Why Pesky Clients Meddle in the Law Firm Business

Think back to the last time you purchased a new vehicle.  Do you recall advising the salesperson, in that gently chiding tone of yours, to be sure not to show you any cars manufactured on a Monday or a Friday?  When the incredulous salesperson asked you why the day of manufacture would possibly matter, do you recall your explanation?

"We all know that assembly line workers are, like everyone else, tired on Monday mornings so quality suffers until the workers regain their rhythm.  And we all know that many assembly line workers start their weekend on Thursday night and come into work on Friday morning tired and hungover, and with everyone else so focused on starting their weekend, quality suffers all day long."

This is, of course, a preposterous notion.  Automobile manufacturers embed so many quality controls and redundancies into the manufacturing operations that they feel quite comfortable issuing a brand promise of high manufacturing quality, regardless of which worker, which shift, which factory, which country, was involved in the assembly of a given vehicle.  Sure, mistakes can happen, but the incidences are statistically remote and any observable pattern of recurring flaws would be dealt with quickly and effectively.

And yet every single day in-house counsel across the globe feel the need to instruct their outside lawyers to not allow first- or second-year associates to work on certain matters, or on all of their matters, in order to protect the integrity, quality and efficiency of the legal work product. What gives them the right to meddle in the production of the legal work?  What factors influence clients to analyze legal bills, highlighting some tasks as unnecessary and accordingly refusing to pay for services rendered?  The answer, quite simply, is the typically insufficient and ineffective law firm brand promise.

Quality isn't a de facto outcome of pedigree

Once, while serving as moderator of a panel of law firm managing partners presenting at an in-house counsel conference, I asked how each law firm demonstrated "quality" to its clients.  One managing partner declared that his approach was to hire the best and the brightest, pay an above-average wage, staff matters to ensure thoroughness and leave no stone unturned in the pursuit of the client's objectives.  An audience member asked the managing partner if he wasn't even a little concerned that clients, the questioner included, weren't willing to pay premium prices for young lawyers to learn their craft.  The managing partner scoffed at the notion, suggesting that if the client wants quality, he should expect to pay for it.  Let's all sit quietly for a moment and let that, shall we say, inelegant response settle in.

Before you judge the managing partner too harshly, understand that nearly every law firm partner felt this way just a few years ago.  Hire quality people, train them at the knee of quality partners, continue the tradition of quality that Smith & Jones has delivered lo these many years, rinse and repeat.  The only oddity was this managing partner's tone deafness in the face of monumental market changes, but his perspective is by no means unique.  The fact is, law school doesn't train lawyers to practice.  (If you aren't prepared to stipulate this point, then you needn't continue reading.)  Furthermore, academic success, as typically measured by the LSAT, law school grades and bar exam performance, have limited utility in predicting a lawyer's ability to understand a client business, have empathy, employ active listening skills, ensure predictability, use project management, deploy resources efficiently, embrace technology, create and adhere to budgets, communicate proactively and be responsive -- the very factors clients use to measure law firm performance.  Simply hiring good people isn't enough, not nearly enough, to demonstrate quality.

Price is a poor proxy for quality

I like wine.  I don't know much about it, but I enjoy a fine red or a chilled white when the occasion arises.  And like many unsophisticated wine buyers, when I'm invited to a dinner party and I need to select a bottle to bring, I migrate to the expensive aisles at my local wine merchant.  After all, I can't arrive at a fancy party with a $25 bottle of wine when a $75 bottle of wine would be far more suitable, right?!  The oenophiles reading this are chuckling.  (Oenophile is the Greek word for wine snob!)  Anyone who knows wine knows that price is a lousy proxy for quality.  There are many excellent wines at affordable prices that, by comparison, make the expensive wines taste like aged vinegar.  Yet this is the same approach many firms take to demonstrate quality:  "We're expensive because we're good; and we're good because we're expensive.  Don't hire that inexpensive middle-market middle America firm, hire us at two times the rate, because you will get two times the quality."

Anyone who has taken a Microeconomics course knows that it's not uncommon for consumers to substitute price for quality, and this perception is often aided by the producers who use subtle -- and not so subtle -- cues to influence buyer behavior.  The classic business school example is Grey Poupon, the mustard, which experienced dramatically improved sales when the manufacturer raised the price and launched an advertising campaign populated with rich people asking one another for Grey Poupon.  This works when buyers are unsophisticated, a.k.a. they lack sufficient information on which to make a more measurable distinction.  Since so many law firms are indistinguishable from one another ("We're big but with a personal touch, global but operate locally, fierce but collegial, diverse but Ivy-league educated...") it's no surprise that firms and clients alike have traditionally gravitated toward high-price as an indicator of quality.  But clients now know better.  With the abundance of metrics available to any in-house counsel, it is easy to distinguish between those firms meeting a client's specific and articulated needs, and those firms failing to do so.  (And if you're an in-house counsel and you don't know what I'm talking about, for crying out loud call me immediately, lest you mistake the pressure from your CEO and CFO as a simple mandate to negotiate hourly rate discounts!)

Quality results from measurable, repeatable, demonstrable processes

Incorporating metrics in the selection and management of outside counsel is exactly why we see the increased presence of the procurement function in many law departments.  A law department can create a dashboard of measurable factors and each outside law firm must fall within acceptable boundaries or be shown the door.  Many partners perceive the market changes as purely a reaction to price -- whether in the form of clients simply demanding lower rates, or in the form of competitors offering predatory pricing to steal clients away.  The reality is, many law firms have created their own dashboards of measurable performance cues, and these form the basis of their pricing and operational strategy.  Law Firm A may be able to provide a service on a fixed fee basis, or within certain boundaries on an hourly basis, by closely scrutinizing the manner in which it delivers its services and still generate a handsome profit while finding efficiencies.  But Law Firm B, which treats all matters as the same regardless of the client's perceived value, can only offer discounts which erodes profitability and does nothing to improve the quality of the work product or the client's perception of value.  And every day the partners of Law Firm B will cry that their competitors are "undercutting the price and winning work that can't possibly be profitable."  The only thing holding back Law Firm B from embracing a more modern business-oriented approach to the practice is the short-sightedness of its leaders and the recalcitrant posture of its partners.

Clients can go too far, but can you blame them?

In a recent workshop, an in-house lawyer explained that she bans first- and second-year associates from all of her company's matters because she fears that any inefficiency will be passed on to her, often in a disguised fashion.  "I'll pay partner rates for their experience, but I won't pay the lower associates rates when the 'rates times too many hours' calculation always works in the law firm's favor."  She went on to say that she also demands her outside counsel provide profitability information so she can "ensure that the law firm is making a fair profit, but too much of a profit, from the work I send them."  Partners, hold on to your chairs, I've got this one.

If Law Firm A in our example above can deliver a quality work product, using the client's own metrics, at a reasonable rate, using the client's own perception of value, then the client has no business meddling in how the law firm produces the work.  Like the auto buyer, the brand promise of quality is built into the many measurable performance attributes.  A client who continues to meddle under these circumstances is misguided.  And, let's be crystal clear,  no matter how idiotic it is for law firm leaders to perpetuate the profitability rankings, and how meaningless profit is as a measure of quality, no client has any business dictating the profit margin a law firm can make.  Any General Counsel who disagrees with me on this point should schedule five minutes with his or her own CEO or CFO and ask how often these business leaders allow their clientele to have direct input into transactional or long-run profit margins.  I get the underlying intent, but clients should focus on the performance metrics that matter, hire law firms that meet these performance criteria, and leave the production and profitability to the law firms to decide and derive.

Timothy B. Corcoran delivers keynote presentations and conducts workshops to help lawyers, in-house counsel and legal service providers profit in a time of great change.  To inquire about his services, click here or contact him at +1.609.557.7311 or at tim@corcoranconsultinggroup.com.

Improving the Certainty of Legal Budgets - a Collaborative Workshop

It's law firm annual retreat season and I've been traversing the country presenting to practice groups and entire firms and preaching the importance of predictability in legal budgets.  As one client wrote to me afterwards, "Thank you for making 'predictability' our new buzzword!"  My perspective is somewhat unique, as I explain how using budgets can improve the quality of the legal work product, improve client satisfaction and generate greater profits for the law firm.  Who wouldn't want to achieve these disparate and elusive outcomes simultaneously?  Well, quite a few, as it turns out.  Many lawyers raised on the billable hour continue to feel that any approach other than maximizing hours is a slippery slope, destined to result in increased risk and lower compensation.  They could not be more wrong, and as regular readers of my articles can attest, I can demonstrate this in terms that even math-challenged lawyers can embrace! There are quite a few tactics and tools to help in the creation and fine-tuning of legal matter budgets.  In fact, I will be participating in a collaborative workshop on Thursday, May 16, in Washington, DC, where groups of in-house counsel and outside counsel, along with colleagues from the law firm marketing and finance departments, will work together on strategies and tactics to develop legal matter budgets.  What information is necessary?  How much information should law departments share to help law firms craft an RFP and a budget?  Who's responsible when something unexpected occurs and the budget no longer reflects the scope of the matter?  And so on.  If you've struggled with these issues or others related to legal matter budgets -- and honestly, who hasn't? -- then join us.  The workshop is produced by TyMetrix, and here's the workshop agenda:

Opening TED-Style Discussion: Emerging Trends in Buying Legal Services—Law firms and corporate law departments will collaboratively examine key elements and challenges that arise when budgeting and forecasting the business of law. The group will discuss what current tools that exist to improve planning and the factors that must be considered, such as average matter durations, total costa, rates, and staffing allocations for matters by timekeeper role, phase, task, and geography.

Workshop Collaboration: Improving the Certainty of Budgeting and Forecasting—Hear and discuss new ways corporate law departments and law firms can improve the certainty of budgeting and forecasting in case study exercise with peers. Groups will examine a real-life legal challenge and develop a proposal that is acceptable to both the firm and the corporation.

Workshop Results & Discussion: Scope, Baseline, Benchmark, Value—Upon conclusion of the group exercise, there will be a collective presentation of the workshop findings mapped to four defined pillars—Scope, Baseline, Benchmark, Value—that provide a blueprint for better budgeting and forecasting for both law firms and corporations.

TyMetrix LegalVIEW^® Forums are peer-to-peer content driven sessions designed to exchange ideas and best practices related to an emerging trend in the buying—and selling—of legal services.

Join me in Washington, DC on May 16 by registering here.  Enrollment is free, but come prepared to roll up your sleeves and contribute.  If you can't make this session, there are two more in the series this year:  July 11 in Chicago ("Sourcing Legal Providers in a Changing Business Environment")and September 26 at Terranea Resort in Rancho Palos Verdes, CA ("Negotiation Strategies for Corporations & Law Firms").

Each session generates best practices in the form of a white paper which is available to all.  Here is the white paper that was produced after the workshop held in February, Establishing Value-Based Pricing and AFAs.  See this synopsis by Dr. Silvia Hodges.

Timothy B. Corcoran delivers keynote presentations and conducts workshops to help lawyers, in-house counsel and legal service providers profit in a time of great change.  To inquire about his services, click here or contact him at +1.609.557.7311 or at tim@corcoranconsultinggroup.com.

Closing Skills of Successful Rainmakers... and other Myths

I was recently invited to present at a law firm retreat on the topic of closing skills, presumably in the hopes that my remarks would magically transform reluctant partners into willing rainmakers.  As the partner in charge of retreat planning said to me, "We need to give our weaker partners a shot at carrying their own weight, otherwise we need to make some changes."  Before agreeing to present at the retreat, I asked the partner if the successful rainmakers would be in attendance and open to new ideas as well.  He assured me that attendance was mandatory for all, and if I needed help the successful rainmakers would be happy to contribute anecdotes of their own successful techniques.  We then proceeded to talk basketball, as we both shared an interest in an NBA team that was likely headed for the playoffs. When I delivered my remarks at the retreat, I included a number of basketball analogies.  Yes, I know, sports analogies are trite and overused and often gender-biased.  But the quote providing the theme for my remarks was offered by legendary UCLA basketball coach John Wooden, whom I've quoted previously, and has wide appeal:  "It takes ten hands to make a basket."  In short, my goal was to bust the myth that rainmaking is a skill akin to scoring in basketball, that a successful law firm simply needs more scorers to thrive.

The reality is it takes a coordinated effort between lawyers who are successful at networking and generating visibility for the firm, and lawyers who can not only successfully understand a client's business challenges but create custom solutions to address the challenges, and lawyers who deliver the legal work necessary to achieve the desired outcome, and lawyers tasked with managing the project and ensuring that it stays on track and on budget, and lawyers who continually communicate with the client to minimize surprises and stay abreast of new developments, and staff professionals who provide support for all of the above, and so on.  This is not unlike a basketball game in which one player boxes out the opponent and secures a rebound, and another player pushes the ball up court, and another player sets a screen to free a teammate, and another drives to the basket and draws the attention of several defenders, and another player spots up in the corner so when the driving player passes the ball he takes, and makes, the open shot.  Beautiful basketball is a team sport, and so is running a successful law firm.

Not only are there no magical words that will transform reluctant rainmakers into gregarious, glad-handing, back-slapping master networkers, there is no certainty that finding, or developing, such skills is a guarantee of success.  Here are five common myths about rainmaking that we can dispel right now, with corresponding suggestions for alternate approaches:

Rainmaking is not the same as networking.  While being visible in the community of clients and potential clients is important, it's only one facet of rainmaking.  Some lawyers enjoy, or at least can tolerate, the cocktail and conference circuit, and the visibility is undoubtedly beneficial.  But simply becoming known is only part of the equation.  And there are many ways to become visible, including authoring scholarly articles on substantive legal matters, blogging about emerging trends of interest to clients, using social media to become known "virtually" in the desired circles, speaking at client events, volunteering on charity boards alongside potential clients, and much more.  There are opportunities for lawyers of all personality styles to successfully generate visibility.

Rainmaking is not the same as asking for the business.  There are countless sales books on closing techniques, most of which are helpful when you've run out of kindling for your fireplace or lighter fluid for your charcoal grill.  But as guides to successful professional tactics to win business, most do more damage than good.  When's the last time you, as a consumer of goods and services, felt great about a purchase in which you were manipulated to buy something you didn't need, or paid a price greater than necessary?  Closing techniques are about manipulation, but successful consultative selling is about matching the benefits of your offering to a client's stated needs.  If your lawyers are meeting a lot of prospective clients but not winning new engagements, it's likely they need work on asking questions to better understand needs, not making clever statements to entice the prospect to buy.

Rainmaking is not the same as discounting.  In every sales organization, there's always a sales manager or executive we call the "hero."  She's the one that demands all of her salespeople remain firm on price but when a sale has to be made, often at the end of the month or the quarter, she will offer the brilliant insight that only a seasoned manager of special talents has, and promise a steep discount to close the deal.  These heroes are toxic.  The salespeople aren't allowed to use the same tactics and the clients know it, so savvy clients have the patience to wait until the hero is called in.  Law firms that employ undisciplined discounting to win work erode profitability and create internal price pressure because clients accustomed to discounts from practice A will demand it from practice B.  If your primary tactic to win work is lowering the price, then your rates are either too high to start or you haven't demonstrated sufficient value to the client to justify your expense.  Organizations that don't perpetually rely on discounts focus on quantifying the cost to the client of not acting, and quantifying the benefits of a favorable outcome, and quantifying the value the firm can bring in delivering the desired outcome.

Rainmaking is not the same as growing top line revenue.  Whether it's winning new engagements or recruiting laterals with a portable book of business, many law firms focus on new revenue.  As the old saying goes, all revenue is good revenue.  But like many old things -- eight-track tape players and wooden skis come to mind -- we should stop using it.  What this approach ignores is the cost of sales.  Any analysis of law firm finances demonstrates that it's far more efficient, and far more likely, to cross-sell services to existing clients than to sell new services to new clients.  Yet most firms put far more time and energy into selling services to new clients while ignoring effective methods to delight and retain existing clients.  And no matter how many times we hear that clients treasure law firms that provide predictability, we fail to make the connection that excellent lawyers who rely on deep subject matter expertise to manage legal projects tightly are as critical to retention (and revenue) as those who bring in new engagements.

Rainmaking is not the same as generating profit.  Too often firms focus on top line revenue without regard to the cost of delivery.  If I can earn $5 million in new fees, but it takes $6 million to deliver the legal work, this is obviously a bad idea -- yet many jump at the opportunity, presumably under the delusion that what they lack in profit potential they can make up with poor math skills.  Even if I can deliver the legal work for $4.5M and generate $0.5 million in profit, it may still be a bad idea if those same resources devoted elsewhere could have delivered $1 million in profit.  Managing legal projects profitably has as much (if not more) to do with service delivery than rates.  If the client will only pay $1 million for legal services that once generated $2 million in fees, the savvy firms find ways to lower the cost of delivery so as to turn a profit at the lower fee level.  The clueless firms continue to hunt for dumb clients willing to pay double the market value, possibly by coercing them through clever closing techniques.

Managing a modern law firm is challenging, just as making the playoffs is difficult for a basketball team in a competitive league.  Those basketball teams that identify the various skills of their players and combine them together in unique ways to maximize strengths, minimize weaknesses, and exploit opportunities presented by competitors, tend to win more games and championships than those teams who believe recruiting top scorers is the key ingredient for success.  Law firms must also recognize that rainmaking isn't about clever closing techniques or finding that elusive client willing to pay far more than anyone else for a service.  It's about maximizing all of the firm's resources to find, win, and keep clients, and this requires everyone to contribute.  And while many contributions won't appear on the stat sheet after the game, champions know that it takes the entire team to win.

Timothy B. Corcoran delivers keynote presentations and conducts workshops to help lawyers, in-house counsel and legal service providers profit in a time of great change.  To inquire about his services, click here or contact him at +1.609.557.7311 or at tim@corcoranconsultinggroup.com.

InnovAction Awards 2013 Call for Entries

I'm pleased to announce the call for entries for the 2013 InnovAction Awards, a program I'm chairing once again.  The InnovAction Awards, conducted annually by the College of Law Practice Management, is a world-wide search for lawyers, law firms, law departments and others in the legal services field that have invented or successfully applied new business practices to the delivery of legal services.  The goal of the InnovAction Awards is to demonstrate to the legal community what can be created when dedicated professionals with big ideas and strong convictions are determined to make a difference. Who Should Apply?

Loyal readers from the law firm, law department and legal service provider ranks, take a look at your own organization's offerings, products, services or businesses practices. What approaches have you employed this year that have produced fantastic results?  What efforts have resulted in higher client satisfaction, generated more leads, provided a substantial number of people with access to justice, improved efficiency, improved quality, generated a buzz, positioned your organization for future success, developed stronger leadership, leveraged existing knowledge or opened new markets for your services?  Innovation can take many forms.  You can read about the winners here and browse the Hall of Fame to learn more about past Award recipients.

What are the Judging Criteria?

• Disruption: does this entry change an important element of the legal services process for the better, and marketplace expectations along with it?
• Value: is the client and/or legal industry better off because of this entry, in terms of the affordability, ease, relevance or its effect on legal services?
• Effectiveness: has this entry delivered real, demonstrable or measurable benefits, for the provider, its clients, or the marketplace generally?
• Originality: is this a novel idea or approach, or a new twist on an existing idea or approach?

Who's Eligible?

Any individual lawyer or law firm, practicing anywhere in the world, or any business providing services to lawyers, law firms or consumers of legal services, is eligible. An individual or firm may submit more than one entry so long as they are not duplicative.

 Only entries submitted in accordance with these instructions will be considered. We reserve the right to disqualify, at any time, any and all entries that do not comply with these instructions. All entries and supporting documents are subject to verification. Once submitted, entries become the property of the College of Law Practice Management and will not be returned. All entrants must be willing for their entries to be the subject of articles published in legal and business media. All entrants must be available for interviews and provide requested information in connection with verification of entries to The College of Law Practice Management. Any entrant who fails to comply with the foregoing will be disqualified.

Law firms employing members of the Board of Trustees of the College of Law Practice Management or members of the InnovAction Award Selection Committee will be ineligible for consideration.

How Do I Apply?

The deadline for submissions is June 30, 2013.  Interested in the nominations process?  Visit the How to Enter page to learn more.  Click here to download the 2013 InnovAction Awards application.

The Cost of Getting it Wrong vs. the Cost of Getting it Right

Famed UCLA basketball coach John Wooden is credited with saying, "If you don't have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?"  Quite a lot lately I've been hearing a related theme from lawyers struggling with adapting to the new normal:  "We can't afford to get it wrong, but we have no budget to bring in help to get it right."  They refer, of course, to the age-old tendency to suffer with the devil you know rather than take the costly path -- in financial, time or distraction terms -- of trying something new.  How do we know when it's time to devote energy and resources to adapting to the changing legal marketplace?  What indicators should we watch for to indicate the tipping point is upon us?  The stark reality is that when it's abundantly obvious to everyone else, it's far too late to gain a competitive edge.  It may also be too late to survive. I've written previously about the cost of doing nothing.  Simply put, any organization should establish an explicit trajectory for its financial performance.  We made $x last year, next year we will make $y and the year following we will make $z.  This isn't voodoo, it's a calculation based on key performance indicators, both internal and external, that results in a forecast, with ranges based on our confidence in the underlying data.  Most businesses operate with some combination of recurring revenue streams and transactional revenue streams.  In a law firm, repeatable revenue may take the form of retainer arrangements, with established financial commitments for a fixed period of time.  But long-term engagements such as a complex litigation matter that spans multiple years and provides recurring billable tasks can be forecasted with some confidence.  At the other end of the spectrum is revenue associated with new engagements or new clients.  We may know our historic success rate at cross-selling existing clients, and we may know our historic success rate at winning beauty contests for new work, but there are many unknowns so our confidence to forecast this revenue isn't nearly as high.  The point is, one way or another healthy organizations have a clear sense of their financial fortunes and the factors which will impact, positively or negatively, that trajectory.  Without it, how can you possibly know if you're on track or off track?  Like the family that piles into the SUV for a an old-fashioned driving vacation, if you leave without a map and without a destination in mind, how will you know if you're lost or behind schedule?

Based on my long experience providing strategic counsel to law firm practice groups, many readers are shifting uncomfortably as they realize they lack a map, though luckily they have a clear destination.  Allow me to drop a wet blanket by suggesting that meeting or exceeding last year's PPeP is not a destination.  It's an outcome. And it's an outcome we can influence through a variety of financial shenanigans that mask significant under-performance.  It's like stating that our vacation destination at day's end is a nice hotel in a nice location, and strategically manipulating our speed, direction and restroom breaks to ensure that at day's end we have arrived at a location meeting our vague objectives.

Time to be more direct.  The world has changed.  And no, law firm partners, despite the perverse incentives of hourly billing, despite the $1,000 an hour rates charged by some "rock stars" and despite the supposed culture of bill churning by some, you didn't cause this seismic shift.  The balance of power would have shifted eventually.   It's an economic reality that all goods and services are on an inevitable and inexorable march toward commoditization.  Buyers always, and I mean always, seek lower costs for the goods and services they need, and failing that they will seek substitutes.  It's an economic certainty that circumstances change.  It's also, sadly, a certainty that some players refuse to acknowledge that change is possible, let alone that change is upon us.  And this is what causes the reluctance to adapt.  The legal marketplace adds a few multipliers to this impact:  lawyers are generally risk-averse, so working harder at what we know is far easier to absorb than embarking upon a risky new approach to practicing law; and the constant reliance on precedent makes it more difficult to recognize alternative courses of action because we've never seen any.

Time for the upside.  Every industry on the planet, including other professional services segments, have found ways to survive, and often thrive, in the face of a changing climate.  There are lessons to be learned from others.  In short, law firms can rely on deep subject matter expertise to create competitive differentiation; lawyers can charge profitable fees based on the value of the outcomes rather than the cost of production (a.k.a. hours); lawyers can deliver services in the way they know best without clients meddling in the process (e.g., no more restrictions on young associates assisting in matters); lawyers can significantly improve client loyalty through service and work product quality, and not merely by offering discounts.  Don't know how?  Get in line.  It's not that challenging, but you're not expected to know how instinctively, or to read a blog post or two and grasp the nuances.  But you may have to spend some time, and spend a few dollars (or Euros, or Pounds Sterling, for my global clients) to get the help you need.

In a recent conversation, a partner lamented that his practice group's realization rate was 6 points below its all-time high, and 3 points below the firm's average. The net effect was a loss of between $8M and $12M in top line revenue in recent years, despite the same lawyer headcount and the same mix of rainmakers and service partners.  However, the practice group chair was unable to spend any money on a consultant to help address the problem because the management committee had forbidden any extraneous expenditures in order to preserve profits... even investments that would restore the realization rate!  Predictably, the several consultants who were invited to participate in the practice group retreat on a pro bono basis were forced to decline the kind invitation.  A variation on this theme is the request to provide an outline of topics the lawyers can discuss amongst themselves at a retreat, a request I receive several times per month.  My impertinent response to such requests is to ask how often the firm's lawyers agree to such an arrangement with clients:  "Yes, Mr. CEO, we are quite familiar with high-stakes securities fraud investigations and we're sorry to hear that you and your management team are under indictment.  However, we'll send over a couple of our client alerts with some insights that might prove helpful, and maybe we can spend an hour over lunch giving you some tips so you can handle most of the lawyering yourself.  After all, you're smart and this isn't all that complicated." 

Some of you may be chuckling at how preposterous this sounds.  I assure you, it happens all the time.  More challenging is that clients know that some law firms are actively resisting change, and they're shaking their heads in despair and disbelief.  Despite what you may have heard, nearly all in-house counsel and corporate executives I work with are quite happy for their outside counsel to be happy, thriving, profitable businesses.  In fact, many of them need just as much help adapting to the new normal and they're desperate for trusted advisers to provide guidance along the way.

If you don't have a clear sense of your firm's financial future and the factors influencing that future, how will you know if you're on track?  If you don't have a plan to adapt, how do you expect to compete with the many firms who are devoting significant time and energy to delight their clients... and yours?  If you don't have the answers but refuse to spend time, energy or money to find the answers, what are you saving for?  The rainy day is upon us.  Now, more than ever before, the cost of getting it wrong is far higher than the cost of getting it right.

Timothy B. Corcoran delivers keynote presentations and conducts workshops to help lawyers, in-house counsel and legal service providers profit in a time of great change.  To inquire about his services, click here or contact him at +1.609.557.7311 or at tim@corcoranconsultinggroup.com. – See more at: http://www.corcoranlawbizblog.com.