My good friend Arnie Herz (Lawyer and Consultant) was kind enough to interview me for his blog:

the legal sanity mentor: gerry riskin

Google is amazing…  Wolfram Alpha transcends it.  Try it out !

WATCH THIS DEMO - 13 minutes that will change your life.

(Thanks to my son Daniel Riskin, PhD for making me aware of this.)

 

Source:  ABA Journal Post referencing BTI PDF from which above image was extracted.

"In a press release, Michael Rynowecer, president of BTI Consulting, calls the findings “a big ray of sunshine in what has been a very stormy environment.” He cautions, however, that some law firms won’t benefit from the increase in spending."

From the Sacramento Business Journal today:

Law firm confidence index drops to record low

Excerpt:

Confidence in the economy among managing partners at large law firms nationwide hit new lows in the first quarter, according to the latest research from the Citi Private Bank Law Firm Group in New York City.

I recommend three priorities to Managing Partners:

1. Bulletproof existing clients (complacency is deadly in light of the predator-like behaviour you can expect from your competitors as their revenues diminish)
2. Concentrate Business Development training and strategic assistance on your best rainmakers (Train the rest later - for now, you need results)
3. Coach all partners on how to deal with fee resistance (Your partners will be divided and conquered unless you give them the tools and confidence to effectively deal with the inevitable fee resistance that accompanies a recession.)

PUNCHLINE: There is so much more to do, but I have seen these three initiatives making an immediate palpable difference. NOW is when you need these benefits most.

Keynote Presentation in Chicago May 27, 28 at the Get a Life conference for lawyers.  

...also Strategic Planning Session to close the conference   

...details

I was honoured today to participate in Charon's 114th Lawcast which you can hear at the Charon QC blawg or download it from there in iTunes format:

Lawcast 114: Gerry Riskin, founder of Edge International - Law practice in these recessionary times

Access all of Charon's lawcasts by clicking on Charon's Lawcast website logo below

Charon QC is intelligent, articulate and highly entertaining.  Don't miss any of his offerings!

Succeeding in Tough Times:

Bruce Marcus of The Marcus Letter offers us a fascinating lesson in transposition in his new article called "HOW TO ELECT A PRESIDENT -- OR GET A CLIENT".  Bruce’s tag line is the name of this post.

Here’s a quote from Bruce Marcus as he shines his light on learnings from the campaign of President Barak Obama:

There are many lessons to be drawn by professional services marketers from a successful election campaign – perhaps none more cogent than from the Obama campaign. And while there are differences between an election and a professional services marketing campaign, it is the parallels that inform both.

PUNCHLINE:  Thank you Bruce Marcus for relating the successful campaign of the President Elect to attracting clients.  It's a stimulating and catalytic read!

Jan. 14 (Bloomberg) -- The week after Bernard Madoff was charged with running a $50 billion Ponzi scheme, Proskauer Rose, a New York firm of 750 lawyers, offered a telephone briefing on the scandal for its wealthy clients. With only a day’s notice, 1,300 Madoff investors dialed in.

“This is a financial 9/11 for our clients,” said Proskauer litigation partner Gregg Mashberg, one of the lawyers on the call. “People are dying for information.”

You may not have anything on the scale of 911 that you can help your clients with but the principle remains valid:

Is what you have to say to clients relevant, timely and valuable? 

If so, they will listen!

These extreme economic times are not the place for the long-term marketing-speak consulting-mumbo jumbo about branding and image.

Your clients (and prospective clients) need your help and they need it now.  How can your firm help your clients with:

strategies to deal with slow paying customers (even potentially bankrupt ones)

employment strategies that allow for layoffs (if necessary) without retribution

renegotiating contracts of all kinds - including leases.

international assistance especially where foreign currency value fluctuation could hurt your client

PUNCHLINE:  You don't need my list - you need to sit down with your practice group, industry group and/or client team and determine what your clients needs from you.  By the way, don't hesitate to involve your key clients in this discussion - they will enthusiastically participate (remember to tell them the meter is off if you still bill by the hour).

Note:  The Bloomberg quote and Madoff image above are from a story today called "Madoff Case Promises Fees for Firms Facing Worst Year in Decade" 

I was honoured to be included in the round table that culminated in the cover story of Law Pro

Click on the image to download the PDF.

I am in good company.  The roundtable included:

Karen MacKay

Merrilyn Astin Tarlton and

Ed Flitton

If you would like the entire magazine, download it here

               Ms. Juhi Garg

Edge International is delighted to announce the addition of Ms. Juhi Garg.   Juhi holds a Masters in Business Law from India's foremost law school, the National Law School of India in Bangalore and is also a graduate in media from Delhi University. With Juhi on our team, Edge International will offer our full traditional range of consulting services to Indian law firms. In addition, we will be focusing on assisting Indian law firms with their strategies to develop business in the western hemisphere and to assist western firms wishing to take advantage of the burgeoning Indian legal services market.

India is a legal services market that is attracting global attention, for good reason. It produces more law school graduates annually than any other country. Its impact with outsourced legal services in western markets has been significant and this is set to grow exponentially as western clients seek to cut legal costs in the face of the current economic recession. Also, upcoming legislation is expected to significantly relax restrictions on foreign firms and lawyers practicing in India. Several international firms have already entered into arrangements with Indian law firms in anticipation of this change.

 See Juhi's biography by clicking here.

PUNCHLINE:  If you are a firm based in Australia, New Zealand Canada the US or UK and are interested in exploring an arrangement with an Indian law firm and you would like counsel on the selection and vetting processes, please allow me, Juhi Garg or Robert Millard to explore helping you.

Patrick was kindly referring to my August 2007 post called Doom and Gloom in the Legal Profession - It's Coming which I promised to eat if wrong.  I am sorry I don't have to eat it for reasons you will see if you review it.

In any event, read Patrick Lamb's recent post A Brief Look Back.  A Sober Look Forward. for an interesting update from the perspective of a top business litigator (Patrick) who along with his brilliant colleagues at The Valorem Law Group is walking the talk about killing the billable hour.  

A special THANK YOU to Patrick Lamb for his most gracious comments.

Evan R. Chesler is a Presiding Partner at Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP.  He has offered his thoughts via Forbes in a piece called: Kill The Billable Hour.  There is no suggestion that he is articulating a new policy for the entire firm but he is clear on his own views and given that he is the presiding partner, his words may very well represent some strategic thinking within the firm.  

Here are some excerpts from Evan R. Chesler's views:

"I bill by the hour... This needs to be fixed. Yes, you read that correctly."

"Clients have long hated the billable hour, and I understand why."

"So what am I proposing? For reasonable periods of time during the life of a lawsuit, say three months at a time, I should... identify the client's objectives, measure, calculate, build in a contingency and come back with a price. Once the price has been agreed upon, the billable hour should be irrelevant.

PUNCHLINE:   Evan R. Chesler is not the first lawyer to understand this.  Visit the firm founded by awesome litigator Patrick Lamb and you'll see he and his partners have been living without the billable hour for some time at Valorem.  Are Evan Chesler and Patrick Lamb (and those few who think like them) right?  My money is on YES - the proof will be how sophisticated clients vote with their choice of counsel.

Patrick Lamb

Photograph of Evan Chesler by Fred Marcus Photography as it appeared in the referenced Forbes article.  Image of Patrick Lamb (with hammer and clock) from the Valorem firm's website.

Read the entire Evan Chesler story here: Kill The Billable Hour and visit Valorem here and Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP here.

Hat tip to Larry Bodine's ListServ for alerting me to the story.

Perhaps these troubled times will motivate more attempts to defraud law firms - Managing Partners, what have you done to strengthen security lately?

Client Reportedly Scams $1M from Philippine Law Firm

Pepe & Hazard has had the courage to decide to freeze its rates for existing clients for 2009 and to go public with that information. 

Managing Partner Al Turco

Managing Partner, Al Turco, said [Pepe & Hazard] is in the process of formulating a 2009 budget to manage its own revenues and expenses.  However you can see the firm’s concern for clients in this statement:

“Our will was to reach out to our clients first. We can manage our own adjustments later”

Firm co-founder Lou Pepe

Firm co-founder and construction law international superstar Lou Pepe demonstrates his sensitivity to the plight of the firm’s many prominent and long standing clients in confirming:

“It’s an economic crisis unlike any we’ve seen before…”

If you are not familiar with Pepe & Hazard, it has national and international prominence that it’s four office locations (including Hartford and Boston) may not make obvious.   In addition to its strength and fine reputation serving businesses and financial institutions, Pepe & Hazard has an unexpectedly broad construction practice mainly representing general contractors, construction managers, and EPC (Engineering Procurement Construction) contractors in a variety of power, infrastructure, heavy industrial, and commercial projects in places from New England to New Orleans, the Middle Atlantic to the Middle East, and Argentina to Australia.

PUNCHLINE:  In these unprecedented economic times, no Managing Partner has enough information to make the right decision.  Making a decision is risky because events can make your choices look bad in hindsight.  Going public with a fee decision is an extremely courageous move because it alerts competitors as well as clients.  Pepe & Hazard’s Managing Partner Al Turco is therefore an exemplar.  He and his firm are putting the interests of their clients ahead of their own and publicly committing to their bold initiative without undo regard to competitors.  There is no seminar for Managing Partners (even my own) that teaches this lesson better than seeing Al Turco “just do it”.