March 3, 2008 by David Sorin.

Yes baby boomers, we are getting tired. We have practiced law for forty years or so and we want to slow down, even get out all together. Is our firm ready for that? If all baby boomers want to start cashing out, is the cash there? Can the firm survive?

What a dilemma for firm founders. They have put their heart and soul into building a successful law firm and when they want to retire and live out their lives in luxury or near luxury they may have to destroy their creation to be able to do it.

Hopefully, there is some planning going on somewhere. Baby boomers being the biggest age group in our nation’s history, are going to be retiring in droves over the next few years. Firms should have been preparing for this for years. Those that bought in will want to be bought out. How will we do it? When will we do it? Plan, plan, plan.

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February 8, 2008 by David Sorin.

Law firms are starting to discovery a disturbing trend. Their associates do not all have a desire to be partners. In fact, more and more associates are looking at having a balanced lifestyle rather than the “secure” future of partnership. Firms need to wake up to this fact and reconsider their operational model before it is too late. Instead of being able to choose future partners from a group of associates all of whom want to make partner, firms may have to choose from among a small percentage who want partnership and then decide what to do with the others.

In the near future, there will be more jobs than applicants. It will be a candidate’s market. And candidates may be choosing firms not on the basis of their prestige or high starting salaries and benefits, but on their culture and the quality of life they afford their employees.

Wake up firms!! Look at your cultures. Consider how you treat your associates and staff. Give some thought to whether you have a mentoring program, offer development plans, give serious feedback and performance reviews, listen to what your employees want to be doing and in other ways think about your firm from an employee point of view.

And remember, what you are not doing, some other firms will do. And when future employees have a choice, where do you think they will go?

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January 24, 2008 by David Sorin.

I have spent this past week with an aerospace company at their annual management and sales meeting. They have done some things remarkably well during this meeting. What they have doe could be an example for any number of law firms.

First, they were singleminded in their focus. They stayed on message throughout and hammered it home every chance they got. The message was “Execution.” Strategy without execution is worthless. In order to execute well they need to focus on certain areas, such as really listening to their customers about their wants and needs, being innovative in every aspect of their jobs to find solutions, working collaboratively more than ever before; and they have to be results driven. “Nice try” doesn’t really cut it.

How could your law firm apply these tenets?

Law firms are businesses and they must apply business practices to be successful. Law firms need to develop their own set of best practices and learn to apply them across the board and enforce them in the same way.

Strategy-execution-accountability-results.

Posted in Profitability, Strategic Planning, People Management, What You Didn't Learn in Law School Seminar | No Comments »

January 24, 2008 by David Sorin.

There is an interesting article in the NY Times today by Lisa Belkin about the issue of billable hours. It talks of annual billable hours requirements rising from 1,600 to 1,800 in the 1970s-80s to 2,000-2,200 today. And, the article goes onto say that lawyers are “overworked, depressed and leaving.” It should be noted that the article is in the Fashion and Style section.

Apparently, many firms have only just discovered this and they are beginning to swing into action with alternate plans. The article offered five separate ideas for compensation, based on the acronym FACTS, which is the brainchild of a woman by the name of Deborah Epstein Henry.

FACTS stands for fixed, annualized, core, targeted and shared. The different options allow lawyers to choose their own hours plan and to have their compensation matched to the plan.

It is clear that this youngest generation just entering the legal job pool has less interest in working long hours than any generation before it. law firms can begin changing voluntarily, or come kicking and screaming into the future at the back of the pack where they will not be an employer of choice.

What do you think?

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January 14, 2008 by Daniel Siegel.

The more law firms I work with, the more I discover how deficient so many are with their training. While many firms will train on key applications, such as case/practice management software, few ever train on the basic programs, such as Word, Outlook and even Windows itself. Why? They assume that their staff knows how to use the programs when, in reality, most computer users have never been trained on these essentials. If they have been trained, it was probably years ago for an hour.

The Managing Partner has many responsibilities, and one is to assure that every member of the firm — from partners to clerical staff — are fully versed in the firm’s software, whether it is Outlook or TimeMatters. A little training, especially in the basics, will go a long way toward improving firmwide productivity. Training doesn’t have to be onerous, but it must be consistently done, and attendance must be mandatory.

Posted in Profitability, Technology, People Management | No Comments »