ABA Section of Business Law
Business Law Today
September/October 2001 (Volume 11, Number 1)
How firms are meeting the challenges
Identifying and marketing core competencies
- Technology - upgrade it, provide or require computer training,
stress lawyer use of
- Marketing, advertising, public relations: increase spending,
become more aggressive, business development, cross selling, raising
visibility to decision makers, individual business development
efforts, expand to Internet
- Attention to customer service, continue to do excellent work
- Practice expansion - open new or regional office(s), into new practice areas, membership in international affiliations
Creating firm culture and managing knowledge
- More social activities, lateral hires and retreats or sabbaticals
- Lateral hiring - don't hire every year and watch for strong
lateral lawyers
- Strengthen mid-level lawyer management leadership skills: delegating
more tasks, training and mentoring programs, encourage those with
ability to motivate and educate, diverse case assignments, earlier
assigning of overall case responsibility and performance-based
compensation, assigning responsibility to track trends and developments
to particular lawyers, streamline management to act more quickly
- Staff incentives and training - oversight of administrative
staff, more flexible hours and benefits, increase morale, redefine
staff roles, encourage local legal secretary courses
- More aggressively recruit associates, widen recruiting area,
use "headhunters"
- Improve communication between lawyers/offices
Improving profitability
- Possible merger
- Compensation: increase rates, use of bonus system, changes to
compensation system, implementation of practice groups, fine tune
method of compensation
- Profitability: improve, increase rates and be selective with clients, justify and curb expenditures, increase profits allocated to partners, fixed contacts to do all litigation, educate staff to understand importance of it and how to change corporate culture to obtain it
