Roslyn Tsao | Managing Your People: How To Drive Efficiency and Performance at Your Law Firm

The Lawyer's Edge

Roslyn Tsao is the Managing Partner at Epstein Cole LLP, a boutique family law firm where she manages operations, recruitment, and student programs. As a family law attorney, she specializes in parenting arrangements, property division, and support issues and represents high-net-worth individuals with complex assets or compensation structures. Roslyn has appeared on motions, conferences, and trials in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice and argued appeals at the Ontario Court of Appeal.

She is also frequently retained as a mediator and arbitrator in private disputes. Roslyn is an Associate Editor of the Reports of Family Law and has taught family law courses at Osgoode Hall Law School and will teach at the University of Toronto Law School in 2024. She is the 2022 recipient of the Award of Excellence in Family Law and has a Band 1 ranking in the Chambers & Partners Global High Net Worth Guide in Family/Matrimonial.

With prior experience in employment, wills and estates, criminal, real estate, and taxation law, Roslyn has achieved favorable outcomes for clients by focusing on practical, results-oriented legal advice and ongoing dialogue. Her expertise in the courtroom and role as Managing Partner enables her to manage attorneys effectively to drive law firm efficiency and performance.

In this episode…

Our legal education certainly didn’t cover how to best manage and lead people, meaning that most lawyers who assume leadership roles are learning on the job and figuring it out as they go (or to put it another way, “flying by the seat of their pants”). When you are one doing the managing and leading, what are some of the ways in which you can facilitate productivity and efficiency at your firm while at the same time fostering a desirable organizational culture?

With over three decades of experience in the legal field, family law attorney Roslyn Tsao has become a coveted leader at her firm. She notes that attorneys today prioritize satisfaction in their careers and personal lives, so managing partners should facilitate a delicate balance to encourage professional development. Identifying your staff’s needs, strengths, and weaknesses allows you to cultivate empathy, deliver value, and boost performance and your firm’s bottom line. Additionally, Roslyn emphasizes educating lawyers on supplemental roles at the firm to reduce workload.

Join Elise Holtzman for this episode of The Lawyer’s Edge Podcast as she interviews Roslyn Tsao, the Managing Partner at Epstein Cole LLP, about her experience managing lawyers to increase firm productivity and efficiency. Roslyn shares the ideal attributes of lawyers in a boutique law firm, how to terminate attorneys tactfully, and how professional talent management roles have evolved. Spoiler alert: Empathy drives more productivity and efficiency!