I recently read a Wall Street Journal article with a headline that stopped me:
“Helicopter Parents Are Co-Piloting Their Adult Children’s Careers.”
And when they say co-piloting, they mean it.
The article describes parents calling hiring managers, applying for jobs on behalf of their adult children, and even hovering just outside the camera during Zoom interviews.
One story really got me.
Steven Clark had to fire a 24-year-old employee after the new hire had either shown up late or not shown up at all four times during his first week. That alone is a leadership headache. But then Clark essentially had to deal with the firing again—because the employee’s mother got involved.
I read that and thought:
We can laugh. We can roll our eyes. We can blame Gen Z.
But I think we’d be missing the much bigger lesson. Because after nearly 30 years of working inside law firms, I can tell you something:
I have seen plenty of 25-year-olds who are incredibly resourceful, proactive and accountable.
And I have seen 50-year-old executives who won’t make a $200 decision without three meetings, four emails and the attorney owner’s blessing.
This isn’t an age problem.It’s not even really a parenting problem. It’s a dependency problem. And dependency is one of the most expensive line items in your law firm that will never show up on your P&L.
The Cost You Can’t Find in QuickBooks
Think about what happened in your firm this week.
How many times did somebody walk into your office, call you, Slack you, Teams you or email you with a problem? Not a problem and a recommendation.
Just a problem.
“Molly, the client is upset. What should I do?”
“Molly, we’re behind on this file. What do you want me to do?”
“Molly, this vendor hasn’t responded. Should I email them again?”
“Molly, this employee wants Friday off. Is that okay?”
“Molly, the printer isn’t working.”
“Molly, I can’t find the document.”
“Molly, what should we say to this PNC?”
“Molly, what do you think?”
And before you know it, you are solving 47 problems a day that technically belong to 12 other people.
Here’s where it becomes a leadership issue.
You solve them.
Because it’s faster. You can answer the question in 90 seconds. You can fix the problem in 11 minutes. You can rewrite the email faster than explaining why the email isn’t working.
So you do. And every time you do, you accidentally teach your team:
When you aren’t sure what to do, bring it to me.
Congratulations. You have just become the helicopter parent of your law firm.
Law Firm Leadership Isn’t Doing Everything Yourself
I know. I hear this every single week from law firm owners.
“If I don’t follow up, it won’t happen.”
“If I don’t check it, it will be wrong.”
“If I don’t remind them, they’ll forget.”
“If I don’t make the decision, we’ll sit here for three days.”
“If I don’t jump in, the client experience will suffer.”
And you may be 100% correct.
Today.
But if that statement is still true six months from now, you don’t have a team problem anymore.
You have a leadership and operational problem.
Either you hired the wrong person.
You failed to clearly define what they own.
You haven’t empowered them to make decisions.
You haven’t trained them to make those decisions.
You haven’t created measurable accountability.
Or—and this one hurts—you keep taking the work back every time they try.
I’ve watched this cycle inside thousands of law firms.
The owner says:
“I need people who take ownership.”
Then someone takes ownership and makes a decision differently than the owner would have.
Suddenly:
“Why did you do it that way?”
“Why didn’t you ask me?”
“I wish you would’ve run that by me first.”
“I would have handled that differently.”
So what does the employee learn?
Don’t decide. Ask.
Then six months later, the owner is sitting in my coaching session saying:
“Molly, nobody will make a decision around here!”
Exactly.
Because your team has been trained to believe that independence is dangerous.
Strong Leadership Creates Autonomy—Not Cowboys
This is where law firm leaders sometimes swing too far in the other direction.
They hear me talk about autonomy and think:
“Fine. I’ll just let everyone figure it out.”
No.
That’s not leadership. That’s abandonment.
And I don’t want cowboys either.
A person who disappears for three weeks, makes 17 unilateral decisions, builds the wrong thing beautifully and proudly presents it to you on Friday afternoon is not autonomous.
They’re dangerous.
True autonomy is independence plus communication.
I want someone who can:
- See the gap.
- Assess the situation.
- Gather the information.
- Know when they have enough information.
- Make a recommendation.
- Move when they have the authority to move.
- Communicate what they’re doing.
- Escalate when appropriate.
- And own the outcome.
That is very different from either extreme:
“Tell me exactly what to do.”
versus:
“I don’t need to tell anybody anything.”
Your strongest employees live in the middle.
They think independently and communicate proactively.
That combination is gold.
And here’s the part most law firms miss:
You need to start screening for it before the person is ever hired.
Leadership Starts With Hiring for Independent Judgment
One of the biggest mistakes I see law firms make is hiring the person who interviews the best.
They were polished.
They were confident.
They had great energy.
You “clicked.”
They said all the right things.
They told you they’re proactive, organized, detail-oriented and “a self-starter.”
Wonderful.
So does everyone else.
Nobody walks into an interview and says:
“I need an extraordinary amount of reassurance and will probably bring you problems all day without thinking through a solution first.”
That’s why I don’t care nearly as much about what candidates say they are.
I want evidence of how they actually operate.
Before you even open the role, write one sentence:
What does independent judgment look like in this position 12 months from now?
Not generally.
For this specific seat.
For a Client Services Coordinator, maybe it’s:
She independently manages routine client concerns within defined service standards and escalates only issues requiring attorney judgment, financial authorization or a deviation from firm policy.
For a law firm administrator:
He identifies operational gaps, develops recommendations supported by data, communicates potential impact and moves approved initiatives forward without requiring the owner to manage individual tasks.
For a Community Growth Coordinator:
She independently identifies relationship-building opportunities, follows up consistently, manages the outreach calendar and reports results without waiting for the attorney to tell her who to call next.
See the difference?
“Must be a self-starter” means nothing.
Leadership requires you to define the behavior.
Then interview for evidence.
Leadership Interview Question #1: What Did You Inherit?
Here’s one of my favorite interview techniques.
When someone tells me about an impressive accomplishment, I want to know:
What did you inherit?
Because a turnaround and a winning hand can look exactly the same on a résumé.
“I grew the department by 40%.”
Great.
What was happening when you arrived?
“I increased conversion.”
Great.
From what to what?
“I implemented a new system.”
Great.
Whose idea was it?
“I helped grow the firm.”
Great.
Tell me exactly what was happening before you got there.
Candidates are prepared to tell you their accomplishments.
They’re much less prepared to explain the conditions surrounding those accomplishments.
And that’s where the truth usually lives.
Leadership Interview Question #2: Ask “How?” Three Times
This is another one I love.
Someone says:
“I completely revamped our intake process.”
Ask:
“How?”
They answer.
Then ask:
“And how did you do that?”
They go another layer deeper.
Then do it one more time.
“Walk me through exactly how you made that happen.”
By the third “how,” you usually know.
Did this person actually build it?
Did they drive it?
Did they identify the problem?
Did they convince others?
Did they encounter resistance?
Did they solve problems along the way?
Or were they simply standing near the project when it succeeded?
People can memorize interview answers.
It’s much harder to fake operational depth.
Leadership Interview Question #3: Listen to Failure
I want to know about failure. Not because I’m trying to catch the candidate. I want to understand their relationship with accountability.
Ask:
“Tell me about a decision you made that didn’t work.”
Then listen carefully. Some candidates tell you about failure as though it were a weather event.
“The team didn’t communicate.”
“Leadership didn’t support me.”
“The client was impossible.”
“Nobody told me.”
“The system wasn’t working.”
“They changed the expectations.”
Everything happened to them.
The strongest candidates sound different.
You’ll hear things like:
“I underestimated…”
“I didn’t communicate early enough…”
“I made the decision…”
“I should have…”
“I realized…”
And then something interesting happens when they talk about the recovery.
The language often shifts toward:
“We.”
“We got together.”
“We rebuilt the process.”
“We changed the communication.”
“We figured out what wasn’t working.”
I love that.
I own my decisions. We solve problems together.
That’s the mindset you’re looking for.
Leadership Interview Question #4: What Did You Fix That Wasn’t Your Job?
Want to find proactive people?
Ask this:
“Tell me about something you fixed in your last organization that technically wasn’t your responsibility.”
Then stop talking. You’ll learn a tremendous amount.
But don’t stop with the first answer. Follow it with:
“Who did you need to involve to make that happen?”
And then:
“How did you get them bought in?”
This is where you separate initiative from cowboy behavior. Because I don’t simply want someone who notices problems. I want someone who can build alignment.
Law firms are interconnected ecosystems.
Intake affects marketing.
Marketing affects sales.
Sales affects legal production.
Legal production affects client care.
Client care affects reviews and referrals.
Billing touches almost everything.
A person who “fixes” their department while creating chaos in three others isn’t a strong operator.
Your best people know how to move with other people.
Stop Asking Candidates If They’re Proactive. Make Them Prove It.
Here’s where I would love to see more law firms evolve their hiring process.
Stop interviewing. Start watching.
For appropriate roles, create a structured, paid work sample or job simulation for your finalists.
Give them a realistic business problem. Don’t make the instructions intentionally confusing, but don’t spoon-feed every step either. Then watch what happens.
The dependent candidate often freezes.
They want more instructions.
They want you to define exactly what “good” looks like.
They ask what format you want.
They ask how many pages.
They ask what you would do.
They keep seeking permission because their primary objective is not solving the problem.
It’s avoiding being wrong.
The autonomous candidate behaves differently.
They ask a few intelligent questions.
They clarify the outcome.
They identify assumptions.
They tell you what information they’re missing.
Then they move.
And if they hit something material, they communicate.
That’s what you’re looking for.
Not perfection. Judgment.
Use References to Evaluate Leadership and Autonomy
Most reference checks are useless.
“Did Sally work there?”
“Yes.”
“Would you rehire her?”
“Yes.”
“Great. Thanks!”
That tells you almost nothing.
Instead, ask the candidate’s former manager something like:
“How often did she typically check in with you before making a decision, and did that feel like the right amount?”
Then listen.
You’re not simply listening to the words.
You’re listening for the story.
A manager who trusted this person usually has examples.
“She would come to me if there was a client risk or if we were going outside policy, but otherwise she handled it.”
“She’d usually tell me, ‘Here’s what happened, here’s what I’m doing and here’s why.’”
“She rarely brought me a problem without two possible solutions.”
Beautiful.
That’s operational maturity.
But sometimes you ask that question and get:
“Well…”
Pay attention to the pause.
The pause may tell you more than the answer.
Now Comes the Harder Question: Are You Creating Dependency?
You can hire the most autonomous person in the world and slowly train it out of them.
This is where the conversation needs to shift away from employees and back toward leadership.
When your employee brings you a problem, what do you do?
If your immediate response is to solve it, you’re reinforcing dependency. Try something different.
Ask:
“What do you recommend?”
If they say they don’t know:
“If I weren’t here today, what would you do?”
If they’re afraid of making the wrong decision:
“What information would you need to feel comfortable deciding?”
If they’re trying to hand ownership back to you:
“What part of this do you believe requires my decision?”
These are leadership questions.
They build muscles.
Will it take longer the first few times?
Absolutely.
Remember that 11-minute problem you could solve yourself?
Maybe teaching someone how to think through it takes 30 minutes.
Do it anyway.
Because solving it yourself takes 11 minutes today.
Teaching them to solve it may save you 11 minutes every week for the next three years.
That’s ROI.
The Owner Cannot Be the Firm’s Operating System
This is ultimately why I care so deeply about this topic.
I work with law firm owners who are brilliant attorneys.
They have built successful firms.
They have employees.
They have revenue.
They have clients.
They have marketing.
From the outside, the business looks successful.
But internally, everything still routes through them.
Every exception.
Every client issue.
Every hiring decision.
Every employee conflict.
Every marketing question.
Every pricing conversation.
Every technology change.
Every process update.
Every fire.
The firm has 12 employees, but the owner still functions as its central nervous system.
That’s not scale.
That’s a more sophisticated version of self-employment.
And eventually the firm reaches what I call the owner bottleneck:
The business cannot move faster than the owner’s capacity to answer questions, approve decisions and solve problems.
That is when growth starts feeling incredibly heavy.
Revenue may still be increasing.
Headcount may still be increasing.
But freedom is decreasing.
Because every person you add creates more communication, more decisions and more questions flowing toward the same person.
You.
Your Goal Isn’t to Become Unnecessary
Law firm owners sometimes get uncomfortable when I talk about building a firm that doesn’t need them for every decision.
“But Molly, it’s my firm.”
Exactly.
Your goal isn’t to become irrelevant.
Your goal is to become valuable at the right level.
Your time should increasingly be spent on things like:
Vision.
Strategy.
Key relationships.
High-level financial decisions.
Leadership development.
Growth opportunities.
Culture.
Innovation.
High-value legal work you intentionally choose to keep.
Your $500-an-hour brain should not be deciding where someone orders toner.
And if you have built a multimillion-dollar law firm, you should not be the only person capable of deciding how to handle an upset client.
That’s not control.
That’s captivity.
The Ultimate Leadership Goal: Build People Who Can Think Without You
The Wall Street Journal story about parents inserting themselves into their adult children’s careers is certainly entertaining—and maybe a little shocking.
But before we make it another generational debate, I think leaders should look closer to home.
Because dependency doesn’t magically disappear when someone turns 25.
It can exist at 35.
And it can be reinforced every single day by the organizations people work inside.
The question isn’t:
“Why can’t people make decisions anymore?”
The better questions are:
Are we hiring for judgment?
Are we defining ownership?
Are we giving people the authority that matches their accountability?
Are we teaching them how to think—or simply telling them what to do?
And when they come to us with a problem, are we developing their decision-making muscle or grabbing the problem back because it’s faster?
Because here’s what I know after nearly three decades of working with law firms:
You cannot build a scalable firm with a team that needs constant permission.
You cannot create attorney freedom when every decision eventually lands on the attorney’s desk.
You cannot develop leaders by answering every question for them.
And you cannot demand ownership while refusing to let people practice it.
Your next great hire shouldn’t need a helicopter parent.
And once they’re inside your firm, make sure you don’t become one.
The goal is not a team that never needs you.
The goal is a team that knows when they need you, why they need you and what they recommend before they walk through your door.
That’s how you build capacity.
That’s how you develop leaders.
That’s how you stop taking the work back.
And that’s how you finally build a law firm that can grow faster than your calendar.
Ready to Strengthen Leadership Inside Your Law Firm?
If your team is constantly bringing decisions back to you, your problem may not be motivation—it may be role clarity, authority, accountability or the way your firm has been trained to operate.
Inside The Law Firm Admin Bootcamp™, we teach law firm owners, administrators and leadership teams how to create clear ownership, measurable KPIs, stronger delegation and an operating rhythm that gets the attorney out of the middle of every decision.
Because the goal isn’t simply to hire more people.
It’s to build a team that knows how to think, decide, communicate and own the outcome.
Book a free Clarity Call with our team today. We’ll take a look at where work, decisions and accountability are getting stuck—and help you identify what needs to change so your team can take greater ownership and your firm can grow without everything continuing to come back to you.
Stop being the answer to every question. Start building the leadership infrastructure your firm needs to grow.