior lawyers and work under high standards of supervision.

Sustaining our culture

One of the responsibilities of being a global firm is to make sure our clients and people receive the same experience of Linklaters everywhere in the world. To make that a reality, we have to reinforce a strong culture.

We talked above about the values we share as a firm. These are the building blocks of our culture. To build this culture, everyone in the firm – from the most senior to the most junior – needs to live these values. We reinforce them through our induction programmes around the world and on many of our global training courses. They are regularly referred to in our decision making processes.