ABA Section of Business Law
Business Law Today
September/October 2001 (Volume 11, Number 1)
Key challenges facing mid-sized law firms
Identifying and marketing core competencies
- Competition from multi-disciplinary practices
- Attracting and retaining good clients - good client service
- Technology issues - computer availability
- Building a business practice and maintaining national institutional
client base
- Changes in the practice of law/keeping up with new legal trends and practice areas
- Finding new business - sustained flow of new work
- Managing growth - regional representation, whether or not to
merge
- Professional malpractice issues, practice group development,
managing existing work load, offering range of services at excellent
performance rates, consolidation of existing client business
- Competition from other law firms
- Information dissemination
- Creating firm culture and managing knowledge
- Staffing issues - ADA, achieving diversity, requests by lawyers
to work part time
- Associate employment - recruiting (possibly from distant areas),
training, retaining and promotion of quality associates
- Support staff employment - recruiting, retaining, balancing
compensation of quality support staff, training
- Transformation of firm to an institution that survives its founders or retaining culture of firm, also while conforming to clients' needs
- Maintaining strong management shared among partners
- Firm governance
- Burnout or polarization of departments
- Improving profitability
- Declining state of economy
- Maintaining balanced compensation among partners and shareholders
and associates
- Matters concerning retiring shareholders
- Increase profitability per billing unit - leveraging to paralegals,
money priorities in firm
- Dealing with billing practices - raising billing rates
- Costs and overhead - finding affordable office space, increase in cost of supplies, increase in cost of doing busines
