Evolve or Perish: Leading your firm in an increasingly competitive market

I am pleased to have been invited to deliver the keynote address at the upcoming MPF 2014 Leadership Conference, to be held in Atlanta on May 8.  My remarks will focus less on the challenges posed by the economic and structural disruptions facing the legal profession and more on the compelling opportunities such changes present. Believe it or not, there has been no greater time for quality lawyers and law firms to stand out in a crowded market and thrive while others languish. I not only believe this, I believe we can demonstrate it, clearly and concisely, illustrating the mathematical link between increased client satisfaction, law firm profits, and the quality of legal services. It's quite possible to improve performance on all three fronts simultaneously. The most common lament I hear in my consulting work with law firms and law departments alike is that this inexorable shift from law as a profession to a business is troubling; and this increased focus on ROI and profits -- whether by lawyers seeking ever-increasing compensation, or by business leaders seeking to control costs -- is chipping away at the nobility of the profession and turning it into a crass commercial endeavor.  Some fear that lawyers who have spent years delivering quality legal work to satisfied clients are now being forced by reduced rates to choose between delivering a lower-quality work product to maintain their lifestyles, or hold steady on quality but face significantly reduced compensation. The increased prominence of bean counters, or procurement functions, in the purchase of legal services proves that cost is more important than quality.

To this I say: Really? Are you under the impression that clients have heretofore been completely satisfied with your work and your rates? Do you believe that businesses hiring you in the past were primarily concerned with the expansion of the rule of law as a noble societal goal rather than furthering their own commercial interests? For those working in-house, do you recall your CEO asking you to eliminate all business risk, and take as long as you'd like, and spend whatever you wish to achieve this outcome?

The first lesson is that nostalgia ain't what it used to be. The second lesson is that there are fundamental business techniques to guide law firm leaders from the darkness and into the light. While these challenges may be new to the legal profession, they aren't new challenges. And there are answers.

Law firm leaders face unique challenges: How to herd cats; how to reconcile firm-wide strategy with compensation plans that tend to reward individual behavior; how to invest for growth in the face of declining revenue; how to attract and retain star talent; how to make tough business decisions while having a heart.  We'll discuss these challenges and more.  I'm confident you'll leave with answers to your questions. I hope you can join us.

The MPF 2014 Leadership Conference is produced by John Remsen, President & CEO of the Remsen Group. Since 2002 more than 825 law firm leaders from 700 firms in 41 states have participated in 22 MPF conferences held throughout the US. They value its high-level participants, its interactive format, and its world-class faculty.  Click here to read some of their testimonials.  Click here to register.

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, contact him at +1.609.557.7311 or at tim@corcoranconsultinggroup.com.

Recruiting and Staffing Law Firm Pricing and Project Management Roles

Please join me and top recruiter Steve Nelson of the McCormick Group as we present our second webinar in a series on identifying and hiring the right talent for your pricing and project management roles: Putting All the Pieces Together. We'll focus primarily on law firm roles but the discussion will also be relevant to to in-house legal departments, as there are similar challenges.  What skill set is best equipped to drive innovative pricing discussions in your firm?  Some firms seek a trainer to help the partners better understand alternative fee models and when they apply.  Others are looking for a business analyst who can crunch numbers.  Still others desire a client-facing executive who can interact directly with the client's finance and operations counterparts in order to better connect the dots.  It's the same challenge for project management:  Some firms seek a heads-down manager to capably monitor a project plan and keep the team on track.  Others seek a firm-wide resource who can educate lawyers about this new skill.  And there are numerous variations on this theme. Additional issues to be covered include:

--Status of project management programs in the AmLaw 200

--The importance of doing a project management audit

--What training do your existing lawyers and administrators need before embarking on a legal project management program?

--The interaction between project management and alternative pricing, particularly from a staffing point of view

--How does project management fit into your organizational chart?

--Where do your project management professionals need to reside? Issues of geography and relocation

Please join us on February 4, 2014 at 1 PM ET for the on-hour interactive webinar.  For more details and to register, click here.

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, contact him at +1.609.557.7311 or at tim@corcoranconsultinggroup.com.

OnRamp Fellowship Launches

My friend, fellow Fellow of the College of Law Practice Management and occasional collaborator, Caren Ulrich Stacy, has launched a new initiative - the OnRamp Fellowship - with the goal of increasing gender diversity in law firms.  The Fellowship is a re-entry platform that matches women lawyers returning to the profession with law firms for a one-year, paid training contract.  The program allows women an opportunity to demonstrate their value in the marketplace while broadening their experience, skills, and legal contacts. Law firms benefit by gaining access to a group of highly-talented, diverse lawyers who want to return to and advance in the profession, particularly into leadership roles.

"These women were highly sought after when they graduated from law school, and they should be again," says Caren Ulrich Stacy. "The first goal is just to bring more women back into the fold. The second goal is to find women who have the potential to advance." (AmLaw Daily "New Fellowship Aims to Restart Dormant Legal Careers."

In addition to the training provided by the law firms, additional contributors have donated their time and expertise to the Fellowship to provide individual coaching and training classes in areas such as business development, public speaking, management skills, negotiations and numerous other topics.  I am pleased to be participating in the initiative by offering training on pricing and project management, critical skills necessary for delivering client value.  The several dozen other contributors (here) represent a who's who of thought leadership in today's changing legal marketplace.

There are four law firms participating in the pilot program: Cooley, Baker Botts, Sidley, and Hogan Lovells.  Applications and interviews for the initial Fellowship are underway and selections will be made by March of this year, with a start date in May.  For more information, visit the OnRamp Fellowship site or view the American Lawyer article here.

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, contact him at +1.609.557.7311 or at tim@corcoranconsultinggroup.com.

A Look Ahead for the Legal Marketing Association in 2014

In a few short weeks I take the helm as President of the 3,400+ member strong Legal Marketing Association. I could not be more proud to have been elected to lead LMA, a family in which I have been actively involved for nearly 18 years. Just as each of my esteemed predecessors has faced a fast-moving marketplace, I too step in during a time of great change. I'm quite fond of change, however, and I strongly believe the enormous structural and financial changes taking place in the legal marketplace are good for the legal profession, and provide an excellent growth opportunity for the legal marketing profession and the Legal Marketing Association. The current and outgoing Legal Marketing Association president, Aleisha Gravit, conducted a short Q&A with me in her final column of Strategies, LMA's flagship publication, in which I conveyed my outlook for the organization in 2014 and where the legal marketing profession is headed.

Q. Tim, as incoming president, what are the primary goals for LMA in 2014?

A. We must continue to improve both the quality and the access to education for all members, so expect to see more movement on that front. in 2014, we will pursue with vigor new opportunities for collaboration with and among chapters and city groups, so good ideas can receive a wider audience, regardless of where they’re developed.

Q. What trends are you envisioning in legal marketing during the next five years?

A. Legal marketing is evolving, and the recent creation of an LMA Special Interest Group dedicated to pricing is just one example. we must embrace a wider role, moving upstream from tactical execution to strategic planning and leadership. where this is happening already, legal marketers have proven to be valuable thought leaders and trusted advisers. we must be part of the “what” and “why” discussions and not just part of the “how.”

Q. What advice would you give someone just starting out in legal marketing, say with less than two years of experience?

A. Do not allow yourself to be boxed in by how earlier generations of legal marketers have defined the role. Each successive generation must continue to push the boundaries.

Q. On the flip side, what advice would you give seasoned legal marketers?

A. Seasoned marketers who have earned the trust of their internal clients often have the latitude to master new skills and tackle new challenges. while our world is evolving, our own skills can also evolve. Introducing new ideas to tradition-bound lawyers is challenging, but who better to carry the torch of change than trusted marketers who have learned and embraced and adopted new ideas? 

Q. On a more personal note, what do you do in your spare time?

A. I play a lot of basketball. But my real avocation is raising my two daughters. whether it’s attending their sporting events, attending concerts together, trying new recipes or just enjoying their presence, being a Dad is my favorite activity.

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, contact him at +1.609.557.7311 or at tim@corcoranconsultinggroup.com.

I Ain't Gonna Play Sun City

I'm sure there are many people, particularly the younger generation, seeing their Tumblr, news feeds and Facebook walls blow up with Nelson Mandela tributes and who, while recognizing the name, still wonder what's the big deal. We've all read in our history books about some of the heinous treatment of one people by another and because these are history books we get the sense that by and large humanity has evolved past such acts. Sure we hear short snippets in the news of atrocities such as genocide, slavery and ethnic and religious purges taking place today, but they always seems to take place in far off countries and often among people that don't look or act like us so it feels pretty distant. Sadly, this is human nature. I grew up in era where Apartheid was legal in South Africa, and proudly so, at least as characterized by some of its country's leaders. While South Africa was far away and many of its people didn't look like us, many of the leaders spouting support for institutionalized hatred looked a lot like us and spoke our language on the newscasts. With the emergence of cable news and 24-hour news cycles, it was hard to escape the reality that people like us were still pursuing heinous policies against others. During my formative years apartheid moved from being a distasteful policy perpetrated in some far-off land to the forefront of our consciousness.

For many US generations, college has been a place where political activism takes hold and it's no coincidence that some of the most compelling moments in political protests, such as those against the war in Vietnam or those in support of Civil Rights, took place on college campuses. But my '80s college generation wasn't exercised about much. We complained about the labeling of "dangerous" music and our musical heroes produced music videos expressing fear of nuclear war, but for the most part our economy was humming along and we were apathetic. Until apartheid. I can't say that I joined marches or protests against apartheid because I don't recall any being organized at my school, but I can say we cared, and cared deeply.

There are no conversations as fascinating and wide ranging as those that take place in college dorm corridors at 3 AM, punctuated by kids who are invincible, who know just enough of politics and world events to be dangerous and who are still supremely confident that they have all the answers to solve the problems foisted upon us by earlier generations. We would debate apartheid and declare that had we been in charge we would never have allowed it to take root, and if we could have our way now we'd eradicate it, though we didn't know how. These conversations crossed racial, political and socio-economic lines, in part because many of us hadn't yet established our own personal ideologies and selected our lifelong news sources that would comfortably reinforce our own biases. From our business and economics classes we understood that the issues were probably more nuanced than "simple" hatred by one race of another -- and make no mistake, there were business and world leaders and emerging leaders of our own generation supporting apartheid at that time, or at least not condemning it because South Africa served their commercial interests. But for most of us, it was a black and white issue - pun intended, but no disrespect intended.

Our musical idols provided some measure of assistance, by refusing en masse to play Sun City, at that time popular stop on many global concert tours. And we radio station geeks would both play the relevant anthems ("Little Steven" Van Zandt and Artists United Against Apartheid "I Ain't Gonna Play Sun City" comes to mind) and refuse to play music from artists who continued to tour South Africa (I'm looking at you Elton John and Queen, among others) though admittedly our gnat-like memories faded when hot new songs by these artists were released. But to the extent we cared about global politics and human rights in that era, apartheid was the subject of our activism. And Nelson Mandela figured prominently in the conversation.

Mandela was released from prison after I graduated, and while the task of earning a living replaced my late night world-problem-solving discussions, none of us could help but be aware, and impressed by, the towering intellect, passion, strength and, yes, compassion, of this man who had spent nearly three decades incarcerated for his stand against his government's injustices. Let's ponder that for a second. There are notable movies illustrating how those incarcerated for long periods often struggle with returning to society. And of late there is a seemingly constant stream of wrongly-convicted prisoners released after DNA evidence clears them, typically years if not decades later, and unfailingly the vibrant young people who went to jail emerge as broken shells after a lifetime of imprisonment. And yet Mandela emerged with an unbroken spirit, ready to catalyze the movement to finally ban apartheid. He then led his country after an election in which he earned over 62% of the votes, one of the most stunning reversals of fortune I've observed in my lifetime. He did not act alone. There were, of course, many others, whose names won't be recorded in the history books, fighting apartheid. But Nelson Mandela is not, for me and for many (and hopefully most) of my generation, some distant history book reference; he's the embodiment of what one person can do to fight injustice on a scale that seems impossibly insurmountable.

For that, I am pleased to have been a witness. And I hope my daughters, nieces and nephew, some of whom are of mixed race, and others in the younger generations take a moment to study and reflect on Nelson Mandela's accomplishments (some already have). There's been some muttering about the disproportionate air time devoted to a popular film star who died tragically this week and what an injustice it is that Nelson Mandela's passing isn't generating nearly as much viral attention. I bear no grudge against the media, or the young film fans, who can't get enough news of their deceased movie star. But trust me, when all is said and done, Nelson Mandela, both his life and his passing, will have a far greater impact on our social consciousness than any other news we'll read this week. He was, and is, that important.

He had his failings, as we all do, and we'll begin to hear of his imperfections, and rightfully so. It's important to note that our icons put their pants on one leg at a time just like the rest of us, and have weaknesses just as we have. But that doesn't detract from what he accomplished.

Thank you, Nelson Mandela, for what you've done and for showing us how it's done. Rest in peace.

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, contact him at +1.609.557.7311 or at tim@corcoranconsultinggroup.com.