But what are we really talking about when we talk about leverage? I suggest we are actually talking about profit. But just
All this talk about alternative billing and alternative fee arrangements (AFAs) might lead one to believe there are numerous tools on the market for managing these.
I’ve previously posted on 3 Geeks about how budgets sit at the core of AFAs and on methods for building reasonable budgets. With that concept in mind,
Jay Shepherd’s post on ‘associates as overhead’ got me thinking about associates and value. Jay closes his post with the comment, “They (clients) want to pay for value.” His main point is that law firms should bill by value and not by time keeper. This idea has merit, but as I have
Bruce Schneier, the guru on security, posted on the differences in information security breaches by type of industry. Schneier is referencing a scientific study of security breaches. This study was looking to see if there were major differences in types of breaches by industry. Professional Services is one of the industries highlighted.
Looking into
Geek Number 2 of the 3 Geeks and I were strategizing about our Crowdsourcing project over some adult beverages recently and got to philosophizing about alternative fees. Greg had posted a comment on my recent post about how things won’t change with current thinking. We ended up talking about how GCs (even when they’re insulted
Coca-Cola recently announced it was going to a value billing system with its professional services advertising agencies. The alternative fee topic is obviously spreading to many professional services industries, beyond legal and accounting. Doug Cornelius picked this story up from the Economist.
I attended a webinar on this topic that came to my attention
Based on a some past posts, Maciek Janowski reached out to show us the Calvis Blackberry (BB) App for InterAction. Greg and I enjoyed a brief and informative demo.
In terms of functionality, it is exactly what you would expect. Your lawyers can access the information and tools in InterAction directly from their BBs.
Carolyn Elefant posted an interesting comment to Part 2 of our Crowdsourcing dialogue.
After Greg’s post on crowdsourcing, he and I met to explore how
Recent posts and discussions on the de-leveraging of law firms got me thinking. The thrust of the discussion is that BigLaw (and law firms in general) will not have the same leverage on the other side of the recession. I offer my evolving thoughts on this subject.
No leverage = no profit. The only ‘firms’