Dawn Anderson | How Strategic HR Transforms Law Firm Performance

Elise Holtzman: Hi everyone, it's Elise Holtzman here, a former practicing lawyer and the host of the Lawyer's Edge Podcast. Welcome back for another episode. Managing people in a law firm is rarely simple and leading the HR function across nearly 400 lawyers and 25 offices takes strategy, diplomacy, and a deep understanding of human behavior.

In this episode, we're going to talk about what it really takes to build a thriving law firm culture, from retaining top talent and aligning your people with law firm strategy to creating systems that reward excellence instead of just longevity. You'll hear how thoughtful HR leadership can help law firms grow stronger, perform better, and become better places to work for everyone.

Before we dive in, today's episode is brought to you by the Ignite Women's Business Development Accelerator, a nine-month business development program created by women lawyers, for women lawyers. Ignite is a carefully designed business development program containing content, coaching, and a community of like-minded women who are committed to becoming rainmakers and supporting the retention and advancement of other women in the profession.

Registration is now open for the 2026 Ignite cohort and early bird pricing is available. To learn more about Ignite, visit thelawyersedge.com/ignite. I am absolutely thrilled to welcome my guest today, Dawn Anderson, who is the Chief Human Resources Officer at Butler Snow LLP, a law firm with nearly 400 lawyers across 25 offices.

With more than 30 years of HR experience and both an MBA and law degree from the University of Georgia, Dawn brings a truly unique perspective to law firm leadership. After two decades in HR leadership roles in retail and manufacturing, Dawn transitioned to the legal industry where she now oversees Butler Snow's HR function and operations.

She has taught as an adjunct professor teaching college-level courses and facilitating countless training seminars on leadership, management, and human resources. And she's also an active member of the Atlanta Association of Legal Administrators, where she previously served as its board member and chapter president. Dawn, welcome to the Lawyer's Edge.

Dawn Anderson: Thank you for having me today, Elise.

Elise Holtzman: I'm really excited to have you today, Dawn, because we've talked a lot about some of the things that we're going to share with everybody on the call today. You and I were in a session together at the Managing Partner Forum Conference in Atlanta where we had a room full of managing partners trying to figure out how to best run their firms, to create cultures, to retain their people, attract the best people, maximize productivity, all of the things that law firm leaders are charged with doing.

And so I'd like to start with you. You were very helpful in terms of the conversations that we had getting people to focus on the real issues, and so I'm really excited to be talking to you today. Let's start out by you sharing a bit about your journey and what led you to pursue a career in human resources, particularly as somebody with both a law degree and an MBA.

Dawn Anderson: I had a little bit of a twisted journey, as a lot of us do. I actually started out in chemical engineering and after a couple of years in that direction, realized that just because you can do math doesn't mean you should. So decided to make a switch, moved into journalism, public relations, basically, quite frankly, as a placeholder. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do.

At a summer job in a company in my hometown, I went to the labor relations liaison and said, "I want your job, how do I get it?" And he told me, "Well, I think you're going to need a law degree and a business degree going forward." And I'm thinking, "That sounds great, I'll do that."

So I went to law school, did the JD MBA program with the express intent of going into human resources. Never really wanted to practice because I'm not a side taker. I prefer to analyze, dig, do a root cause analysis, identify where we went wrong, and figure out how we can fix it.

So how do we go forward from here? Usually, if you look back, if the firm had done this and the employee had done that, we would not be here. So let's figure out how to wind that back so that in the future we won't get to this place.

It is a delicate balance—you and I talk a little bit about this—human resources has the balance between being an employee advocate and also taking care of our firm because we have a fiduciary duty to our firm. If you really base your decisions and your direction on values and doing what's right, you can do that as long as you're at the right firm.

Elise Holtzman: We're going to talk a little bit more about some of the opportunities and challenges, some of the complications that come up in your role. I'm curious about the gentleman who suggested that you do a JD MBA. Do you think he was right? Do you think that having that background has been better for you than not having a background in HR? Because let's face it, most HR professionals do not have JD MBAs.

Dawn Anderson: I do. I think it helps tremendously. So early in my career, it gave me instant credibility, especially in the—I call it the real world. I worked in manufacturing, retail, distribution, and the legal role really helped.

As I moved higher up in my journey, the MBA and the business knowledge helped me understand better what was keeping my CEOs and my VPs up at night. When you flip over to the legal side where I sit now, lawyers don't learn how to run a business in law school. It is not covered.

I have to remind myself of that when I see attorneys and partners not handling things as they should in a best practice manner. I have to remind myself that while I have the MBA and I had that foundational piece, most of them don't. So it's important as a human resources professional to be able to speak the language of our audience, but also to be able to educate and bring them forward.

Elise Holtzman: There's a lot of talk in the legal industry or profession about how lawyers are sometimes—I say this with love because you're one and I'm one—but lawyers are sometimes intellectual snobs when it comes to what other people know or don't know. I think that we're moving towards understanding that people in administrative roles at law firms are unbelievably important to the organization.

It's not just that the lawyers know everything and these people don't know anything. What have you experienced in the legal profession versus some of these other roles that you were in that either support what I just said or weigh against it? Do you think that lawyers respect what's going on in these administrative positions or not?

Dawn Anderson: Not usually. Unfortunately, there's not an appreciation of what's happening and the work that goes into it. I really see it. I hear it a lot. "Well, they're not an attorney. I don't know if they could get the ear because they're not an attorney."

"We need to get an attorney to give this message because they won't listen to anyone else." It's unfortunate because as professionals in many different areas—in human resources, in operations, in pricing—there are incredibly talented people who have undergone a rigorous program of study and bring a lot of experience that they may not get to ever provide because there's kind of a closed door.

I ran into that even with the JD MBA. I've run into that in my profession. We were talking offline. It took me five years to get my previous law firm to allow me to be a part of the end-of-year bonus process because it was behind closed doors and "don't pay attention to the man behind the curtain."

Elise Holtzman: Well, and you're the head of HR. I mean, who else is supposed to be involved in this?

Dawn Anderson: It's like what I do for a long time. It's like what I studied. So it's funny because at that situation, I remember it very clearly. They were like, "Well, now we've got to start on the attorney bonuses." I said, "So let me ask you a question. Is it fair to assume that you want to reward productivity and quality of work?"

"Yeah." "Is it fair that these are two objective measures of that, the employee evaluations and the billable hours?" "Well, yes." "Let me take a stab at it."

So I walk away, put together a bonus platform using a modified bell curve, saved out a pool of money to recognize and reward other desired behaviors, came back and said, "Let me explain this to you."

"Here's how the bonus decisions were made. Here's the criteria upon which we base these decisions. Here is extra money because I understood when we were talking that this person has done a lot with business development. This person is a great mentor to the younger associates. This person has done XYZ in this professional organization that we feel like is of value to the firm."

"So here's some money that we set aside that you can use to reward that behavior." I took a look at it and it was almost comical because they were like, "Well, that makes sense." I'm like, gee whiz, you'd almost think it was my profession or something.

What took them a day and a half to two days behind closed doors arguing was finished in a couple of hours. It was one that I felt like was equitable and that, quite frankly, if challenged, I could defend because I knew what the decisions were based on. It wasn't based on "do you have a champion in the room?"

Elise Holtzman: Yeah, we know that that's so much of how this happens. We talk about the black box of compensation and a bunch of guys go in a room and talk to each other, then they come out with these numbers and nobody understands the rhyme or reason for them. I don't think that creates good feelings and it creates a lack of trust and all of the parade of horribles that we don't want going on.

It's almost making me laugh. I mean, I don't want to say it's funny, but it's almost making me laugh in part because you and I also talked about this idea. You once said to me, "Well, nobody wants to talk to HR," right? You walk into rooms and people stop talking. So you're getting it from both ends, right? You're getting it from the leader end and also the employee side.

So how do you navigate that sort of thing? I mean, I know you love what you do for a living. I'm sitting here thinking, good grief, hearing all of this, they would want this job. So tell me a little bit about your philosophy of all of this and how you manage the idea that you're in a pretty fraught role.

Dawn Anderson: It depends on the audience. So for the staff, start with them, as I like to say, the revenue enablers. For that group, I am very approachable. I know that I can come across as very direct and very strong and intimidating to some. I don't see it, but they do.

So I work really hard to counteract that. My avatar on Zoom is a picture of my son's calico cat wrapped up in a colorful blanket he brought home from a mission trip in Honduras. She's in the sun, she's asleep, and you can see a smile. That's an icebreaker on any Zoom call. I say that is my life aspiration, be as happy as that cat is in the moment.

I also worked really hard to provide some, I call them enrichment trainings, for our staff, particularly the first year, year and a half, where I did lunch and learns on gratitude, on mindfulness, on your personal brand, on things that were good to have investments in them both personally and professionally. I made it a point to go to 17 out of 25 of our offices first year.

I did just a grand tour, and I got as many of the offices as I possibly could before my plate got so full, because nobody needed to call me yet. So it was the perfect time to do it. I tried to build those relationships, and I worked really hard to play down my education and play up my humble upbringing on a farm in middle Georgia.

I can usually relate and connect to people. That's just a talent I have, a gift so to speak. I don't think it's a talent, because I don't think I did much for it. I think it's just a gift to connect people.

For the attorneys, it is quite frankly, I do leverage my degree, and I know that's unfair, but you have to a little bit. And you bide your time a little bit. One of the books that I always reread when I start a new role is The First 90 Days, and it's not real complicated, but just watch. You look for the low-hanging fruit. Figure out who the champions are. Figure out who the influencers are, because your influencers are not necessarily the ones with the title.

They're not necessarily your EC. They may just be the person at the water cooler who is very well respected or very loud. Figure out who those people are, and make certain that you get them in your corner. It's all part of change management, so I use my ADKAR change management skills, and I strategically went at it from that perspective.

Listen, a lot of listening, a lot of hearing what their agenda is, hearing what their concern is. We tend to go in with our agenda. In 2026, we're going to improve employee engagement. We're going to improve training and development. We're going to do that. That's great, and it's important, but I'm not going to get anywhere if I don't stop and ask the practice group leaders, "Hey, what's on your mind?"

"Here's information I have that will help you. Here's your demographics. Here's your snapshot. Let's talk about knowledge retention and succession planning. Let's talk about how you can utilize AI in your practice." But you have to solve their problem, not yours.

Elise Holtzman: I love that perspective because a lot of people talk about leadership and what leadership looks like, and there is still to this day, I think, a misconception that leadership is about coming in, running things, having all the answers, telling people what to do. And it's so much more complicated than that. In fact, I think those people often don't succeed.

I think what I'm hearing from you—I mean, you tell me—what are some of the things you're trying to create in taking this approach? I assume trust is one of them, so people trust you enough to be able to come to you.

Dawn Anderson: Trust is big. The other is the first stage of change management, awareness that you need to make a change. There's not an awareness that employee retention is a thing. There's not necessarily an awareness that it is getting harder and harder to recruit legal assistants because people don't graduate from high school and go, "Gosh, I want to be a legal secretary when I grow up."

So we're going to have to figure out another way to take care of those tasks. Is it changing the role of paralegal to expand it, to include administrative tasks? Is it utilizing AI? Is it bringing people in who don't know what they want to do and convincing them and training them in how to be a legal assistant? Well, I don't know. It depends. A favorite lawyer answer.

Elise Holtzman: Right. It depends. That is our favorite. A couple of things are occurring to me here. One is that in law firms where they're large enough to have the kind of staff and administrative support that you're talking about, I think it's really important for the lawyers, as you say, to have the awareness about what it is that the administrative folks are doing and to respect and listen to some of the ideas that are coming up, not just to put our heads in the sand as lawyers and do the same old, same old.

And also the recognition that lawyers simply don't have the time to be doing all of this. They are supposed to be billing hours and bringing in clients and training junior lawyers and that sort of thing. The other thing is that for those lawyers who are listening who are not in law firms that have large administrative staffs, to think about all of these things that you just mentioned. Again, I think for many people, this stuff doesn't come up.

A couple of the things you mentioned are very obvious to people these days, which is the tremendous lateral movement that we see going on in law firms and how expensive that is for law firms, not to mention demoralizing. It really does have an impact on law firm culture.

But you mentioned things like having trouble hiring legal assistants. Those are not necessarily things that I've been hearing about that much. I hear a lot about what's going on with the lawyers, but not necessarily what's going on with the administrative-type professionals.

What are some of the things that you think—if you could sit a lawyer down and say, "Hey, here are the things going on these days that I would really love you to be paying attention to. This is what I see as a Chief Human Resources Officer," what are some of the things going on these days that you think lawyers should be paying attention to?

Dawn Anderson: One is the rapid and easily available movement among firms. If you're not treating your legal assistant or your paralegal well, they're going to leave. They have options. If you are not willing to be flexible, you're going to lose them.

You also have to recognize that we're doing work a different way. If you are insistent that, like in our firm—and now it's a larger firm—but you're insistent that the only way you can utilize a legal assistant is that they have to be sitting outside of your office 24/7, that's not practical anymore.

Most firms are going to a higher ratio of attorneys to legal assistants. There's good reason for that. Number one, a lot of our newer attorneys in the profession do their own thing. They don't utilize a legal assistant like someone who started practice 40 years ago.

They're keying their own information in, so they need the legal assistant to probably do a quick check and to understand deadlines and to help coach them. I've often said as well that having a great experienced legal assistant partnered with your attorneys is a phenomenal leverage opportunity because they will help teach the attorneys what law school doesn't teach you.

Elise Holtzman: I'm just going to pipe in there for a minute, Dawn, because true story, when I went to my second law firm, a Biglaw, Am Law 50 firm, I was very junior. I was a fourth-year associate. I went in there and they gave me—we used to call them secretaries—but they gave me a secretary, legal assistant.

I guess I was in my late 20s and this woman was in her 50s and she absolutely scared me half to death. She just scared the pants off me. She was in her 50s. She was from Queens, New York. She had this gravelly smoker's voice and I just thought, "Oh my God, what have I gotten myself into?"

She was the biggest blessing in my life because she knew how the law firm worked. She taught me what I needed to know. She kept me on task. She also, by the way—and I know this is old school—she also took shorthand. She did shorthand and took dictation and so she would come into my office and take letters down and taught me even a couple of shorthand symbols that I used. The one for contract was a good one to know.

But I think that that's a really good thing to think about when we think about lawyer training. It's such a simple value add for a young attorney to have a really experienced legal assistant. What a great idea.

Dawn Anderson: It is. It's funny. My nephew has just completed his first year of practice and I think I heard from him more that first year of his practice than I have in the 27 years preceding that because he'd call and go, "Aunt Dawn, how do I word this? Aunt Dawn, what do I do with this? Aunt Dawn, does this make sense?"

So it really brought home to me that there are so many things that you don't learn in law school and there needs to be someone that the young attorney, the newer attorney, you used the word young, but it's really the newer attorney, those comfortable asking. And they may not feel comfortable asking the stupid question of even their mentor that's assigned. They may ask each other or they'll ask a staff person or they'll call Aunt Dawn.

Elise Holtzman: It makes me wonder how many phone calls my husband and I are going to get next year. Our daughter is graduating from law school and she's going to a big firm, so we'll see if that happens.

Dawn Anderson: Just anticipate it.

Elise Holtzman: You mentioned the term revenue enabler when you started talking about the administrative staff and administrative professionals. What do you mean by that and how do you think that that language can make a difference? It could be just semantics, but it could be something that's meaningful.

Dawn Anderson: Back to attorneys can be intellectual snobs. So there is a perception that everyone is just overhead. If you're not a practicing attorney, you're just overhead. So the one main crusade I'm doing in my firm is to turn that around and at least drop the breadcrumbs that these individuals enable you to actually do your job.

I've always, when I talk to new staff members coming in, new file clerks or legal admins that are green as grass, I always tell the story. It's like if you were at a manufacturing facility and there was this big machine that made pencils, if that machine went down everybody would drop what they're doing to get that machine working again because if that machine is not churning out pencils, the company is not making profit.

Well, in this firm, the paralegals and the attorneys are the machine. They are the product we're selling. So our job is to do what we can reasonably to enable them to better do their job, to be more efficient, to be more effective, to use their time wisely. I don't want my attorney to waste their time clearing the jam in the copier. That's not a good use of your time. It may be frustrating and you may feel like that job should go to someone else, but at some point in time, the button needs to stop and somebody needs to get up and fix it.

Elise Holtzman: Another thing you said earlier was something about change management and I think when lawyers hear that terminology, it just sounds corporate-speak to them. What does it all mean and how can lawyers think about it differently?

Dawn Anderson: So number one, if you are in any administrative role, revenue enabler role, at a leadership level, do not use any jargon. They will immediately ignore you. I've been told so many times, "Well, that's corporate-y, we're not a corporation. We're not a business. I'm like, "Excuse me, you have 725 lives over multiple states in 25 offices. You are a business, so stop. You are." But you have to eliminate that out of your vocabulary.

I don't use those terms when I'm talking to attorneys. I simply sneak it in. But change management is such a hard thing to accomplish in a firm. I recently did an article that's in the legal magazine by ALA that noted that lawyers are in the top 10. They're in the 9th percentile for skepticism. They do not believe anything. They do not like change. They are so change-resistant.

So you really have to go through all of the steps to get them in the right chair, and then you have to constantly re-recruit them to keep them in the right chair and on the right bus for that matter. I use the ADKAR method. It's just one that I found very effective. You start with raising awareness that there's a need to change, a desire to change, knowledge, the ability to make the change, and then reinforcement to keep it sustainable. I'm a big believer in ADKAR.

Elise Holtzman: Let's talk a little bit about this idea of the right people in the right seats. Because one of the things that we know—I don't know if you're familiar with the Gino Wickman books, Traction, and it's largely for entrepreneurial folks, small to mid-sized businesses, and how to grow. One of the things that he talks about is how important it is to have the right people in the right seats.

You just mentioned something along those lines. In law firms, I think it can become very challenging because we are putting lawyers in seats that maybe are not the best roles for them. So one of the things I talk about all the time is that even in the managing partner role in many law firms, maybe not as much in the biggest law firms, but in small to mid-sized law firms, we say something along the lines of, "Oh, Dawn, you're a great lawyer, you've got a good book of business, we'd like you to run the firm." And it's suddenly like, "I'm sorry, what are you talking about? That's a completely different job description. I don't know how to do that."

How do you think about the concept of the right people in the right seats? How do we know who the right people are to put into leadership roles, whether they're lawyers or administrators?

Dawn Anderson: That is a tough call and it requires a lot of planning. My personal process is to first identify the competencies that that person needs. The competencies are emotional intelligence, their communication, their ability to subvert their personal agenda for the good of the firm, things like that.

Then you have to look at the technical skills. I can teach you the technical skills if you're willing to learn them, but I do get really frustrated with law firms all over because we will tell you, "Congratulations, you're a partner now," but we never go through the process of explaining what you need to do differently now. Back to what got you here will not keep you here.

So I have been working in the last firm and this firm with our professional development group to say, "How do we prepare people for success?" And we're starting with our laterals that are coming in and doing retreats for them that help them understand how to leverage the strengths of the firm and also the personal attributes and skills they need to acquire.

As a matter of fact, one of your recent podcasts—you interviewed a managing partner that you had met at the Managing Partner Forum—and she talked about how they did training on delegation. And I reached out to her after your podcast and we scheduled an hour discussion. I talked to her about how they prepare their associates and counsel for that transition into partnership roles and what they did to enable them to be successful.

So we are actually going to kick that off more fully and more robustly in January. So thank you for your Lawyer’s Edge. That’s very helpful.

Elise Holtzman: I love hearing that.

Dawn Anderson: I sent it to our acting COO and she was like, "Absolutely, this is great." Because one of our practice management partners has taken on the role of COO at our firm. So I've been feeding her information like your podcast and giving her ideas on how we can take our group to the next level.

Elise Holtzman: I love this idea. This is something that I talk about all the time, particularly when it comes to business development and leadership. We somehow expect people to just figure this stuff out on their own. Sometimes when I talk to law firm leaders, they say, "Well, we could train people on all of these things, but we know that a lot of them are going to leave. And so it's really frustrating to invest in people who might wind up leaving."

I guess my thought on all of this is, what's your alternative? You're not going to teach your people what it is they need to know in order to help you run your law firm so that it can be a thriving business? And so I love hearing that you're doing this, that you're implementing something new.

Dawn Anderson: Or you lose them to the firm that is. You lose that person that you don't want to waste that investment to the firm that's willing to put that investment in.

Elise Holtzman: Yeah, I agree with that. We know that's happening. So I think that we have to turn that whole attitude on its head, which is the more—going back to this idea of people moving so much—the more we invest in people, the more we treat them like human beings, as you say, the more we listen to them and figure out what they need and how they want to be part of the team, the more likely they are to stay.

Dawn Anderson: Maslow's theory of motivation, the higher levels are self-actualization and professional development. That's what we're looking for, especially when you get into overachievers who are intellectual snobs. We want to keep learning. We are lifelong learners, most of us. So if you don't feed that, someone else will. We're going to take that chance.

Elise Holtzman: Yeah, that's so powerful, Dawn. It's such a great reminder. We're not just dealing with cogs in a wheel here. We're not just grinding out legal work.

Dawn Anderson: Especially with our audience, because this is not the nine-to-five. These are people who are generally very passionate about their work, about their clients. So we have to keep feeding that.

When it comes to making sure we bring in the right people, I'm a big believer in behavioral interviewing and situational interviewing, where you ask, "How have you handled a situation and how would you handle a situation?" Because past performance predicts future performance. So you can get a feel for their judgment and their patience level, their emotional IQ, just from how they've handled something or how they would handle it. If they're going off the reservation pretty quickly, that's a problem.

So you can do a lot of that with your team. Now it's harder to get the attorneys, quite frankly, to buy into the behavioral energy questions because they all think they're great interviewers. But you can get the people who are sitting in all those interviews to take that role.

If your regional manager or your recruiter is also sitting in that interview, have them ask the questions because the partner is going to be hearing the answers and the responses and they'll start to factor them.

Elise Holtzman: Well, I'm also going to give a plug for the lawyers to learn this stuff and to not be so eye-rolling about it because we know that lawyers at law firms typically do not have any system for how they interview people. It's like, well, you have a law degree, you worked at a law firm, we meet you, we like you.

A lot of times, I think people are trying really hard to sell the firm. They're spending more time selling the firm and trying to convince the lawyer why they should want to come than they are doing a great job of figuring out whether this person is going to be a good fit for the organization.

Dawn Anderson: Absolutely. They ask questions like, do you have experience doing depositions? "Yep."

Elise Holtzman: Right, finished.

Dawn Anderson: That doesn't tell you if they were good at it. They're successful. It doesn't tell you what that experience was. Did you develop your own questions? Help me understand a little bit more.

I do see it: "I see you went to University of North Carolina, I did too." That goes off in this tangent. I do really encourage interview training and behavioral questions. I found that if I can provide you with an easy checklist guide, you're more likely to use it. You don't have to come up with questions.

Elise Holtzman: This is another great example of how law firms can be strategic in leveraging their administrative leadership. We've talked about why they struggle with it. They're not always willing to listen. Again, a big plug for the lawyers and the lawyer leaders to be listening to the administrative leadership, to be asking them questions, to be open to trying different things because the administrative professionals have so much experience.

Dawn, there's a question that I ask all of my guests at the end of our time together. There's a phenomenon called the curse of knowledge where experts sometimes forget that what is so obvious and natural to them is not at all obvious to others. When it comes to maximizing human resources in law firms, what's a principle or piece of advice that may seem obvious to you but is important for people to hear?

Dawn Anderson: Particularly with your audience of the podcast, human resources, employee relations, employee engagement, recruiting—these are not someone else's job. They are every person in the law firm's job.

Just as I am sure that most attorneys intuitively understand that client relations is everyone's responsibility, you've got some internal clients. How are your employees, your applicants? Treating them well, putting the best foot forward, creating a positive experience, that's everybody's job. It's not someone else's.

Elise Holtzman: I think we forget that a lot, especially in the hustle and bustle. I always say I'm not critical of lawyers. It's understandable that some of these things would fall to the bottom of their list because they are so driven by the billable hour and so driven by keeping the clients happy and training and mentoring associates and junior partners and all of that sort of thing.

I love what you just said because it's such a reminder that this stuff is so important. It's not just an afterthought. It's not, as you pointed out in the beginning, it's not just a cost center. It's really the lifeblood of the firm and what helps law firms be successful.

Thank you so much, Dawn. Thanks for being here. I always love talking to you. We have such great conversations.

Dawn Anderson: This was awesome. Thank you so much. I really enjoyed this. The highlight of my day.

Elise Holtzman: Believe me, the pleasure was mine. I want to thank our listeners for tuning in as well. If you've enjoyed today's show, please subscribe, rate, and review us at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. In the meantime, be bold, take action, and make things happen. We'll see you next time.