How to Enable Value with Clients: Part 2

04.15.20 | Susan Duncan

In our March 4th post, How to Enable Value With Clients: Part 1, we discussed the need for law firms to build and deliver more innovative and efficient service to clients. Part 1 addressed the first two components of innovative, value-enabled service delivery: knowledge management and process/project management. In this article we will address data…

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How to Enable Value with Clients: Part 1

03.04.20 | Susan Duncan

Firms continue to make efforts to better understand and deliver more efficient and effective services by utilizing systems, people and technology. However, many partners in firms still resist change and are not aware of or comfortable with the many ways that their firms can and should be aggressively pursuing alternative and innovative processes to both…

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Innovation Case Study 4: Morgan Lewis & Bockius

08.21.19 | Susan Duncan

Our prior three law firm case studies have featured a 75-lawyer firm in Chicago, a 550-lawyer US firm and a 1,100-lawyer firm all based in the United States except for 13 full-time lawyers in China. This case study is about global law firm Morgan Lewis, with more than 2,000 lawyers across 17 offices in the…

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Innovation Case Study 3: Perkins Coie

08.07.19 | Susan Duncan

In our two prior posts,  Innovation Case Study 1 and Innovation Case Study 2, we described two different law firm approaches to innovation.  This third case study describes the efforts at Perkins Coie with a focus on those being led or shepherded by Toby Brown, the firm’s Chief Practice Management Officer.  Toby has been in the…

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Innovation Case Study 2: Davis Wright and Tremaine – Fostering Service Delivery

07.26.19 | Susan Duncan

At the recent P3 Conference (P3 stands for Pricing, Project Management and Process Improvement,) Sam Davenport, Business Innovation and Finance Director, DWT/De Novo, DWT and Brian Fanning, Director of Practice Economics at Davis Wright & Tremaine, shared their approaches to how they support and expand a culture of innovation at the 550-lawyer firm that has…

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Innovation Case Study 1: Levenfeld Pearlstein

07.10.19 | Susan Duncan

Levenfeld Pearlstein is a 75-lawyer firm in Chicago. Its innovative CEO, Angie Hickey, recently shared her insights at the P3 Conference about how the firm has adopted a corporate style Customer Experience culture that sets it apart.  Their client focus permeates everything the firm does both internally and externally. The firm was founded in 1999…

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Innovation in Law Firm Operations: Takeaways from LMA’s P3 Conference

06.26.19 | Susan Duncan

Nearly four hundred professionals gathered for the 7th annual P3: Practice Innovation Conference focusing on project management, process improvement and pricing and hosted by the Legal Marketing Association.  It was an impressive group of experts and very instructive to see how law firms continue to expand their commitment to legal operations and innovation in their…

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Skills Gap Part 2: How Some Law Schools and Others are Filling the Void

05.29.19 | Susan Duncan

Our last blog post, Skills Gap Part 1: What Skills Will Lawyers Need to Stay Relevant? described the expanded set of competencies necessary for lawyers in law firms and legal departments today.  The types of skills needed and the level of competency in each will vary according to a firm’s practice mix, its strategic positioning…

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The Skills Gap Part 1: What Competencies will Lawyers Need to Stay Relevant in the Future?

05.15.19 | Susan Duncan

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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Innovation Part 3: ALSPs Are Expanding and Aren’t “Alternative” Any More

04.17.19 | Susan Duncan

[Editorial Note: We apologize for the error in our last post Innovation Part 2: Insights from the Experts. We mistakenly referred to Bill Deckelman as John. ] The most recent Alternative Legal Service Providers 2019 Report* was released in January. In the two years since the survey was conducted last, the ALSP market has grown…

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Innovation Part 2: Insights from Experts

04.03.19 | Susan Duncan

The 2019 Legalweek conference hosted presentations by many experts who represented various players in the legal ecosystem: law firms, in-house lawyers, technology companies, ALSPs and consultants.  In our prior post, Innovation Part 1: What It Is and What It Isn’t, we provided the framework for how to think about innovation in law. In this post,…

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Innovation Part 1: What it Is and What it Isn’t

03.20.19 | Susan Duncan

With so much buzz about the need for innovation in the legal profession, it can be overwhelming and also very misleading. Many misconstrue that innovation in law firms is all about technology.  It isn’t.  Some of the most fundamental innovation that is occurring has to do with how work is done, why, by whom and…

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Practice Groups Part 2: Practice Group Leader as Strategist

11.28.18 | Susan Duncan

It is surprising how many law firms, their leaders and partners eschew the discipline of planning and strategy. Many firms still don’t require annual plans or even the process of planning from their partners, or practice groups and many don’t even have a strategic plan for the firm. A survey conducted by Patrick McKenna and David…

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Law Firm MDPs and New Delivery Models Part 1 – A Primer

10.04.17 | Susan Duncan

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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Feedback + Communication = Employee Engagement

06.21.17 | Susan Duncan

Our last article The Millennial Generation in Law Firms – How to Attract and Retain Gen Ys focused on several aspects of the workplace that appeal to millennials and must be present in order for your firm to avoid the common turnover so prevalent in this generation. According to a Clutch HR survey, 40% of…

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