Are you running the business (firm)?

By on July 31, 2011

OK, Mr./Ms. Managing Partner, Executive Director or CEO, are you running your business or is it running you?

Here are 5 symptoms that indicate the business may be running you:

  1. The problems always end up on your desk for a final resolution. It ends up on your desk, many times, because you haven’t empowered your managers to make final decisions. Managers learn real quickly what decisions they aren’t allowed to make.
  2. You really can’t take a vacation. The details in the office must have your personal attention, sort of sad that you haven’t allowed the business to run on its own.
  3. Your managers are afraid to stick their necks out. Oh, they probably tried it a few times, only to find that you “had” to jump in and overrule their decisions, even on nuisance issues. They won’t make that mistake again. Sometimes failure is a great teacher.
  4. You can’t go anywhere without being hunted down by the office. This can be contagious, just teach them that instead of dealing with issues or figuring out a solution, they should just call you. You can handle it better and faster than they can.
  5. You can’t identify your replacement in the business. No one could possibly fill your shoes. You haven’t hired people better than you, it’s sort of intimidating. It’s a really safe feeling that you won’t be replaced because you are the only one who can do xxxxx and xxxx (fill in the blanks).

 The CEO’s job is to hire, train and empower the top managers that can run the business on a day to day basis. If the business is “running you” you aren’t a very good CEO. The ideal CEO or top executive is one that is working on tomorrow, not unnecessarily managing details today.

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Categories: Best Practices, Management

Note to The Firms Liability Carrier – I Know We Did it Right(?)

By on September 1, 2010

Nothing keeps the managing partner up at night more than a professional liability claim by a disgruntled client. It’s never a win-win situation, even when you prevail, you lose. It can also be quite costly.

Some assertions of professional liability arise out of claims of conflicts of interest or the lack of ethical walls.

New associates and staff arrive every day, lateral partners bring in excellent books of business … the business of law can be very rewarding. There are times however, that firms may need rock solid proof that conflict searches were not only properly run but that the data available at the time of the search did not show any reason to decline or ask for a waiver.

 Here are some Best Practices for “Proof of Searches:”

  1. All conflict searches must be run through the firms best sources of information, at a minimum the time and billing and practice management systems.
  2. The results of all searches should be a “snapshot, point in time” type record and saved in the conflict system. No user should have the ability to modify the snapshot.
  3. The system must be capable of re-printing the exact details of all snapshots searches.
  4. The search reports should provide a time/date stamp of the search, the search operator, the requesting attorney, the search words with all Boolean search terms, and results from the database itself showing all the “hits” or no “hits.”
  5. The database should store all reviewing and approving attorneys or other staff along with all comments.
  6. The system should allow for a re-run of the exact same search(s) previously used based on newer database content to then determine at what point in time the potential conflict surfaced.

Law firms are required to use best practices and reasonable efforts to identify and deal with potential conflicts. One thing is certain, Best Practices might be much better off than “reasonable efforts.”




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Categories: Best Practices, Practice Management, Technology

The Future of Law Firms – 2 Interesting Studies

By on July 7, 2010

Within the last few days, two very interesting studies were released regarding the future of law firms. I came across the first study while reading Rees Morrison’s blog, Law Department Management. Rees has been involved with corporate legal departments for as long as I can remember. I enjoy his postings since they provide “the other side” of the market I usually deal with, private law firms. His blog provided comments on Eversheds “Law firm of the 21st century:, The clients’ revolution” . Eversheds is one of the largest law firms in the world. It is UK based with 4,500 employees and 47 international offices. The report focuses on the post-recession legal sector in 2010, including feedback from a survey of 130 General Counsel and 80 law firm partners. What’s unique is that 75 percent of the law firm partners believe the balance of power has shifted to clients, in-house GC’s are gaining more visibility within their own businesses and partners are as disconnected as ever from the needs of the clients.

Here is an example of a disconnect:

“Over two-thirds of General Counsel are demanding lower fee rates from their external lawyers and 47 percent of partners recognize that this is their clients’ number one priority. Crucially, however, only 25 percent of partners are actually delivering reduced rates, despite knowing that it is what their clients want”.

 One encouraging note was that 48 percent of the partners were offering technology solutions to their clients in an attempt to improve services even during a down economy and under pressure to keep their costs under control. This response seems to be at direct odds with my posting Mid-size Firm Managing Partner’s – Poor View of Technology, which cites a Hildebrandt survey whereby a dozen managing partners were really only interested in keeping their infrastructure running smoothly. This just might be the difference between larger and mid-size law firms.

Overall, the surprising aspect of the Eversheds report is that a law firm would author and distribute it. One might expect a General Counsel group to provide this insight, not one of the largest firms in the world.  

The second look into the future of law firms comes from this month’s issue of Peer to Peer, ILTA’s quarterly publication. The feature story is “Law2020TM”, a comprehensive panorama from multiple points of view covering the firm-client relationship, the virtual law firm, the mobile attorney and how technology will make a substantial impact on the business of law over the next decade.  

Here is a link to the on-line “electronic magazine” version in case you didn’t get the hard copy.

So, what’s the bottom line? The only thing that guaranteed to change, is the rate of change. It will increase and firm leaders must be able to look beyond the current economic downturn and start immediately planning for the future. The glory days of 2007 may never return, the client is holding more control over the relationship and technology may help improve client satisfaction and improve law firm efficiency.


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Categories: Best Practices, Productivity, Technology, The Legal Market

Mid-size Firm Managing Partner’s – Poor View of Technology

By on July 7, 2010

I was a little shocked to see the Hildebrandt story on how a dozen managing partners felt about their technology investments. Their perspective was they just wanted to make sure the network was reliable and maintained at a reasonable cost.  We don’t know all the details of the discussions that took place with the partners but one thing is certain, “they are missing the boat.” One of two possibilities come to mind, either the partners just couldn’t articulate the benefits of the technology the firm actually uses beyond stable networks, or their firms really don’t use technology for much more than email, document storage and a few legal software applications.

Technology can be a game changer for a mid-size firm, here are some examples:

  • Business Development – without a good contact management system (other than just Outlook) it’s just not possible to manage relationships and track the effectiveness of marketing campaigns.
  • Business Process Improvement (BPI) – business processes used by firms may not have changed very much in the last 10-20 years. Most of these processes are manual, paper based systems, for example, new client/matter intake, requesting a check, requesting a vacation day etc. These are just ripe for cost reductions and improvements in service.
  • Attorney Dashboards – at a glance, how am I doing compared to the requirements? Am I missing time for a certain day, do I have excessive client un-billed costs aging over 60 days, is my billing realization dropping below 95 percent? Attorneys need on-demand access to hard-hitting performance related information, gone are the days of sending out reporting packages (aka, paper).
  • Green Billing – stop sending your corporate clients paper bills, they don’t want paper. Green billing allows your firm to send clients a digitized bill, ready to be immediately imported into their in-house system for processing and approval. Happier clients and faster payment cycles is a win-win for both parties.  

Of course, the list could go on and on, the overall message is that when the managing partner can say that technology is being used by the firm as a strategic advantage in the marketplace his firm will be in a much better position to compete and quite possibly more profitable.

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Categories: Best Practices, Productivity, Technology, The Legal Market
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