February 16, 2006
Law Firm Trends
Bob Denney is President of Robert Denney Associates, Inc., a strategic marketing and management consultancy. Bob’s assessment of Trends and Issues as well as the temperature of practice areas and geographic markets was published in the January/February 2006 issue of Law Practice, published by the
· Succession planning is up as the number of partners in their 50’s and 60’s is increasing.
· Firms are discontinuing perpetual origination credit and, in some cases, eliminating it all together.
· There is a shift to performance-based compensation plans away from equity-based and “eat what you kill” places—It is a shift toward salary and bonus.
· More firms are requiring partners to prepare a personal business plan including nonbillable activities for use in evaluating performance.
· The book of business that comes with laterals is often much less than expected
· More clients are looking for business advice in addition to legal advice
· Emergency/disaster plans and measures are a high priority again, particularly for electronic storage and backup.
· Spin-off and start-ups are increasing in a cause-and-effect response to mega firm mergers and large firm acquisitions of mid-sized firms.
· Clients are still ambivalent about hourly billing. Why haven’t they bought into alternative billing? Hourly billing is almost the only way they can monitor outside counsels’ invoices.
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Filed under Planning by Tom Collins