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Burnout

22/10/2022

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A recent survey of a types of legal workers in the UK, who have changed jobs at least once in their career, has shown that poor pay, constant stress, poor career progression and a lack of work-life balance are the primary reasons why they’re leaving their jobs.


Some 35% of those surveyed working in the legal sector said pay was a major factor in them deciding to leave their role, whilst 24% cited work-life balance as the major reason for moving. Twelve-percent revealed that their old position was too stressful and 24% told Go1, the online learning platform which conducted the survey, that they wanted a career change.
The research further found that 20% of workers in the legal industry felt their employer didn’t offer sufficient career progression.


This figure was the joint highest, alongside the IT sector, of all the sectors surveyed in this category. It was closely followed by architecture & engineering (19%), whilst 14% of those those surveyed in the finance sector complained of poor career progression.


An average of all professions included in the research also indicates that Generation Z (aged 16-23) will only stay in a role they’re unhappy in for just over four months before resigning.
Millennials (aged 24-42), however, are likely to stick it out slightly longer, waiting just under a year (11.2 months) before leaving, whereas Generatopn X (aged 43-54) will wait for just over a year (12.5 months) and baby boomers (aged 55-73) 17.6 months.


The website Legal Cheek has been closely reporting on the war for legal talent that has been going on since US firms began to expand their foothold in the London legal market.

​Many top US players now pay their City juniors upwards of £160,000 upon qualification, our Most List 2023 shows. But the work hours have also become more extreme, with some City lawyers clocking off, on average, post 11pm.
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How can a 150 year old Law firm disappear?

3/4/2019

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The Scottish legal firm, Morisons LLP went into administration on 29th March 2019 leading to gasps of air from commentators.

Morisons can trace their roots back to the 1860's and I need to declare an interest...I uses to work there.


It begs the question;  How can a firm like that simply disappear, cease no more, go bust?

The answer lies in the simple phrase; market forces.

The source of the demise could probably be traced back to the Clementi Report and the changes in the way law firms of the future were allowed to operate.

This gave law firms new powers but it effectively brought them into the 21st Century.

Sadly, Morisons chose to stay stuck in the past.

It was a mid-tier firm with no direction.

Had it embraced value pricing, looked after customers, embraced technology, embraced social media (I set up their first Twitter account in 2009! Seldom used since then!!) and booted out some snakes in their domestic grass, then they might have stood a chance.

They failed to react when other firms around them moved on, brought in external expertise and stole their lunch and they paid the price.

The fact that their name was constantly confused with the supermarket group didn't help either.  But then again, they had numerous opportunities to change it with all the mergers they did.

Instead, they made a right Plum-Duff of things!





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Morisons LLP in Administration

3/4/2019

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Scottish law firm Morisons LLP, which has offices in Glasgow and Edinburgh and some 90 partners and staff,  entered administration on the 29th March 2019.

Some of the firm’s assets have been bought by rival firms Thorntons and Blackadders but several posts are likely to go it was confirmed over the weekend.

Tom MacLennan and Iain Fraser, partners with FRP Advisory, have been appointed joint administrators of Morisons, which can trace its roots back to the 1860s. Prior to the administration the firm had 16 partners and employed 74 people across its two offices.

The deals, which are for an undisclosed sum, see eight Morisons partners and 41 staff transferring to Thorntons, and three partners and 30 staff transferring to Blackadders. A further three partners are moving to Gilson Gray in Edinburgh, Weightmans in Glasgow and one undisclosed firm where negotiations are ongoing.

There are no immediate redundancies. However, Thorntons and Blackadders will next week begin a redundancy consultation period with some former Morisons staff while simultaneously undertaking a review of their “staff structures and requirements”. It is hoped that some 45 staff positions will be saved as a result of the rescue deals.

MacLennan said: “We are pleased that Thorntons and Blackadders have agreed deals to acquire certain assets, goodwill and work-in-progress of Morisons, thus ensuring continuity of client service, preserving employment and safeguarding client service. We wish the newly enlarged businesses every success.”

​Craig Nicol, managing partner of Thorntons, said: “Morisons was a long-standing, highly respected firm with a high profile in the Central Belt, and this acquisition will further strengthen our position in the Edinburgh market. “Our priority will be to provide a seamless transition for clients to ensure they continue to receive an excellent service, and to integrate those partners and employees moving across into our Edinburgh team.” Johnston Clark, managing partner of Blackadders, added: “This acquisition underpins Blackadders’ investment in our people and our business and will position us for continued, strategic growth.”

​Lorna Jack, chief executive of the Law Society of Scotland, said: “We are very sad to hear that Morisons has gone into administration. It represents the loss of a highly regarded Scottish law firm operating in Glasgow and Edinburgh. “We are confident that arrangements are being put in place to ensure that there is as little disruption as possible for the firm’s clients.


Read more at: https://www.scotsman.com/business/companies/update-law-society-reacts-to-collapse-of-scots-legal-firm-morisons-1-4898568
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Are You Working Over the Holidays?

5/12/2018

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The Christmas holidays are approaching fast.... so what do you have planned? 

If you are like most lawyers or  firm owners I know, you won’t be going anywhere without your smartphone, tablet or your laptop. 

That’s because you’ll probably be working. 



If you could change that would you? Well, you can—if you learn to delegate the things that others can do better and focus on your core competencies.
 

Robin, who runs a city centre 20 partner law firm said;  "For many years, I allowed my business to control me and dictate my life. I was afraid to take holidays longer than a week because I was certain my business would implode without my physical presence. If things were good, I was flying high, but if we lost a client or didn’t land the “next big deal,” I was miserable to be around.
 
I am not going to lie to you and tell you that I’m now cured or that I never allow my business to affect my feelings. But the lows aren’t nearly as bad as they used to be and typically don’t last nearly as long. It’s taken several years and a lot of time, energy and hard work to get to where we are now.
 

We absolutely, positively could have never achieved these goals without two things:

(a) a strong, supportive team and
​
(b) written systems we have put into place to help us “run” the business.
"



A growing number of similar sized law firms and lawyers are recognising that to build a financially successful business, you must focus on your main core competencies and either delegate or outsource the rest of your business functions.
 
You didn’t go to university to get a law degree to learn how to process payroll or to handle employee issues or to deal with difficult clients or run a small business. You went to uni to learn how to practice law and become a technically skilled lawyer.
 
A similar parallel can be drawn to marketing—with some notable exceptions. Most of the time- and labour-intensive parts of marketing can be outsourced, for example: designing and developing a new website, writing content for your blog, running your social media marketing campaigns, improving your Google rankings with search engine optimisation (SEO), or sending out a monthly e-newsletter.
 
There are some things you cannot outsource or delegate, like going to lunch with a referral source to solidify the relationship or giving a presentation to a group of potential clients. But for every one marketing activity you cannot outsource, there are three or four that you can — giving you the time to focus on what’s really important: growing your law firm or your legal business.
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6 Ways To Attract Your Ideal Law Firm Clients

4/9/2018

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In the beginning, you probably weren’t too picky about who hired you.

You were starting your own law practice and you had University loans to pay off and living expenses to meet.

Your  Number 1 qualifying factor for clients was probably a credit card and a pulse.



However, as your business grew, you came to realise that not all clients are worth the money they pay you (if they paid you!). You definitely regretted taking on clients that demanded the moon and never wanted to compensate you for delivering it.


Hopefully, these experiences taught you a valuable lesson: To avoid bad clients that waste your time and resources, the best thing you can do is to create an ideal client profile for your firm and focus on attracting these types of clients. Sometimes called an Avatar.


If you are a B2C attorney, your ideal client profile should be a detailed description that includes income level, profession, gender, age, and other important demographic details. If you are a B2B attorney, specify business size in terms of revenues, type of industry, legal specialty (employment law, heritable property, litigation), etc.


As you qualify these prospects against your ideal client profile, you need to educate those prospects on how you work, what they can expect, how you charge, and what you expect of them as clients. If they voice objections, then they are most likely not a good fit for your law firm.

But you also need to set your firm up in a way that positions it to attract top-tier clients who will pay you what you are worth. Here are five ways you can consistently attract your ideal client:



1. Establish a professional, polished image.

Top-tier clients do not want to do business with law firms that appear to be unsophisticated or unprofessional. Luckily, it’s pretty simple — and inexpensive — to project a polished image. WordPress websites are easy to set up and manage with a number of professional templates available. You can handle many of your business functions — bookkeeping, invoicing, etc. — with software solutions or outsourcing. The point is, it doesn’t take a lot to create a professional business image that attracts high-end clients.


2. Make your free content better than your competition’s paid content.

Blog posts, articles, videos, newsletters, webinars, and seminars show prospects that you are the expert in your practice area. These all provide the foundation of knowledge and trust that prospects need to hire you. Providing content and ideas that others may charge for shows prospects your depth and quality. If you have to outsource this work, then do it so you have the highest quality content available in your market.


3. Price your services on the high end.

​
People will place value according to what you charge, and top-tier clients are turned off by low prices. Base your pricing on the value you deliver, and the valuable clients will come. You can even offer different services at different price points, but just be sure you always have a premium product offering.


4.Showcase your testimonials with video.

Video testimonials are much more impactful than written ones because they are obviously genuine. Post them on your website, blog, and social media pages and provide prospects who ask with contact information for these references so they can follow up.

5. Showcase your testimonials with video.


6. Have a professional sales team to close deals.

Depending on the size of your firm, you need a dedicated team or at least an intake specialist responsible for handling calls from prospects. This is not a receptionist! This is not a paralegal or an attorney! This is a person who knows how to sell over the phone. And if your firm is fielding more than 10 leads a week from new prospects that are coming from different sources — your website, phone calls, social media, advertising, your newsletter, etc. — you need a customer relationship management (CRM) software system to help you track and manage these leads. A CRM system allows you to track every lead and see where they are in the sales process so good prospects don’t slip through the cracks.
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The dreaded 'B' Word - Brexit

6/8/2018

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It's not out of the news.  It's everywhere. It's Brexit.

But it's time for some good news for lawyers.

Most law firms will see an increase in revenue up to and after Brexit as clients look for legal advice on what it all means for them or their business.

This is an opportunity for you to reach out to your clients and offer them a chance to come in to your firm for workshops or seminars. Hold them in a local hotel if you have no space.

Many years ago, in 2007/2008, when I worked in a city centre law firm, we ran a series of seminars and webinars called The Recovery Club.  It was all about getting ready for the upturn.

This led to quantifiable, good, unexpected business coming in just as a result of regular talking and providing tea/coffee and biscuits!

It's easy and you can do it.
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Engage on Value not Price-by-the-hour

27/4/2018

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The practice of law is often a win or lose proposition.

You want and need to win clients. You want and need to win cases.

The race to the top is predicated on wins.

But there is one race you don’t want to win when it comes to business development for your law firm and that's the race to the bottom.

And that is the race you’re running if you are competing on price.



Author Bob Burg, who wrote "Endless Referrals", says that when you compete on price, everyone loses. You lose because in lowering your price, you are taking on work for which you will not be paid what you are worth. Plus, time spent on unprofitable business is time away from servicing profitable accounts.


Your client loses because you cannot afford to service them properly.

There is no point in adding value that you’re not being paid for. And if your race to the bottom is successful and you go out of business, you won’t be there to help them anyway.



If you have prospects that pressure you on price, you have failed to communicate your value. Most people do not make a purchase decision based solely on price. If you do have someone who tells you they are only going with the lowest cost lawyer, then refer them to a competitor immediately and tell everyone else in your office to do the same.


Of course, the price of your legal services will be a part of your intake discussion as prospects expect to have a handle on the cost of their legal matter. It is important that you control this conversation carefully by asking your prospective client about all their decision-making criteria in choosing a law firm.

Once you understand the factors that will go into their decision, you can address each one, clearly outlining how you can add value for each factor.



To help keep the tyre-kickers from wasting your time, the best thing you can do is to create an ideal client profile for your firm and communicate that profile to everyone involved in the intake process.


If you are a B2C lawyer, your ideal client profile should be a detailed description that includes income level, profession, gender, age, and other important demographic details. If you are a B2B attorney, specify business size in terms of revenues, type of industry, legal specialty (employment law, real estate, litigation), etc.


As you qualify prospects against your ideal client profile, educate them on how you work, what they can expect, how you charge, and what you expect of them as clients. If they voice objections, then they are most likely not a good fit for your law firm.
​


Train yourself and your customer facing staff to sell on value, not price, and you’ll avoid entirely that race to the bottom where no one wins.
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How Some Lawyers "Earn" a bigger bonus by not doing their job

18/9/2017

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Undue focus on fees generated relative to budget, and indeed on amount of fees rendered per se, can have some interesting outcomes in law firms. This is especially so when very significant management responsibilities are given to team leaders, who may have very different understandings of what is good management and what is good performance within their team.


In some law firms when a lawyer becomes an Associate or Partner they are allocated more FirmTime™ in their WorkPlan™ for performing increasing aspects of their changed role, such as greater supervision and training of other less experienced team members.


They might also be allocated more FirmTime™ for Business Development.


Unless the total time allocated in the WorkPlan™ increases, and it seldom does, the amount of time allocated for ClientTime™ reduces as a consequence, and so does annual fee budget, unless the WorkPlan™ reflects a belief that the new Associate or Partner will be able to recover the same or greater fees than before.


The reality is that very often annual fee target is reduced.


Some firms have incentive schemes under which team members are paid a bonus if they achieve their annual fee target, and in some cases that bonus increases in an agreed relationship to the amount of fees above budget.


Different permutations are found throughout the Profession, and some work much better than others.


One issue that needs to be watched closely is management making sure that the FirmTime™ allocated as described above is actually invested, and effectively.


I regularly see situations in which the extra FirmTime™ allocated is not used at all, often because the newly promoted team member does not have skills in Business Development, and does not invest sufficient time to acquire them. Examples of team members having a strong dislike of Business Development are rife.


What can happen is that the team member simply continues to invest around the same level of time into ClientTime™ as they did before, and will thus quite easily exceed their new budget.


Management must remain aware that far from being a “star”, generating exceptional fees relative to budget, the team member is actually not carrying out their new role correctly.


This is especially likely if the team member was an over-achiever before in the fees area, and that was a big part of the reason they were promoted!


Early discussion needs to take place to start work on re-directing effort into the relevant aspects of the role in correct proportions.
It would be a serious mistake to allow the team member to earn a larger bonus by failing to do what was intended, and generate “excessive” fees as a result.


Whether a firm has an incentive scheme or not, failing to manage investment of resources properly is a major area of concern.
It should be noted that along with inadequate ongoing management, the design of the incentive scheme may in itself be unsophisticated, and in many cases encourage the wrong behaviour entirely.


In my observation, over more than 47 years now, many incentive schemes are fairly blunt instruments, designed in an attempt to give team members additional incentive to do what they should be doing anyway as a basic requirement of their job and base remuneration.


The incentive scheme is often a very poor substitute for good planning and people management, within a good culture, and rarely works successfully across the firm.


I prefer additional ad hoc, considered but unexpected, reward for rounded super-performance above and beyond expectations.


Source: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-some-lawyers-earn-bigger-bonus-properly-doing-job-knowsley-llb-

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It Does Not Make Sense to Hire Smart People and then have them Follow Stupid Rules

17/9/2017

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This post so resonated with me that I had to reproduce it here;

My employee resigned.


I just started as a manager in a new company and this was a shock to me.
​


I asked why.


He said he feels stifled, unappreciated, without a career path, and most of all, has been taking tasks that nobody else was willing to take.


I looked deeper, his previous manager took all the interesting work, and let routine tasks to be dealt by his employees. But then his best people started to quit, and at some point, he stopped being effective. So he left too.


This employee was one the last of the best people remaining.


The best people always suffer the worst from bad leadership.


It took me an enormous effort to convince him to give me a chance.


It was even harder effort to rebuild the team and to earn their trust.


To manage smart people, you do NOT need to be smarter than they are.


You need to give them a chance to grow, opportunities to shine, and appreciation.


Do you agree ?

Source: 
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/does-make-hire-smart-people-have-them-follow-stupid-oleg-vishnepolsky



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Quite interesting

27/11/2016

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​It's quite interesting to see the developments in the legal sector over the past year.

Most of the predicted changes made on this site over the last few years have come to pass or are coming to pass.

1. Work/Life balance.  


​
​2. Alternative Business Models and delivery of legal services.

3. Alternative billing methods.

4. Virtual Law Firms.

​5. Social networking.

6. Globalisation.

7. Legal Process outsourcing.

8. Technology.

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    After many years paying lawyers,I became one in 2005 Just in time for the largest upheaval in the law since records began. Brilliant. Exiting times ahead.

    Disclaimer.  The thoughts, ideas and comments on this Blawg ("Blawg - a legal Blog) are my own and not to be confused (unless otherwise stated) with anyone else and certainly not of anyone in the Firm where I used to work and they are not the views of the firm where I used to work.

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