The instability, disruption and resulting anxiety in the legal profession at times feels like a roller coaster: ups and downs, twists and turns, peaks and valleys, fast and slow, feelings of risk, exposure and vulnerability and a lack of control over our destiny. We are more or less along for the ride, which admittedly is…
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A month ago, at a conference on change management, a managing partner of an AmLaw 200 firm asked a question that likely weighs on the minds of most AmLaw 200 managing partners, some of the AmLaw 100 firms and many of those below the top 200. His question was: We hear all the time that…
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In an effort to offer existing and new clients fuller capabilities and solutions, many law firms have developed wholly-owned subsidiaries often comprised of experts in an industry or service specialty who are not lawyers. As we reviewed in our last post, Law Firm MDPs and New Delivery Models Part 1 – A Primer, clients today…
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In our post Who Do Law Firms Compete with and Why? we described the fierce competition that law firms face today, noting that much of that competition is increasingly coming from non-law firm legal services providers, consulting firms and the Big 4, which have some of the largest law firms in the world outside the…
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The law firm model likely will change in the coming years as described in our article The Shape of Things to Come – Tradition Gives Way to a New Model! These changes may result in the hiring of fewer traditional lawyers out of law school and the advancement of fewer associates to partnership, the hiring…
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Law firms are facing stiff competition when it comes to holding onto their clients, much less gaining market share. Given the flat growth in available legal work, law firms have been having to “steal” work from other firms to gain share. BTI Consulting’s Market Outlook and Client Service Review 2017 reports that while legal spending…
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Leadership is not a title or a position. The best leaders have developed competencies that enable them to drive their firms forward, think conceptually and strategically and effectively build and rely on teams and networks. According to the 2016 Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends report, eighty-nine percent of companies see leadership as an important or…
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Our two prior blog posts examined a number of trends, challenges and changes that will affect legal service businesses of the future. “Legal service business” is used here intentionally to suggest that many legal services of the future will more frequently be provided by non-traditional law firms (many of which won’t even be called or…
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In Part 1 of 3: The Next Normal – Will the Traditional Law Firm Model Survive?, we suggested that the traditional firm model will not survive in the future (or perhaps even the present for many.) The law firm or legal service organization of the future will employ numerous types of people who have various skills,…
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“Value” is one of the most commonly used buzzwords of the first part of this century. Everyone is talking about it, promoting it, writing about it, offering it, demanding it, trying to measure it and bragging about it. First, let’s start with the Merriam-Webster definition of value: 1: a fair return or equivalent in goods,…
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The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines col•lab•o•ra•tion [kuh-lab-uh-rey-shuh n] as: (1) the state of having shared interests or efforts (as in social or business matters;) (2) the work and activity of a number of persons who individually contribute toward the efficiency of the whole. In today’s business environment, technology tools and platforms facilitate effective collaboration. So there…
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Last week, our post entitled Culture Part 1: Does Law Firm Culture Play a Role in Success or Failure? discussed the components that comprise organizational culture. Every law firm has a unique set of interwoven values and characteristics that make up its culture. As firms address the substantial disruptions posed by the economy, technology and supply and…
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