At a recent collaborative workshop between two camps -- in-house counsel and corporate procurement professionals on one side and law firm partners, finance and marketing professionals on the other -- we had a lively discussion about law firm profits. Most agreed generally with the view that a law firm has a right to profits, but the challenge arises when a law firm is extraordinarily profitable at the same time the client is extraordinarily unhappy with the value delivered. This scenario, one which resonates with many in-house counsel in recent years, leads to increased price pressure from buyers and over time this will depress law firm profits.

Predictably, in an effort to boost sagging profits some short-sighted law firm partners will make up for price pressure from one set of clients by raising prices for others, eroding the price-value connection for even more buyers, and accelerating this decline of profits. One in-house participant declared that he requires all outside counsel to submit profitability data and he'll decide what profit margin is acceptable! We can all empathize with buyers who are dissatisfied with the value received at the prices they pay for goods and services. But it's a stretch for the buyer to explicitly decide what profit the supplier should earn, in any marketplace.

So how can a law firm both enjoy a healthy profit and satisfy clients? If we adjust our lens a bit, it's not all that difficult - as with many commercial ecosystems, the pursuit of profit can best be maximized by delighting customers, and not as many assume by having one party win while the other loses.

Long Term vs. Short Term Profitability

Most law firm financial systems are structured to measure short-term profits, that is if there is any measurement structure at all. A surprising number of law firms do not explicitly calculate profitability, and many who do refuse to share these calculations with the partnership out of a misguided concern that it's divisive and corrosive to a collaborative culture. What's more divisive is a culture of not knowing -- which naturally leads to most parties making flawed assumptions about their performance relative to their peers. But the root problem is that without a clear understanding of what generates profits and what dilutes profits, no enterprise can sustain itself indefinitely because there will be too many factions working at cross-purposes. When everything supposedly makes money, then nothing makes money. And vice versa.

A focus on short-term profits drives and rewards the wrong behavior. Imagine a partner who sees an opportunity to bill a client $100,000 for a litigation defense matter, when that partner's experience could quite easily lead him to counsel the client that he's better off settling rather than defending, and thereby reducing legal costs by $50,000. Or imagine the partner who pads his own time and allows others to pad their time against the client matter, knowing the client will absorb some or all of these costs without complaint because, after all, "They hired us because we're the best and because we're thorough and they should expect to pay a premium for this." In reality, clients are rapidly becoming more sophisticated and can incorporate benchmarking data from other matters and other firms to help identify the "right" price for legal services, and increasingly they know when they're being overcharged. This isn't unlike purchasing an automobile before ubiquitous internet research, when price shopping was logistically challenging and buyers expected the dealers to take advantage... and they did. When a buyer discovers he's been overcharged, he doesn't return to that merchant. And therein lies the mathematical basis for focusing on long-term profitability instead of merely short-term profitability.

A law firm that calculates profitability as a function of maximum hours per engagement will, over time, as sure as the sun rises in the East, eventually experience client defections. Client defections (measured by retention rate) caused by over-emphasizing billable hours lead to three serious financial consequences:

The cost to acquire a new client is far higher than the cost to maintain or expand an existing relationship
The firm will price itself out of competitive bids
The firm will eschew efficiency and alternative fee arrangements and forgo potentially higher profits associated with these models. Success can't hinge on finding an endless supply of clueless clients, a task that gets harder every day.

If a law firm embraces a model in which long-term profitability is more balanced with short-term profitability, we will see changes in behavior and reward systems:

Matters will be priced more competitively, because the objective is not only to win the work, but to also win subsequent work
Matters will be delivered efficiently to maintain price competitiveness, and profiting from the learning curve is always more sustainable than profiting from high prices
Satisfied clients not only stay longer (leading to higher retention rates), they buy more services (a.k.a. cross-selling, leading to higher penetration rates at a lower cost of sales)
Satisfied clients insulate the firm from consequences of lateral partner defections. Even when a key rainmaker or service partner leaves, satisfied clients remain
Lateral hires and new offerings measured for their contribution to long-term profitability will insulate the firm from making hasty and dilutive decisions, such as recruiting a lateral partner with an alluring book of billable hours but with high service costs, non-competitive pricing, and clients evidently willing to change firms at will
Contributions from those involved with delivering high-quality legal services and managing valued client relationships will be more readily recognized, and the emphasis will shift from substantially rewarding origination to rewarding all steps along the supply chain. (Yes, it's hard to win new business, and this is why "hunter" salespeople are often highly-paid individuals in a corporate setting too. But those who make, manage and service the product lines are also essential to the sales and retention process. Missing this point is one of several extraordinary gaps in law firm management science.)

Organizational vs. Matter Profitability

To be clear, if we focus on long-term profitability and ignore the many short-term actions we take day in and day out, it's likely that we'll make many wrong and dilutive decisions. So there's nothing wrong with measuring profitability on a shorter time horizon too. Organizational profitability is typically the derived sum of individual matter profitability, often clustered within practices whose profit contributions are measured and compared.

Matter profitability, as we've described above, can be influenced by over-pricing. Is it acceptable if we achieve a 50% profit margin on a $100,000 matter, but in so doing upset and lose the client? Or is it better to achieve a 35% profit margin on a $50,000 matter, followed by a 35% profit margin on four subsequent matters, each acquired at no cost to the firm because a happy client simply assigned the work? Similarly, who should earn the higher reward -- the rainmaker who brings in a $100,000 matter at 50% margin that keeps 5 timekeepers at 60% utilization for 3 months, or the rainmaker and timekeepers who convert a $50,000 matter at a 35% margin that keeps 10 timekeepers at 40% utilization for 2 months into four more $50,000 matters, each at a 35% margin and that also keep 10 timekeepers at 40% utilization for 2 months?

I know, the math is getting hard to follow. The point is, sometimes the math is hard to follow so reducing everything to a single, simple point statistic like billed hours, and then basing all rewards and pricing on this one factor, is foolish. Running a business is a bit more complex. The many variables we've identified already include retention rate, utilization, realization rate, leverage, productivity, penetration rate, cost of sales, cost of goods sold, and more, and this is only a small subset of the variables available to managers who need to make rational decisions about the allocation of resources.

While we're at it, a few quick notes on the mechanics of matter profitability:

Matter profitability and even practice group profitability ignores cross-pollination. One of my clients recognized that the Trust & Estates practice generated a significantly lower profit margin per matter than other practices and considered shuttering the practice. However, deeper analysis revealed that T&E clients, many high-net worth individuals like CEOs, were feeders to the firm's other practices, like corporate, securities and litigation. On an isolated basis, the numbers suggest the firm's T&E practice should be closed, or at least starved of resources in order to focus on more lucrative practices. On an aggregate view, however, there may be more investment needed in this feeder practice if this can be done at a lower cost than alternative lead generation activities
Matter profitability often provides a false read because of improper allocations. One of the liveliest discussions in any business setting is how to allocate various costs to the business and to the various product lines. In a law firm, we can argue endlessly over whether to allocate costs based on headcount, or on a square foot basis, or on a consumption of resources basis, or other models. In many cases, the final tally isn't all that sensitive to modest tweaks in allocations, but the overriding imperative is to select a model and then stick with it for all, so it provides a sound and sustainable comparative measure
Matter profitability shouldn't be diluted by productivity. Matter profitability should balance the revenue generated against the hard costs to deliver the matter, including the compensation associated with the timekeepers billing against the matter. But the compensation should reflect target hours worked by associates, or associate bands. While associates are not truly fungible, in this case we should view their contribution as an interchangeable raw material, so if we replace Mary with Carlton, the underlying cost structure doesn't change. Why? Because if we price our services efficiently based both on our organizational learning curve ("We can complete this task in 5 hours") and the client's perceived value ("This task is worth $3,500 to me"), then an individual contributor's productivity shouldn't have a material impact on our costs of goods sold. Said another way, clients resist first- and second-year associates working on their matters because of the assumption that associates work inefficiently as they learn their craft. By basing the price on a standard cost, we remove the client's objection. Some will complain here that more productive associates are penalized because they're placed in a box along with less productive associates. But productivity is a management issue, not a pricing issue. We don't pay more or less for light bulbs or automobiles or haircuts or vaccinations based on the training level of the person making the product or delivering the service. And legal services shouldn't be priced that way either.
Matter profitability shouldn't be diluted by equity and bonus compensation. Partner time can be billed at actual rates rather than a target, if we choose, under the assumption that their variable billing rates already reflect experience and an experienced partner will bill 3 hours at $650 for a task that an inexperienced associate might bill 10 hours at $275. So a pro rata portion of the partner's compensation based on hours billed is a sensible cost to accrue to the matter. But it would be foolish to add in partner equity compensation, or bonuses for either partners or associates, as these costs have nothing at all to do with the matter! In fact, these costs would force the matter profitability to plummet, requiring the firm to significantly increase prices to make it profitable, which as we've described above serves to provoke the opposite effect, namely that no clients will buy any of what the firm is selling. Consider lawyer bonuses and partner equity compensation as SG&A to be addressed elsewhere.

Managing a law firm or a practice group is challenging enough without adding a lot of financial math to the mix. But the reality is that no law firm manager should be operating without a clear sense, or hopefully a directional sense, or at bare minimum a vague idea, of how resource allocation and pricing can influence the financial health of the business. Long-term profitability vs. short-term profitability, matter profitability vs. organizational profitability, allocations and overhead and leverage, oh my. Yes, it's hard. But I'm willing to bet that you have a resource on staff, or a phone call away, who can help you sort through these issues. The key is to establish a consistent approach across the firm based on the ideals of firm management. And these ideals should be established based on a fully-informed view of the alternatives and consequences. Welcome to management. No one said it would be easy.

For more information about the evolving state of law firm pricing, see Toby Brown's excellent "The State of Legal Pricing 2013."

Timothy B. Corcoran is principal of Corcoran Consulting Group, with offices in New York, Charlottesville, and Sydney, and a global client base. He’s a Trustee and Fellow of the College of Law Practice Management, an American Lawyer Research Fellow, a Teaching Fellow at the Australia College of Law, and past president and a member of the Hall of Fame of the Legal Marketing Association. A former CEO, Tim guides law firm and law department leaders through the profitable disruption of outdated business models. Tim can be reached at Tim@BringInTim.com and +1.609.557.7311.

There was a recent request on the Legal Marketing Association's discussion forum, for benchmarking data for paralegal and legal secretary staff to lawyer ratios. There are a number of good sources for this sort of thing, which savvy readers submitted. However, I was compelled to provide a contrarian response.

I question the validity of benchmarking data like this, particularly in today's economy.

Human nature generally nudges us toward safe choices as defined by how many others have made similar choices. In many law firms, precedence is the dominant method of decision making mostly because it's the method learned by lawyers in the practice of law. But those of us tasked with bringing sound business practices into today's law firms have an opportunity to introduce more rigor into the discussion. This applies to many areas of practice management, but in light of the recent law firm layoffs and downsizings, it seems even more poignant when applied to law firm staffing.

I'd like to hypothesize why staffing ratio benchmarks might be a hot topic lately:

A benchmark for paralegal/secretary to lawyer ratio is undoubtedly of keen interest to law firm leaders entertaining the question, "Which staff positions can we eliminate to reduce our cost base?" The problem is, the ratio is a function of the nature of the practices, the current workload, the culture and productivity levels.

Practices that rely heavily on paraprofessionals, e.g., real estate, litigation, will carry different ratios than other practices. Some practices are busier than others, for example those addressing counter-cyclical client work. Those that aren't busy tend not to delegate work downward, so partners are doing work today that a year ago a mid-level associate might handle. And some cultures better exploit technology and knowledge databases to improve productivity levels, so their ratios will differ from competitors in the exact same practices.

In this light, it’s presumptuous to believe that much value can be derived by examining staffing ratios compiled by surveying dissimilar firms in dissimilar markets comprised of dissimilar practices and targeting dissimilar clients.

Unfortunately, it's hard work for leaders to examine the organization's business processes and culture to determine the appropriate staffing ratios for their firm. But if the objective is to recalibrate capacity so it's aligned with current demand levels, with enough flexibility to adapt as demand returns, then it's sensible to roll up the sleeves. Too often, however, the objective appears to be to find a quick and easy rationale to lower costs by "bringing our staffing ratios in line with industry standards."

Cost cutting in an enterprise impacted by a recession is by definition necessary. Tough decisions have to be made. The law firm leaders who assess their enterprise in light of its long term outlook and make specific adjustments based on sound business rationale will have an easier time ramping up when demand increases than those firms using imprecise benchmarks to simply lower costs today without regard for tomorrow.

Business process re-engineering and improvement programs are more effective in the long run for aligning staff to workloads. These processes generally result in cost savings and are, therefore, often self-funding exercises. And we shouldn't have to repeat the growing theme (but we will) that law firms that find more efficient ways to deliver legal services are better positioned to implement alternative fee arrangements, which in turn lead to increased client retention.

These are not just good ideas for today's law firm leaders. They are essential.

Timothy B. Corcoran is principal of Corcoran Consulting Group, with offices in New York, Charlottesville, and Sydney, and a global client base. He’s a Trustee and Fellow of the College of Law Practice Management, an American Lawyer Fellow, and a member of the Hall of Fame and past president of the Legal Marketing Association. A former CEO, Tim guides law firm and law department leaders through the profitable disruption of outdated business models. A sought-after speaker and writer, he also authors Corcoran’s Business of Law blog. Tim can be reached at Tim@BringInTim.com and +1.609.557.7311.

Corcoran's Business of Law

New Podcast: "Disrupting Outdated Compensation Models"

Upcoming Webinar: Rallying Strategies that Benefit Your Firm and Your Clients

Solving for Profitability

Benchmarking as a Proxy for Intelligence

Tim Corcoran

VA Office