Partners are the financial engine of your law firm. They generally land the biggest clients, manage high-stakes files, and consistently hit their billable targets. To the rest of the firm, they can appear invincible. But behind closed doors, many of them are quietly burning out. Lawyers are trained to project confidence and stoicism. Because of [...]
When law firm partners think about operational strategy, they usually focus on external threats. They worry about competing firms stealing their clients, technological disruption eroding their billable hours, or a sudden dip in the local economy. But there can also be internal threats to the firm: Associate churn, Partner under-productivity, a lack of operational efficiency. [...]
As part of the strategic planning side of my consultancy, I find that many of my clients identify a gap between the need for succession planning, and the willingness of their more senior lawyers to embrace and plan for succession. I can easily convince law firms of the value of these plans. The hard part [...]
Gary Klein can tell law firms a lot about working under pressure and uncertainty. He is a research psychologist and pioneer of the field of naturalistic decision making, as well as author of (among others) the book “Seeing What Others Don’t”. People pay attention to this guy: his work is used by the US armed [...]
Typically, lawyers work from 40 – 80 hours per week. If they are able to bill out 2/3rds of that time, they are lucky (or organized). But it could be better. The difference between billed work and the rest of that time is often wasted or at least under-utilized time. That’s because most lawyers don’t [...]
As a gardener, I love this time of year. In my part of the world, the May long-weekend is the traditional time to prepare the soil and plant all of the vegetables and flowers that I’ve been growing from seed, or bought as little plants six weeks ago. They’ve been safely tucked away in my [...]
I’ve received several requests to outline a good pathway to Partnership. (I’m referring here to Equity Partner). A pathway is critical because there are a lot of lawyers (and owners) set to retire in the coming ten years. Properly preparing for Partnership and being prepared to run what is often a multi million-dollar business was [...]
I’ve written about this in the past but it merits repeating. As you critique your past year and prepare to make plans for the year coming, consider one of the best ways to improve your efficiency and promote productivity in the firm. Professional legal managers (office manager or COO, Accounting Manager, Marketing Manger, HR Manager, [...]
Recruiters make a lot of money helping to place Associates in law firms. It’s a great service, but their motivation places emphasis on movement in the marketplace rather than stability. And movement follows because most Associates don’t really know what they’re looking for and how to assess if firms have those things. And most law [...]
(On October 21st, I’ll be presenting a session on how to use the pandemic as a catalyst for positive change in law firms, through CLEBC. Find information on that session here: https://store.cle.bc.ca/productdetails.aspx?title=Using-COVID-19-and-other-Challenges-to-Progress-Your-Firm&cid=1821 . In this blog post, I’ll highlight one element of that presentation). When he first took office, Obama suggested that the only time [...]