August 25, 2005
Law Firm Professional Development Investments
Beth Keno, who heads up the Professional Services area of Juris, Inc., sent me this insight which can have a big impact:
Most firms have a goal for the number of billable hours each timekeeper in their firm should achieve, but do they have a number of professional development hours? Is this a line item on your budget? If not, why?
Professional development should be viewed as an investment for the firm and a personal investment by the employee. More firms are finding that to attract top talent, they need to provide opportunities for professional development as well as growth opportunities within the firm. If your firm is not investing in building the skills and knowledge base of your staff, then you are missing out on a competitive edge.
In the recent 2005 survey of Law Firm Managing Partners, the top two major challenges facing firms today are “competition for business and competition for talent.” A firm willing to invest in itself and its staff reaps the rewards many-fold.
Ask yourself this – if your marketing message and firm message included “We invest in our people so they can provide you with the best business and legal advice," would that give you a competitive edge? Absolutely it would.
Beth is on target. It is also worth noting that continuing professional development has another benefit. Your team picks up new knowledge (information, trends and new twists). That new knowledge gives the firm a reason to contact existing clients to share that information. That action is likely to generate new business or, at a minimum, solidify the existing client relation.
Continuing professional development investments increase the long-term value of the firm’s talent and can also have an immediate payback—provided you have in place tactics for capitalizing on new knowledge to generate more business and more per-partner income.