On Thursday April 19 at 1 PM Eastern, Jim Hassett will be offering a free webinar on “How to Develop New Business in an Uncertain Economy” with Ian Nelson, VP of Business Development and Marketing at the Practical Law Company. For details and a sign-up form, click here.
The second edition of my Legal Business Development Quick Reference Guide is being published today.
Like my Legal Project Management Quick Reference Guide, the book is designed for the needs of the busy attorney. A lawyer need not read it from start to finish but can open it nearly anywhere and find useful business development ideas that are relevant to his or her practice.
This new book will help you develop business more efficiently by focusing on the activities that are most likely to produce immediate and practical results for your practice, your personality and your schedule.
Part 1 of the book describes the “Top ten ways to increase results from your limited marketing time” including prioritize relentlessly, start with current clients, listen, and plan advances.
Part 2 is organized alphabetically to make it easy for you to find exactly the information you need, just when you need it. It includes tools and checklists for everything from the best ways to increase client satisfaction to a list of 67 questions to get a conversation going. It also summarizes marketing experts’ latest thinking on such key topics as alternative fees, defensive marketing, and social networking.
“This Quick Reference Guide is just what busy attorneys need – a well-organized, well-thought out roadmap to business development actions that are easy to implement. The content is organized to give information on demand, so that professionals can easily find tips and techniques when they need them,” says Despina Kartson, chief marketing officer of Latham & Watkins.
According to Mark T. Greene, chief business development officer of Waller Lansden: “Jim’s Guide is concise and clear, and every section is worth reading. Best of all, it serves as a great reference. When someone new to my team needs to learn about an aspect of legal business development, I point them to a section of Jim’s Guide.”
This second edition updates and combines material from two books which have been used by thousands of lawyers: the LegalBizDev Desk Reference and Legal Business Development: A Step by Step Guide.
The price is $79.95 plus shipping ($10 in the US, $30 outside the US), with volume discounts of up to 50 percent on orders of multiple copies. The book can be ordered now by email (sales@legalbizdev.com), by phone (800-498-7246), by fax (917-386-2733), or by mail (LegalBizDev, 225 Franklin Street, 26th floor, Boston, MA 02110). An excerpt from the book and an order form can be downloaded from our web page.
I have had a number of conversations lately with clients about how to price alternative fee arrangements while controlling risk, and with my brother Matt about his work as a mathematician addressing similar problems in other industries, including helping to set prices for mortgage backed securities and medicare supplement insurance. I recently convinced Matt to join LegalBizDev to help us develop new workshops and consulting programs in this area. Today’s post on pricing is the first of many we will write together.
This series of posts is a slightly extended version of an article that appeared in the July 2011 issue of Managing Partner magazine. To download a PDF of the published version of my article, click here.
Problems like the ones described last week could be reduced or eliminated by focusing on the eight key issues in legal project management described in my book, The Legal Project Management Quick Reference Guide:
It all starts with clearly defining the scope of the work at the outset – what is included in the budget and what is not. Planning and managing the budget is important as the project proceeds, as is negotiating a change of scope when issues first become apparent, rather than waiting until the end of a matter and just sending a bill.
However, legal project management requires fundamental changes in the ways lawyers do business. Change is difficult for anyone, and it is especially challenging for lawyers who have developed strong habits over several decades. As Richard Susskind noted in his widely quoted book The End of Lawyers?, “It is not easy to convince a group of millionaires...that their business model is wrong.” [1] But the environment is changing and lawyers must adapt.
Firms are now experimenting with a variety of techniques to introduce project management. The key word in that sentence is “experimenting.” Lawyers would prefer to act based on solid precedents, models that have been proven their worth over decades. But legal project management is a brand new field, and those who wait decades to apply it do so at their own risk.
When lawyers begin considering what to do, they often start the discussion with the approaches that have been most widely publicized, such as Seyfarth Shaw’s use of Six Sigma and Lean. According to Seyfarth’s web page: “With more than 100 projects executed [we have] applied SeyfarthLean in every practice throughout the firm to deliver quality and efficiency that also delivered client cost savings ranging from 15–50%.”
While the results have been impressive, Lean is not the best place for most firms to start because it is such an expensive way to go. According to an April 2010 American Lawyer article, “Seyfarth has spent over $3 million to date administering and training workers...and budgets $200,000 – $500,000 annually for such costs.” [2] Similarly, Eversheds has been widely recognized for the success it has achieved through massive project management training programs and software systems. But they have spent even more: over £10 million, according to Eversheds’ web page.
This series will conclude next week.
[1] Susskind, Richard, The End of Lawyers?, (Oxford University Press, 2009), 280.
[2] Levine, D.M., “Leap of Faith.” American Lawyer, 1 April 2010
This series of posts is a slightly extended version of an article that appeared in the July 2011 issue of Managing Partner magazine. To download a PDF of the published version of my article, click here.
In one sense, any lawyer who has ever planned a budget or managed an associate has acted as a project manager. But a new movement is underway to improve legal project management by applying formal methods that have been used for decades in engineering, construction, information technology and other businesses.
The modern discipline of project management is such a rich and deep body of knowledge that universities offer advanced degrees in the field. Its origins can be traced back to the Nautilus nuclear submarine program after World War II and beyond, all the way back to civil engineers in ancient Rome constructing a 53,000-mile network of roads, many of which are still in use today.
In 1969, five professionals formed an organization called the Project Management Institute (PMI) to facilitate communication in this discipline. PMI now has more than half a million members in 185 countries, organized into dozens of chapters and “communities of practice.” It is interesting to note that the PMI sub-group which focuses on legal project management started less than a year ago. As a recent article in Canadian Lawyer put it, “Project management is so new to the legal profession that everyone is still trying to figure out what it can do and how to make it work.” [1]
Despite this uncertainty, many law firms are beginning to implement a variety of types of legal project management programs. When The American Lawyer published the results of its annual “Law Firm Leaders Survey” last December, 55% of AmLaw 200 firms reported that they offer project management training to partners, and 34% said they offer it to associates.
Why is LPM spreading so quickly? According a National Law Review article by Squire Sanders’ partners Stacy Ballin and Mitch Thompson:
The world has changed, and clients need more than ever from their law firms. They want their lawyers to partner with them to achieve their business goals and deliver value, not to merely send them a monthly bill showing how many hours have been spent. Like every other kind of business worldwide, law firms are becoming more cost-effective and efficient in providing their services.[2]
The growth of non-hourly alternative fee arrangements (AFAs) has also played a role. When a law firm agrees to handle a certain matter for a flat rate, it must find a way to meet legal needs within a limited budget. The less the firm spends, the more money it will make.
But, as a senior partner at a 500-lawyer firm put it in an interview for The LegalBizDev Survey of Alternative Fees:
For alternative billing to be successful for both the client and law firm, the partners have to re-think their approach and try to decide the most efficient way to approach matters. For example, instead of sending an associate off to research 50 issues that could come up in a litigation case, you might focus strictly on the small number of issues that are likely to be most important.[3]
Project management skills can also help lawyers protect the profitability of hourly work in a number of ways, including reduced write-offs. There are many reasons write-offs occur, but poor communication is frequently the key. Consider this scenario from a senior partner at an 800-lawyer firm (and a participant in the LegalBizDev survey):
[The client asks] “What’s it going to cost?” and [the lawyer] says, “Oh, I can’t tell you, we don’t have enough facts. But normally a deal of this size would run $120K-$150K.” The client hears, “You’ve promised me $120K.” And then that’s it. That’s your fixed fee. And you don’t know that, of course, because you thought what you did was say, “This is what it costs on average.” And at the end the client would say, “Gee, this cost $200K, how is that possible?” And you think, “Well, you know, your CEO got fired in the middle of the deal. The deal dragged on for three years. It turned out you got sued. Yeah, it cost $200K.” [4]
This series continues next week.
[1] Kevin Marron, “Buzzword 2010: project management,” Canadian Lawyer, April 2010.
[2] Stacy D. Ballin and Mitchell S. Thompson, “Why We Decided to Become Certified Legal Project Managers,” National Law Review, 4 Feb. 2011.[3]Jim Hassett, The LegalBizDev Survey of Alternative Fees, (Boston: 2009) 114.
[4] ibid, 30.
We live in an age when consumers rate everything from restaurants to toaster ovens and movies on Yelp, Trip Advisor, Netflix, and hundreds of other web sites. In this environment, is inevitable that law firms too would be rated online. In October 2009, the Association of Corporate Counsel introduced its Value Index, an online forum that ACC members use to share ratings of law firms.
From a project management perspective, the single most important fact about this index is that outside counsel are rated on these six factors:
Law firms that wish to increase client satisfaction would be wise to focus on these same six factors when they deliver services and when they evaluate them.
However, there has been controversy over the actual ratings in ACC’s database. Many law firms have been less than thrilled with the whole idea. Around the time this was announced, an article entitled “ACC rating index unnerves firms” quoted Fred Krebs, then president of ACC, as saying “It’s like a Zagat for law firms.” They also noted that “These words … may well send a chill down the spine of many a private practice lawyer.”
As of the date I wrote this post, the ACC web page summarized 4,787 reviews of 1,251 firms. On the six factors above, the average rating was 4.4 on a scale from 1=Poor to 5=Excellent. When asked “Would you use this firm again?” 92.8% of respondents said yes.
One concern raised by law firms is their lack of access to the ratings. According to a set of FAQs on the ACC web page, “Law firms cannot view complete evaluations without express permission from the members who submitted them.” There are, however, ways for firms to view “aggregated scores,” which are explained in the FAQs.
By their nature, online ratings are based on biased samples from people who care enough to take the time to respond. According to a recent Scientific American article, online reviewers:
evangelize what they love and trash things they hate. These feelings lead to a lot of one- and five-star reviews of the same product.
The result, according to research from the Wharton School, is that for online ratings:
the wisdom of crowds may neither be wise nor necessarily made by a crowd. Its judgments are inaccurate at best, fraudulent at worst.
Others argue that online reviews provide valuable information. The appeal of such systems is obvious to anyone who has ever bought a book on Amazon.
Personally, I am skeptical of the value of online ratings, but I use Amazon ratings and others all the time to decide what to buy, simply because they are so convenient. I try to remember to take the extreme ratings – pro or con – with a large grain of salt. Law firms can only hope that their clients will take this same cautious approach.
This post was adapted from the second edition of my Legal Project Management Quick Reference Guide.
Last month, the Canadian magazine Lexpert ran an article about legal project management that began by describing two partners at Stewart McKelvey who participated in our Certified Legal Project Manager™ program.
The article went on to discuss other project management initiatives at such firms as McCarthy Tetrault, Ogilvy Renault (now part of the Norton Rose Group) and Osler and said that legal project management has “the potential to cause a fundamental shift of the tectonic plates of the traditional law firm business model.”
However, perhaps in the interests of journalistic balance, the article also interviewed skeptics. Keith Mitchell, chair of Farris, Vaughan, Wills & Murphy, was quoted as saying that "project management is just another ‘flavour of the month’ idea being pushed on law firms by consultants” and that “prudent clients have always done this on large matters. It’s just this week it’s suddenly being called project management."
I would certainly agree that clients and their law firms have always used some elements of project management informally. However, I would strongly disagree with the implication that there is little room for improvement, or that the movement is just a fleeting fad.
This is not a change being pushed by consultants or law firms; it is one that is being demanded by clients. The Association of Corporate Counsel, which describes itself as “the world's largest community of in-house counsel, with more than 26,000 members in over 75 countries,” has been instrumental in promoting legal project management, and even offers a course entitled Project Management for the In-House Law Department.
The legal project management movement aims to improve legal procedures by adapting tactics that have been refined over several decades by professionals in engineering, manufacturing, information technology and other professions.
I first became aware of its importance several years ago, when I interviewed AmLaw 100 chairmen and senior partners for the LegalBizDev Survey of Alternative Fees. As the chairman of an 800 lawyer firm put it:
In the world of construction, architects engineers and contractors have been working on a fixed price basis for a long time. There is a body of learning about how to estimate, contract, define scope, manage changes, allocate risk, and how to manage fee disputes, delays and changes in scope that could be adapted to the legal profession.
That adaptation is precisely what lawyers do in our Certified Legal Project Manager™ program. They review the body of learning from other fields by completing selected readings from seven key project management textbooks (including my Legal Project Management Quick Reference Guide), and answering questions about how to adapt these principles to the legal profession.
The precise way they apply the principles, and the value they derive, depends on each person’s practice. When I wrote about the results from the first lawyers to complete this program, I highlighted the work of Fraser MacFadyen, one of the Stewart McKelvey lawyers who was also mentioned in the Lexpert article. Fraser has developed a number of templates to improve practice-wide procedures for handling certain types of secured financings, including budget spreadsheets, working agendas and more. His certification program has been completed, but he is continuing to work on sustainable tactics to use these templates to maximize benefits to clients, and to implement them throughout the firm.
I have also written about the results for other lawyers, but not for Daniela Bassan, the lawyer whose interview started the Lexpert article. The reason for that information gap, in both my blog post and in the Lexpert article, is that Daniela’s certification has not yet been completed, and we are both reluctant to say too much before it is. I can tell you that Daniela is working on an internal training program for Stewart McKelvey lawyers on how to apply project management principles to e-discovery. But if you want more details than that, you will just have to keep reading this blog until she completes certification.
Does this program produce value? As you can see from the quotes on our web page, the participants certainly think so. As Stacy Ballin, the Litigation Group Business Partner at Squire Sanders put it:
These days, clients want to make sure their firms deliver quality management of cases that drives a better value for them, and firms want to improve the bottom line. This program will help lawyers accomplish both.
Some lawyers are sure to remain skeptical. That’s what lawyers do.
In the Lexpert article, Mr. Mitchell was also quoted as saying: “Certified project managers may look very good on marketing brochures, but our clients haven’t been asking us about accreditations, they’ve been asking us for value.”
I would certainly agree with the first part of this statement. Certification DOES “look very good on marketing brochures.”
However, since I started the program, the biggest surprise to me is the fact that nearly half of the lawyers who have signed up for certification insist on remaining anonymous. They believe the program will help them personally deliver greater value, but want to do this in their own quiet way. The client is always right, so we will never mention their names in print or in conversation.
But I must go on the record as disagreeing with this philosophy of anonymity. Clients care about improving project management, and some are starting to specifically ask about it in their RFPs. It is always a good business practice to find out what clients want, give it to them, and make sure everybody knows that you are giving it to them. Publicizing certification is one way of doing that.
Mind you, certification is not the only way to produce more value. For most lawyers, it’s not even the best way. The program requires a substantial time commitment, and is designed for lawyers who want to take a leadership role on these important issues, help change policy inside their firms, define new processes, and train others.
We also offer a number of other training and coaching programs that are designed to produce immediate and practical results for time-pressed lawyers, including several types of just-in-time training, and an Introduction to Legal Project Management course. In our opinion, those less demanding programs are more than enough to meet the needs of most lawyers.
If I were a client hiring a large law firm to advise on a multi-million dollar matter, I would not care HOW they had learned to be efficient and provide maximum value. But I would be extremely interested in knowing that they were open to the idea that project management is a “fundamental shift,” as described in the Lexpert article, and that they did not dismiss it out of hand as just another “flavor of the month.”
The material below is an excerpt from the second edition of my Legal Project Management Quick Reference Guide. Copies have already been shipped to purchasers from firms with a total of over 16,000 lawyers, who pre-ordered the book after the initial announcement in this blog.
If you’d like to know more about the book, download sample chapters, or read about the book on our web page, or see the sample material below from Chapter 1.
Please do not read this book.
This Reference Guide was written for lawyers who don’t have time to read books but do need to find ways to quickly apply proven project management principles in order to:
This book was not designed to be read cover to cover. It was designed to help lawyers identify personal action items during LegalBizDev project management workshops, training, and coaching programs. These programs quickly change behavior by helping each lawyer focus on the action items that are most likely to produce immediate and practical results. This book enables lawyers to find exactly the information they need, just when they need it. Clients have told us that they continue to refer to the book long after the training is done, whenever a new challenge arises.
When we published the first edition in July 2010, we made it available not just to lawyers who had already signed up for our programs, but also to those who were considering them. Because it summarizes our proprietary approach, we limited distribution to potential clients, and turned down many orders from others. We sold it only through our web page, rather than through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or bookstores. Despite these limits on distribution, the first edition was purchased by firms with a total of over 65,000 lawyers. Many bought between 3 and 100 copies for key partners and decision makers.
My interest in legal project management grew out of an alternative fees survey I conducted with AmLaw 100 chairmen, senior partners, and executives. Many of these senior decision makers emphasized the need to adopt project management techniques from other professions. As the CFO of a firm with more than 1,000 lawyers succinctly put it, “If we teach our people to manage, we can make more money.”
Several survey participants said that project management could be especially helpful to lawyers who must suddenly learn how to deliver quality solutions within limited budgets. For example, the chairman of a firm with more than 800 lawyers noted that:
In the world of construction, architects, engineers and contractors have been working on a fixed price basis for a long time. There is a body of learning about how to estimate, contract, define scope, manage changes, allocate risk, and how to manage fee disputes, delays, [and] changes in scope [that could] be adapted to the legal profession.
Some firms have already started adapting this knowledge. According to Joe Morford, managing partner at Tucker Ellis & West (which derives 60% of its revenue from non-hourly fees):
Project management is the key to success, and it is very hard to roll out to attorneys. People think if they get a computer program they will be doing project management, but in fact it is much harder than that...We discuss project management at every partner meeting. But aligning interests and working smarter have benefits both to our clients, and to us. It is simply a better way to practice law.
So exactly what should you do to adapt this deep and rich body of knowledge? The answer depends on your practice and your personality.
If you had enough time to get a master’s degree in project management, you could consider all the possibilities at length. But the truth is that most lawyers can barely find time to read this chapter.
The billable hour has created an enormous amount of inefficiency and “low hanging fruit” – areas where lawyers can instantly reduce cost simply by focusing on proven best practices. This book will show you how. It provides easy access to hundreds of ideas that other lawyers have found useful, so you can decide for yourself what will best fit your practice, and where to begin.
If you obtained this book in one of our workshops, training or coaching programs, we hope that you will continue to use it long after the program ends. And if you have not yet signed up for one of our programs, we hope that this book will encourage you to do so, or at least to review what we offer.
In either case, the innovative tools in this guide can help you gain an advantage in today’s highly competitive marketplace. All you have to do is use them.
This book was not designed to be read cover to cover. It was designed to help lawyers identify personal action items during LegalBizDev project management workshops, training, and coaching programs. These programs quickly change behavior by helping each lawyer focus on the action items that are most likely to produce immediate and practical results. This book enables lawyers to find exactly the information they need, just when they need it. Clients have told us that they continue to refer to the book long after the training is done, whenever a new challenge arises.
When we published the first edition in July 2010, we made it available not just to lawyers who had already signed up for our programs, but also to those who were considering them. Because it summarizes our proprietary approach, we limited distribution to potential clients, and turned down many orders from others. We sold it only through our web page, rather than through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or bookstores. Despite these limits on distribution, the first edition was purchased by firms with a total of over 65,000 lawyers. Many bought between 3 and 100 copies for key partners and decision makers.
My interest in legal project management grew out of an alternative fees survey I conducted with AmLaw 100 chairmen, senior partners, and executives. Many of these senior decision makers emphasized the need to adopt project management techniques from other professions. As the CFO of a firm with more than 1,000 lawyers succinctly put it, “If we teach our people to manage, we can make more money.”
Several survey participants said that project management could be especially helpful to lawyers who must suddenly learn how to deliver quality solutions within limited budgets. For example, the chairman of a firm with more than 800 lawyers noted that:
In the world of construction, architects, engineers and contractors have been working on a fixed price basis for a long time. There is a body of learning about how to estimate, contract, define scope, manage changes, allocate risk, and how to manage fee disputes, delays, [and] changes in scope [that could] be adapted to the legal profession.
Some firms have already started adapting this knowledge. According to Joe Morford, managing partner at Tucker Ellis & West (which derives 60% of its revenue from non-hourly fees):
Project management is the key to success, and it is very hard to roll out to attorneys. People think if they get a computer program they will be doing project management, but in fact it is much harder than that...We discuss project management at every partner meeting. But aligning interests and working smarter have benefits both to our clients, and to us. It is simply a better way to practice law.
So exactly what should you do to adapt this deep and rich body of knowledge? The answer depends on your practice and your personality.
If you had enough time to get a master’s degree in project management, you could consider all the possibilities at length. But the truth is that most lawyers can barely find time to read this chapter.
The billable hour has created an enormous amount of inefficiency and “low hanging fruit” – areas where lawyers can instantly reduce cost simply by focusing on proven best practices. This book will show you how. It provides easy access to hundreds of ideas that other lawyers have found useful, so you can decide for yourself what will best fit your practice, and where to begin.
If you obtained this book in one of our workshops, training or coaching programs, we hope that you will continue to use it long after the program ends. And if you have not yet signed up for one of our programs, we hope that this book will encourage you to do so, or at least to review what we offer.
In either case, the innovative tools in this guide can help you gain an advantage in today’s highly competitive marketplace. All you have to do is use them.
Click here to download sample chapters from the Legal Project Management Quick Reference Guide.
Last December, we announced that Squire Sanders, Stewart McKelvey, and Harris Cost Lawyers were the first three firms to sign up for our new Certified Legal Project ManagerTM program.
Lawyers from all three firms have now completed their final case studies and been awarded certification. We have also begun certifying additional lawyers in the United States, Canada, Brazil, China, and Germany. The smallest firm to sign up has eight lawyers, the largest has over 3,000.
The first certification group has provided an important proof of concept that busy senior partners can indeed complete this program within a few months, build a solid foundation of project management knowledge, and apply this knowledge to develop and implement new procedures that improve client service and increase profitability.
Over the course of the program, each participant studied over 300 pages of assigned readings from six textbooks and answered 17 essay questions about how the concepts applied to their practice. Then, in three phone conversations and numerous emails, we discussed their “low hanging fruit”: which of the concepts could be most efficiently applied to achieve immediate and practical results?
The first to finish was Fraser MacFadyen, a partner at Stewart McKelvey, a 220-lawyer firm in Atlantic Canada. Fraser decided to focus on improving practice-wide procedures for handling certain types of secured financings, starting with representing borrowers on a loan secured by real property and related personal property.
For his final project, Fraser developed several templates to increase efficiency:
We also discussed sustainable tactics to use these templates to maximize benefits to clients, and then to implement them throughout the firm. We agreed on minimum success criteria for the next 90 days, including using the forms in at least two of Fraser’s matters, getting in-depth feedback from at least two partners on how to improve the forms for their practices, and holding at least one client meeting to discuss how to work together to increase efficiency. Again, these are the minimum goals. We both hope he can achieve much more in 90 days, including having other partners actually use the templates.
Although the program has technically ended, I will be calling Fraser after 30 days and after 90 days to check on his progress. I want to know what works and what doesn’t.
The second to complete the program was Liz Harris, the founder of Harris Cost Lawyers, an eight-lawyer firm in Melbourne, Australia. Timing is everything in life, and Liz read about our program on the internet at exactly the right moment. She had just completed the first module in a program to become certified through the Project Management Institute (PMI) and concluded that while “the PMI program was extremely interesting, much of the content was not relevant to my practice.” So when she saw an announcement that explained how our certification program was specifically designed for lawyers, she signed up right away.
For Liz’s final project, she created over 25 pages of checklists and templates to enable her firm to better define scope for four types of fixed price matters, and to complete them within budget. For example, one of Liz’s templates will help her firm to complete particular stages of litigation under Australian law. One of her checklists lists 12 issues to take into account when estimating the extent of work a matter will require, built around practical details and hard-won wisdom, including “Who is instructing us…a client with little litigation experience will need a more detailed explanation of concepts like instructions for experience offers of compromise" and, “Which court are we in – federal court objections need to be much more detailed and reference case law.”
Harris Cost Lawyers has been using the templates for the last month, and has already started seeing results. The templates have “resulted in a clear change in focus on the part of the lawyers in planning matters upfront.” The firm is planning to increase its percentage of fixed price work, measure the results, and continue to improve their processes. According to Liz, “the materials developed in this program give us a clear competitive advantage.”
The third to finish was Stacy Ballin, a partner at Squire Sanders, which has over 1,200 lawyers. Stacy is co-chair of Squire Sanders’ Project Management Committee, so she came to the program with a very strong interest and background in this area. She is also one of the people who convinced me to start the program, along with her partners Mitch Thompson and Howard Nicols. We met last fall after I gave a speech at the Squire Sanders Partners meeting, and we talked about the lack of standards in this rapidly growing field. After they convinced me that the profession needed to establish standards as quickly as possible, I went back to the office and started designing our Certified Legal Project ManagerTM program.
Stacy’s final project is likely to produce immediate results that go straight to the bottom line. As the Litigation Group Business Partner, she is responsible for approving discretionary write-downs, where a relationship partner decides not to bill a client for some of the time charged to a case and writes down a portion of the bill before it is sent to the client. According to data reported in the 2011 Hildebrandt Client Advisory, the average large law firm write-down rate – also called billing realization - has been increasing for the last few years, and currently exceeds 11% (p. 13). (Firms also write off an additional 13% of the bills they send as uncollectible, but that is another story.)
Squire Sanders has not revealed its billing realization rate, but with annual revenues over $500 million, a reduction of 1% would mean an immediate increase in profits of $5 million.
When Stacy reviewed all 2010 litigation write-downs over $10K as part of this program, she saw that a few young partners had unusually high write-down rates, which they explained as simply costs beyond budget or caused by a pattern of inefficiency. Inefficiency reduces the value clients receive and discretionary write-downs have an immediate negative impact on the bottom line. So Stacy decided to interview six of these young partners and explore with them how the firm could help them reduce inefficiency and write-downs in the future.
For her certification case study, Stacy developed a phone interview survey questionnaire based in part on the 17 questions she answered in the first part of our certification program. In the next few weeks she will conduct these interviews and “develop a plan as to how to use the results to reduce write-downs in the future, and to measure the financial impact of my recommendations.” Depending on what Stacy finds, her initiative may include future project management training to help key partners manage their teams more efficiently.
All three of these lawyers have been awarded certification and their programs are now officially over. However, I have planned additional follow-up with all three over the next few months. I want to hear exactly what happens next. And when I do, I will let you know.
Yesterday, we issued the press release below to announce the publication of the second edition of my Legal Project Management Quick Reference Guide: Tools and Templates to Increase Efficiency.
We recruited lawyers and professionals from nearly 40 large and mid-sized firms (listed below) to provide advice on what to include, and on our approach to publishing the book. After much debate, we decided to continue the limited distribution policy from the first edition. Since the book includes a significant amount of proprietary information from our training and coaching programs, it will be sold only to law firms and only through our web page.
The press release
Next month, Jim Hassett, Ph.D., the founder of LegalBizDev, will publish the second edition of his popular Legal Project Management Quick Reference Guide.
The guide “was written for lawyers who don’t have time to read books but need to find ways to quickly apply proven project management principles in order to deliver greater value to clients, increase profitability, reduce risk, and focus on clients’ true needs,” said Hassett, whose company is recognized as a leading innovator in legal project management training.
The book is subtitled Tools and Templates to Increase Efficiency, and is organized around eight key issues: setting objectives and defining the scope of a matter, identifying and scheduling activities, assigning tasks and managing a legal team, planning and managing a budget, assessing risks to the schedule and budget, managing quality, managing client communication and expectations, and negotiating change orders. It was not written to be read from start to finish but rather as a handy guide for lawyers with questions in any area of project management.
“This is an exceptional piece of work,” said Patrick Lamb, founding member of the Valorem Law Group. “It answers the ‘how to’ questions that everyone has. It provides best practices, templates, guidance and wisdom on how to accomplish this massive change by focusing on low hanging fruit and seizing early wins to demonstrate the value of this skill set.”
The book includes proprietary material from LegalBizDev’s highly acclaimed training programs for attorneys. It is being sold only to law firms and only through LegalBizDev.com. The book adds more than 80 pages of new material to the July 2010 first edition, which was purchased by firms with a total of more than 65,000 lawyers.
“The phrase ‘legal project management’ has become popular lately,” Hassett said, “but the field is so new that people are still uncertain about which tactics will have the greatest impact for lawyers. This book will help each lawyer find the tactics that fit their practice and personality.”
The book can be ordered now by email (guide@legalbizdev.com), by fax (917-386-2733), by phone (800-498-7246), or by mail (LegalBizDev, 225 Franklin Street, 26th floor, Boston, MA 02110). It will be released in May 2011.
The price is $49.95 plus shipping ($10 in the United States, $30 outside the United States), with a 50 percent discount when ordered as part of a LegalBizDev program.
The LegalBizDev Reference Guide Advisory Board
I would like to thank these experts, and others who chose to remain anonymous, for their reviews and suggestions on early drafts.
Cindy Bajdarvanov, Litigation Pricing and Budgeting Manager, Fish & Richardson
Mark Barbee, Director of Project and Portfolio Management, Greenberg Traurig
Michael D. Barnes, Senior Director of Business and Program Services, DLA Piper LLP (US)
Wesley Beato, Competitive Intelligence Manager, Herrick
Martin D. Beirne, Chairman, Beirne, Maynard & Parsons
Toby Brown, Director of Pricing and Strategy, Fulbright & Jaworski
Jeff Bukowski, Shareholder, Stevens & Lee
Steve Burke, Associate Director of Business Development, Proskauer Rose
Jonathan Cooper, Partner, Tucker Ellis & West
Kim Craig, Director of Project Management Office, Seyfarth Shaw LLP
Jim Dickson, Partner, Stewart McKelvey
Paul Easton, Managing Director, Global Colleague
David Eberhardt, Principal, Miles & Stockbridge
Karen Febeo, Director of Training, Goodwin Procter
Bill Garcia, former Executive Director of Strategic Initiatives, Howrey
Sam Goldblatt, Partner, Nixon Peabody
Melanie Green, Director of Business Development and Marketing, Baker & Daniels
Missy Hower, Director of Practice Group Services, Perkins Coie
Suzanne Iazzetta, Associate, Lowenstein Sandler
Byron Kalogerou, Partner, McDermott Will & Emery
Howard Kaufman, Counsel, Fasken Martineau
Susan Kurz, Director of Business Development and Marketing, Keating Muething & Klekamp
Patrick Lamb, Founding Member, Valorem Law Group
Susanne Mandel, Chief Marketing and Business Development Officer, Lowndes Drosdick Doster Kantor & Reed
Lauren Meader, Senior Manager, Business Development, Arnold & Porter LLP
Howard Nicols, Global Managing Partner, Squire Sanders
Rose Ors, Business Development Director, Manatt, Phelps & Phillips
John Paris, Partner, Williams Mullen
Michael K. Renetzky, Partner, Locke Lord
Michael Roster, former Managing Partner, Morrison & Foerster’s Los Angeles office
Steven Schroeder, Chief Business Development Officer, Hinshaw & Culbertson
William Cory Spence, Partner, Kirkland & Ellis LLP
Clinton Swan, Head of Marketing and Business Development (Middle East Region), Clyde & Co
Fram Virjee, Partner, O'Melveny & Myers
Felice Wagner, Chief Client Service Officer, Sutherland Asbill & Brennan
Graeme Wood, Head of Project Services, Linklaters
For more details, or to order the book, see our web page.
