Editor's foreword

For many law firms, ‘to be or not to be?’ is quite literally the question that counts. Fee earners are the business, a view that is elevated by the primacy of the billable hour. Support staff and non-fee-earning activities in the firm – business development and knowledge management, for instance – are increasingly respected, but rarely embraced as core to business success. And it is still the case that firms are neatly split into the all-important lawyers on one side and nice-to-have support staff on the other.

While such attitudes prevail, law firms will be unable to progress as businesses. Lawyers will for ever be locked into billing targets, where those who work slowly or refuse to use efficiency-boosting technology will be more rewarded than those who make the most of their time. Support departments looking at ways of improving business processes, maximising the firm’s expertise and nurturing client relationships will also find their efforts wasted as it proves impossible to involve lawyers in their business-development initiatives.

To be sure, things have changed to a certain degree. Lawyers are increasingly expected to contribute to areas such as client-relationship management, marketing activities and in-house training. But while firms continue to convey the message that hitting billing targets is the key to reward and advancement, few lawyers are realistically going to indulge in what will be seen as extra-curricular activities.

The answer must be to overhaul the appraisal system so that fee earning becomes only part of the performance criteria on which lawyers are judged. Indeed, Damian Greiff, head of business development at Berrymans Lace Mawer, suggests an appraisal model (page 15) that evenly distributes the time that a lawyer is expected to dedicate to fee earning, client-relationship management, promoting the firm, developing business, managing the team and training. Only if the lawyer meets all of those targets will reward and promotion follow.

In addition, law firms need to address cultural attitudes. Where a lawyer has spent years thinking in terms of chargeable hours, it will be difficult to gain their support for changes to the appraisal system. Some may even resist a move that appears to belittle fee earning and its profit-making potential by promoting touchy-feely fads that have no demonstrable measures of success. This is where firms may have to bring in evidence from the clients, demonstrating that they want to deal with law firms as modern businesses where the lawyers understand the world in which clients operate and can react to changes in the market with a business mind. For those lawyers that remain transfixed by the billable hour, this will become increasingly hard to achieve.

David Pester’s comments suggest some change is happening on the shop floor. On interviewing him for this issue’s profile feature (page 10), we discussed his abilities to combine fee-earning activities and the managing-partner role at his firm TLT Solicitors. He not only thinks that it is possible to do both (with the right management infrastructure in place), but also believes that doing so reflects the changing role of lawyers, where fee earning is only part of a much wider contribution to the business. If more lawyers could think along this line, then it would not only enable firms to develop as businesses, but would also aid collaborative working. For many firms, however, it is clear that there is still work to be done.

Caroline Poynton
Editor

Features

Thought leader Free
In the annual Acritas ‘Legal and Accountancy Benchmarks’ study, we collate the perspectives of over 200 senior buyers of legal and accounting services across the UK. To find out what really makes clients happy, the 2004 results were split into two groups: those respondents most satisfied with their advisers – group A (scoring nine or ten out of ten) – and those less satisfied – group B (scoring eight or less). The two groups were then compared to determine what it was that group A’s advisers were doing better than group B’s.

Moving the earth Free
With the changing balance of power between client and adviser, law firms are warming to the virtues of business development, introducing client-service initiatives and industry-sector expertise, nurturing a culture of innovation, and weaving sales and marketing activity into their partner-performance criteria. Many partnerships, however, still struggle to overcome residual scepticism to business-development strategies, despite the obvious benefits. Meirion Jones, director of business development at Lovells, examines the challenge for law-firm management teams and assesses how firms can move forwards.

Support solutions Free
‘Management twaddle’ might be the response of many partners to an upstart from a support department suggesting that there are different, and possibly better, ways to operate. But such recalcitrance to business-development efforts may undermine a firm’s ability to improve profitability and gain competitive advantage. Damian Greiff, head of business development at Berrymans Lace Mawer, explains why and how firms can use commercial principles to succeed.

A question of culture Free
For some time, law firms have invested in knowledge-management (KM) activities, understanding that success in the legal profession is all about making the most of a firm’s expertise. Whether firms succeed, however, is quite a different matter. Jason Marty, global director of knowledge management at Baker & McKenzie, assesses the KM lessons learnt at his firm.

Five minutes with... Janet Day, IT director, Berwin Leighton Paisner Free
Firms that have invested heavily in technology solutions are now looking at how they can better integrate and use their systems to improve efficiencies and business throughput. With this in mind, Caroline Poynton talks to Berwin Leighton Paisner’s (BLP) IT director Janet Day about her firm’s approach to business-process management.

Voicing value? Assessing Voicepath’s transcription service for law firms Free
Voicepath is still a relatively young company in the legal-solution-provider space, but it has been working hard to carve itself a niche that is becoming more established by the year. Caroline Poynton talks to Voicepath’s general manager, Richard Bate, about the evolution of the company so far and asks whether it can really deliver the quality service growing law firms need.

A trained eye for success Free
Training strategies at law firms range from the rudimentary to the rigorous, but few firms will succeed in implementing truly integrated learning that links people, technology and business strategy. Tony Reiss, a director at Sherwood PSF Consulting, explains the meaning of integration in this context, and examines how firms can go about using such principles to gain competitive advantage.

Rethinking reward Free
Karen MacKay, a partner and consultant at Edge International surveyed law-firm associates and partners around the world during 2004. This article, the third in a series published in Managing Partner, explores the issues of monetary and non-monetary rewards that associates value in their firms.