Culture
Culture Integration & People Strategy Solutions for a National Law Firm
Industry
Law Practice
Company Size
1K-5K Employees
The Results
A unified culture, an aligned people function, and a scalable framework supporting growth, mergers, and long-term organizational success.
Client Background
The client is a top-ranked U.S. law firm with 800+ attorneys and offices in more than 20 cities nationwide. Known for its industry-focused legal services across healthcare, education, energy, and real estate, the firm has built a reputation for its distinctive approach to client service and culture.
Challenges
Following a period of rapid growth through mergers and strategic combinations, the firm faced significant complexity in shaping a unified people experience. With the arrival of a new Chief Executive, the firm recognized the need to assess and intentionally shape a unified culture that could support its continued evolution as an Am Law 100 firm.
Key challenges included:
- Fragmented cultural identity across legacy groups and offices.
- Lack of a shared Culture Code, leaving new hires without clear cultural norms or behaviors to align to.
- Underdeveloped people infrastructure that lagged behind the firm’s progressive external brand.
- Decentralized HR model with misaligned reporting structures, creating inefficiencies and inconsistent experiences.
- Limited visibility into the employee experience, making it difficult to define a scalable, distinctive culture.
Success Metrics
As a result of livingHR’s engagement, the client gained meaningful insight into the current state of its culture and people experience, and made tangible progress toward building a more aligned, human-centered organization.
Key outcomes included:
- Robust Culture Insights and Alignment: Conducted a full-firm cultural analysis through a comprehensive culture survey, 50+ in-person and remote focus groups, and 50+ 1:1 interviews—capturing feedback across all levels and regions of the firm within a 3-month discovery window.
- Creation of Foundational Culture Tools: Developed and delivered core cultural artifacts including a firmwide Culture Code, culture narrative, and employee value proposition (EVP)—providing a clear and actionable foundation to guide behaviors, decisions, and communications.
- Roadmap to Embed Culture in the People Lifecycle: Delivered a strategic People Experience Roadmap focused on embedding the Culture Code across the employee lifecycle—spanning recruiting, onboarding, performance, recognition, and more—leading to the approval of a Phase II implementation engagement.
- Design of a Consolidated People Function: Recommended a restructured and more centralized People function, aligned by Strategic Business Units (SBUs), to improve consistency and better support timekeepers and client service outcomes.
- Enabled Culture-Driven Growth: Designed a Culture Due Diligence tool to assess cultural alignment in future mergers and acquisitions—positioning the client to scale while protecting its distinct culture.
These efforts helped accelerate internal alignment, surface critical truths about the current experience, and build the framework for a more consistent, values-driven, and future-ready firm.