Volume 8: Business Partner

Tell us about yourself and your biggest focus right now 

I’m Angie Floessel, CFO at Chapman and Cutler.

What I’ve learned in legal is that partners want an advisory relationship with finance. They don’t always want to serve that role in front of clients; they want someone with true expertise they can rely on. So, I’m focused on building a team with confidence and a customer mindset that can serve as an advisory function for our legal teams.

I want our partners to feel comfortable asking for advice or discussing concepts and strategy. They’re the owners, but our job is to give them solution alternatives and the best support we can.

What is the one behavior or mindset you believe most determines long-term success in a law firm? 

Firms need a strong identity. When I was doing pricing work, I kept coming back to this question of ‘What is our differentiator?’ Sometimes that can get lost. But when you know who you are and what you’re trying to do, everyone can fall in line behind a single mission.

When you’re proud of your brand and values, it elevates everything you do.

At Chapman, that differentiator is financial expertise, but also how approachable our partners are. There’s no sense of hierarchy, and that builds extremely strong relationships with clients and our team. They’re experts in transactions and the practice of financial law but also respect the business professionals enough to have us interact with clients, take part in pricing conversations, and thrive in our roles.

How do you encourage your team to think more boldly? 

It’s all about trust. The best thing I can do for my team is train them to be good at what they do, alongside learning their partners’ and clients’ preferences to help form those business partner relationships.

Sometimes there is a bit of fear of working directly with partners, but we embrace it. We align our team to partners/practices, so they start to speak the same language and cultivate that connection and trust.

What is the biggest shift law firms need to make in the next three years? 

AI is the biggest topic because it’s what everyone is talking about, including our clients. But it’s a double-edged sword. We must prioritize legal expertise as our value, which encompasses reliability, accuracy, and consistency. But all law firms are being asked about is how AI will impact billable hour rates. AI may bring efficiency, but if it results in less accuracy, what value is that providing?

When the conversation always starts on the finance part, it’s very limiting. We should focus on how AI transforms delivery of service and whether we trust it to do that. Out of that will come organic solutions on how to price or package. Right now, everyone is focusing on the billable hour and how to deconstruct it. That focus is stifling creativity.

How are you using data and AI to reshape how your people work? 

We’ve built our own internal AI tools that we use for routine tasks like NDAs or other types of due diligence. It really helps us scale transactional processes where volume and speed are key to the business model's success.

What’s difficult is when the task is more subjective. But because our firm is heavily AFA-based, we’re going to start using it to build out the invoice narrative or work product descriptions.

That means collecting the time entry narratives, engagement letters, closing checklists, and any other documents involved, and then drafting a summary of work. That administrative work had to be done by lawyers previously but could be significantly accelerated with these new tools.

With that said, data is probably the most important thing for lawyers to focus on in the future. The cleaner the data we collect, the better AI will work, and the better efficiencies we can drive.

What's one piece of advice for the next generation of legal leaders? 

Be curious.

When I first got into legal, I didn’t know anything about it. I knew finance very well but lacked any understanding of the practice of law. Confidence comes from understanding both. It doesn’t mean you need to know how to write a brief, but generally understanding people’s work and what they’re trying to do is very beneficial.

That extends beyond your firm, too. You need peers to collaborate with, bounce ideas off of, or learn how to handle certain situations. It’s important to get engaged in external organizations like the Legal Value Network to fuel that curiosity. It repays the time investment in so many ways.