A blog by Joel Barolsky of Barolsky Advisors

Posts Tagged ‘planning’

, , , ,

The Big 4 in law – failing again?

In Articles, Commentary on 4 September 2021 at 12:13 pm

The full text of my opinion piece first published in the Australian Financial Review on 3 September 2021.

In 2018, PwC announced that it aimed to be a top 20 law firm in the world within five years. KPMG and EY also stated their intentions to significantly grow their legal teams.

While these ambitions of global domination are noteworthy, the progress of the big four in law has been underwhelming.

On one tangible measure of progress – the number of Australian-based partners – the evidence suggests PwC Legal has gone backwards, KPMG Legal has stalled, EY Law is growing, and Deloitte is still making up their minds.

If one added all the big four law firm partners and made one firm, this new player wouldn’t even make the top 15 in the latest Australian Financial Review Law Partnership Survey.

On other metrics, like lead roles in major M&A transactions, they’re hardly making a splash. They’ve made no attempt to enter the litigation space and recent headlines have been more about departures than new hires.

While the big four have made some inroads in managed service and volume legal solutions, this is mostly impacting in-house legal teams rather taking a lot of work from established law firms.

There are five major reasons why the big four might be struggling in law.

#1 The one-stop-shop

The essence of the big four value proposition is a one-stop-shop: buy all your business advisory services from us and there will be lower transaction costs, more integrated advice and a better client experience.

The problem is many sophisticated clients just don’t buy it. They regard the one-shop as risky and lazy.

These buyers prefer horses for courses and back themselves to pick out tried and tested specialists. They recognise the benefits of cognitive diversity and are wary of groupthink. They feel it’s easier to hold a specific firm accountable for their advice when it’s more discrete.

#2 Brand limitations

In another related market – management consulting – high-end strategy advice firms like McKinsey, BCG and Bain still have the lion’s share of the best work. On the supply side, top MBA graduates generally prefer jobs in these places than the big four.

I think there are similar limitations when it comes to premium legal work. When clients have a bet-the-farm legal matter, the big four are not naturally considered as part of the tier 1 set (tax excepted).

For smaller matters and operational work, the big four are not naturally in the tier 2 consideration set, as they mostly price themselves above it.

#3 Conflicts

The big four are just that. Four! This has inevitably put limits on their penetration of the legal market.

It is estimated that the ASX50 is served by more than 300 law firms, barristers, freelancers and other legal consultants.

One of the key reasons for this fragmentation is conflicts. Most legal clients are particularly sensitive to the same advisers being involved, directly or peripherally, on both sides of a transaction or a dispute.

The threshold test of perceived conflict in legal matters is also much higher than, say, helping competing companies implement an enterprise software system.

#4 Leadership

Tony O’Malley at PwC and Stuart Fuller at KPMG led the way in growing their firms’ legal practices in Australia.

Interestingly, both these leaders were promoted to senior global roles about two years ago.

While it’s hard to quantify the impact of such changes, it seems that some of the drive and energy of the local practice has been lost with these promotions.

#5 The club

For the big four to make serious inroads into legal, quickly, they would have needed to poach some heavy hitters from heavy-hitting firms. Assuming they can match incomes, they would be asking these lawyers to leave their club.

This is how a typical lawyer rainmaker might weigh up a move.

“The new club is a lot, lot bigger and I will have even fewer decision rights. The new club will pander less to my specific needs, given it already has dozens of heavy hitters. The new club will ask me to fit into their service style and product ‘packaging’.

“The new club will be run by bean counters. Nah! I’d rather stay.”

, , , , ,

Is your practice in the right shape?

In Uncategorized on 14 August 2021 at 12:10 pm

The full text of my opinion piece first published in the Australian Financial Review on 12 August 2021.

The start of a new financial year often coincides with law firm partners updating their budget and doing a strategy health check.

Targets are usually set around revenue, margins and headcount, as well as qualitative indicators such as client service and staff engagement.

This is great, but there is one critical thing missing.

Practice shape is one of the most important drivers of success but seldom gets a mention. By shape, I mean the number, type and roles of practitioners at different levels within a practice team.

David Maister, in his seminal work, Managing the Professional Services Firm, stated, “many factors play a role in bringing goals [of client service, staff satisfaction and financial success] into harmony, but one has a pre-eminent position: the ratio of junior, middle-level, and senior staff.”

Getting it wrong

Poor practice design can be a handbrake on practice performance.

Being too ‘top heavy’ can result in mid-level lawyers leaving to join other firms with better promotion prospects. It could also lead to deep discounting so as to match competitors with more appropriate leverage.

A ‘bottom-heavy’ practice runs the risk of producing lower quality work and creating burnout and stress for those left to carry the load. (Bottom-heavy is also a good description of me after 18 months of intermittent Covid-19 lockdowns 😀).

A ‘missing middle’ often leads to practice stagnation and major financial opportunity costs. Interestingly, many premium firms are facing this issue right now partly as a result of reduced graduate intake in the mid-2010s.

Bad design can also contribute to systemic under-delegation. Partners who hog all the work make their practice far less competitive over time, not to mention sapping the morale of their people.

Succession is also a whole lot easier when the next generation is there trained, ready and waiting.

AFR August 2021

New shapes

The world has changed since David Maister first published his book in 1993. New technologies, providers, channels and delivery platforms have created new design opportunities beyond the traditional pyramid.

With the rocket model, the left and right corners of the pyramid are cut out and most low-level process work is done using a combination of legal technology, paralegals and law @ scale outsource providers. Rocket practice teams generally have fewer entry-level lawyer positions and more legal operations roles.

The hub and spoke model has a partner at the centre of a network that brings in a range of different resources and modular solutions to solve a specific client problem. These resources may include full-time lawyers in their firm as well as advisors from other professional service firms, the bar, data analysts, client resources and third-party software platforms.

The agency shape splits a practice into specialist groups focused on what they’re best at. A great example of this is the award-winning ad agency, Thinkerbell.

Thinkerbell has two groups: Thinkers and Tinkers. To quote their website, Thinkers are “a cross between strategy-types and suity-types, they ask a lot of questions and listen very carefully for the answers. They’re problem-solvers.”

It says Tinkers are “creativey-types and producery-types who pull things apart and put them back together again. They hit things with hammers and fiddle with knobs and buttons. They experiment, and play and build.”

Revisit your design

So, returning to annual budgets and strategic plans, practice leaders need to ask themselves a few critical questions about their current practice shape:

  • does it help or hinder career advancement and learning opportunities?
  • does it fit with the mix and complexity of the work?
  • does it optimise the business model i.e. how the team makes money?
  • what should the shape look like in three years, and in seven years?
  • what alternatives could be considered?

The agency model might not be a realistic alternative at this time, but it’s essential that leaders keep thinking and tinking when it comes to practice shape.

, , , , , , , , , ,

Will new partners need to keep grinding away?

In Articles, Commentary on 13 July 2020 at 6:18 pm

Full text of my opinion piece first published in the Australian Financial Review on 9 July 2020.

Most practice teams in the larger law firms have been set up with partners as the “finders” and “minders” and associates as “grinders”.

A decade’s worth of time records analysed by Thomson Reuters Peer Monitor shows that associates have around 10 more billable hours per month on average than partners in the same firm.

However, in April and May 2020 – the first full months of the COVID-19 lockdown and remote working – this long-term trend reversed and partners recorded more billable hours than associates.

There are two questions worth asking. Why are partners producing more now? Can all the new partners in the Financial Review Law Partnership Survey expect a permanent change in their role? In other words, will they have to be finders, minders and grinders?

AFR July

Why now?

Many law firm clients went into crisis mode with the onset of the coronavirus. Deals needed to be completed quickly. Funding needed to be secured urgently. Disputes on unfulfilled contracts needed rapid resolution. Almost daily changes to government regulation needed interpretation and action.

To deal with these pressing and complex issues many clients indicated a strong preference to get more direct access to partners. This meant fewer opportunities for delegation to associates.

Cost-conscious clients also had less tolerance for juniors being allowed to learn on these matters. As one general counsel put it to me: “I was happy to see one maybe two people [from the law firm] on [Microsoft] Teams, but not a football team.”

Another factor that has led to the increase in partner hours at some firms is partners holding on to more work due to fear of a broader market slowdown so they can hit their personal billing targets.

During the GFC, many large firms cut partner numbers through a combination of de-equitisation, early retirements, dismissals and reduced promotions.

While many firms now prefer measuring the contribution of a team rather than an individual, having a healthy personal practice can strengthen a partner’s case for retention if things get tough. In recent weeks, it appears that some partners and associates have been getting a little tired of working from home.

After the rush of adrenalin in dealing with the crisis and keeping connected during March and April, there’s now slightly less enthusiasm for the weekly video drinks – and growing frustration with the clunkiness of a distributed workforce.

Supervision, training and delegation is hard enough when everyone is co-located and physically present in a purpose-designed city office. It’s that much harder when associates are working from a kitchen table in a shared rental apartment with variable NBN speeds.

As time moves on, some partners might resort to the easier – though strategically flawed – option of doing most of the work themselves.

Will there be a permanent change?

No, and yes.

Leverage of non-partner fee-earners is at the heart of the law firm business model. The economics of having lots of associates doing lots of production will not change in the years ahead. Effective and efficient delivery of larger transactions, projects and disputes will still require teams of lawyers, paralegals and legal technologists at different levels.

Over time, firms that don’t tailor their approach for each project will lose out to those that do.

When demand returns, the issues around less delegation should ease. Intransigent hoarders will get caught out and move on – or be moved on.

As technology and workflows improve over time, the clunkiness of the remote workforce should diminish and become less of a handbrake.

One change that will hopefully stick is that of the law firm partner as the client’s primary strategic risk advisor. The coronavirus crisis has revealed the relevance of experienced lawyers in assisting clients on things that matter. This period should hopefully build their confidence as strategic advisors from a legal perspective and not just narrow technical legal specialists.

The discussion above suggests that perhaps the finder minder grinder characterisation is a little out of date.

A better description of the role of partner is that of a strategic advisor and leader – a thought leader, a team leader, a client account leader, a project leader and a sales leader.

The winners will be those firms that recruit and develop outstanding legal leaders and not just see their associates as high-billable grinders.

, , , , , , , , ,

Does your law firm really need a barista?

In Articles, Commentary on 11 June 2020 at 2:14 pm

Full text of my opinion piece first published in the Australian Financial Review on 4 June 2020.

For the past three months, many law firms have been in crisis management mode.

The focus has been on ensuring staff safety, staying close to clients, sustaining productivity and shoring up financial reserves. The mindset has been mainly about conservation and survival.

It’s time now time to look up and to look ahead – to work out what’s needed to succeed in the next normal.

Here are four things to think about in creating your future.

Screen Shot 2020-06-05 at 8.49.43 am copy

#1 Organise for a hybrid workforce

Most law firms will seek to capitalise on the success of remote working and will adopt a model in which people work two or three days a week in the office and the balance at home. While this offers benefits in terms of staff flexibility, reduced commute times and lower occupancy costs, the rhythms of office life will be very different from life before coronavirus.

Firms will need to help their staff create boundaries and new work habits. This includes setting clear ‘office hours’; finding new ways to socialise that replace the serendipitous corridor bump; ensuring consistent supervision of graduates and clerks; and providing regular and balanced performance feedback.

#2 Speed up decision-making and execution

During the ten days from March 16-26, most law firms discovered that if push comes to shove, they can execute big decisions very quickly.

My advice: keep going!

The short-term public health crisis helped concentrate decision-making power. And it appears that in the main those vested with that power acted promptly and professionally.

Firms should build on this experience and streamline decision-making processes for times when things are back to normal. It could mean less consultation on trivial matters, fewer meetings, better communication and greater respect and appreciation for leadership roles.

Most law firms are designed as network organisations with self-managed practice teams as nodes and a small central bureaucracy. In theory, this should make them agile and responsive, but the reality is often quite different. Firms should harness their structural strength to move earlier and faster.

#3 Plan and budget with less inertia

The coronavirus crisis has given firms the opportunity to assess the merits of every revenue and expense item.  Recent McKinsey analysis shows most organisations only reallocate 2 to 3 per cent of their budgets year to year. But those that do more—in the order of 8 to 10 per cent—create more value.

While starting each year’s budget with a blank sheet might be overkill, reviewing each item on a two- or three-year rotating cycle should ensure smarter allocation of resources.

Revenue targets might set with an honest assessment of market potential and how your team stacks up against key competitors. Expense items can be set with a clear-headed view on value creation.

#4 Personalise the client experience with scale

The client experience pre-coronavirus included numerous face-to-face meetings; document preparation shared via email; and multi-touch file handling.

The evidence from the past few months is that productive client meetings can still be held without a barista on call; documents can be prepared collaboratively in real-time and remotely; and that most aspects of file management can be automated.

In designing the firm of the future, think about creating a client experience that is personalised, streamlined and scalable.

This is the time to start imagining your firm as it should be. If you stay in conserve mode too long, you will land up being two or three steps behind those that are determined to create their own future.

, , , , , ,

A post-corona legal world: more kindness, less paper

In Articles, Commentary on 4 April 2020 at 4:45 pm

Full text of opinion piece first published in the Australian Financial Review on 2 April 2020.

At some point later this year or early next we will move into a post-Corona world. What might that world look like from a law firm perspective? On my reckoning, it will involve deeper relationships, less paper and more flexibility.

Deeper relationships

There is much research that shows that people that go through acute stress together come out at the other end with stronger relationships. War is one of the greatest stresses anyone could ever encounter yet it also often leads to deep human friendships and incredible acts of heroism and sacrifice.

As Stanford’s Emma Seppala states, “Understanding our shared vulnerability — that life makes no promises — may be frightening, but it can inspire kindness, connection, and desire to stand together and support each other.”

To illustrate this point, I heard a story this week of a law firm partner checking in every day with every person in her team via Zoom. These check-ins covered some work matters but mostly were about sharing the fears, loss, grief and the black humour of the pandemic and the remote working experience. She said she encouraged her team members not to avoid interruptions from partners, kids and pets during the video calls.

The partner indicated her surprise as to how deeply personal the conversations had become, and how much closer she felt with her team members. Seeing her team members at home interacting with loved ones added a whole new level of understanding and appreciation of them as individuals.

She imagines a post-corona world with much deeper social connections – with staff and clients. Going through a crisis together can help engender trust and understanding, the foundations of all solid business-to-business relationships.

Screen Shot 2020-04-04 at 4.33.21 pm

Source: AFR

Less paper

Over the past decade, many law firms have invested in sophisticated and expensive document management systems to reduce paper, streamline processes and improve control. It is a common experience that firms don’t realise the full benefits of these systems because a small group of lawyers, often senior partners, refuse to change their habits and prefer to edit in hardcopy only and/or keep paper copies of everything.

The coronavirus has forced some law firm partners to change their rusted-on work habits in about one week. When the hardcopy file is inaccessible and no assistant is at their side, only then will the penny really drop that a change is required and the painful process of stepping outside comfort zones will commence.

In a post-corona world, there will be less paper and greater compliance with enterprise-wide systems that promise so much but often deliver less. Allied to this there is likely to more defined workflows, greater support for cloud-based applications and better use of deal platforms.

As legal project management expert Ron Friedman notes, “Litigation and investigations have long employed [and co-located] armies of contract lawyers to review documents for responsiveness and privilege… The technology exists for secure, remote document review. Though supervision and collaboration may be harder working remotely, it does tap a much broader labour pool [and meet social distancing rules].”

More flexibility

Pre-corona, flexible working arrangements were mostly the exception rather than the rule in law land. The past two weeks have reversed this statistic.

The generally positive experience of meeting via videoconference, accessing files remotely, collaborating online on shared documents and engaging staff and clients virtually has brought a new realisation: actually, we don’t need everyone at the office all the time. If people want the option to work flexibly it can be done without destroying productivity or team dynamics.

While I don’t foresee a shift post-corona to complete remote working or agile office set-ups (that is, an office with no allocated desks), I would expect firms to be far more comfortable with people seeking flexible work arrangements that include some regular time working from home or other locations outside of the office.

Remote working must be balanced with having a team congregate in one space to collaborate to solve complex client problems, to share knowledge and to socialise. There is still no technological substitute for face-to-face interactions and the serendipitous opportunities that come from overhearing conversations – and unexpected bumping into colleagues in corridors and kitchens.

In conclusion

In conclusion, the post-corona legal world will be different. While there’s a lot to fret about, there are also some important positives to reflect and focus on.

, , , , , , , , , , , ,

Five ways to improve your firm’s balance sheet

In Articles, Commentary, Legal Technology on 8 February 2020 at 4:19 pm

Full text of my opinion piece first published in the Australian Financial Review on 7 February 2020.

Law firm partners focus a lot their profit and loss statements but tend to glance over the asset section of their balance sheets.

This is a missed opportunity.

There are three main reasons assets are largely ignored. Firstly, in ‘zero-in zero-out’ partnerships with 100% dividend payout ratios tracking long-term asset value is relatively less important. Secondly, in some firms, the accountants lump all intangibles into a vague and unhelpful construct called ‘goodwill’. And thirdly, balance sheets tend to list boring things like plant and equipment.

AFR 7 Feb 20 Balance Sheet

Original AFR article

From a strategic management perspective, there is a significant benefit in framing goals around making the firm more valuable. This means identifying all the assets, both tangible and intangible, that the firm uses to create and sustain value.

A more detailed balance sheet can also be useful when it comes to partner performance management. Growth in asset value should be the heart of what’s expected of partners, especially in regard to their non-financial contribution.

Tangible assets are easy to quantify. The intangibles less so.

Here are five important intangible assets in your firm that are worth measuring, protecting and leveraging.

#1 Relationship capital

Relationship or social capital refers to the strength and stickiness of existing client relationships and, where relevant, referrer and community connections.

While there are no simple measures of relationship capital, good proxies include total client lifetime value, client commitment indices, net promoter scores, client loyalty rates, average service mix per client, share of wallet of platinum and gold clients, social network strength and percentage of sole-sourced work.

#2 Human capital

Human capital refers to the quality, performance and commitment of all partners and staff. Management reports often include data on salaries, recruitment, training and turnover, but these don’t get to the heart of tracking human capital growth or depletion. Additional measures might include:

  • Toe-to-toe analysis comparing the quality of key practitioners in the firm versus direct competitors
  • Loyalty and career intention indicators
  • Succession and talent development pipelines by practice area
  • Diversity and inclusion metrics
  • Glassdoor, Seek and social media ratings
  • Employee net promoter scores
  • Leadership capacity and capability
  • Culture maps, highlighting hot spots or blind spots
  • Real-time measures around staff morale, firm climate, employee experience and discretionary effort.

#3 Brand capital

This refers to the strength of the firm’s brand and reputation in key target markets. Traditional measures include brand awareness, consideration, preference, use, board room impact, recommendation and social media following. An ability to attract star recruits is also an indicator of its brand capital.

One benefit of a strong brand is the ability to command a price premium. By way of example, in 2019, Apple’s brand premium enabled it to capture 66% of smartphone industry profits, 32% of overall market revenue while only selling 13% of total handset units.

Proxy measures around the firm’s pricing clout impact might include the percentage of bids won where the firm was priced higher than competitors, depth of discounting and percentage of matters with supernormal margins.

#4 Data capital

Most firms are sitting on mounds of valuable data with most of it stored on disconnected databases collecting digital dust. The main data islands include:

  • client data such as matters delivered, interactions, service feedback, event participation, agreed pricing and billing,
  • staff data such demographics, salaries, tenure, engagement, training, feedback and performance records,
  • operational data such as time records, matters processed, productivity and utilisation, and
  • financial data such as revenue, margins and expenses.

Joining these data sets and applying some smart predictive analytics will allow firms to make much better decisions. For example, the analysis could point to using a specific team with a particular process to do a specific type of matter for a certain client category using a defined pricing model. Each of these choices might mean a 2% improvement, but accumulatively you’re looking at +10% gain without working any harder.

#5 Intellectual capital

The last category is for important bits of firm know-how that don’t neatly fall into one of the other four areas. This might include the proprietary legal products, algorithms, websites, domain names, precedents, templates, applications, patents and trademarks.

Growth in intellectual capital could be assessed by things such as the firm’s investment in research and development and its innovation portfolio. Quantifying the revenue from new products and services can indicate success or otherwise in this asset class.

A call to action…

Take a quick glance over your firm’s strategy papers and board reports over the past 12 months. Is there a way to elevate your firm’s strategic thinking by delving into the intangibles that will sustain your long-term success? I bet there is.

If you enjoy my articles, please consider donating to my team participating in the 100km 2020 Oxfam Trailwalker. Learn more here

, , , , , , ,

Legal technology products: A new trick for old dogs

In Articles, Commentary, Legal Technology on 29 November 2019 at 1:46 pm

Full text of my op-ed first published in the Australian Financial Review on 28 November 2019

According to The Economist, advice on strategy accounts for only 10 per cent of revenues for McKinsey and its peers, Bain & Co and Boston Consulting Group. The balance comes from sources including designing and developing technology products for their clients.

So if meat-and-potato strategy advice has become a side dish for the major consulting firms, will legal advice become a niche product for premium law firms?

I don’t think so, but some are seriously asking the question.

Screen Shot 2019-11-29 at 1.33.18 pm

AFR article print edition

Tier 1 law firm Allens currently has nine legal products in its a+ solutions portfolio. One of these, SmartCompile, pulls together publicly available company information for due diligence reports. The firm is also working on new risk assessment apps, a FIRB notification app and a contract workflow solution.

A quick review of other premium law firm offerings suggests the ripple of new legal products will turn into a wave in the years ahead.

With that in mind, I posit that law firms have to learn five new tricks to make their legal product strategy a success.

New measures

Current law firm KPIs (key performance indicators) such as utilisation, leverage and realised rates are irrelevant in a world of legal products. New indicators should cover factors such as product life-cycle cost, annual recurring revenue, channel profitability and subscription retention rates.

The time frame around KPI targets also needs a rethink. The rules of thumb around time to break even and profit cycles are vastly different for technology-based products. It took Amazon 10 years before it started to generate any cash profit, never mind recover its investment costs.

The challenge ahead is for firms to redesign their KPI dashboard to include service and product measures, but also balance short-term and long-term strategic objectives.

New channels

Most traditional commercial legal practices rely on two primary channels to market: direct selling to clients and referrals from intermediaries.

There are far more options when it comes to getting products to market: app platforms, a dedicated sales force, accredited resellers or agents, other technology vendors or via competitors.

Other channel-related choices include compensation payments, sales incentives, spotter fees, territory allocation and channel exclusivity.

New roles

Hall & Wilcox’s client solutions director Peter Campbell is tasked with providing technical support to the firm’s partners and clients as they develop and implement new products.

Other new roles like product manager, channel strategist and deployment specialist will start to emerge in law firms.

Existing positions will also be reshaped. Partners and senior associates will need to be trained to identify product opportunities and drive sales efforts. Marketing will need to hone their online retailing skills. IT will have to embrace working with both internal and external clients.

Interestingly, Allens has set up cross-functional “squads” to help develop new legal product concepts, test them and bring them to market – quickly.

New pricing

Technology-enabled products are usually priced via a licensing or subscription model. It can fluctuate based on the number of users or volume of transactions.

Setting the right price level will be tricky as there is often no clear frame of reference or way to compare prices for these products. In some cases, firms will be making the market or creating the category. Go too high, and there will be limited trial and take-up. Go too low, and the product will never be valued highly (or be profitable).

New norms

Many traditional law firms will need to adopt new norms in selling products.

Practitioners need to resist the buzz that comes from creating something new from scratch each time. The big egos need to get used to the idea of clients buying branded products, not them. Partners need to get comfortable with product-push campaigns rather than waiting for clients to call with a specific need.

In some ways, the most significant barrier for new legal product success is the firm itself.

If it does not adjust its business model, there will be little opportunity for these products to mature and flourish. Long-term, this will mean these old dogs won’t learn any of these five new tricks.

, , , , , , , ,

Law firm partnerships could give BHP a productivity lesson

In Articles, Commentary on 7 September 2019 at 10:03 am

Full text of my opinion piece first published in the Australian Financial Review on 6 September 2019.

CEO Andrew Mackenzie and the top 200 global executives at BHP Billiton do not dig for iron ore, or cart coal, or drill for oil. They are 100 per cent dedicated to the task of leading and managing their company.

In contrast, almost all of the top 200 global partners in Herbert Smith Freehills (HSF) are involved in legal service production in some way. This includes advising clients, supervising the legal work done by juniors and pursuing new opportunities.

A BHP vs HSF comparison points to one of the key differences between law firm partnerships and corporations; almost all senior people in law firms have a producer-manager-leader (PML) role.

As producers they win and deliver legal work; as managers they organise and control people, processes, resources and facilities; and as leaders they help set direction, align constituencies, innovate and inspire others to perform at a higher level.

There is strong evidence that most law firm partners bias production over their management and leadership roles. The reasons for this are both structural and personal.

Proof of legal excellence and client followership are the most common ways people get promoted. Production-related outcomes are the things that are celebrated and rewarded – acquiring new clients, winning high profile cases, beating budgets, winning awards and ranking higher in directories.

Screen Shot 2019-09-07 at 9.51.46 am

Entitled Millenials

Ask partners what they enjoy the most in the job, the most common response is helping clients solve really important complex problems. The thing they enjoy least is dealing with entitled millennials.

As the business of legal becomes more complex and competitive, so does the importance of effective leadership and management.

As firms grow there are more cats to herd.

As legal technology evolves there are bigger strategic bets to place.

As client expectations and sophistication rises, so firms have to deliver more for less and still make a buck.

As younger lawyers leave the profession in droves, firms have to do much better at engaging top talent.

One obvious solution to deal with this production-bias is to employ full-time specialised managers and leaders and let the lawyers just do law.

This thinking is seriously flawed.

Rather than blindly follow what corporations do, law firms should wholeheartedly embrace the PML model and just work harder at addressing the problems listed above.

Empowered self-managed teams

PML results in law firms being run as a network of highly empowered self-managed teams. There’s no middle management pushing papers and inventing new reports. There’s no CBD head office tower filled with bureaucrats. There’s no intricate incentive system to extract more discretionary effort from senior executives.

In the main, premium law firms are highly profitable perpetual engines of productivity. As an organisational form, traditional partnerships create wealth, share wealth and reduce risk very effectively.

Boris Groysberg of the Harvard Business School mentioned during his recent Australian tour that many large corporations are in fact trying to move towards the PML model. They see the obvious benefits of reducing overheads, fostering empowerment and having executives much closer to customers.

The key lesson is for law firms to reframe their whole talent system around the PML model. This means hiring more rounded legal graduates. It means providing non-legal training, especially in people skills, at all career stages. It means fast-tracking those with obvious leadership potential to senior roles more quickly. It means adding new elements to the symbols and measures of success.

It also means support for incumbent partners to better manage the trade-offs and tensions across their current portfolio of responsibilities.

The frequently cited claim that the partnership model is an anachronism is misguided. Having an empowered organisation with almost everyone on the tools in some way would make BHP’s Andrew Mackenzie think he’s discovered another Pilbara.

, , , , , , , , , , ,

Five lessons from successful lawyers

In Articles, Commentary on 8 July 2019 at 9:14 pm

The full text of my opinion piece first published in the Australian Financial Review on 5 July 2019.

There are five stories worth retelling in comparing the 2019 AFR Partnership Survey to the one reported 10 years ago in July 2009.

IMG_6410

Original AFR article

#1 Resilience

Over the past decade, numerous commentators have predicted the end of BigLaw. Headlines such as, ‘Large law firms are about to have their Kodak moment’, ‘BigLaw is dead. Long live NewLaw’, and ‘Law is ripe for consolidation and disruption’ has attracted readers’ attention, but it is safe to say that these predictions have simply not yet come true.

Analysis of 2009 vs the 2019 Top 30 lists shows:

  • Average firm size is quite similar and there has been very little consolidation. In fact, the largest firm in the land by partner numbers was 297 in 2009 (Minters) compared to 266 in 2019 (HWL Ebsworth).
  • The business models of the Top 30 firms are by and large very similar to those from 10 years prior. They still operate within traditional professional partnerships, they make money through leverage of people, and they price directly or indirectly based on time.
  • While there are a number of global brands in the 2019 list, the Australian-based partnerships of these firms are still broadly the same set of people, putting aside obvious partner promotions and retirements. The vast majority of Australian legal work is still done by Australians in Australia.
  • For all the hype about the Big 4, PwC Legal does not make even it to the Top 30 list in 2019, and the other three are way behind.

#2 The shadow

In July 2009, DLA Phillips Fox had 164 partners and 434 fee-earners. It was the 7th largest firm in the land, the first trans-Tasman integrated partnership (excluding Perth) and a market leader in insurance, government and transport.

Ten years later the AFR Survey shows that DLA Australia has only 70 partners.

UK-based DLP Piper may be very happy with the slimmed-down version that their Australian branch office has become, but it seems amazing to me that nearly 100 of those original Phillips Fox partners who put up their hands to vote ‘yes’ for the DLA tie-up, left the firm they owned within a relatively short time period. Why did so many get it so wrong?

#3 Spot-changers

Much is said about law firms’ and lawyers’ resistance to change but it is worth highlighting the success that two firms are having in changing their gender profile. The 2009 AFR survey revealed that 16.3% of Allens’ partners were female. Ten years later this percentage is 33.1%. Over the same time period, Maddocks has shifted its female partners from 16.9% to 36.6%. Interestingly, the pioneer in this area, Gilbert + Tobin, has seen its proportion stay roughly the same: 36.2% in 2009 versus 35.7% in 2019.

The numbers do not reveal the specific strategies to become more inclusive, but they do show that a real commitment to a goal can make some leopards become less leopard’ish.

#4 The trainers

The firms listed in 2019 AFR survey hired 1,222 graduates over the past financial year. Most of these firms will spend the next three or four years of training these graduates to become independent legal advisers. Back-of-the-envelope calculations indicate that this is around 1.5 million hours of training at a rough cost of $90 million.

Assuming one-third leave the profession, the market cost of this attrition is $30 million. Assuming 20% go into in-house roles, the law firms are providing an $18 million training cross-subsidy to their clients (now how’s that for a value-add!). Assuming firms are expanding their training programs to include digital literacy and related topics, these costs are only going to escalate.

All this data points to the cost of not getting significantly better at talent management.

#5 New and old friends

The 2009 AFR listing included IP specialist firms Davies Collison Cave and Griffith Hack. Both of those firms are now part of ASX-listed entities and playing a very different game.

The 2019 AFR survey includes points to two emerging strategic groups:

  • The multi-disciplinaries or MDPs – firms that include significant consulting and adjacent (to legal) offerings. The standout members are the Big 4 legal arms plus Minter Ellison. Others that have a foot or toe in this pond include Corrs, Clayton Utz, Herbert Smith Freehills and McCullough Robertson.
  • The global boutiques – firms that are focused on just one or two service line or sectors in Australia and tied to a mothership back in UK or USA. Obvious examples include Seyfarth Shaw, Clifford Chance, Allen & Overy, Clyde & Co, Squire Patton Boggs, Jones Day, White & Case and Quinn Emmanuel.

In conclusion

There are lots of other interesting case studies behind the AFR surveys. They provide a rich history of our legal market and we should be very grateful to the participating firms and the AFR that the data is there to be shared and stories to be told.

, , , , , , , , ,

When Google Comes to Legal

In Articles, Commentary on 10 June 2019 at 10:02 am

Full text of op-ed that first appeared in The Australian Financial Review on Friday 7 July 2019.

The ‘legal supply chain’ can tell us a lot about the future for lawyers – and how much technology will disrupt the industry.

Will they become middlemen for technology providers?

Will the race to provide operations software yield a winner with extraordinary leverage over the legal sector?

IMG_2134

Original AFR article

Traditional law firms have been at the core of the supply chain for well over 150 years. In-house legal has a phenomenon of the past 30 years. Law companies – those providing legal process specialists, managed services and contract lawyering – have become a force over the past five to seven years.

Legal technology providers are the newest kids on the block, but the growth has been remarkable. Stanford Law School’s TechIndex points to 1,051 legal tech startups across the globe since 2016, all wanting to be part of the supply chain.

There are six broad entities that are involved in the delivery of commercial legal services in the modern era; the law and legal system; legal technology, algorithm and data providers; law firms and law companies; in-house legal; client organisations; and end-consumers.

Not all legal services involve all six entities, many don’t follow the chain sequentially and some services start and end at different stages. However, its still a useful conceptual framework for those who don’t’ have a crystal ball.

Many lawyers will become value-added resellers

Fast forward five years and legal technology will have matured to the point that it will become integral to legal advice and delivery. Many commercial lawyers will become value-added resellers of sophisticated technology developed by third party vendors.

To illustrate, Contract Probe software allows users to do a comprehensive review of draft NDA, service, supply, consultancy, IP license or employment contracts within 60 seconds for a fixed fee of $100 or less. Created by former Allens TMT partner, Michael Pattison, Contract Probe generates an overall quality score out of 10, highlights key omissions and errors, and makes suggestions for improvement. Contract Probe uses a machine learning approach which means it gets better each time it is used.

In this world, there will be fewer junior lawyers doing the grunt process work but a greater demand for the ‘human’ elements in the client-lawyer exchange, i.e. empathy, problem-solving, creativity and judgement. Competing as a reseller will require lawyers to have a profound understanding of how the technology works, and how it doesn’t. They will also need to get a lot better at pricing their service to capture value beyond charging for their time. Resellers will live or die based on the depth of their client relationships and their ability to be true trusted advisors.

Powerful platform providers will emerge

PwC and KPMG both recently announced collaborations with Australian providers of legal operations software for in-house legal teams. This SaaS technology provides a single scalable low-cost solution for in-house lawyers to transact with external counsel, manage internal workflows, prepare and store documents, service internal clients, communicate value to the C-suite and stay in control of their budget. While this software has been around for a while, attaching it to the world’s most powerful B2B brands with deep change management expertise is a gamechanger.

Fast-forward ten years and one of the Big 4, or another provider like Elevate or Xakia, will have won the battle to be the dominant platform for in-house legal teams. They will have unrivalled data around law firm performance, pricing, client satisfaction, in-house productivity and a myriad of other benchmarks. They will own the screen of every in-house lawyer giving them extraordinary influence and leverage along the entire legal supply chain.

In this future scenario, the Big 4 winner will become the intermediary that premium law firms, law companies and technology vendors have to deal with. They won’t compete as clones of traditional firms but rather as Google of the legal world.

A single platform will most likely lower transaction costs and improve choice, quality and responsiveness for client organisations. It won’t displace or disrupt incumbent law firms, but it will most likely reduce their relative bargaining power.

It is worth noting that data security and legal conflict concerns are major obstacles in the way of a single legal operations platform developing. Notwithstanding these issues, the momentum for change in the ‘more for less’ era is significant.

%d bloggers like this: