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For a culture such as is described in the case of Sovani James to exist in McMillan Williams is a failure of leadership and management in that firm. The owners should look long and hard at the values and behaviours that they promote / permit and be prepared to make bold changes to root out bullying, hectoring and innapropriate mangement behaviour. They should invest in training and development, and reward the right bahaviours, at the expense, in the short term, of financial outcomes.

Readers may be tempted to point to the external (Business Growth Fund) investment in this firm and its quoted ambition for a stock exchange float at some point. They might infer that poor behaviour is inevitable in such a firm, where outsiders are pushing for results and returns.

However, that would be to miss the point, which is that most law firm leaders are accidental business people, who have received very little training and development opportunities in leading and managing people - and who all too often, sadly, show little appetite to receive any, because they view this sort of thing as much less valuable than technical legal training.

Sadly, cases like this can happen in 'traditional' firms, too.