Legal
Nurturing your culture
How to set a good example from the top
By Abby Cymerman
Smart Business San Diego | August 2008
Page 1 of 2
Thomas W. Turner Jr.
Managing Partner, Procopio, Cory, Hargreaves & Savitch LLP
With six decades of tradition backing Procopio, Cory, Hargreaves & Savitch
LLP, Thomas W. Turner has a
lot of reputation to uphold.
“Your overall reputation is the
threshold that, if it is not surpassed, you are not even going
to be given serious consideration,” says the law firm’s managing partner. “It’s critical to
have a solid reputation, not only
in terms of competence in your
given field but also in terms of
being a company that has heart
and soul.”
Turner’s business law firm
has more than 200 employees
and posted 2007 revenue of
more than $50 million. The firm
serves local, national and international clientele, and Turner
says that devotion to the firm
motivates employees to make
the organization as good as it
can possibly be.
“Employees recognize how
passionate we all are about
doing a good job,” he says.
“And that inspires them to do
more of the same.”
Smart Business spoke with
Turner about how he sets a
good example at his firm by
being down-to-earth, accessible
and friendly.
Set the right tone. The philosophies, the attitudes and the
approaches that are established
and exhibited by the leader of a
company ripple down throughout the organization. It all starts
at the top, so it’s important to
set the right tone in the way
that you approach things.
Applications of that philosophy are many and varied. It’s
important to be completely
professional, prepared and
technically competent, but you
need not be overly formal
about your approach to work.
Be real. You need to be down-to-earth, accessible and friendly. If
you’re not, that’s not the kind of
tone that lends itself to a happy
work environment. Take your
work very seriously, but don’t
take yourself too seriously.
That ties in with bringing a
sense of fun to work. We spend
too big a chunk of our lives
here to carve it out as a time of
only seriousness and no enjoyment. I like to bring a sense of
humor to the office; it’s just an
attitude, keeping an eye on the
quirky, interesting and amusing
aspects of things that are going
on throughout the day, and
sharing that with the folks
around me.
Keep the tone light and enjoyable while maintaining the level
of seriousness and focus that
you need to bring to task.
Show respect. Be genuinely
respectful and considerate of
everyone around you. That principle was inherent in the way
our firm’s founder, Alec Cory,
approached his life, including
his work. That focus and that
set of values has rippled down
and affects all of us here.
It attracts and helps us retain
the best attorneys and best
employees. It has helped us
develop and continues to help
us maintain and nurture a fabulous firm culture. People
enjoy working here, and as a
result, people want to come
here to work.
Make fairness a priority.
You
need to think fairly, act fairly
and be fair in the way that you
approach your work and the
people around you. It’s how
you address matters and the
way that you treat people.
It’s thinking not in terms of
what’s going to give to you an
immediate benefit but in terms
of what’s going to be fair to
everyone that is involved. We
treat each other fairly, with
respect and with genuine consideration.
You don’t send a memo out to
everybody saying, ‘You will
henceforth treat everyone fairly
and with respect.’ What you do
is treat everyone fairly, with
respect and consideration, and
you expect that of those
around you, and — guess what
— all of a sudden, the whole
firm is acting in that fashion.
