Working with Law Firms is great fun.  

Once they finally decide to implement a development 
programme a strange thing occurs.

The strangeness comes not from the Firm itself but from individuals and the sheer number of lawyers who finally open up and admit that they never really wanted to be lawyers in the first place.


There’s a crucial point in the timing of these “confessions.”  It’s usually after the initial consultation has completed and the first step of the programme begins when it finally sinks in with some that the business of law needs to be delivered in a new way and that “change is on the horizon”.

Now no one except a wet baby likes change.  And the thought of “change” and all that it may bring seems to initiate an internal conversation.

The internal conversation may go something like this: “oh no, we’re going to have to change the way we do things around here.  I can see that now and it looks as if I may have to work harder/smarter/more efficiently.   


I’m already billing as many hours as I can I can’t see how to squeeze more time out of this, already squeezed, life of mine.  Heck, I never really wanted to be a lawyer in the first place.  My dad/Mum/brother [add to the list and take your pick] made me do it.  


I always wanted to work outdoors/be a lifeguard/start my own business [again, add to the list and take your pick]. Well, if I’m going to have to change I may as well bite the bullet and start my own business/learn carpentry/ hairdressing/to be a chef [etc] now.  


This Firm are planning to merge/take over/be taken over and there will be upheaval anyway.  I may as well go through all that for my own benefit. That’s it, I’ve had enough, I’m leaving.  It’s  now or never.”


Of course there will be variations on that theme, but you probably get the gist.

I’ve thought about what to do to help these people in their transformation and short of encouragement to do what they love (as you’ll never work a day in your life if you do) I always wanted to be able to make a more concrete suggestion or point to some great insight that can help.

Recently when reading a new book (Just out 27 April 2013) calledThe Inside Out Revolution by Michael Neil, I came across the following;

“Imagine a man comes to you for coaching. He’s about to turn 30 and he’s decided that it’s time to “grow up” and take over the family carpentry business.  He wants you to share innovative marketing techniques, work with him on how to make better personnel decisions and coach him to incorporate technology to bring the business into at least the new millennium.”

"But even as you’re speaking together, something’s bothering you about the conversation. He’s saying all the right things and seems willing to do all the right things and yet something still feels out of alignment. 


Following your intuition, you go back and review the client intake form he filled out when he first came to you and to your surprise you see that his name is Jesus and he’s from a small town in the Galilean region of Israel called Nazareth."

Here’s the question:

Do you really want to work with him on becoming more successful in his carpentry business?

What if every man, woman and child you meet has the seeds within them to become who they truly are?

What if that includes you?


What if?......

As I write this its Boxing Day. I'm bored. But I'm also open to ideas for articles and as I watch the football, an idea has sprung into my mind.

Now I remember when I was young, football was pretty much all about the final score. 


Nowadays we have Sky and football punditry and at half time we get bombarded with statistics and replays.  Why, because apparently it's what people want.

However, the thing about "what people want" is that most people don't know what they want. They do after you give it to them, but mostly they don't know.

The late Steve Jobs hit the nail on the head when he said something like, "you don't ask people what they want because they don't know".  If  said Henry Ford, I asked people what they wanted in 1909 they would have said faster and more comfortable horses!

Ok, so far so what.....here's the so what....sometimes you just have to present something to your clients to see if they like it.

Wow, what a groundbreaker!

But what does that have to do with football?

The changes in the way football has been presented on TV were not as a result of what people said they wanted, it's a result of trial and error, but mostly it's a result of competition.

Before Sky came along, football on TV was a bit rubbish.  First of all it was in black and white! ( ok I made that up to see if you're paying attention!), no really, if you're over a certain age (ahem) TV football coverage was very amateur.  For a start you only saw about four or five games out of the whole league.  in Scotland you didn't really see English Division 1 as it was and when you did, all games were commented on by Brian Moore.  In Scotland you had a choice of Arthur Montford, Archie Macpherson or of you were really unlucky, Bob Crampsey.  There were about four or five angles, replays were a bit non-existent and no body bothered about statistics.

Statistics were all very American.  American Football ( rugby with padding for boys who don't want to get hurt) was all about yards and percentages. We saw, but we didn't care.

Then they introduced it into the Premier League.  We saw, but we still didn't care.

Then one day, about 3 or 4 years after they first introduced statistics, I remember a friend in the pub droning on about the number of corners and shots on target that Team A had over Team B the last time they met, so naturally, Team A were favourites to win.

All of a sudden, statistics meant something.

In fact, the whole betting industry is built around them.

Imagine if the betting industry started to put odds on law firm survival?

If it did, what are your law firm stats like?  

How do you measure and manage referrals or website hits? If you do, how do they compare to last month...the month before...last year?

How many clients do you have? What is the average spend? What is the lifetime value of your clients? And so on.  

The thing about proper statistics ( or as management consultants call them, KPIs or Key Performance Indicators) is that they tell a story. They tell the story of how well or how badly your firm is doing.  And if you don't have any at all, or if your whole team don't know what they are, then your heading for relegation; but in this climate, that means oblivion.

Law is a mature profession and apart from some small increments; the use of email, tracking of documents and online services, there has not been a really big innovation of any great value to the purchasers of legal services in the past few generations.

But as I consistently state on this blawg and others; all of that is about to change.

If you're a lawyer working today for yourself or as part of a firm, the way I see it you have 3 choices:-

Number 1 - Do Nothing.

This is the usual route taken by mature or stagnating industries, hoping that somehow things (income) will go back to the way it was. Hoping that the past will somehow equal the future.

And with this thinking - usually by men over 50 - there is no reason to change anything.  If we keep on doing what we've always done, we'll keep on getting what we always got.

Except that you're not getting what you got before, are you?

You still put in the hours but the income has dropped.  Or you have to put in more hours to get the same income.

Doing nothing is always an option.  This is not a chess game.  You don't actually have to make a move at all.


Number 2 - Outsiders wil start to replace large sections of the profession

Joseph Schumpeter wrote about "Gales of Creative Destruction" and to some extent that is already happening.

The changes in the Legal Services Bill when it comes in, will mean that other organisations - mainly ones that are great at customer service! - will start to woo the buyers of legal services and start to show that they care, thereby nibbling away at the overall pie that feeds lawyers.

And finally,

Number 3 - Innovate and become your own creative destroyer

Bring in new thinking. Forget about how things were done in the past.  Start offering customers what they want, not what you want to provide and give them
a dozen ways to pay.


I discussed this with a couple of lawyers the other day, and to them, none of these options were terribly attractive.  Why? because it was not that they didn't want to do the changing but that they felt that no one else would want to.

This crazy situation is like "keeping up with the Joneses"...they wish that you would stop so they could stop.

But hey ho.  The way to change the world is one person at a time and with that in mind the next target is the Law Society seminar on 14th October where I shall present to a room full of people and then on a one-to-one basis.

Here are some predictions for the future:

In 2012 and 2013 the inclusion of Alternative Business Structures (ABS) in the legal marketplace will see completely new firms created using private equity investment.

LLP's will be phased out or replaced by Limited Companies.

External (non UK) legal brands with huge financial resources will become ABS's and start to eat into the UK legal market.

There will be lots of mergers as middle tier firms start to feel the financial squeeze and "huddle together for warmth".

Many more redundancies amongst lawyers will result in an increase in the number of new legal firms created; but these will be one and two man niche operations.

Redundancies will result in lower salaries for lawyers in PQ 1 to 5