Happy New Year! While most reports from Q4 indicate that 2019 was a robust year for law firms, others are cautioning that we are still due for a slowdown in 2020. Now is the time to hone your growth strategies, safely secure your clients and your own talent, and proactively manage into the future. We…
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In our prior post, Smart Growth Part 6: Organic Growth of Talent, we discussed the need for growing your talent organically as well as through lateral hiring of associates and partners. Today, when leaders and consultants talk about organic growth, they often are referring to the revenue side of organic growth. In a highly competitive environment…
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Our last three posts have addressed different aspects of innovation that are occuring in the legal profession: Innovation Part 1: What It Is and What It Isn’t, Innovation Part 2: Insights from Expertsand Innovation Part 3: ALSPs Are Expanding and Aren’t Alternative Anymore. Inherent in all of this client-driven change and digital transformation is the…
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Most law firms have implemented a practice group structure. Even those firms that retain the traditional, larger umbrella department structure (for example, corporate/transactional, litigation/disputes, regulatory,) most break down the management of the practice into smaller strategic business units that are used to: Organize lawyers and manage talent with specific skills and specialties Develop, execute and monitor…
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Making meaningful and sustainable change will require collaboration and strong leadership. As discussed in Change Management Part 1, effectuating change in law firms is more difficult than other professions and industries and managing partners cite the reluctance or refusal of the vast majority of their partners to change. Given the dynamic shifts occurring in the…
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This post follows two prior posts and addresses the third pillar of succession management. Like many aspects of law firm management, the subject of succession planning often is limited to internal firm or management discussions and consideration. This is a mistake. Clients know and worry that senior partners may be nearing retirement, and absent any…
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Much of the Baby Boomer/retirement/succession dilemma revolves around money: the firm’s revenues, senior partner’s contribution to and control of client revenue, partner compensation and incentives to transition and other financial aspects of retiring partners.As noted in our recent post: Succession Management: The Problem and a RoadMap, we know that according to Altman Weil, 73% of…
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In our recent blog post Succession Planning: The Problem and a RoadMap, we concluded with a RoadMap for how to establish a framework for an approach to succession planning. This post provides additional detail about five components that comprise the pillars of succession management. Pillar 1 ComponentsDone correctly, as described in our post The Succession…
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Eight adults per minute turn sixty-five and by 2020, 20% of the workforce will be 65 or older. In law firms, the problem is exacerbated as senior rainmakers aged 60 or older often control 50% or more of the client base and key relationships, and often serve in key leadership positions. According to studies conducted…
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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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[Note: This post is co-authored by RainMaking Oasis and Jonathan Hollenberg of HawkPartners, a marketing strategy and research firm for Fortune 500 companies.] As discussed in our first post Customer Experience (CX) Part 1 – Is It Different than Customer Service, customer satisfaction often focuses on narrow and discrete touch points that clients are exposed…
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[Note: This article is being published with the permission of our client, Morgan Lewis & Bockius.] Two of our previous posts on collaboration, True Collaboration Drives Profitability and Collaboration: The Next Law Firm Frontier, discussed the benefits of collaborative cultures and approaches to client representation. But both articles also alluded to the reasons why collaboration…
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Two things are clear right now. First, dramatic changes have already occurred and will continue to occur in the legal profession (actually, most are affecting all sectors of the economy.) Second, these and other new changes will be permanent, i.e., this is not a pendulum swing that will swing back. The marketplace is driving these…
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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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