Case Study · Buckles · Law firm · Developing lawyers into managers
Buckles took its first cohort of managers and leaders, almost all of them lawyers, and helped them learn to lead their teams, not just practise the law.
Buckles took its first cohort of managers and leaders, almost all of them lawyers, and helped them learn to lead their teams, not just practise the law.In Buckles' first management cohort
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managers and leaders, almost all of them lawyers, from a front-line solicitor to a partner, learning to lead their teams
One firm, seven offices
- Cambridge
- London
- Stamford
- Nottingham
- Peterborough
- Paris
- Milan
Solicitor to partner
one cohort spanning the firm's levels, almost all of them lawyers learning to lead
A 7-office firm
Buckles works across England, Paris and Milan; this was its first management cohort, with more of the firm to follow
Ongoing
a continuing engagement, with further workshops already in the diary
Executive Summary
- Sector
- Law firm (legal & professional services)
- Buyer
- Head of Learning and Development
The Brief
Buckles is a law firm with offices across England and in Paris and Milan. For its first management cohort it brought together 13 of its managers and leaders, almost all of them lawyers who had risen on the strength of their legal work, alongside one client-services manager. Most had stepped up to lead teams without any formal management development, and Buckles wanted to get ahead of that deliberately: give them one practical, shared way of managing, built around the real situations of leading inside a law firm, from coaching a junior fee-earner to delegating under the pressure of billable time.
The Outcome
Across the year, Buckles' first cohort developed together against one shared approach, built specifically around the firm. A partner, a legal director, senior associates, solicitors and a client-services manager learned to coach rather than simply hand over the answer, to delegate with clear accountability, and to have the performance and behaviour conversations that are easy to put off. Buckles valued the work enough to carry it on beyond the first cohort, with further workshops already underway.
From the leadership
In a law firm, people earn their progression by being excellent lawyers, and then we ask them to lead teams as well. We did not want a generic management course bolted on top of that. We chose 10X Managers because the work was built around our world. It started with real diagnostics through the Manager Strength Index, and every session was shaped around what our people actually face: coaching a junior fee-earner instead of just giving them the answer, delegating when it feels quicker to do it yourself, holding a difficult conversation while carrying a full caseload. They worked with a cohort of our managers and leaders, from solicitors running their first team to a partner and a department head.
Our lawyers are not just better informed. They manage differently now, and they share one language for it that runs right across the firm.”
Chris Bradshaw
Head of Learning and Development, Buckles
01 / The trigger
Buckles' managers had risen as outstanding lawyers and professionals. Leading people is a different craft, and the firm chose to build it deliberately.
In a law firm, people earn their progression by being excellent at the law. The strongest solicitors become supervisors, team leaders, heads of department and partners, and almost overnight the job changes from doing the work to leading the people who do it. Buckles saw this clearly across its offices, and rather than leave its managers to pick leadership up on their own, the firm decided to develop it deliberately, as a craft in its own right.
Buckles is not a single building. It runs from Cambridge, London, Stamford, Nottingham and Peterborough, and reaches into Paris and Milan. For its first management cohort, the firm brought together managers and leaders from across its offices, almost all of them lawyers, from a front-line solicitor to a partner. A senior associate leading a small team in one office and a partner running a department in another were facing the same management questions, often without a shared language for them.
The firm wanted to change that on purpose. It wanted its managers to share one practical way of leading people: setting clear expectations, coaching their teams rather than simply directing them, delegating with real accountability, and handling the performance and behaviour conversations that so many managers find hard. And it wanted all of it built around the realities of a law firm rather than borrowed from elsewhere.
The honest reflexes the cohort named
“Just give them the answer”
A lawyer's value is having the answer, so the instinct is to supply it. Coaching means holding it back long enough for someone else to get there.
“The buck stops with me”
On every file, accountability rests with the individual, which can make handing work over feel like a risk rather than a release.
“Quicker to do it myself”
When your time is the product, doing the task yourself can feel faster than delegating it, even when it adds to your own pile.
“Keep the conversation comfortable”
Feedback can land as criticism, so the harder conversations about behaviour are easy to keep putting off.
These are the honest reflexes of expert professionals stepping up to lead, named by the Buckles cohort themselves. The programme was built to work on exactly these.
02 / Built for a law firm
Not an off-the-shelf course. A programme built around Buckles, and grounded in what its leaders actually faced.
10X did not arrive with a fixed programme to install. The work began with the Manager Strength Index, a diagnostic that measured where Buckles' managers were already strong and where they wanted to grow, so the development aimed at the real gaps rather than at assumptions. From there, a 10X Performance Partner shaped the programme around the firm itself. The examples, the language and the focus were all drawn from the situations Buckles' leaders meet, and even the work on culture was anchored to Buckles' own values rather than to outside theory.
How it worked
Learn a skill, apply it on real matters, then come back and troubleshoot together.
Rather than a trainer who turns up, delivers and leaves, Buckles had a Performance Partner embedded across the engagement, known across the firm and reachable between workshops, working on the real problems already on managers' plates rather than adding to the pile.
Each of four management capabilities ran on the same rhythm. A skill workshop opened it up with the firm's own examples. Managers then put it into practice on live matters and real people back in their teams. Then the cohort came back together to troubleshoot what had actually happened, which is where the learning turned into habit and where managers started borrowing what was working from each other.
Learn the skill
a workshop built on Buckles' own examples
Apply it for real
on live matters and real people, back in the team
Troubleshoot together
come back, compare notes, make it a habit
Run across four capabilities
Four capabilities, each run on the same loop. The troubleshoot sessions are where intent became habit, and where managers started learning from each other.
One of the simplest and most useful things I took away was learning to embrace silence, giving people room to think and reach their own answers rather than rushing to fill the gap. The programme was genuinely informative and well adapted to how a firm like ours actually works.
Andrea Harrod, Wills, Trusts & Probate Senior Associate Solicitor, Buckles
03 / Every level, one room
A partner, a legal director and front-line solicitors, in the same room.
Buckles' first cohort brought together 13 of its managers and leaders, almost all of them lawyers, from a front-line solicitor to a partner and a legal director, with one client-services manager among them, drawn from offices across the firm. The rooms were mixed on purpose, so a solicitor worked a real problem next to a partner, and people saw how colleagues in other teams and other offices handle the same challenges.
Who was in the room
Partner, legal director & department head
3
Senior associates & solicitors
6
Solicitors & associates
3
Client services
1
13 managers and leaders, one cohort
Every dot is one of the 13 in Buckles' first cohort, from a partner and a legal director to front-line solicitors, with one client-services manager among them. Almost all of them lawyers, learning to lead in the same room.
The most valuable part for me has been the insight into how colleagues across our other teams and offices work, at every level of the firm. As a partner you can become very focused on your own department, so hearing how differently people across Buckles approach the same management challenges has been genuinely useful.
Victoria Robinson, Partner, Corporate and Commercial, Buckles
It showed in the rooms. When one manager described revisiting goals in every one-to-one, others said on the spot that they would start doing the same. A habit found in one office became a habit in another, and Buckles gained a shared language for managing that now crosses departments and sites.
The shared language they built
A handful of lines now run through Buckles, some taught, some coined by the cohort. One manager said “perception is reality” gets thrown around her team to this day. This is what one shared way of managing sounds like.
04 / What changed
The change shows up in how Buckles' managers now lead their teams.
The clearest evidence at Buckles is not a single number. It is the shift in how its managers handle the everyday work of leading people, reported by the managers themselves when they came back to troubleshoot what they had tried. The reflexes they started with became new habits.
The reflexes, and what they became
“Just give them the answer”
Now they ask first
One leader holds the answer back and lets people reach it themselves. Another swapped “we” for “you and I” in a one-to-one to make ownership explicit, and the conversation landed better than the ones before.
“Quicker to do it myself”
Now they hand it over
One leader gave a team full autonomy over how to run a piece of work, something they say they would not have done six months earlier. The trust held.
“The buck stops with me”
Now they let people learn
One leader stopped stepping in before every small, non-critical mistake, and found people began arriving with solutions rather than just questions.
“Keep the conversation comfortable”
Now they have the conversation
One leader built a reflective close into every one-to-one, two things that went well and one to work on, and other managers in the room adopted it on the spot.
The reflexes the cohort started with, and what they became. Each shift is a real change managers reported when they came back to troubleshoot what they had tried back in the job.
In their own words, leading differently
Hear it from the managers themselves.
“As a solicitor, you are trained to have all the answers, so learning to coach my team rather than simply direct them has been a real shift. The programme gave me a clear structure for my one to ones and the confidence to set sharper goals and listen properly.”
“My instinct used to be to give my team the answer whenever they came to me with a problem. The programme taught me to give them the space to work it through themselves, and more often than not they reach the right solution and grow in confidence for it. I have a proper structure for feedback now, and I have already seen the difference it makes in how my team takes ownership.”
“What stayed with me was learning to understand what actually drives each person before trying to manage them, and rethinking how I give feedback. Since putting it into practice I have seen real improvement in my direct reports taking ownership of their own progress.”
“The programme gave me a simple but important shift: to treat behaviour with the same seriousness as performance, and to build both into my one to ones. Having a clear model for giving feedback has made those conversations with my direct reports far more constructive.”
05 / Start here
If you run a law firm or professional services business where your best technical people are becoming managers, and you want to develop them with something built around your world rather than a generic course, that is the work we do. The same is true if you need one shared standard of management across multiple offices and teams.
Every partnership between 10X and a client is entirely bespoke and unique. Book a no-obligation call with one of our Development Experts to scope how we could support you and your situation.