Feature

posted 26 Apr 2005 in Volume 7 Issue 10

Quality and quantity: Combining expansion with client satisfaction

In recent years, law firms have expanded faster than ever before, with Weightmans providing a typical growth pattern among mid-size firms as it moved from a one to five-site business during the 1990s. James Holman, the firm’s head of risk management, explains why changing times require a fresh look at quality systems and audits and how they should be implemented to ensure the highest level of client service.

To Joe and Tom Holman, aged six and four respectively, life contains considerably more questions than their parents can answer. Most of their questions are repetitive or call for reinforcement of a familiar message. Occasionally, though, they come up with the mother of all conundrums – usually in a very public place and at full volume.

For a typical firm of solicitors with a representative group of clients, the challenges mirror those of parenthood. I am head of risk management at Weightmans. Undoubtedly, I face more questions than there is time to answer. Specifically, my role entails me being:

Responsible for our e-manual (more later);
Money laundering compliance officer;
Data protection officer;
Financial services co-ordinator;
Complaints partner;
Partner responsible for professional-indemnity insurance.

I have a day job too, but this article is not about me searching for sympathy. Instead, I thought I would spend a few minutes setting out my firm’s experiences in an area that we regard as a cornerstone to our strategy and business development – quality systems and audit.

Weightmans has undergone the sort of transformation in size that many firms are familiar with. The firm’s routes are in 1830’s Liverpool and, until the mid 1990s, remained a one-site operation with no more than 200 employees. The firm now covers five sites in the North, Midlands and London and employs nearly 600 people.

That growth has coincided with revolutionary changes to court procedures, the substantial disappearance of legal aid, the development of pre-action protocols and a dramatic fall in the numbers of litigated matters. Clients’ expectations of a solicitor’s role have evolved with equal pace as cost cutting and rationalisation have taken hold externally. A multitude of managerial conundrums arise. Solicitors have to re-invent themselves and their working methods to survive.

In 1996, Weightmans obtained ISO9001, a kite mark it retained until 2003. In June 2004 we became accredited by the Law Society to its Lexcel standard. I supervised that transition and am now tasked with moving us forwards.

The major issues are:

Bottom line;
Budget;
Buy-in;
Training;
Audit;
Responsiveness;
Maintaining momentum.

Bottom line

Everything else flows from here. Unless the promoter of change can demonstrate bottom-line enhancement, a proportion of the organisation, possibly the majority, will be resistant – some because of cost, some because it requires change, but most because they see no business imperative to act.

The problem is that unless your firm has a large client threatening to withdraw instructions, it is difficult to demonstrate the financial benefit of implementing change.

So what affects the bottom line? Some obvious examples include:

The time spent on and cost incurred in dealing with complaints from unhappy clients. All law firms must have clear and responsive processes, managed by a senior individual. Even without the direct cost of bills not paid and work lost, the indirect cost of one unhappy client can be huge;
The time and cost of claims. There are obvious direct costs in premiums and excesses. There are often very substantial management costs too, perhaps involving many different partners, not just the case handler who caused the claim;
Client retention. Even the one-off client should be treated preciously. Word of mouth is a powerful marketing tool. Lawyers are an easy target for those seeking a cheap laugh but do we do enough to change perceptions of our service and value for money? Bulk providers of instructions can be critical to a firm’s survival. That type of client will want consistency of approach, deadlines meeting and protocols followed;
Failures can open the door to dozens of capable competitors;
Business development. Few tenders these days allow you to duck the direct question about whether your firm has a kite mark. Beyond that, having the Lexcel standard allows you to demonstrate effective, plain-English, independently-audited systems. The gathering of client intelligence facilitates a more focused marketing approach. The results of client surveys give invaluable feedback and learning material for training and improvement;
The use of IT in the process allows different gearings and supervisory structures to be considered. It can also enable total transparency of approach. No longer does the supervisor have to wade through six inches of paper to find when we last updated the client. The client does not even need to chase us; they can just log on and see for themselves;
Lexcel gives a valuable hand with the perennial problems of making appraisals meaningful and establishing clear career paths.

There are many other efficiencies to be had from systems and buy-in. It has to be accepted, however, that in any organisation, a proportion will be slow and perhaps obstructive and may never really embrace change. There is only so much that words can achieve. Anyone behaving overtly outside the desired structure may ultimately need to be managed out. But even that painful process should be assisted by the disciplines that Lexcel has brought.

Budget

Budget allocation follows from buy-in. If senior commitment to the concept is won, a degree of financial clout is needed. In our experience, the process took about 12 months (remember we had ISO already). It required approaching six months of my time and many hours with other individuals to come up with our IT-based procedures manual – the e-manual.

The e-manual is in two parts. Part one is cradle-to-grave file handling. It tells the case handler everything they need to know about processing a client’s instructions. If printed out, it fills about eight pages. Part two is practice management, so includes our HR, IT and finance procedures, as well as sections on risk and money laundering.

To deliver, I needed IT budget; consultancy fees were incurred; and everyone needed training on what was to happen and how it would affect them.

The process of the Lexcel audit itself takes many hours of management time and costs a fee. There is then an ongoing cost factor. The world does not stand still. Client’s demands increase. The shape of the firm changes. People come and people leave.

The requirement to audit, review, refine and re-launch never ends.

Buy-in to the concept of quality systems

When you are faced with a constituency of 600 spread nationwide I do not think even the most optimistic politician would expect to attract 100 per cent of available votes. Even with no other candidates, you would expect some apathy and no better than a 60 per cent turn out.

Selling quality kite marks is an impossible task, save to those lawyers working in areas with clients who are really active in these areas. In talking to those who act for local authorities, insurers and large corporations, you are likely to be preaching to the converted, certainly at senior levels. Those clients often demand not only slick, efficient added-value service but also management data, feedback and innovation. If anyone working in those teams is struggling to accept those basic requirements, those wishing to accelerate improvements have their work cut out.

With those whose clients are occasional users of legal services or who as yet do not display any great interest in processes, selling the benefits of streamlined systems and the use of IT to deliver can be a challenge. The main obstacle for most is the perception that changes in working practices are being imposed in circumstances where clients are not complaining and the old ways have worked perfectly sensibly so far.

The approach here is the dripping tap. The leaders of teams handling these sorts of clients need to be talked around by senior management. The marketing director and head of HR may have a role to play. The managing partner may need to become hands on and group sessions including supervisors who are ‘converted’ can prove useful. An outside consultant or a client representative could be asked in to give the consumer’s view.

Training

Even in a small firm, you should not underestimate the need for and time required in training. You cannot hope for buy-in unless those promoting the change take time out to explain, reassure, demonstrate and cajole. It is no use only training team leaders. Everyone – from the front-of-house receptionist, through all support staff to the senior partner – needs to embrace the cultural evolution being pushed.

The training cannot be rushed. It needs to lead people through the same thought process that caused the firm to embark upon its journey. People need to be shown why clients demand improvement, what the firm hopes to achieve, how they will be supported and encouraged and how their individual contribution to the whole is as important as anyone else’s.

In a firm like ours, I took the view that I had to get on the train and personally see people individually or in their teams. They had to be forewarned what the meeting was about and given the chance to formulate questions on matters of concern to them.

The training needs to be in phases, dealing with buy-in and launch. If the new systems are heavily reliant on IT, the IT infrastructure needs to be tried and tested. Resources need to be available to field the inevitable flood of post-launch questions and problems. Some people and teams will be very high maintenance. Some will need many months of patient encouragement to come on side.

Audit

On an ongoing practical basis, the audit can be the biggest issue and cost for the firm. Our current solution comprises:

Client audit;
Internal process audit;
Internal quality audit;
Lexcel audit.

We have many clients that impose their own audit regimes and many of our people are very familiar with the stresses produced and the benefits that can flow. We took the view that client audit was not enough for us to be confident that our standards are high enough.

We have devised a two-pronged internal approach. First, we have an internet-based audit-questionnaire system. This enables the firm to fire questions in manageable chunks at any or all staff on any topic. We have standard questionnaires for every role in the firm. Supervisors can produce bespoke versions on specific topics, for example, money laundering.

The intention is that every person in the firm receives and answers at least one questionnaire annually, produced by our risk manager. They are multiple choice and deliberately basic. They should raise awareness of simple everyday processes. They are designed to encourage people to become familiar with the e-manual.

The questionnaires self mark and the results populate into spreadsheets for easy analysis, feedback and improvement.

The internal quality audit is carried out by the actual supervisors of teams. Again, there is a generic form prompting the supervisor to ask questions under various headings such as rule 15, strategy, pro-activity, quantum advice and use of ADR. As with process audit, the supervisor can alter the generic form to reflect more closely their own client’s expectations – as long as the basic headings are covered.

The results of such audits are shared with the auditee. Any patterns or serious issues lead to escalation.

Responsiveness

There is no benefit in seeking to impose systems that do not respond to the needs of the clients, case handlers and support staff you expect to deliver. Unless the process is sensitive to the needs of both, buy-in will be very difficult.

Similarly, when change is needed, the process has to allow for it. People have good ideas; clients ask for new standards. The e-manual allows us to deliver today’s live system to everyone’s desktop every day. If resource to make updates is available, it allows us to input change within minutes and launch to the whole practice.

Further, there is no mileage in the author of the manual being sensitive to suggested improvement or even complaint.

Maintaining momentum

Whoever you appoint to promote and own the process, they must be given an ongoing role and time allowance to ensure the systems remain cutting edge, people are trained and updated, and that the issues raised remain high on the agenda.

The person in charge must be part of, or have a direct line to, senior management. It must become a part of the firm’s culture to think at every turn how to convert the investment to profit. That means that every person in the organisation needs an awareness of how they can use the tools available to improve their performance.

The systems adopted must run through the middle of strategy, recruitment, people and client development.

One more thing

It is sensible to concentrate ultimate responsibility for the project with the person who deals with complaints, claims, money-laundering issues and the like. It helps with connected thinking and allows a coherent report to be made to the firm on progress and cost.

In a firm like Weightmans, that makes the role almost full time, even on an ongoing basis. That requires a big commitment from the firm and the person entrusted to deliver.

Moving forwards

We are still in the early stages of getting comfortable with our decisions on quality and audit systems. There is more to do to unify the culture we aspire to. The challenges are economic, geographic and human. I have no doubt, however, that we are gaining strength through our collective efforts and that the benefits are becoming more easily demonstrable both internally and externally.

James Holman is a partner at Weightmans. He can be contacted at james.holman@weightmans.com