Since 2000, law firm PEPP (profits per equity partner) have increased on average 11% for Amlaw 100 firms and 8% for Amlaw 200 firms.  Some observers fear that, like other markets that have sustained growth periods at or near double digits in the past 10 years, the law firm partner profit "bubble" may soon burst as well.

Looking at Amlaw 200 data, PEPP increased by 2% in 2001.  In 2002, the increase was 7%.  2003 saw an increase of 11%, 8% in 2004 and 2005, and 10% in 2006.

This increase doesn't only apply to Amlaw 200 firms.  Looking at the differences from 2005 and 2006 for the top respondent firms in the Law Firm Economic Survey  by Juris Inc. and LexisNexis, respectively (the only two years available), firm PEPP increased 11%.  It is likely that most firms in the mid-market and small market increased incomes by respectable if not similar percentages over the same period.

What can you do to prepare for a stunt in the growth (or decline) of PEPP?  Bruce MacEwen posted an article May 5th  on his blog Adam Smith Esq., titled A "Bubble" in PPP? that looks at some short term ideas to help "mitigate the downward trend" and predicts a change in the las firm business model over the long term:

Short term ideas:

• Redeploy lawyers in troubled practice areas to healthier ones;
• Use the opportunity of "shared pain" with your key clients to get closer to them;
• Adroitly stand by while the normal waves of attrition take their toll;
• Build or at least safeguard capacity in selected practice areas that you anticipate will emerge strongly from the downturn;
• And always, always, keep a sharp eye on costs–although, truth be told, you don't have much material flexibility here. You're not moving your offices to Brooklyn and you're not paying less than market for partners and associates.

Long term predictions:

• the billable hour, lamented by many but eliminated by few, will eventually replaced with a more "value-based" model, though MacEwen stresses that he is not "holding [his] breath" on this;
• the traditional associate/partner model changes to include more non-equity partners and more contract attorneys;
• at least fundamentally, "the core processes by which law firms manage cases and deals must and will change" (ie, more project management, more team philosophy centered around practice groups to become more efficient).

Ultimately, MacEwen believes that due to increased demand (at least for Amlaw 100 firms), finding work won't be the problem.  However, he sees the traditional model as being unsustainable based on the limits placed on things such as productivity (>2,400 hours?), rates (>$1,000 per hour?)and realization (>100%?).  Because of this, if PEPP does suffer a downturn for an extended period of time, the long predicted changes to law firm dynamics may happen.

If this occurs in large law firms, it is incumbent on smaller firms to adapt quickly.  The predictions above are all point towards efficiency that allow firm profits to increase through efficiency rather than increased rates and worked hours.  Much has bee written about the "unmanageability of law firms".  Despite this, firms have continued to make exceptional profits - due in no small part to their enviable margins.  With good management, law firms can see profits that far exceed anything that firms receive currently.   And if partner profits start decreasing, your firm will be in crisis -  just as it is not a good idea to go to the grocery store on an empty stomach, it isn't a good time to contemplate an overhaul in processes during a crisis.

Much of the allure of smaller firms is quality service at a lower price.  Some large firm partners charge rates in excess of $1,000 per hour.  If large firms realize they can offer similar services at lower prices and still increase profits, smaller firms can be squeezed out of the marketplace.

Think Walmart.  As Walmart entered the scene, small businesses were unable to compete based on their lack of purchase power.  Walmart could offer more product selection at a lower price.  Home Depot and Lowes did the same to small hardware stores.  The small shops that survived did so by using their secret weapon - customer service and personal engagement.  Still, you won't find many of these shops who don't struggle on a monthly basis and have to watch as their clients often come to them for advice, then go to Home Depot to buy the big-ticket items.

For small and mid-size firms to compete in this changed environment, they will have to embrace workflow efficiencies that meet or exceed that of the larger firms - and use their "secret weapons" of personal engagement with clients and responsiveness.  However, without the fundamentals of an efficient business in place, your firm will suffer under the weight of your processes.  

There will always be individual clients available, but more dependable sources of income often come from business clients and their leaders.  These clients are already demanding more cost certainty.  If larger firms are able to provide this value to business clients first at a price that isn't so different than yours, your firm may be in trouble.

The time to act is now.

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Two of the wisest minds on the business of legal services, David Maister and Bruce MacEwen, recently posted items dealing with the ambiguities and paradoxes of capitalism.

Maister posted “Who or What is the Firm For?”, noting that the standard capitalist answer that a business is run for the shareholders doesn’t appear to be that cut-and-dry when one is talking about a law firm. In fact, I think Maister would say the question is unsettled or, as he put it, “confusing and ambiguous."

What sets a law firm apart from big corporations is that ownership and employment are commingled, but that is also true of small, closely held organizations that make up most of the business world. Here is the difference: law firm owners are not stakeholders in the “value” of the business. At the end of the day, partners are expected to walk away leaving the firm to the next generation. As firms take on a life of their own (beyond the productive life of their founder), firm leaders acquire an obligation to preserve the firm for the next generation. Doing so means “business as usual” on a continuing uninterrupted tract for the clients of the law firm. The preservation mission in this “walk away” ownership model pits generations against each other or leads to the kind of situation Maister observed:

“…….an immensely successful firm which has dramatically improved its profitability (among other accomplishments) in the past 5 years. The "moves" made by the firm did indeed impress this reader. But here's the kicker: the article pointed out that, since 2001, 37 percent of the partners (i.e. shareholders) had left the firm. Now how is one supposed to process that?”

MacEwen’s post on Adam Smith Esq., “The Paradox of Capitalism”, should make all law firm leaders sit up and take notice. You are at risk from the Darwinian creative destruction driven by entrepreneurship. We are talking about the competitive threat that goes beyond other law firms nibbling around your edges. It is the threat that entrepreneurs tapping new “means” will reinvent legal services or the segment of legal services in which you are engaged. Or to turn that threat around, it is the opportunity out of entrepreneurial drive, or desperation, that capitalism affords you. The paradox referenced by MacEwen is one described by the economist Joseph Schumpeter, who warned that societies benefiting from wealth accumulations through capitalism might begin to erect barriers to protect the entrenched from the next generation of capitalist destroyers.

As for the business or profession of legal services, the smell of change is all around us. The pressures of reforms abroad cannot be ignored. Law firms cannot forever ignore traditional concepts of ownership investment and value. New “means” of solving the wants and needs of legal service customers cannot go untapped. The Societies and Bars afford only limited and temporary protection. Some time, some day, some entrepreneur will accumulate massive wealth by eliminating the wealth and livelihood of entrenched players. The threat only grows for law firms as a whole as elements of change are ignored or resisted and more and more “new means” go untapped.

Law firm leaders must accept that change is constant. Resist at your peril. You either change up or the natural forces push you down. Like other businesses, you must look outside of your natural competitors for the risk that will replace you. You have to look outside of your natural competitors for the innovations through which you can reinvent your enterprise.

Morepartnerincome.com is sponsored by Juris, Inc. For information about Juris® products and services for increasing law firm performance and partner income contact Juris National Sales Center: 877/377-3740, e-mail info@juris.com or go to www.Juris.com.
 

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A few days ago I wrote the post titled Economic Outlook for Law Firms that included the attention-getting word “recession”. Not that one is looming on the horizon, but as Bruce MacEwen warned on his blog Adam Smith Esq., “….We all know one lies in store sooner or later.”

The May issue of The American Lawyer picks up from there with an article titled Recession Resistant by Peter Zeughauser. The author’s thesis is that law firms are more resistant to a downturn than they were fifteen years ago. He credits this robustness to the following trends:

• Firms have become more businesslike. Management-savvy partners with decision authority have made firms more nimble – able to respond quickly to changing economic conditions.
• Firms are less top-heavy at the equity level, although he is concerned about the income (non-equity) partner trend.
• The new focus on profitability has created financially stronger firms.
• Use of temporary contract attorneys and flexible time arrangements has made operating expenses more variable.

On the other hand, firms that have given up critical mass in strong markets for expansion are likely to feel greater pain in the next recession. He notes that firms that have built “known-for” status and market share will be winners. Perhaps his most important message has to do with the impact of a firm’s Vision and Strategy during recessionary periods. Zeughauser writes:

“Twenty years ago, these [Vision and Strategy] were dirty words in law firms. I remember listening to a leading law firm consultant pooh-pooh the notion of a vision for a law firm at a managing partner conference I attended in the mid-eighties. In boom times, it is relatively easy to survive and even prosper without a clear sense of direction—a sharp focus helps, but it doesn’t determine success. In a recession, a firm without a clear vision and a strategy for achieving it will quickly lose its way. Partners today are much more mobile than they were in the early nineties. In a recession, even the best partners will become insecure and look for a firm that knows where it’s going and how to get there.”

I agree. Accidentally successful law firms will not even see the train wreck coming during an economic downturn. Those with purpose and a plan for achieving it will, in contrast, come out of a recession stronger—picking up talent and clients from the casualties. It, of course, follows that those with a clear articulated purpose also tend to be the best managed. They are the same firms that plan, set objectives, measure performance and hold people accountable.

As a business person, my strategic plans always included strategies for dealing with economic downturns. When others were reacting by cutting advertising, travel cost and personnel, our plans called for increased marketing and opportunistic additions to our team. Savvy business leaders think of recessionary periods as a time of opportunity, mindful that the cutbacks made by those forced to retreat create investment opportunities for the prepared.

Morepartnerincome.com is sponsored by Juris, Inc. For information about Juris® products and services for increasing law firm performance and partner income contact Juris National Sales Center at 877/377-3740, e-mail info@juris.com or go to www.Juris.com.
 

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The issue of which is more important, doing the right things or doing things right, has been ringing in my ears since I saw a leading business consultant to law firms shout, “Execution is everything!” from the blog world.

Then as I read Bruce MacEwen’s recent post “ Do The Management Gurus Have Clothes?”, I was reminded of my reaction to that earlier post. MacEwen was writing about Phil Rosenzweig’s new book The Halo Effect, in which the author takes to task many of the popular “management books."  Most emphasize execution quality and would make great “managers” of us all by following their methods.   

If execution in great management is everything, then great managers could make any bad idea or pursuit a success.  It isn’t and they can’t.

Bad execution can rob one of their successes.  It can lower results from what is possible.  But being in the right place at the right time pursuing the right idea rules the day.  Getting the right people on the bus may be the way to go from “Good to Great”, but having the right bus is pretty important to start with.

This is the point where David Maister would probably want to educate us as to the difference between leadership and management.  There is a difference.  Many leaders are not good managers—if, by management, we mean masters of execution. Leadership has more to do with being in the right place at the right time with the right idea and then, of course, getting people to believe the leader’s vision.

The “Halo Effect” is the tendency of management experts to attribute the qualities of “doing things right” to organizations that achieve great success.  Most, I might add, achieved that success by having done the “right things”.  Unfortunately, time catches up with us.  Once others begin to imitate such success, execution becomes the important differentiating factor.  One time “right thing” leaders like IBM, Federal Express, and eventually even Microsoft can fall pray to the imitator with superior execution.  

What does all of this mean for the law firm? It is simple: first do the right things! Then work on doing them better. Picking the right areas of law for your place at this time may be the most important decision you make. The primary importance of doing the right things is why planning is so important.  Otherwise, you may be working hard to improve your ability to arrive at the wrong place. 

When one takes a structured approach to planning, execution is the last thing you plan. First you have to decide where you are going.

Morepartnerincome.com is sponsored by Juris, Inc.  For information about Juris® products and services for increasing law firm performance and partner income, go to www.Juris.com.

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Recently a managing partner asked me if there had been any economic surveys targeting US midsized law firms using lockstep compensation plans.  The question came up as I was explaining the finding that under the traditional US compensation plan approach, midsized law firm partners are hoarding work—working more hours than associates. Why? For one reason, they make more income by doing the work rather than delegating it.

To my knowledge, there haven’t been any U.S. studies or surveys targeting just lockstep followers.  Lockstep plans are not common in the USA. With regard to the hoarding issue, the buzz is that lockstep compensation plans can have the opposite effect unless ruthlessly administered.  Since individual production is largely removed from the compensation equation, lockstep can give a raise to the partner who suddenly dropped from 2000 billing hours per year to 400. And that missing 1600 hours has not been redirected to management or rainmaking. Thus, performance standards must be ruthlessly enforced so that those abusing the system are outed quickly to prevent the system from becoming corrupted.

The consulting firm John P. Weil & Company has posted a thorough description of the lockstep approach on their page, which contains other articles of interest to those involved in law firm management. 

Even in the UK, where lockstep is a tradition, there are few pure lockstep plans around nowadays.  Modified lockstep plans prevail as firms introduce both objective and subjective measurements to affect results in support of law firm strategies and goals.  Bruce MacEwen of Adam Smith, Esq. posted an interesting article dealing with the trend toward modification of lockstep plans. Patrick McKenna has an insightful post on performance differences among firms depending on their compensation plan type. His post supports the belief that statistically driven plans yield lower results. McKenna also has a great white paper on the various types of plans used by law firms.  

Morepartnerincome.com is sponsored by Juris, Inc.  For information about Juris® products and services for increasing law firm performance and partner income, go to www.Juris.com.

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Dennis Kennedy in making his 2006 Blawggies Awards selected morepartnerincome.com as the Best Overall Law Practice Management Blog with David Maister's Passion, People and Principles and Bruce MacEwen's Adam Smith, Esq as runner-ups.   To be selected as the best blows me away; just being in the company of Maister and MacEwen is an honor in and of itself!

While the name morepartnerincome attracts the attention of most managing partners, there are some who are put off by the name. What they miss is its core message. More partner income is the result of “doing the right things and doing them right”.

You do not have to make a choice between higher income and better client services.  Higher income is the result of better client services.  It is not a choice between placing the interest of clients first or driving income higher. Higher income is the reward for serving the client’s interest.  It is not a choice between higher margins and the proper concern for treatment of the firm’s talent.  Higher income comes from the quality of the team and their environment. 

To think of those alternative choices is to have fallen victim to what Jim Collins refers to as the “Tyranny of the OR”.  Excellent organizations practice “And Thinking” rather than “Or Thinking”.   For example, how do we provide exceptional services to our clients and exceptional compensation to our legal professionals and employees?  These are not incompatible choices.  To the contrary, the very process of “And Thinking” leads to breakthrough innovations.  The genius of “And Thinking” is that greater success results from the effort to achieve both rather than limiting an organization’s efforts based on the belief that we could only have one or the other.

Morepartnerincome.com is sponsored by Juris, Inc.  For information about Juris® products and services for increasing law firm performance and partner income, go to www.Juris.com.

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One of the business rules I have lived by is the motto “Fix it before it breaks”.

It is an understanding that all things have a life cycle. If it exists, it is aging. It is wearing out. It is becoming obsolete. It is breaking.  Change is constant.  We either change up or natural forces change us down.

This past week, Bruce MacEwen posted an item on his blog Adam Smith, ESQ dealing with partner retirement, Mandatory Retirement” Idiocy or Atrocity? Also this week, The Wall Street Journal Online commented on a forthcoming study by two economists, James Rebitzer and Lowell Taylor, which delves into the predatory behavior behind the current “up or out” model of larger law firms.

To understand what is going on, one only has to understand the Life Cycle.  The life of a law firm without a succession plan resembles the classic bell shaped curve. 

It is created by the original partners.  The firm then continues—prospering for a period of time. Eventually, as the productivity of the partners begins to decline, performance of the law firm turns downward. Finally the law firm goes out of existence with the retirement, disability, or death of the partners. 

Law firms that succeed in taking on a life of their own have found a way to transition from one generation to the next.  To understand such a law firm, visualize a series of life cycles as illustrated below:

The life of a continuing law firm is measured by its successful movement across the multiple life cycles of productive practicing partners and leaders. The point is that the continuing life of a firm depends on the hand off from one generation to the next.  It is not surprising that Altman Weil’s survey disclosed that the majority of larger firms have a mandatory retirement age policy.  While Bruce MacEwen correctly sees a tragic waste of accumulated wisdom in mandatory retirement policies, the naked-in and naked-out tradition of large firms coupled with their mandatory retirement age is an effective way to institutionalize law firm survival—placing it beyond the reach of politics and power.

From the standpoint that survival depends on the hand off from generation to generation, law firms are not unique. While mega law firms have found an answer through mandatory retirement, the corporate world’s answer has been independent ownership—i.e., shareholders.  Shareholder interest supersedes “management’s interest” and that places shareholder interest and business survival as the primary objective of the business.  On the other hand, a family-owned business does not have an independent ownership and faces the same problem as midsized law firm. Survival depends on having someone to hand the business off to and it depends on the existing owner/management wanting to hand the business off to that someone.  

Of the two necessary ingredients, the available talent to accept the handoff and the current owner/management motivated to make the handoff , it is the latter that is most often missing in midsized firms. The old guys and girls need something to motivate their hand off of power and income other than just a philanthropic desire to help the newcomers. The person handing off something of value should receive something of value—they should be paid for the value of what they are turning over or “selling” to the newcomer.   Unfortunately, law firms haven’t been able to figure out that part of the equation.  Without any consistency, law firms apply a variety of approaches that involve continuing compensation to retiring partners for some limited period of time—origination credit being a favorite.  Often, the burden of those unfunded liabilities has had the opposite effect from their intended purpose.  The incoming generation would rather dissolve the firm and move across the hall than share their income with the retired partners.

What is missing among law firms that is present within the commercial world is a concept of ownership and transfer of the going-concern value of the business. The new generation should have to buy its way in and exiting partners should be able to sell their ownership shares back to remaining partners.  For a “how to do it” approach, see the prior post “Law Firm Value, Partner compensation and Continuity”.

The alternative strategies for long term survival can be summed up as:

• Mandatory retirement usually coupled with a naked-in/naked-out tradition—the prevailing U.S. mega firm model among law firms

• Ownership independent of management and workers—the corporate model to which the UK appears to be moving

• Partner buy-in and buy-out agreements—the closely-held business model prevalent in the commercial business world

The alternative is either a law firm that fades away or one that survives for at least one more generation through an ugly or quiet revolution. We old guys leave one way or another.  It needs to be by a win/win arrangement.

This overview should bring home to the existing generation of baby boomer partners the importance of continuity planning.  The new guys and girls can go across the street to another firm or break away and start their own. The needs of the law firm’s clients will be met, no matter what happens to you or your law firm.  There are always alternative law firms ready to serve.  Continuity planning is most important to the entrenched partners.  Without planning for the handoff to the next generation, it is the entrenched partners and their heirs who will lose the value of the legal service business they built (or improved) during their tenure.  

            Morepartnerincome.com is sponsored by Juris, Inc.  For information about Juris® products and services for increasing law firm performance and partner income, go to www.Juris.com.

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I recently read (and can’t remember where) survey results that indicated that a consensus opinion among the populists beats those of the experts.  Adam Smith, Esq. picks up on that theme with his post What if Your Executive Committee’s Not So Smart?  Bruce MacEwen, the host of Adam Smith, pointed to James Surowiecki’s 2004 publication of The Wisdom of Crowds—more evidence that the consensus forecast of a number of lay people is almost invariably superior to the individual forecast of experts and gurus in the field.

What does this mean for the managing partner?  Neither Bruce nor I would suggest man-on-the-street polling as a tool for law firm planning.  But MacEwen suggests:

“Try, for example, asking all your attorneys—even include, for the wildest and craziest among you, your clients—things like:

·        Which practice areas should we invest more in, and which less?

·        Do we have an office in a city with poor prospects, or lack an office in a city with outstanding prospects?

·        Which competitor do we need to worry about the most vis-a-vis (say) our M&A practice?

·        Who's going to win the contested election for managing partner? (Ooops—did I say that?)

The point is simply this:  The assembled expertise of your executive committee or practice group heads may not be—indeed, if you buy the notion of ‘collective intelligence,’ almost surely will not be—your most valuable resource for insight about the future.”

Many of the legal pundits dismiss consensus planning as a poor substitute of leadership.  I, for one, am a champion of the consensus building process.  Aside from the fact that diverse members of a planning team can cause a new idea light bulb to go off, leaders need an organization of believers if goals are to be achieved. Consensus planning is “consensus building."  It is part of the process of leadership—of aligning a team with shared core beliefs behind clearly defined and communicated objectives.

Many law firms approach planning with a careless disregard for the importance of assumptions—predictions about the future.  A law firm’s plan can be no better than the planning assumptions upon which it is based.  Consensus building is particularly valuable here.  You want to include people closest to the law firm’s work, the newest to the firm, those with the most contact with peers outside of the firm, those competing for new clients, those most knowledgeable of the environment encompassing a practice class, those most interested in technology, those most concerned for client services, those who deal with the frustrations of administration. They need not all be part of the same planning team. There is no rule that says a firm must have only one planning team. It is in the leader’s interest to have organization-wide participation.  We own what we build ourselves, and by involving a cross section of the firm (if not all of the firm) in the process, you develop team-wide ownership of the plan.

Developing assumptions is a serious business that involves assessing the current environment in which the law firm must operate and then identifying how that environment will be different in the next three to five years.  The consensus process' best role involves the following segments of a law firm’s structured planning processfont>

Identifying the current environment in which the firm operates considering the following aspects:

·        Economics

·        Labor force

·        Technology

·        Competition

·        Courts

·        Governmental impacts

·        Professional and ethical rules of conduct

·        Nature of market and trends

·        Pricing constraints

·        Buying methods of prospects

Identifying the firm’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats:

·        Our strengths

·        Our weaknesses

·        Our threats

·        Our best opportunities

o       New products to existing clients

o       Same products to new markets

o       New products to new markets

o       Performance (improve performance compared to benchmarks)

o       New delivery methods

o       Etc.

Agreeing on the current planning assumptions regarding the future:

·        Economics

·        Labor force

·        Technology

·        Competition

·        Courts

·        Governmental impacts

·        Professional and ethical rules of conduct

·        Nature of market and trends

·        Pricing constraints

·        Buying methods of prospects

What is an effective structure process of consensus building? Suppose I have a planning group of 12 key team members and we are tackling the questions about the future issues involving professional talent—i.e., labor force issues.  What assumptions can the firm make about the availability of talent, the competition for it, what candidates will be looking for, what skills candidates will lack when they walk in the door and any other aspect of the talent market that the firm must consider for the future?  I would ask each planning member to list the most important aspects of talent that the firm should consider when planning for the next three years.  Then I would ask them to rank the items on their list from one to five—one being the best and/or most important.  I would then start around the room asking the first person for their No. 1 item.  I would list it on a flipchart.  I would then go to the next person and ask for his/her No. 1 item.  If it had already been listed, I would ask for his/her No. 2 item, etc.  Each participant can give me only one item at a time.  I would continue around the room until every member’s top five items were listed.  As a result of this process, we might have 12 to 15 items listed.  Interestingly enough, almost every member will have at least two to three items in common with the rest of the group.  At that point, I would ask the group to individually rank the items on the new combined list of items.  I would ask them to draw a line below their top third or fourth item.  I would go around the room again asking each to identify their top items.  We would tally up those items mentioned most often to create a “main things” list of three to five items.

Anyone who disagreed with the items in our new “main things” list would be given an opportunity to present their case.  Usually there is very little disagreement at this point.  Once the best ideas are identified, we would move on to develop the strategies, tactics, resources, programs, responsibilities and schedule for achieving the main things.

Morepartnerincome.com is sponsored by Juris, Inc.  For information about Juris® products and services for increasing law firm performance and partner income, go to www.Juris.com.

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Bruce MacEwen gives the details of the New York City based MBA program on his blog Adam Smith, Esq.  Bruce is a member of the faculty.

The addition of an MBA program exclusively for law firm managers is a valuable contribution to the legal community.  Now if Bruce could just get SUNY/Stone Brook to go online with their program, we would really have something. I would like to see an MBA program targeted to midsized firm managers that is accessible anytime/anywhere.

Midsized law firms are actually doing pretty well financially due to the intrinsic favorable characteristics of a law firm as a business. At the same time, virtually all firms are underperforming compared to what they could be achieving.  Most are not paying enough attention to continuity issues.  They tend to be accidentally successful, failing to have enough forward-looking systems to see a train wreck that might be just around the corner.  In a nutshell, they lack trained management skills.  

Morepartnerincome.com is sponsored by Juris, Inc.  For information about Juris® products and services for increasing law firm performance and partner income, go to www.Juris.com.

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If MorePartnerIncome.com is helpful to you in your role as a law firm partner involved in management, you deserve to know that it is just the tip of the iceberg. I am in awe of bloggers all around me. I regularly read 35 blogs daily, blogs written by some of the smartest people I know in the legal management arena. I often feel in their shadow after reading their skillfully written posts. Some are unbelievably prolific. I post daily and can’t hold a candle to bloggers who can post half a dozen or more items in a single day.

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