Renegade lawyers run amok...

How to deal with lawyers who will not follow your practice systems

This problem crops up an awful lot in practices...

Not all law firms systems are so bad that they can just be ignored...some are well-designed and crucial to success...

Here's my approach...

Life after selling your practice

Recent experiences with various sole practitioners negotiating sales of their practices to larger firms give rise to this post.

Buyers are looking to achieve a strategic benefit from purchasing your practice and to make a good profit from it to justify the investment.

They may want you to work with them for a time to help make it happen.

A key point to address is why you are selling and why the purchaser is in a position to buy.

You may want less pressure and to withdraw your equity for other purposes...

What started Trilby Misso Lawyers on the right road to success?

History records that Slater & Gordon purchased Trilby Misso lawyers in August 2011 for AUD$57M.

One news report ran...'The acquisition will be funded by a combination of cash, equity and deferred consideration.

Slater & Gordon managing director Andrew Grech says Trilby Misso is the perfect vehicle to advance the company’s long-held ambition to grow its personal injury market share in Queensland. “Trilby Misso delivers growth that would have taken us a number of years and a heavy investment to achieve organically,” he said. “It also gives us a fantastic revenue base and highly skilled and experienced practitioners.”'

Below is a potted history of Trilby Misso from it's most modest beginnings in Redcliffe, Queensland, to the point of sale, prepared by Hilton MIsso.

What follows immediately below is the text of an email sent by Hilton Misson to me once due diligence had been completed and the deal settled.

How to reduce lawyers' Administration Time...

Followers of my approach to fixing law firm profitability over the last twenty-five years will know that I am passionate about the endemic poor productivity of endless streams of lawyers.

They often work hard but ineffectively, and usually under-charge... through a failure to appreciate what they've done for clients and poor client engagement and billing practices...

When confronted with poor daily average output one refuge of many lawyers is to point to all the "inescapable Admin time" that eats into huge parts of their day...

Sorting out the reality from the myth is not always easy...particularly if the lawyer is not prepared to be accountable for tracking what is really going on...

Does Yellow Pages still work for lawyers?

My usual answer, "It depends!"

Recently I posted a reminder to lawyers not to dump any particular advertising spend without carefully analysing return on Investment...

A firm kindly responded with details of their ROI from YP and in so far as I can without breaching their confidentiality I will share it with you as it makes a strong point...

Charging for your relevant support staff...why it's so important

I'm still finding firm after firm not charging for Support staff...even when they have a provision allowing it in their Client Service Agreements.

They do not (ever, in my experience) have hourly charge rates of lawyers high enough to compensate.

Here's a powerful example why it's so important.

Getting law firm fee budgets right

Today I reviewed the performance of an Australian client firm for the first half-year to December 31 2011...

They are showing surplus fees generated over budget, but it's a classic case of apparent "success" obscuring a big profitability failing at serious cost to the principals...

The budgets have been set without proper regard to the fundamentals and careful planning...making them easy to achieve by principals doing too much billing themselves.

Budgets for employed lawyers are low...and budgets for paralegals and secretarial support are non-existent...

Small-Medium Law Firm Management ... The Future is Already Here

You will have noticed the KMS Future Forums I'm facilitating for Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane...January and February 2012...

The first three have already been a great success, with excellent feedback during and after...lots of important topics discussed, with a consensus that in some key areas things are changing a lot faster than most participants appreciated. 

In fact I'd go so far as to say that in many areas the future is well and truly already here!

Law firm marketing essentials

Need for uplift in law firm marketing effort intensifies...

For your interest...here's a copy of an email sent Wed 1st Feb am to attendees of yesterdays KMS Future Forum in Melbourne...

Good morning everyone...

Just a quick note to thank you all for investing time and money yesterday afternoon and contributing very actively to a very good discussion...

Again lots of interesting issues!