As we watch another AMLAW 100 firm on a spiral-down trajectory, Law Firm Management and partners in other law firms look to quickly glean lessons - hoping to avoid the same type of demise.

When I see the tell-tale partner diaspora begin in the news, three things enter my mind:

1. The Root Cause - Degraded Law Firm Profitability
2. The Likelihood of Survival - Slim to None
3. The Timeframe for Extinction - Brief (Months, Not Years) 

Law Firm Management teams are looking for proactive profitability management solutions so that their firms avoid similar fates.  Many feel they just can't get their arms around it.  The reason for that is - the problem is dynamic, multi-dimensional and nuanced. 

Firms that aggressively move to take advantage of the dynamicity of the market for legal products and services will experience new growth.  Those that react retrospectively, tactically and with unidimensional approaches are likely to suffer the similar fate of extinction with increasing rapidity.

Legal Project Management - 101

Firms seem to be somewhat comfortable beginning to adopt one strategy for profitability protection - Legal Project Management.  By applying basic project management tenets, some firms are achieving higher profitability and increased customer satisfaction.  By employing project management best practices, firms can regain visibility and a new level of control over matter execution, with direct line impacts on profitability when done effectively.

Of course, there is no real news here - other industries have understood the need and value of project management for decades (like the technology industry, for example).  Once law firm customers began demanding accurate cost estimates and budgets, project management was an obvious requirement.

Why Law Firms Can't Survive without BPM

So Legal Project Management helps in some ways, but what doesn't it address?  So much - but let's focus on what I think are the top three:

1. Efficiency Gains By Changing the 'How':  Project management coordinates what work gets done, by whom, with some adjustments in terms of overall approach and timing.  The work itself might still continue on as before, just with better planning and coordinated execution.  Those are some elements of process optimization - but nowhere near what is required.  Law firms must fundamentally shift HOW work is done.  This requires a holistic approach to optimizing work delivery processes, and the effective utilization of supporting business systems or applications.  This is business process optimization, not project management.  BPM provides the optimization of use of both human and technology resources.  The result?  More with Less = Same or Increased Revenue with Less Staff or Overhead = Higher Profitability.  Faster Delivery = Accelerated Cash Flow.
2. Commoditization:  Law firm management must stay ahead of the curve in recognizing legal services that are destined for commodization (practice areas or customer types). 
1. Once recognized, process optimization techniques must be applied that empower law firm management and marketing teams to accelerate near-term revenue generation opportunities to capture as much of 'what is left' of the service offering while the commoditization process is occurring in the market.  The result?  Awareness + Focus = Exploited Revenue Opportunities = Working Capital to Fund Your Transformation
2. At the same time, while the practice area is in 'glide down' with full exploitation of remaining revenue opportunities, law firm management must use the working capital provided to accomplish required transformation.  This is done through the application of process optimization techniques.  The objective is to determine whether the firm can win at the commoditization game. 
1. If the answer is YES, the practice must be transformed to the newly defined process optimized delivery model, with the law firm marketing department out in front with the appropriate market penetration campaigns.  The result?  Exploit Commoditization = New Market Opportunities and Stable or Enhanced Revenue Generation and Profitability
2. If the answer is NO (the firm can't win at the commoditization game) then operational processes should be implemented to provide visibility and control over pursuit of new opportunities in this area - and redirection of these efforts to identified practice areas that might be able to releverage similar delivery approaches, skills and expertise.  The result?  Dump After Commoditized = Protected Profitability by Applying Resources to Higher Profit-producing work before degradation of profitability can occur
3. Market Differentiation: Legal product and services customers are self-educating and have new options (outsourcing; insourcing; online services).  These savvy buyers are looking for law firms who bring new perspectives, better ways of doing things, predictable high-value service offerings and innovative thinkers.  And to capture their business - law firm marketing techniques must transform with BPM techniques.  The results?  Deeper Customer Penetration + Increased Market Share = Increased Revenue + Increased Financial Risk Mitigation = Protected and Higher Profitability

If you discern anything from the above limited discussion, I hope it is this: the strategies I am discussing are evolutionary, not static.  Business Process Management is by definition meant to be applied to areas of dynamicity, and this is why law firms can't survive without it.   

Dowload our free whitepaper to learn more about why BPM is required to transform law firm operations and delivery models to ensure protected law firm profitability.

Are alternative fee arrangements (AFAs) catching on – or are they likely to remain one of those hypes that never really goes anywhere?

General counsels and other corporate law leaders seem more than ready to embrace AFAs. But are law firms willing to play ball? Yes – it appears that firms are gradually making the transition to new forms of billing. 

The Northwestern University Law School’s Center for Career Strategy and Advancement reports that:

“The billable hour is not dead yet, nor will it be any time soon. However, in the face of client demands for cost containment and increased efficiency, firms are showing more openness to considering fixed fees, contingency fees, and other alternative billing arrangements, typically on a matter-by-matter basis…. We can expect that alternative fee arrangements will become even more common in 2012.”

In its annual survey of law firm leaders, American Lawyer found that in 2011:

• 92% of firms had accepted a flat fee for an entire matter
• 88% had billed at blended rates
• 83% had accepted an incentive or success fee
• 82% had agreed to collars or caps
• 74% had accepted contingency fees

Only 1% of firms responded that they hadn’t used any form of alternative billing.

So, looks like AFAs are the hot new legal trend, right? Well, yes and no.

You may recall that some months ago, I referenced an article in The Economist that mentioned “alternative fee arrangements continue to grow in importance, albeit slowly: they accounted for 16% of big firms’ revenue in 2010.” More recently, the 2012 Client Advisory prepared by Citi Private Bank and the Hildebrandt Institute reported that in 2011, just 11.8% of firms’ revenues were attributable to AFAs.

The current usage of AFAs appears to be “a mile wide and an inch deep.” Looks like an opportunity to me – and I’m not alone.

In the American Bar Association’s Law Practice magazine, Frederick J. Esposito, Jr. writes:

“[P]roper and thoughtful planning will be key to making AFAs, or any other billing arrangement, viable and successful. Law firms that preemptively think through the issues of internal efficiency and utilizing project management skill will be prepared to deliver projects more profitably….

“The big question many law firms ask is how many other law firms are actually achieving profitability by using AFAs? The short answer is some firms are making more profit, but many law firms repeatedly make mistakes that vastly reduce profits.

“Those that have been successful with AFAs understand the economics and understand the need to pay more attention to the mechanics of their practices through better planning, organizing and managing of their firms and engagements.”

In other words, if you can make your processes run as efficiently as possible, you’ll be in a much better position to know exactly what your limit is in terms of price. You’ll position yourself to proactively offer your clients AFAs that give them cost-certainty while enhancing your profitability.

Now, wouldn’t that give you a competitive advantage? You can get started by reevaluating your firm’s business processes and exploring BPM. 

Last week we were speaking with a well-respected member of a law firm management team about innovations and shifts in law firm marketing.  During the discussion, he said:  "We know 50% of the monies we spend on marketing are wasted, but the problem is, we just can't figure out what 50%."  Great quote...not so great a problem to be facing when law firm profitability is under attack - and law firm marketing is such a key component of success in the new world of legal services.

Break down the meaning of the statement, and a couple of points pop-out:

1. Law Firm Marketers (and Management) are having trouble tying efforts to results - they lack the business intelligence they need to evaluate return-on-investment of marketing activities.

2. Without meaningful information to show true value of marketing investments, law firm management has two options: Option A: Cut the marketing budget by 50% or Option B: Keep the marketing budget as-is, and continue the known waste for fear that the wrong 50% might get cut! 

What if law firm management had different choices?  Spend less, get the same return OR spend the same and get full value of that investment?  Either option adds to law firm profitability.  The first hits the bottom line, and the second hits the top and bottom line...which choice does your law firm want to make?

Regardless of which option your law firm chooses, you will need to innovate how you view, execute and report on marketing efforts.  But this really isn't a big deal - because the fact is, you have to do that anyway!  Competition in the legal industry has already transformed - with outsourcing, insourcing, pricing pressures, alternative fee arrangements - its an onslaught.  Your firm HAS to transform its marketing or you will be obsolete before you know it.

Here's the rub for law firms...new age marketing is based on collaboration.  Collaboration within your law firm (cross-attorney) and collaboration with your prospects and customers.  This is where law firm management faces the biggest challenge - culture and behavioral change. 

Elegrity helps law firms navigate the labyrinth of these changes by employing proven business process transformation approaches and supporting technologies. We help law firm management embed marketing into daily operations, with auditable and reportable connections between efforts and returns.  See our earlier posts for information on ways to overcome those challenges...and look for more posts on law firm marketing in the coming weeks.

Often I find myself 'nagging' law firm executives and business users about why the marketing department is underrepresented in process improvement meetings.

Law Firms are faced with increasing and rapidly expanding competitive forces (in-house legal teams; legal outsourcing; other firms).  These forces are threatening both top-line revenue and bottom-line profitability.   

Law Firm success relies on the firm's ability to differentiate itself from these competitive forces.  As a result, the need for marketing teams to be integrated into high-level strategy and every-day business processes is a requirement.  And, the need for the marketing team to be proactively marketing firm differentiators almost in real-time is also key.  The window of differentiation in certain areas of law or key challenges faced by corporations is becoming increasingly short.  Therefore, advantages (such as expertise and key case wins) have to be pushed and highlighted almost immediately.

It has become one of my personal passions to help law firms innovate their marketing approaches.  To remain profitable and viable, law firms have to transform almost every aspect of how they run their business.  Marketing is a core component of that transformation.  In fact, I believe it needs to be the key driver of it.

3 Innovations for Law Firm Marketing

New Insight

First, law firm marketing departments have to be empowered with new insight into their firm and it's ecosystem in the context of the larger global market.  The speed of global market changes, and the potential risk / rewards of those changes is more than apparent to anyone whose been aware of the global economic changes since 2008.  It is no longer enough to look at your internal information in a vacuum - you must have the ability to tie it back to the larger picture of your global corporate clients. 

This is why we have built products specifically targeted at providing vast amounts of intelligence regarding law firm clients (global corporations) from a corporate make-up, financial metrics and industry and market comparisons that tie directly back to the law firm's internal client information.  This way, if any change is detected (internal or external), we can immediately prompt marketing assessments of the potential opportunity.

New Involvement

Marketing needs to be at the table for any process improvement or strategic discussions regarding overall positioning of the firm.  And once there, they need to be expected and allowed to provide meaningful input into those decisions.

Process improvement needs to be inclusive of information gathering and feeding for marketing purposes.  Take a look at the example below of how marketing integration into the new business intake process at your firm can substantially increase the marketing's team ability to target marketing efforts and spend (and adapt almost immediately based on real-time information as the business operates).

New Approaches

Last, but certainly not least, law firms need to match marketing approaches to the changed buying habits of their clients and allow the firm to highlight its differentiators in ways that pull new clients to the firm.

As I alluded to above - content must be timely, on-point and distributed to targets meaningfully and consistently.  The firm's thought leadership in industries and areas of law have to be highlighted (along with the value difference potential prospects can expect to gain).  Done right, inbound marketing techniques provide more and better-qualified leads for less overall spend than more traditional marketing techniques!

Successful firms will provide the marketing department with what it needs to be successful, primarily:

1. Involvement in key strategic decisions and every day processes

2. Insight into the firm's business (with accessible business intelligence tools) and it's tie to the business of it's clients and targeted prospects.

3. Adaptability through real-time information feeds and intelligence to empower the marketing team to implement and monitor new inbound marketing approaches.

If you are in the marketing department of a law firm and you read this blog and think (that would be nice, but there is no way my firm would go for this)...give me a call or write me an email...I am always up for a good challenge and I'm willing to help be your advocate for your firm's success!

Our work with customers has proven over and over again that a process-driven approach, applied thoughtfully, is the best way to achieve almost immediate and, most importantly, sustainable (self-enforcing) change. 

We've all had the experience of what it's like implementing and manually enforcing change without the benefit of a process-driven approach. I'm sure you've got a story like this one:

A few weeks back, I was talking to a Finance person at a firm who was relating to me the pain they are having in managing, monitoring and tracking Alternative Fee Arrangements. His finance team went to great lengths to put together a spreadsheet and provided it to the accounting team.  Of course, the 'assumption' was that the accounting team would maintain the spreadsheet going forward and that this would allow at least the basic tracking they needed.  But...well, you know the answer - it didn't happen and in a few months they were right back into the confused, chaotic world they had tried to address.  They essentially got no where.

So what happened? 

This example is a classic one - you spend time putting something like that spreadsheet together and 'expect' it will continue to be used, but very often those kinds of mechanisms fall by the way side.  The reason is that the usage is not codified and enforced, and therefore does not become a natural part of the day-to-day business process. 

The Policy Police

Aren't you exhausted from manual policing of procedures and policies?? That's what a process-driven approach fixes!

The Big 3 

There are a plethora of reasons why a process-driven strategy and approach makes a fundamental difference in the way businesses are managed, but let's look at what I consider to be the 'Big 3'.

1.  Enterprise Agility through self-enforcing procedures and policies.  Business process management ensures that adherence to procedures and policies becomes part of the natural way business is conducted, alleviating the need for 'manual' follow-ups or policing.  That is not to say oversight is removed, but instead is just another coordinated part of day-to-day activities.  

And, of course, processes are not stagnant!  Once you've applied a process-driven approach using BPM strategies and technologies, you've now got a built-in mechanism for 'tweaking' procedures and policies, or introducing new ones.  This means a new kind of fluidity and agility for your business now and forever!

2.  Enterprise-Awareness Built-In through holistic thought processes.  

Thinking about business activities within the context of a process, and then thinking about the process in the context of an entire LIFECYCLE of processes in which it lives forces transformative thinking in any organization.  Siloes naturally begin to melt away as cross-functional understandings are forged.  

3.  Enhanced Risk Management and substantial efficiency gains as a natural by-product of how the business is run.  While your codified policies ensure adherence to risk management and loss prevention strategies - you are getting incredible monetary benefits at the same time!  Raising visibility into information locked up in existing business systems provides inreased Return-On-Investment on business systems that you thought had given all they could!  Most notably, your most important assets - your people, are being empowered with meaningful, relevant and real-time information and provided new bandwidth to be applied to higher-value work (as opposed to labor-intensive manual workflow management or duplicative data entry).  

These 'Big 3' are the core reason Law Firms around the globe have identified Business Process Management as integral to their survival and competitiveness.  Read more about Law Firm BPM in our FREE whitepaper - Why Law Firms Can't Survive Without BPM.

We've all heard and experienced the hub-bub about Alternative Fee Arrangements.  You can read more about our thoughts and work with customers relating to AFAs in other posts in this blog.

The reality, though, is that most law firms are still reliant upon and use billing rates for the majority of their matters.  Seems like old hat, nothing changed...but that's simply not true.  Even if you are still billing hourly, you can't escape the impact of the new industry expectations for legal services costs.  Maybe your firm has experienced the situation...

The new rates memo goes out, and things seem fairly quiet.  And then...first year billing time hits.  You send out the proformas for attorney review reflecting the new rates, and low and behold the accounting team is FLOODED with Rate Exception requests.

These have to be worked out, negotiations accomplished and bills updated and reviewed (AGAIN) before you can even get the bill out to the customer. 

And, in addition, lack of oversight of these negotiated rates may mean your firm is 'giving away' more than you realize until it's too late!

Poor Rate Exception Management Leads to Decayed Profitability and More

I can't tell you how many times over the past few years I've had CFOs, COOs, General Counsel, Managing Partners and other firm executives tell me that we could really help them if we could just "modify the behavior of their firm's users".  Of course, they are joking...well, at least partially!  But it turns out, we can help!  Don't believe me?  Read on...

About a month ago, I was talking to the CFO of a large, global law firm for which we have been implementing incremental process improvements over the past 2 years.  The firm started with the process automation of New Business Intake, which they have continued to extend and improve over time.  In addition, they have implemented subsequent process automation, like Lateral Hire and Matter Party Management, among others. The firm has been very successful at continuous process improvement, because they astutely target key strategic changes as they become priorities.

As a result, the CFO and Risk Management teams are, in fact, modifying behaviors within the firm as they go! 

This is exactly the approach we advocate and implement with our clients - introduce change incrementally and intelligently within a single user-friendly framework (our LBMS product).  Every change implemented further indoctrinates firm users, and their acceptance and tolerance of change increases, as they recognize the value in overall efficiency it is bringing them and the firm as a whole. 

Sound farfetched for your firm?  It's not as far away or hard as you may think!

Take a look at some of the most basic organizational change techniques we help law firm management employ:

1.  Implement business processes that have embedded business rules that ensure the process is followed in complete compliance with firm policies, but with the built-in flexibility necessary to accommodate the nuances that always exist within business environments.

• Example:  ensure that credit checks occur for all new clients, and enforce retainer check obtainment before intake process completes.

2.  Provide oversight visibility (and alerting) to key risk management, financial management and strategic management teams for proactive and intelligent adjustments.

• Example:  If Alternative Fee Arrangement is being utilized (and it was not previously reviewed by Finance), prompt immediate Finance Review by a Financial Analyst.

3. Hold the line of accountability consistently, across the firm.

• Example:  Provide ability for operational teams to return requests back to requestors if information is inaccurate or incomplete.  Even with the best business rules, requestors can sometimes send in a request that just isn't quite right.  Historically, central operational teams would just 'clean them up' because it was so arduous to send paper forms back, or email back and forth with the requestor.  But with effective business automation, 'training' of requestors by returning the request back for the additional information required is a fantastic way to change behavior and increase overall efficiency!

4.  'Bug' them just enough to act in a timely manner, and make it easy for them to do the work and move on so they can continue to focus on the practice of law! 

• Example:  Automate reminders and ticklers to ensure the users are timely in responding to information requests or approval requests.  Includes mobile review and approval.

5.  Ensure visibility into back-end business system information is provided securely to decision-makers to increase efficiency and accurate decision making.

• Example:  Provide Accounts Receivable Aging directly within new business intake for an existing client if firm A/R thresholds are exceeded to enable timely collection reviews or better decision-making regarding required retainer amounts.

I understand that those of you responsible for managing law firms have a hard balancing act to maintain in terms of transforming your firm's business model while at the same time ensuring you don't over-tip the scales of your firm's cultural norms. But, given the accelerated transformation the legal industry is undergoing, it is clear that sticking with the 'status quo' is more dangerous than doing something that provides the ability to phase change in thoughtfully.  The end game?  Getting the business of your law firm happening concertedly, and in an enterprise-aware fashion.

We’ve written a special report  that outlines how you can improve your business processes, increase your efficiency, and boost your bottom-line profits – even in this economy.

“7 Steps to Efficiency Gains and Enhanced Loss Prevention at Law Firms”  focuses on the new business intake process as an example and describes how to use a seven-step process to do more with less. Download the special report.

Remember when companies would pretty much pay whatever law firms asked? Consider it the Golden Age of Law Firm Profits.

The typical thinking was: “Legal counsel is an absolute necessity, and law firms are the only ones who provide it. So, we should just pay what the firm asks – it’s certainly cheaper than exposing the company to legal risk.”

A recent article in The Economist reports, “Companies must hire costly lawyers to guide them through a maze created by other lawyers. They must also hire lawyers to defend themselves against attacks by other lawyers on a playing field built by lawyers. The cost – roughly $800 a year for every American – is passed on to consumers.”

Today, things are different. Oh, the legal system is still as complex as ever – but companies have tightened their belts. They’re calling on law firms less frequently and negotiating for lower fees when they do.

The hardest-hit firms are responding the only way they can – by reducing headcount. The Economist article reports that “America’s 250 biggest law firms shed more than 9,500 people, nearly 8% of the total, in 2009-10.”

In addition, a recent article on AmericanLawyer.com, titled “A Rebuilding Year,” states, “Much of The Am Law 100’s gains were built on cuts in head count—average head count was slashed by 2.7 percent, while the number of equity partners fell by 0.9 percent, and the number of nonequity partners dropped by 1.7 percent.” Cutting head count to restore profitability is not a sustainable strategy, unless it is paired with a robust process improvement strategy.

Whether your firm has already reduced headcount or is trying to protect its profitability in other ways, your mission is clear: work more efficiently to win more deals and earn a greater margin on each billing. And the best way to do so is to focus on business process management (BPM).

Strategic firms see BPM as a reliable way to improve the bottom line through increased efficiency and decreased overhead costs. At the same time, they recognize BPM as essential for ensuring and actively enforcing risk management and compliance.

Over the past eight years, we at Elegrity have seen the difference BPM can make for firms ranging from multi-million dollar regional organizations to multi-billion dollar global firms. During this time, our BPM experts have defined, architected, designed, and automated countless complex business processes for clients. In the process, we’ve developed a proven methodology for delivering organization-changing business process automation solutions.

I could tell you more – but perhaps the best introduction is for you to read our white paper, “Why Law Firms Can’t Survive Without Business Process Management.” In it, we take a look at the key challenges firms like yours are facing and explain why the old solutions no longer work. And we provide you with new BPM strategies you can apply immediately to protect law firm profits. Download the white paper now.

Have you heard the news? Even the world’s largest law firms are feeling the pinch – and alternative fee arrangements are just the tip of the iceberg.

According to a recent article in The Economist, the legal business is changing forever. Firms are changing their very structure. They’re no longer counting on greater profits each year. In fact, some firms are taking extreme measures just to ensure their survival.

In an environment like this, how is your law firm changing?

If your firm is like most, you may be taking one or more measures to protect your profitability and increase your chances of surviving the economic downturn:

1. Looking for work in unexpected places. Some larger firms are globalizing, going hard after business in burgeoning Third World economies. If you’ve got the manpower, global footprint, language expertise, and knowledge of local law, this can be a good way to go.

2. Cutting staff. Reducing your number of attorneys means less overhead. It also means less ability to scale up your workload when new work comes in – unless you’ve diligently trimmed the fat from your business processes.

3. Outsourcing tasks. Legal-process outsourcing firms were hardly on the radar just a few short years ago. But they can often perform routine legal tasks, such as research, quickly and accurately – and more cost-effectively than an attorney.

4. Embracing alternative fee arrangements. How far are you able to go to win – or keep – the client? Will your firm work on contingency? Charge a flat fee per project? Agree to fee caps? These are all changes that clients are asking law firms to make. In some ways, they feel they have firms over the barrel and have the right to negotiate more favorable terms. But on the other hand, they are looking to see what firms have their business processes and business model fine-tuned to allow them to offer this kind of flexibility.  If your firm can’t…that says something to your prospects!  Your ability to meet these demands will generally be a function of how efficiently your firm can work on any given client’s projects.

5. Leaning on technology. A major part of working efficiently is to leverage technology to streamline or automate tasks that used to tie up hours of an attorney’s time. For example, some law firms are using business process management (BPM) software to streamline and decrease the cycle time of key business processes. BPM helps them to monitor processes and to identify bottlenecks. Making processes more efficient enables them to offer AFAs and still maintain profitability.

The downward pressure on law firm fees isn’t likely to end anytime soon. But if you’re going to compete with other firms on price, efficiency will be the name of the game.

Elegrity specializes in helping law firms like yours achieve a competitive advantage by working “leaner” than their peers. We’ve written a special report that outlines how you can improve your business processes, increase your efficiency, and boost your bottom-line profits – even in this economy.

“7 Steps to Efficiency Gains and Enhanced Loss Prevention at Law Firms” focuses on the new business intake process as an example and describes how to use a seven-step process to do more with less. Download the special report.

If you carry any responsibility for managing a law firm these days you might find yourself waking up in cold sweats (or not sleeping at all) thinking to yourself:  "How am I supposed to manage the firm when I don't even know what is going on out there until AFTER it's happened!"

If it helps, you should know you aren't alone...but it probably doesn't help.

Industry forces such as rate compression, profitability decay, value-driven service delivery, globalization and many more are accelerating at increasing velocity. 

The problem is, law firm management's ability to not just see, but AFFECT change through timely adjustments has not come even close to keeping pace in most firms. 

And so there you are, lying awake in bed at night wondering how on earth you can catch up to the speed of change you are tasked with 'managing'.

Maybe some of these common questions are spinning around in your mind:

• Who is out there in our firm entering Alternative Fee Arrangements that may be putting firm profits at risk?  
• Is everyone prioritizing collections like they should to accelerate cash flow? 
• Are the right retainer amounts getting requested as new matters are being brought in? 
• Are client rate exceptions getting examined properly to ensure consistency across offices in our key client base?
• Is our loss prevention good enough to protect our profits?
• How much more bandwidth could we get from our employees if we got more efficient?
• What can help us get deeper penetration into our existing customer base faster and more effectively?

So what's the answer to getting a handle on the things that are the most important?  Well, the fact is, there isn't just one answer.  The industry forces are complex and shifting, so the answer to combating them can't, by definition, be some 'set it and forget it' solution.  Just the opposite, in fact.

That said...there is one absolutely beautiful fact (I think you'll like it)...ALL of the answers can be found within your firm.  How and where, you may ask?  Inside your most valuable assets...the minds of your colleagues and the business systems that contain (or can contain) the information you and your colleagues need to make more timely and better strategic decisions.

"Ok," you make ask, "but if I already have the answers, why am I still sitting here with these questions?" 

Think of it this way...just because you have all the tools you need to build a house, doesn't mean you can build a house.  You need a blueprint, a plan and the expertise and knowledge of how and when to yield the right tool for the right job.  And because you have no idea how many and what kind of changes you may need or want to make in the future to your house, you must have a base platform (foundation) capable of evolving to support your shifting needs.

For enterprises, like law firms, in need of exceptional agility and visibility, a new 'orchestration' layer must be added on top of the people and systems (technology) that already exist.  The role of this layer is three-fold:

1.  To make sure the right people are doing the right work at the right time for increased efficiency, risk mitigation and loss prevention.

2.  To arm the right people doing the right work at the right time with the right information so they can make better decisions faster.  This information is pulled together (or 'aggregated') from your existing back-end business systems.  But what's different from what you have today, is that now this information can be presented in ways that are meaningful to the EXACT decision being made at the EXACT time and to the EXACT decision-makers that need it.  In reality, much of this information is 'locked away' in your firm today, not accessible to the 'masses'.  So the trick is to 'unlock' it in a secure way to provide the visibility needed for enterprise agility.

3. To codify key firm policies, procedures and business rules to ensure consistency, effective oversight when needed and enhanced efficiency all leading to greater profitability. 

Enter the dragon:  Cradle-to-Grave Client/Matter Management

Cradle-to-Grave client/matter management means systematizing your firm’s core business processes to be as efficient as possible while at the same time enhancing your loss prevention effectiveness.  It requires coordinating and facilitating the involvement of your people and the information you have in your key business systems with the work being performed in accordance with your established strategies and policies.  By managing from inception to close you gain a whole new kind of visibility and control over the daily operations of your firm, while at the same time getting more leverage from the creativity and innovations of your firm’s most valuable assets. 

And this isn’t a ‘set it and forget it’ solution.  It’s an EVOLVING one.  This means that the rules you inject into the processes today can (and SHOULD) be morphed, added to or removed based on CHANGES as they occur in your organization.  You MUST maintain the ability to AFFECT CHANGE, today and tomorrow, to be successful in adapting your firm to the constant changes that will definitely be occurring in the marketplace.

Imagine:

1.  You can see what is happening throughout the entire lifecycle of the client and matter, from prospecting through closure.

2.  You can be sure that YOUR strategies, objectives, and policies are followed consistently with ultimate flexibility to account for necessary nuances (e.g., if you want clients and matters for European offices to go through extra checks to account for enhanced anti-money laundering legislation or other geographically-driven differences).

3.  You get enhanced value from your existing employees as their bandwidth increases to do high-value 'brain' work.

4.  You get immediate add-on leverage out of your existing technology investments, and in fact, see increased return-on-investment from them, even if you haven't 'touched' them for several years.

This is not nirvana or utopia...these are real, obtainable results.  And you can start getting them RIGHT NOW.  Immediate change is possible.  Of course, you don’t, can’t and shouldn’t tackle every process at the same time!  That is NOT feasible, or recommended.  You approach strategically to get the biggest value from each investment you make. 

This blog has only scratched the surface on this subject. 

Download the following FREE whitepapers for more in-depth coverage: 

Why Law Firms Can't Survive Without Business Process Management

7 Steps to Efficiency Gains and Enhanced Loss Prevention at Law Firms

Whatever you do, do something.  Inertia is the ultimate enemy in today's law firm marketplace!