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Toby Brown

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The Law Society Gazette reports that 30% of UK solicitor firms have already talked to potential investors about investing in their firms come October. Some additional stats from the article:
“65% said they were ‘comfortable securing external investment from a non-legal investor”
“Some 65% of solicitors said they would consider doing work with a non-legal

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Yesterday I heard a presentation from a well-known legal consulting group about the state of the legal market for 2011. This is part of an annual road-show they take to different cities to talk about the legal market in general and any distinctions in the local market. Although there were no big surprises in the

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As the market moves away from hourly rates to fee-based billing, law firms are facing a significant market challenge. One of the foundations of a functioning market is “free information.” Economists mean “free” in the sense that information about pricing is freely available to everyone in a market. That way the market can continually set

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Since Ayelette called me out on delivering depressing news earlier in the week, I thought I would end the week on a consistent, low-note by highlighting a emerging trend in downward pressure on legal fees.
The existence of fee/pricing pressure in the legal market is common knowledge. However, based on my experience I see some

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In one of those about-to-fall-asleep, mind-is-wandering moments, it occurred to me that law firms are financially structured a lot like the US Social Security system. I wish I could give the genesis for this thought, but I was lucky to retain the overall analogy. However, it may have come from Ayelette’s post about my recent

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Warren Buffett, the quintessential capitalist, was recently quoted:

“[t]he single most important decision in evaluating a business is pricing power. If you’ve got the power to raise prices without losing business to a competitor, you’ve got a very good business. And if you have to have a prayer session before raising the price by

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In chatting with my boss / colleague / mentor about the economic state of the legal industry, we stumbled on an interesting analogy. We were discussing the recent CT TyMetrix Real Rate report and the fact that the number one driver of differences in billing rates is a lawyer’s location. We concluded that law firms

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It seems reality continues to encroach on the practice of law. Announced this week in the UK is “a bid to create the first solicitors franchise.” The idea is to create a standard platform of back-office systems and services and then franchise that out as a law firm platform to different locations and markets. The

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Legal Project Management (LPM) is a very hot topic. Everyone (including me) is writing and talking about its potential role in helping transform the legal industry. Aside from the various debates on its value and role, out of curiosity (and need) I started asking around for sample job descriptions. This request has gone out to

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In this recent ABA Journal article, the co-CEO of Pangea3 is quoted as saying, “No law firm should be doing commoditized work.” The assumed intent of this statement is to ease concerns that Thomson Reuters (TR) / Pangea3 is competing with law firms (a.k.a. customers). On its face, this statement may provide some reassurance.

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