This post continues an ongoing series deriving from discussions by a group of leaders of small and medium-sized firms at a Managing Partners Forum recently sponsored by Edge International. This group of MPs report that daily they confront a bewildering – often seemingly crazy — variety of issues and frustrations they did not anticipate when… Continue Reading
Category Archives: Law firm practices
Subscribe to Law firm practices RSS FeedLoneliness at the Top: Managing Partners’ Scary Balancing Act
Posted in Law firm practicesIn our last post, we described the almost overwhelming variety of issues reported by firm leaders attending an Edge International-sponsored Managing Partners’ Forum, and we promised a more granular look at several of the challenges that really keep them up at night. In this installment: How do I balance my management responsibilities and the demands… Continue Reading
Up Close and Personal – Perspectives from a Managing Partners’ Forum
Posted in Law firm practicesEdge International recently co-sponsored and facilitated a Managing Partners’ Forum in Savannah for medium-sized firms in the Southeastern region, and I came away from the discussions both with some eye-opening impressions and a renewed sense of respect for how hard law firm leaders’ jobs are these days. My partners and I were there not to… Continue Reading
The Death of Lifetime Partnership?
Posted in Law firm practicesIn a recent article entitled “Layoffs Threaten Law-Firm Partners,” The Wall Street Journal broke the startling news — irony intended — that “as firms grapple with continued lackluster demand for legal services, some are handing out pink slips” to unproductive partners. The article quoted one unnamed partner as saying, “you’re only as secure as the… Continue Reading
Battling the New Inefficiency Disease: Digital Distraction
Posted in Law firm practicesToday’s increasing drive for more efficiency in the delivery of legal services tends to focus on proactive tactics and technologies to achieve faster communication, faster results, and complete elimination of time that doesn’t add value. Ironically, however, today’s technological advances are creating an escalating and little-acknowledged source of inefficiency. How? By creating constant and unavoidable distraction… Continue Reading
What Law Firms Can Learn from Hotels: Perspectives on Service
Posted in Law firm practicesWhat do impeccable client service and pornography have in common? As Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart put it nearly 50 years ago (in Jacobellis v. Ohio), “I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it.” I saw it this week in Chicago, in the form of my extraordinarily pleasant stay at the… Continue Reading
Legal Project Management: Going for Broke and Turning Up the Heat
Posted in General Counsel, Law firm practices, Law Firm Profits, Legal Project Management, Legal Spend, Outside CounselHeretofore, the burgeoning worldwide Legal Project Management (LPM) trend has shown what you see when the buyer turns up the heat. It’s safe to say that if more and more clients were not demanding legal services that are on time, on budget, efficiently managed and predictably rendered, we’d still be back in the “good old… Continue Reading
Well, Isn’t That Predictable? Using Legal Project Management To Improve Client Satisfaction
Posted in General Counsel, Law firm practices, Legal Project Management, Legal Project Management tools, Legal SpendWhether you are planning to climb Mt. McKinley or to provide well-managed legal services to a key client, assaying the possible and probable changes to your plan is key to success. Recent headlines in Alaska told a tragic story about four climbers on Mt. McKinley, the highest peak in North America. Because the weather had… Continue Reading
“Grubby Money” – Lawyers’ Reluctance to Talk About Fees
Posted in Law firm practices, Law Firm Profits, Legal Project Management, Legal Spend, Outside CounselIt’s no secret – and no surprise – that in today’s competitive and cost-constrained legal landscape the Almighty Dollar has taken center stage: clients are increasingly fixated on tightened budgets and efficient service delivery. It’s also clear that discussing the dollars is something a lot of lawyers prefer to avoid. We recently led a Legal… Continue Reading
Why Lawyers are Lousy Collaborators
Posted in Law firm practices, Legal Project ManagementGuest Post by Douglas Richardson Partner, Edge International In an evolving legal profession in which the players are ever more functionally interdependent, the ability to collaborate has become a core competency. In managing law firms and legal departments…managing legal projects…in client service and client relations…and in marketing and business development, the ability to play well… Continue Reading
A Case Study at the Cutting Edge: Legal Project Management in Australia
Posted in General Counsel, Law firm practices, Legal Project Management, Legal Project Management tools, Legal Spend, New Normal, Outside CounselThe legal profession, sad to say, rewards its denizens with relatively few breakout moments, a dearth of challenges that allow its movers and shakers to break new ground. All the talk about law’s “New Normal” notwithstanding, the legal landscape is a pretty conventional place, populated by more “first followers” than “first movers.” That’s why it… Continue Reading
A New Frame of Reference: Reflections on the Legal Industry from the Amazon River
Posted in Law firm practices, New Normal, Outside CounselIt’s strange to find myself ruminating on the changes in the legal profession as I travel on the Amazon River in Brazil, 20 miles upriver from the city of Manaus. What could the global legal marketplace possibly have in common with one of the world’s largest and most complex watersheds? A couple of similarities swim… Continue Reading
THE LOW DELTA FIRM: Demise of the Low Ball?
Posted in General Counsel, Law firm practices, Law Firm Profits, Legal Project Management, Legal Spend, Outside CounselIf you are racing to stay competitive in today’s rapidly-changing legal marketplace, you probably have learned some new words and acronyms. Convergence programs. Alternative fee arrangements – or AFAs. RFPs, those increasingly draconian client requests for proposals. LPM, that is, legal project management. LPOs, those legal process outsourcing enterprises. The Key Selection Criterion All of… Continue Reading
You Can’t Make Lawyers into Techies: 3 Lessons About Legal Project Management
Posted in Law firm practices, Legal Project Management, Legal Project Management toolsAs a result of a conversation I had this week with David Rueff, a partner at Baker Donelson and an ardent advocate of Legal Project Management (LPM), right now I am particularly mindful of the adage, “never try to teach a rhino to dance. The results are generally unsatisfactory and it annoys the rhino.” Mind… Continue Reading
Extreme Magical Thinking: Technology Won’t Take You Off the Hook
Posted in Law firm practices, Legal Project Management, Legal Project Management toolsOn the eve of LegalTech, I have been encountering a lot of magical thinking recently when talking with law firm partners about Legal Project Management. One partner, hoping that the IT and KM folks can simply buy a tech solution so that he could avoid making any real changes to the way he manages matters,… Continue Reading
A General Counsel’s Take On Legal Project Management & Foreseeability
Posted in Alternative Fee Arrangements, General Counsel, Law firm practices, Legal Project Management, Legal Project Management tools, Legal Spend, Outside CounselGuest Post by Russ Dempsey, Vice President and Chief Legal Officer United Retirement Plan Consultants Pam Woldow’s recent blog post, Putting Some Pepper Into Legal Project Management, called to mind my own recent successful use of Legal Project Management (LPM) to manage the risks and foreseeability issues in an engagement with one of our… Continue Reading
Are You Prepared to Kick Butt?
Posted in General Counsel, Law firm practices, Legal Spend, New Normal, Outside CounselThis song goes out to all you General Counsel and senior in-house lawyers, and its title is “Sometimes You Folks Get Hosed and Don’t Do Nothin’ About It.” I could just as easily have directed the song to those law firm lawyers who sometimes are a little, ah, “casual” about the finer points of scoping… Continue Reading
Putting Some Pepper Into Legal Project Management?
Posted in Law firm practices, Legal Project Management, Legal Spend, Outside CounselIt is not uncommon for law firms being pressed by clients for more accurate budgeting and better budget management to raise the “unpredictability defense.” Whether in litigation or transactional matters, the unpredictability defense asserts that it is nearly impossible to precisely plan and completely control legal spend because legal matters are subject to such a… Continue Reading
Dialing for Pizza: Practical Perspectives on Scoping Legal Projects
Posted in General Counsel, Law firm practices, Legal Project Management, Outside CounselLegal Project Management (LPM) assigns extraordinary importance to providing legal services that deliver value as perceived by the client. Yet over and again we observe that while in-house counsel tend to view legal matters in terms of broad business issues and the pressures of “commerciality,” law firm lawyers tend to focus on identifying narrow legal… Continue Reading
Mallesons is Making Efficiency a Law Firm Issue.
Posted in Law firm practices, Legal Spend, Outside CounselTo paraphrase Mark Twain, everyone complains about the weather, but few are doing anything about it. A notable exception is premier Australian firm Mallesons. The firm not only has responded to the client-driven need for enhanced value and efficiency in legal service delivery, but has recognized that lawyers’ time is much better spent doing things that… Continue Reading
10 Key Questions That Law Firms Should Ask Clients
Posted in General Counsel, Law firm practices, Outside Counsel1. Are there any formal methods that you use to measure the quality of legal services? 2. If yes, what are those methods (and metrics) and are you willing to share those with us so that we can strive to continually improve our service to you? 3. If no, can we set up some metrics… Continue Reading
More Eureka Moments in Legal Project Management
Posted in General Counsel, Law firm practices, Legal Project Management, Legal Project Management tools, Midsize firms, Outside CounselWelcome to the new site for At the Intersection. We are settling in to our new address and relationship with Lexblog, and are delighted to commence the kickoff with a GUEST POST. Proving that great minds and great firms think alike, I’m pleased to share a guest post contributed by Sheri Palomaki, Director of Practice… Continue Reading
Call Me INDISPENSABLE
Posted in Law firm practices, Legal Project Management, Legal Project Management tools(Part 5 of 5, LPM in Transactional Practices) This is the last in our series of posts about conversations with Lex, who heads a large New York law firm’s transactional practice and is an avid supporter of using Legal Project Management (LPM) to plan, manage and assure consistent quality in the deals he leads. An… Continue Reading
The Random Lunatic — Always an Unhappy Surprise
Posted in Law firm practices, Legal Project Management(Part 4 of 5, LPM in Transactional Practices) EUREKA! Ever had that experience when someone coins a phrase that perfectly describes something you could never find the word to describe? It happened recently during a fascinating conversation with “Lex,” head of a large law firm’s transactional corporate practice and an advocate for applying Legal Project… Continue Reading
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