Originally published on LinkedIn on 18 June 2026.
Thursday. 7:43pm. The office is quiet in the way it only gets after everyone else has left.
Mark is working through his approvals. He reaches a write-off on a corporate matter his team spent three weeks on. Good work. Careful work. The client even sent a thank-you email.
He stares at the figure. The reason on the form says “client relationship.” His hand moves to the mouse and he signs it off, partly because the question of what actually produced it feels heavier than the approval itself. He closes the tab and the figure disappears from his screen.
That money was earned. The hours went in and yet it will not appear in the cash that reaches the bank this month, or at all.
Some managing partners write off money deliberately, as a conscious investment in a client relationship worth protecting. This article is not about them. It’s about the write-off approved in thirty seconds by a partner who genuinely doesn’t know what produced it.
How many times has that happened in your firm this quarter?
The interventions that aren’t working
Over the years I’ve observed managing partners address this problem by chasing WIP, tightening billing policies and reinforcing time-recording compliance. Some firms have invested significantly in technology, in practice management systems, real-time matter tracking, and AI-assisted review tools. These are not unreasonable responses and some produce genuine short-term gains, but write-offs are still increasing.
If the interventions were reaching the cause, the number would have moved by now, and the fact that it hasn’t points to something specific: the cause is somewhere none of those interventions are looking.
Three weeks earlier
The write-off Mark initialled on Thursday was not produced on Thursday. You need to go back three weeks.
A client call, informal and unscheduled, the kind that happens over a mobile rather than through the switchboard. The scope of the matter shifted, not dramatically, but a steer was given, an assumption was confirmed, and a direction was quietly extended beyond what the original instruction covered. The call ended, no note was made, and the fee earner who took it moved on to the next thing.
Two days later, that same fee earner noticed the matter was tracking over budget. They did not raise it, not because they were negligent, but because they were carrying four other matters, a client deadline was two days away, and raising it meant a conversation that would take time nobody had. So, they managed it quietly and kept moving.
The work was done well and the client was pleased, but when the bill was prepared the gap between the hours spent and the hours that could be justified sat in the write-off queue.
Claire didn’t produce this write-off deliberately, but the conditions that produced it are hers. Her fee earner had learned, without anyone deciding it, that absorbing a problem was safer than surfacing one. What Claire intended as a high-standards, supportive environment had landed as something different. That gap between intent and experience is where the money went.
The blind spot and the evidence
The pattern that produced that write-off has a name. It’s not a flaw in Claire’s character but a leadership blind spot, and the reason she can’t see it is the same reason it formed in the first place. The behaviours that made her an exceptional fee earner, staying close to the detail, protecting client relationships, absorbing friction rather than creating it, were the behaviours the firm rewarded for years.
In a leadership role those same behaviours produce a different outcome, but nothing in Claire’s day tells her that. The write-off gets filed, the agenda moves on, and the pattern keeps running.
What Claire needed was something her firm never gave her, not a training day or a performance review, but structured external feedback that showed her the gap between what she intended and what her team experienced, named clearly, quantified commercially, and delivered early enough to change the pattern before it hardened into the operating culture of the team.
Research published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, drawing on decades of organisational data, found that leadership behaviour accounts for a 23 percent improvement in bottom-line financial performance when it shifts. The mechanism is not abstract. When a leader’s pattern changes, the team’s behaviour changes around it.
The adjustment Claire needs to make is smaller than it sounds. Her standards of excellence and technical judgment do not change. What shifts is something more specific: an understanding of how her presence is landing with the people around her and what that is producing downstream.
When that shift happens, the fee earner who spotted the overrun three weeks ago raises it instead of absorbing it, the scope conversation that felt too risky happens before the matter runs, and the informal advisory gets recorded because the expectation was finally stated rather than assumed.
The revenue the firm is losing to write-offs does not require new clients or new instructions to recover it. The only thing standing between that work and the cash it should produce is a pattern that can be identified, named, and change
Mark will be back at his desk next month. The approvals queue will reload and there will be another figure, another form, another reason that says “client relationship” and his hand will move to the mouse.
The question is not whether your firm has a Claire. It does. Team leaders or partners are carrying a blind spot that their P&L is quietly funding. The question is whether you see it before the next matter closes or is it already too late.
The write-offs in your approvals queue this month were produced weeks ago by a pattern still running. The free TrustLytics® financial diagnostic takes 7 minutes and shows you where it is. Start here: https://www.thomastelman.com/leadership-blind-spot-financial-risk-diagnostic