Q&A: Joanna Oakey – “What makes for a perfect legal firm is doing something that really adds value for clients.”

Joanna, you have been at the helm of Aspect Legal for more than 15 years and have created a firm that was named Boutique Law Firm of the Year at the 2023 Australasian Law Awards. Can you tell us about your management style and how it contributes to your success?

To be honest, I don’t even know about my management style. But I have a real focus on education. I mentioned before that we have Wisdom Wednesday each week where, without fail, I will train the team on various aspects of law or the business, or we’ll get some lawyers or other team members to train our people. I fundamentally believe in education and constantly bringing everyone in the firm up to a higher level. So, I guess a component of my management style is that I love educating and giving everyone the opportunity for growth. I also like giving people the opportunity for leadership opportunities. I am probably – like many lawyers – a slight control freak, even though I try hard not to be, but I want to ensure that the quality of our practice runs through the whole firm.

Many firms boast about creating a great culture. What does Aspect Legal do on this front?

It is deeply important to me that everyone who comes to work here loves coming to work every day. That wraps into my thoughts about the perfect legal firm. When I was a paralegal in the early days and then a junior lawyer, I saw a lot of really clever people who weren’t getting any love out of the job. They were unhappy people wearing golden handcuffs. I have this absolute belief that if I don’t absolutely love what I’m doing, I won’t do it. I’m an all or nothing kind of person and I believe you must love your work and have a deep connection to what you’re doing. I don’t want to get too philosophical, but there also has to be a greater purpose that's just outside of yourself. For me, that was in finding what we do that is important to our clients. What makes for a perfect legal firm is doing something that really adds value for clients, rather than just hitting commercial targets. We have to add value, and if our firm wasn’t doing that I wouldn't continue coming to work each day.

How do you drive staff happiness?

One of our core values at Aspect Legal is to ensure fulfillment of staff members. Every team member has to love what they’re doing and feel very connected to what we’re doing. That’s why I think the vision of a leader in a legal firm is so important. You’ve got to have a vision. You’ve got to know what your value is. My team wants to be part of a vision and part of something that is going somewhere. I love our team. They’re an incredible team and they love being here, which is important, and we’re creating what I believe to be really great outcomes for our clients.

You have 33 team members in your firm. How do you keep checking their satisfaction levels to make sure they are happy?

We run a quarterly survey of our team. I’m big on surveys – we survey every client, we survey every referrer, and we survey our staff. In that staff survey, we’re always on the lookout for how everyone is feeling; what's the pulse at the moment. I also have a manager free at one point in time for every single person so they can have a weekly check-in. People may not have access to speak to me every day or every week, so I want to make sure there's someone who is constantly hearing them and asking, ‘Are there any issues? How can we improve? Is there anything else that can be done?’      

With the staff surveys, are they anonymous?

Yes, they’re anonymous. That’s important because we are not trying to catch anyone out, and I really want to deeply understand what is happening for them.

Speaking of staff, your ‘security officer’ is Chloe, a Cavoodle, who makes an appearance on the Aspect Legal website. Why is she a featured member of the team?

The reason that I wanted to put her on our website is because it’s part of how we demonstrate who we are as a brand. We’re approachable. Yes, we’re serious about what we do, but we’re not too serious. Having Chloe on the website represents truly who we are as a firm, and I think that’s super important. All firms should think about who they are and the relationship they want to have with their clients and find ways in their marketing material to reflect that. Ultimately, that’s why Chloe is on our website.

Aspect Legal has quite a diverse team. Is that important, and is diversity and inclusion delivering for the firm?

It’s not like I sat down one day and said, ‘Oh, okay, I want to create a diverse and inclusive team’. It just happened organically, but it’s incredibly important to have diversity across different cultures, different religions, different genders. I spent my early days in legal firms where almost every partner was male. I knew I didn’t want that, but it’s not like I set out and decided to create a firm that had diversity per se. I’m a female obviously, so that was the starting point of not just having males in the firm.

What other advice do you have for fellow law firm leaders?

Have vision, and show leadership. They’re factors that aren’t talked about a lot in law in terms of retention and recruitment. It took me years to realise that I had to lead from the front and I had to tell people what I was thinking and be really clear. I know most legal firms have their core values that they put up on the web somewhere, but we have core values that are so deeply entrenched in what we do that everyone knows them and lives them. With your vision, have a big goal that everyone can be united behind, and make sure your team knows they are very much valued.

You have expressed a desire to create the perfect law firm. Where do you go from here with Aspect Legal?

I want us to be known as the number one SME business sale and acquisition legal firm in Australia. I want the team to understand that we actually are leaders. I have growth targets that we’re aiming for, but I don’t want to have a massive legal firm. I want to have fun and I want the team to have fun, and I want to keep doing things that I'm proud of, that our team is proud of – so they can go home every day and say, ‘You know what? I really helped our clients today. I did something that had value’. So, while I have targets, the biggest goal or plan is to create a place where everyone loves coming to work – and knowing that our clients will benefit too.

www.aspectlegal.com.au

Click here for the first part of the Q&A with Joanna Oakey.

Click here for the podcast version of the Q&A.