With full credit to the authors of the  Intelligent Change blog, I was inspired to provide my two cents on the topic of, “Lawyers — Just do something.”

Having recently returned from ILTA, I was struck this year by the inertia I felt from many of the attendees. This is not a criticism of the conference itself. ILTA continues to provide high quality programming and the event is always run seamlessly. This year, though, participants, seemed… tired.

My focus for the show was on Legal Project Management. I wanted to learn more about what firms are doing and what success they were having. I talked to at least a half dozen AmLaw 100 firms, as well as a handful of vendors playing in the space. I quickly learned that few firms are making significant headway in this space. The universal frustration: the Lawyers.

It seems that project management is much simpler than change management. Unfortunately, in the legal profession, you can’t achieve the former without the latter. Unless there is a partner driving the change, there is little energy around trying to formalize the management of legal matters to create true businesses processes that can be used for creating best practices and alternative fee arrangements.

This brings me back to the Intelligent Change post, which concisely defines the problem — Change is hard, especially for lawyers; There are other more pressing problems (e.g. cash flow); and,  it’s hard (what worth doing isn’t?)– but makes an even more valid point. Just do something. Some thing.

It is not necessary to develop a strategy — whether for legal project management or something else — that solves all of the world’s problems. Build version 1.0 and maximize that to the hilt. Then move on to version 2.0 or even 1.5. In the end making any forward progress is better than standing still.

Reflections on the impact of the emerging Global 25: Part 3

The first time I heard the term, ‘lawyer’s lawyer’ was during an interview with a senior partner about what made his firm different. His response was that they were “lawyer’s lawyers.”

He was referring to the reputation the firm’s lawyers held within the legal community — among their peers, their opponents and the bench. Being a ‘lawyer’s lawyer’ validates something that drives most every lawyer I know: The need to be recognized for being really good at what they do.

Unfortunately, it is no longer enough to be a ‘lawyer’s lawyer.’ It is not that subject matter expertise and professionalism are not important. They are. But those qualities are merely the price of entry. Lawyers today need to do more. They need to be ‘client’s lawyers.’

Client’s lawyers are true strategic partners. They focus on matter management, providing value-added services, forging strong client relationships.

Inside the law firm, they may not bill the most hours. But they are finding ways to make the work they do more efficient for their clients. Perhaps most significant is that they repeatedly bring in new business from the same clients over and over.

There is no question that the attributes of a ‘lawyer’s lawyer’ are important, but the true rainmakers of the future are those who can manage work effectively and build client relationships. Firms need to stop focusing on hours billed and mere reputation and start looking at the qualities lawyers hold as it relates to building repeatable business from profitable clients. That’s where the talent focus needs to shift.

As the gap between the emerging Global 25 and the rest of the firms widens, firms on the outside looking in need to rethink they way the value their own lawyers. Firms need to look at their partnership criteria and make sure that being a “client’s lawyers” is equal to, if not more important than, being a “lawyer’s lawyer.”

That’s the true point of differentiation.

Reflections on the emerging Global 25: Part 2

Legal is a profession, not an industry. Law firms are different; They don’t sell widgets.

These are the theorems I was first introduced to when I started covering law practice management for the ABA Journal after graduating from law school in 1998.

I challenged the first when I saw lawyers taking stock in lieu of fees during the dot com era. Clearly the “double comma” revenue lawyers that sprouted up after a successful IPO proved being a profession and an industry are not mutually exclusive. Lawyers are in the business of making money. Revenues from legal services are estimated at $210 billion in the United States alone.

With the gap widening between the Global 25 and the rest of the law firms, it’s time to challenge the second theorem. These elite firms will get the most profitable work and will be able to cherry pick the best talent from the other firms.

The rest are going to have to compete for the remainder of the work – much of which is being commoditized. Instead of fighting the inevitable, firms have an opportunity to provide more value to their clients by finding ways to productize what they do. Law firms outside of the Global 25 will need to fundamentally rethink the way they deliver legal services. They need to start selling widgets.

By selling widgets, I’m suggesting lawyers look to productize their services in a way that better demonstrates value and is priced accordingly. Whether you call it value-based billing or an alternative fee arrangement, its about packaging legal services in a way in which clients understand what they are getting for what price.

What’s more, it may actually mean that lawyers get paid for doing less work than they would if billing by the hour. Let’s face it, the things lawyers provide that add the most value — making a vilified defendant look sympathetic or opening doors a client might not even know exist — cannot be billed in six minute increments. So instead, there is pressure to make the “stuff” of lawyering — the documents, the briefs, the filings — to be created in an inefficient way in order to create enough billable hours to make the work profitable. In the end, whether it takes 10 hours or 100 hours, the “stuff” that is produced — so long as it is right — is worth the same. Why penalize those who produce the work more efficiently?

By billing at a flat rate or on a project basis, lawyers and their firms will be incentivized to work more efficiently on the paper work and to focus their efforts on the areas that truly make lawyers valuable — their role as a strategic partner.

Why not sell the widgets and differentiate yourself on the distinct strategic services you provide?

It was a good week at work. One of my clients launched a major business development initiative. Another finalized materials for a marketing campaign to promote a new service line. A third got through a tedious set of meetings in preparation for a CRM deployment.

I even got my taxes done.

All of these projects — especially my taxes — could have been done weeks ago. What got in the way? Excessive planning.

Listen, no one believes in planning more than me. I’ve made a career out of  it. But when it comes to marketing and business development, there are times when planning gets in the way of progress.

Plans are not legal briefs. They do not require you to spot every single issue at hand — just the most important ones. They don not require every potential objection to be anticipated. They just need to be rational.

Plans are a simply a road map that define what you want to accomplish, how you are going to go about doing it, and what success will look like when you are done. If something doesn’t work, you can alter the course or change the approach to improve the results. For marketing and business development, the journey is half the fun.

Some times you just need to dive in and do it.

A great leader I know used to conclude his staff presentations by saying, “They say that showing up is half of life. I thank you for showing up today.”

There is a lot to be said by that statement. Showing up is important. It means you care enough to take time out of your day to consider, and maybe even engage, in important discussions. It gives your voice a chance to be heard. You can offer solutions. It beats doing nothing, but it is only half.

The other part requires you to roll up your sleeves and do the hard work. It takes time. It takes effort. It takes risk. It’s hard. But it is half of life. Too many people, lawyers, law firms only show up.

It’s a tough legal climate out there. The economy seems to be turning, albeit slowly, for the better. Opportunities appear to be on the horizon. For those that spent the downturn showing up to talk about what they needed to, it’s not going to be enough.

It’s time to put plans to action. It’s time to make the investment. It’s time to execute. Don’t let half your life go by.

TechnoLawyer’s BlawgWorld (free subscription required) had an interesting item a few weeks ago about how LegalZoom is beta testing a concept that would allow it to offer its legal services through small firms under the LegalZoom brand. It’s fraught with ethcial complications, which were outlined by the blog’s author Richard Granat on his eLawyering Blog.

From my perspective, LegalZoom is merely emblematic of why law firms need to reevaluate the way the offer legal services.

For those unfamiliar, LegalZoom provides commoditized business services for flat rates. You can do everything from forming your LLC to filing a trademark. They provide easy to understand descriptions of the requirements for filing. They walk you through a series of questions to help you fill out the required forms. They will even call you on occasion to point out facts that will help you make sound decisions without the advice of a lawyer.

For example, I recently used LegalZoom to create an LLC in California. They called to ask me what day I wanted to file, noting that if I filed before a certain date I would be assessed a tax in 2010. If I filed after that date, I wouldn’t be assessed the tax until 2011. They didn’t advise me on what to do, they merely read me the rules.

In sum, LegalZoom has taken an area of the law that can seem onerous and has demystified it by making it easy to understand.

Legal ethicists and regulators will have the last call on whether this constitutes practicing law. For lawyers practicing in this area, the onus is on them to show what added value they can bring to the table that makes the one-on-one service worth the cost of admission.

That’s not a bad thing. It is just different and it’s a reflection of how the practice of law needs to change to provide better service.

In the quest for the perfect law firm business model, I’m often asked about the best way to balance the practice of law with the time needed to develop new business.

While there is no silver bullet, here are three first steps to consider when developing a plan to grow your practice.

1) Start with the partnership.

If your firm has a strong business development culture, your equity partners are regularly out there marketing themselves and your firm. But do a gut check. Typically 20% of partners generate 80% of a firm’s business. That may mean that more attention should be focused on helping rainmakers generate more rain. However, it does not mean that they are the only ones who need to be marketing.

Every attorney in the firm has a responsibility to dedicate non-billable time on helping the firm grow. In my experience, not every attorney needs a personal business plan. Non-rainmaker attorney time may be better spent supporting specific marketing and business development initiatives at the firm or practice group level.

2) Evaluate your current workload.

Where does your work come from currently? If it’s another partner that is feeding you work, how can your support her business development goals? If you rely on referrals, what are you doing to stay in touch with those referral sources? If you are trying to develop a new area of practice, what speaking or writing opportunities are available to you to raise your visibility before prospective clients?

3) What is your current utilization?

To meet your professional goals (firm or personal), how much of your time are you willing to work?

What percentage of that time must be spent on billable matters to meet your minimum financial goals?

How much time is left?

If the answer is zero, you need to rethink your business plan. There are only 24 hours in every day. To maintain a steady pipeline of business, you need to make time to do it. That means spending less time on current clients or devoting more non-work time toward your business development efforts.

It’s all about balance.

I am privileged to be working with the San Diego County Public Law Library as they plan a major renovation of their main library. They launched a campaign this week called Rebuilt. Reinvented. Reinvigorated. The campaign is to raise awareness about their plans to better serve the legal community and the general public.

The changes include conference rooms and technology areas that will make it possible for lawyers to use the library as a satellite law office. They include creating new public spaces that will bring together legal organizations and community groups to better serve the public. They are revisiting their membership program to ensure they are providing value to their patrons. They are even developing a virtual community that will make legal information accessible beyond the physical walls of the library.

Why are they doing this? Because the needs of their patrons and the way legal information is delivered has changed. The San Diego Law Library understands that if they don’t find new ways to add value to their “clients,” they risk extinction.

Law firms should take notice. Instead of clinging to the old ways of doing business, they need to find new ways to add value to their clients and improve the way they deliver their services.

These changes are not easy. Some traditional services may have to go away. The professionals working there have to develop new skill sets. There is a risk that it may not work.

But what is so impressive to me is that the staff and the board are willing to take the chance to make the library a more relevant and vital part of the community. They may not have all the answers, but they recognize that the status quo is not good enough.

I found an old email this morning that references a 2009 McKinsey Executive Insight report about challenges facing corporations coming out of the economic crisis. I no longer have a link to the year-old report, but the excerpt from the email reads:

“Companies need to integrate marketing and sales function into the day-to-day operations of the organization and apply the same rigor to defining commercial processes and systems that they have long applied to manufacturing and other operational processes and systems. This “commercial transformation” can take many forms and involves 1) a concerted, multi-year effort to substantially upgrade the effectiveness of a company’s marketing and sales processes, including aligning top management around a forceful transformation theme; 2) driving performance improvement programs around 2-3 carefully selected commercial levers and striving to lead the industry on these levers; and 3) embedding the change through a comprehensive commercial operating system, comprising not only processes and tools, but also IT systems and performance management.”

If you filter through the jargon and are not put off by words like “commercialization,” “operational processes”and “sales,” there are some salient points from which law firms could benefit, particularly those that have made a heavy investment in marketing but are not sure they are getting the results they want.

First, law firm management and their marketing departments need to be directly aligned. Many firms still fail to give marketing a seat at the executive committee and make the much needed connection between strategic growth and market position.

Second, the old adage, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it,” remains true. Law firm marketers need benchmarks around which they can measure their success. Real process needs to be put in place to evaluate return on investment.

Finally, IT and marketing can no longer work independently. Technology needs to be an integrated into law firm marketing strategies. There are far too many law firm marketing directors out treat technology like a “project” that can be checked off on a things to do list. Technology is a part of doing business. Combined with the right people and processes, it is a tactic for raising awareness, a tool for developing credibility and the centralized resource for tracking results.

This is not to suggests that law firms need to undergo a “commercial transformation” at the expense of professionalism. But the economy has changed and the drivers for legal services are different today. Firms need to take a disciplined approach to the way the do business in addition to the legal work they provide clients. They cannot afford reactive marketing where there is a constant state of motion and very little measurable progress.

I’m calling last week the week of pain – growing pains. On the same day, I had calls from colleagues at three different clients. All wanted to bend my ear about struggles they were having trying to implement new initiatives.

Strategic direction wasn’t the challenge. All three clients have virtually universal support for their end goals. Budget wasn’t even a problem. Sure, money is always a factor, but in all three of these cases, funding for the projects was available. It wasn’t even a question of timing. Again, in all cases, key stakeholders agreed that it was now or never.

The challenge is change management. It seems no matter how much agreement there is about the need to change people continue to struggle to break the status quo.

This is particularly tough for law firms. If for no other reason than the partnership structure itself, law firms struggle with change more than any other organization I know.

The same week I was having these discussions with clients, I had the privilege of attending the LA Legal Marketing Association Chapter’s annual continuing marketing education program. (My company, Legal Vertical Strategies, was a sponsor).

There, Henry Givray, Chairman and CEO of SmithBucklin, spoke on the topic of leadership and, specifically, the importance of transparency in decision making. The framework he uses to communicate decisions is simple:

1)      I’ve made a decision and this is what it is.

2)      I’m leaning toward a decision but want your input.

3)      This decision is open to debate and I welcome your opinion.

This allows the team to respond accordingly.

1)      Yes, I agree.

2)      I don’t agree, but I can live with it.

3)      I don’t agree, and I cannot live with it.

On its face, decision-making clarity and change management seem distinct topics. Yet adapted, Givray’s framework provides a formula law firm leaders can use to drive change in their organization.

There are decisions that require extensive debate among partnerships. What are our goals? What are the principles we all agree are non-negotiable in achieving those goals? Who do we trust to lead us toward accomplishing those goals?

These are important questions. Once the debate is closed and those decisions have been made, however, firm leadership needs to be able to move on and make decisions on behalf of the firm without debating every step.

Firm leaders need to be clear about how they are making their decisions. Some decisions will be open to debate. Others will not. So long as there is clarity about what type of decision it is, the partners will retain their individual right to agree or not.

Individual partners can then make their own decisions. Can they agree and, if not, can they live with it? If they cannot live with it, the individual partner needs to have an honest conversation with himself or herself as to whether they are in the right place.

Law firm leaders can and should try to help partners who disagree and don’t feel they can live with the decision. You don’t want to lose good partners because they are struggling with change. Good leaders need to provide the guidance and will support. But that is a conversation distinct from decision making.