The image above is the core of the post of internet phenom, Rajesh Setty, in his post today at Life Beyond Code: Optimists and Pessimists – The big difference is..

Couple that with the wisdom of lawyer and legal profession provocateur, Patrick Lamb, in his post today: Silver Lining in Black Economic Cloud? in which Pat says among other things:

If you don’t see the opportunity to restructure relationships in ways that produce savings for your clients while at the same time strengthening your relationship with that client, you need to open your eyes.

Punchline:  My asking Managing Partners to treat the deterioration of the economy seriously is in perfect harmony with seeing the situation as a competitive opportunity.  My view of Dynamic Resilience as an alternative to a traditional strategic plan is just that – exploiting the opportunity to be stronger than competitors in challenging times.  (Remember the hiking joke when one hiker says to the other “I don’t have to run faster than the bear; I only have to run faster than you”).

I invite you again to push the button.

 

 

Managing Partners, you may have a disaster plan for fire, perhaps for terrorism – do you have one for the economic train coming off the tracks?

Listen (and watch) what Greenspan said yesterday Sept 14th (50 seconds)

Punchline:  You are getting fair warning – are you acting on it?  This is not a time for traditional strategic planning – it is time for scenario planning that will create “dynamic resilience” that may become the life support system your firm will need should the economy worsen.

It’s time, as Nike would say, to “Just Do It”.

Push the button. (click it) then let’s talk about this privately.

 

 

 

Many of my law firm clients tell me that one of their biggest "people" problems is that some people just don’t work well with others – why?  because they don’t always get along.

Enter a brilliant post by Marelisa Fabrega (lawyer/blogger/woman-extraordinaire) called 30 Tips for Getting Along With Others

You might want to get Marelisa’s permission to print her post and use it for an internal workshop or two.

Oh, and if you have time, check out some of her previous posts like:

How to Make Decisions

20 Ways to Raise Your IQ

Her blog is:  Abundance Blog – Marelisa Online

Am I a fan? YES – and you will be too!

Twitter Users:  Twitter Marelisa at  http://twitter.com/Marelisa

and me at:  http://twitter.com/Riskin

 

 

Americans!!  You are the only ones who can participate in your upcoming election so on behalf of foreigners like me, (in my case, a proud Canadian living in Anguilla, British West Indies) PLEASE get involved and please vote.  The higher the turnout, the more those of us who are not Americans can respect your outcome.

To my regular readers, apologies for this digression from the management of law firms… but I was so tempted to express a political view and managed to suppress it in favour of simply encouraging participation.  There… it’s off my chest!  Thank you for permitting this indulgence.

For a word on civility in this context, have a look at the post of one of my heroes, American, Tom Peters: Civil! Civil! Civil!

Britain is facing “arguably the worst” economic downturn in 60 years which will be “more profound and long-lasting” than people had expected, Alistair Darling, the chancellor, tells the Guardian today in a story called: Economy at 60-year low, says Darling. And it will get worse

Wall Street returns from vacation season to enter what is historically the most perilous period of the year amid conflicting signals about the US economic outlook according to Breitbart in a story called: Wall Street enters month of peril with outlook clouded

In the face of these stories, I am disappointed to report that this is the most common management style I am observing among law firm leaders globally:

If this resembles you, give me a call or email me and we can discuss this off the meter.  Managing Partners and members of their immediate senior teams only please.  (You might be even more inclined to call if this does not resemble you.)

Reference my post one year ago: Doom and Gloom for the legal profession – it’s coming

and Weather the Storm Article Available from Canadian Bar Association’s The National

 

RainToday.com created a special report  from 12 experts in pricing  professional services, including, I am honoured to say, yours truly.  You can download my article:

"Think of Services in Terms of Value – Not Rates" by Gerry Riskin (author: The Successful Lawyer)

or download the entire 39 page report including all 12 articles by visiting RainToday.com here.

Here is what RainToday.com has to say about its publication:

We’ve read a lot of advice about fee structure, and there are a lot of people who claim to know it all. But when you boil it all down — what’s really important? What do you need to know?  What is the one piece of advice you need to get the fees you deserve?
The expert authors and advice includes:

1.  Convince the Buyer that Value-Based Fees are Best by Alan Weiss, Author, “Million Dollar Consulting”

2.  Price with Confidence! Follow These 10 Steps to Stop Leaving Money on the Table
– Mark Burton, Co-Founder and Vice President of Holden Advisors and Co-Author, “Pricing With Confidence: 10 Ways to Stop Leaving Money on the Table”

3.  A Magic Bullet? No, a Process
– Bruce W. Marcus, Marketing and Strategic Planning Consultant and Editor, The Marcus Letter on Professional Services Marketing

4.    The Best Kept Secret of the Selling World
– Jeff Thull, President and CEO, Prime Resource Group and Author, “Mastering the Complex Sale, The Prime Solution”

5,  If You Don’t Discuss Value, Expect to Discuss Hours
– Ronald J. Baker, Founder, VeraSage Institute and Author, “The Firm of the Future: A Guide for Accountants, Lawyers, and Other Professional Services”

6.  Take Courage: Demand Full Price (And seven steps to get you there)
– John Doehring, Senior Vice President, ZweigWhite
 
7.  Creating Value During the Sales Process
– Tom Snyder, Former CEO, Huthwaite

8.  Build the Relationship One Day at a Time
– Ron Worth, CEO, Society for Marketing Professional Services and Author, “A/E/C Marketing Fundamentals”

9.  Think of Services in Terms of Value – Not Rates
– Gerry Riskin, Co-Founder, Edge International

10.  Discounting Doesn’t Work
– Jeanne Urich, Managing Director, Service Performance Insight
 
11.  Over-Serve Your Best Clients
– Neil Fauerbach, Partner and Director of Business Development and Marketing, Smith & Gesteland, LLP and President, Association for Accounting Marketing

12.  Maximize the Value of Work to Your Clients and Your Firm
– Andrew Sobel, Founder, Andrew Sobel Advisors and Author, “Clients for Life” and “Making Rain”

Law Professor William D. Henderson (click on photo for bio)

Managing Partners and law firm H.R. Executives should contemplate the meaning of Indiana University School of Law’s Prof. Bill Henderson’s post: "How the ‘Cravath System’ Created the Bi-Modal Distribution."

Professor Henderson builds on the work of NALP (The National Association for Law Placement®, founded in 1971) who published this graph in 2007 referencing 2006 salaries their article called "A Picture Worth 1,000 Words":
 

Note how meaningless the Median is in helping any form set associate salaries.

Professor Henderson asks, among other things: "Are We Selling Results or Résumés?" which is the title of one of his papers in this area.  Here is a related excerpt:

"The Results or Résumés paper draws upon two pieces of market data to demonstrate that a large proportion of large corporate law firms have to re-evaluate their business models:  (1) stunning uniformity of associate entry level salaries amidst large, growing disparities in profits per partner; and (2) evidence that firms are becoming stratified by premium versus non-premium practice areas."

Professor Henderson also draws our attention to the unbelievable burden taken on by firms that are not the most profitable by showing a comparison between associate salaries and per partner profits as you move up the profitability curve:


Professor Henderson then explores the lateral partner mobility within the Am Law 2000 and in his words "teases out a relative hierarchy of practice areas"  According to Professor Henderson, the table below, which covers the 2000 to 2005 time period, orders legal specialty by differential profits per equity partner (PPP) between the firm a partner left and the firm he or she joined.

I strongly recommend that you read Professor Henderson’s entire post but I think the best is yet to come as evidenced by the final paragraph in his post:

"Fortunately, the Results or Résumés paper lays out a solution for any law firm willing to try something new.  The psychological barriers, however, are much larger than the logistical or financial.  I will blog on this topic in a subsequent post."

Thank you also to my friend Bruce MacEwen of Adam Smith, Esq. for his excellent post on this topic: THE BI-MODAL STARTING SALARY DISTRIBUTION and the ABA post: ‘Cravath Model’ that Created Have and Have-Not Law Grads Could Implode

PUNCHLINE:  The legal profession resists change for good reasons and bad.  As always, it won’t be the legal profession initiating the change – our clients will do that for us.  The fundamental question is whether your firm will be among those to first respond to these issues and from that gain well-deserved competitive advantage.  Stay tuned.

Stephanie West Allen breaks a story that we will look back on in ten years as groundbreaking.  Have a look (click on the image for Stephanie’s post):

PUNCHLINE:  I can relate having lived in a virtual world for many years.  Lawyers in most firms seem to resist the virtual world in favour of the comfort of bricks and mortar and "proximity" – working with someone on the next floor seems easy enough but in another city?  Many still have trouble with that one.  Perhaps the virtual law firm model is decades away from being mainstream but large multi-office firms should take some lessons from this model now.

What is your initial reaction to the title of this blog post?  I thought it was daft… until I read the complete post by Susan Cramm on June 25, 2008 on her Harvard Business Blog: Having IT Your Way.

Here is an excerpt from her blog post:

Over the past decade, IT organizations have worked hard to improve services and in turn increase IT’s impact on the business. But in the quest to deliver great service, IT actually may have been disabling rather than enabling the enterprise.

How? In two ways. First, continual hand-holding leads to a loss of precious time that could be devoted to more important activities. Second, helping others who can help themselves circumvents learning. It lets them off the hook and alleviates their sense of responsibility. And ultimately it slows down progress as communication is constantly being run through an intermediary. In delegation lingo, this is called taking on someone else’s monkey.

PUNCHLINE:   Based on my observations in the firms I serve around the world, I would say that too many lawyers pride themselves on their IT incompetencies believing that it makes them somehow charming and brilliant.  I say they might as well be sneaking into the firm at night and taking cash out of the safe.  The costs associated with that attitude include:

  • poorer client service by failing to capitalize on the efficiencies technology offers
  • competitive disadvantage (clients do not find incompetency charming ever)
  • wasted IT personnel time
  • distracting and therefore delaying or discouraging the latest IT initiatives
  • <I’ll bet the IT folks out there can add lots to this list>

Allow me to transpose one of Susan’s comments for Managing Partners and CIO’s in the legal profession:

Pleasing partners shouldn’t be IT’s ultimate goal (or that of the Managing Partner). Rather, the ultimate goal of the Managing Partner and the CIO is to ensure the success of the firm. Help IT serve you and the firm by making sure that IT isn’t doing anything for individuals that they can, and should, do for themselves.


http://www.vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=1056137&server=www.vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=1&color=00ADEF&fullscreen=1Tom Peters on the Definition of Leadership from Tom Peters on Vimeo.

Whether you are Firm Chair, Managing Parter, Practice Group Leader, Industry Group Leader or Client Team Leader, I believe 3 minutes and 53 seconds will prove a useful catalyst for your thought.