I’ve been reading Toby’s last two posts about the questionable financial state of law firms (The Fall of the Legal Cartels? and Warren Buffett Puts Another Nail in the Law Firm Coffin) and wondering to myself “Come on Law Firm Management, do you really not see your future? Do you really not get
Warren Buffett Puts Another Nail in the Law Firm Coffin
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
Would You like Fries with Your Merger Agreement?
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
Torys ‘Draws’ Attention To M&A Trends Through Animation
Canadian law firm, Torys, is no stranger to using multimedia to present its annual Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) Trends. Their efforts in making a video podcast of the report even earned them the “Marketing Initiative of the Year” award at the Marketing Partner Forum in January 2007. The video podcasts have been
Profitability and the New KM
As a corollary to the profitability series, this post tackles the need for KM to be tied to profitability in a law firm. Otherwise it becomes KM for the sake of KM. Ron Friedmann’s recent post on KM Reincarnated combined with some recent evaluations of Legal Project Management (LPM) software got me thinking
Online Marketing Trends and the Legal Industry
Hat tip to Scott Cone for pointing out this article on Top 10 Online Advertising Trends Of The Decade. It caught my eye since it was taking a longer term look at trends (versus just one year), revealing the more powerful shifts in the market. The trends are generally what you might expect, however
The Plateau
There are moments in the life of every Information Technologist when you wonder, maybe only to yourself, silently, why do I care so much? And yet you do. And the next question is, am I doing the right thing? In the right way? Is there a better way? It’s a slippery slope and it’s hard
Law Firm Profitability and its Impact on the Client
In the series on law firm profitability, the clients weren’t directly addressed. As law firms struggle to adapt to a profit margin business model, what will the impact be on how much clients pay and on the quality of services they receive?
We explored two basic methods for lowering the cost of delivery of legal
More for Less: Reducing the Cost of Legal Services (Part 2)
More for Less: Reducing the Cost of Legal Services (Part 1)
In the last post in this series on law firm profitability, we examined the implications of shifting from a cost-plus business model to a margin model for law firms. The bottom-line is that firms need to reduce the number of hours it takes to provide a service, and/or reduce the average cost per hour for