Walker Clark
Worldview Archives
Removing Barriers to Pride and Professionalism
Most law firms talk a lot about their "professional quality."
Most of them also unwittingly obstruct it.
By identifying and dismantling the barriers that prevent legal professionals from taking pride in their work, law firms can unlock a higher level of personal satisfaction and commitment, leading to superior service, client loyalty, and overall firm success.
Law Firms Without Borders: Challenging Trends in Cross-Border Legal Services
Although law firms today face a seemingly vast array of strategic, operational, and management challenges arising from the globalization of the legal services industry, there are at least five emerging trends that characterize law firms that are successfully building profitable cross-border and multinational practices, even when based in only one office or country.
This paper, presented at the 2022 Annual Conference of the American Bar Association International Law Section, on 29 April 2022, describes these five trends, based on observations and research by the author and other Walker Clark consultants in law firms over the past twenty years.
The Law Firm of the Future: Intimate Client Relationships
"My lawyer is my best friend."
How often has a client said that about you?
"Client intimacy," not just good client service, will be an important feature of the successful law firm of the future.
The Law Firm of the Future: Seven Critical Forces That Will Determine Success
One of the most frequent questions that I am asked these days is What will law firms look like ten years from now? Twenty years?
Contrary to popular belief, we really can foretell the future, especially of the legal services industry.
And a very clear picture is emerging.
This is the first of a series of posts that will describe and explore seven characteristics that will determine which law firms remain successful in the legal services industry of the future, and what law firms can do now to build them into their operations and professional cultures.
Buried Treasure
Most lawyers have an untapped source of new fees...
...from old clients.
Research conducted by Walker Clark LLC with our clients over the past twenty years confirms that the return on investment in keeping in touch with inactive clients — even ones who haven't provided any work for years — can be significantly better than the time, effort, and expense of looking for new ones.
CRM: No Longer a Luxury for Lawyers
One of the most important lessons of the pandemic has been the vital importance of maintaining frequent personal contact with clients.
Client Relations Management (CRM) systems need to move from the marketing department onto the desktop of every fee earner in a law firm. In the hands of a reasonably diligent lawyer — even a horribly busy one — a good desktop CRM system streamlines the flow of information between a central marketing and business development database and each lawyer.
When Cash Flow Dries Up
The Colorado River in the southwestern United States and northern Mexico no longer flows into the Sea of Cortez. Instead, due to diversion for irrigation upstream, it evaporates in the desert about nine kilometers away.
Many law firms are experiencing an analogous situation with cash flow during the COVID-19 crisis.
Here are three tips to keep at least some money in your firm's revenue pipeline during these difficult times.
COVID-19 Update: Resilient Leadership in a Time of Crisis
Resilience has become a big buzz-word in the business world during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the legal services industry is not immune from it.
But what does resilient leadership look like in a law firm? How do the leaders of a law firm — both the titular ones and the de facto ones — successfully guide their organizations through bad times?
This article, first published in Walker Clark Worldview in 2015 and updated for the current crisis management context, offers six actions to build resilient leadership in a law firm. Remember, the goal is not just to get through the current storms, but to emerge from them stronger than before. To do this, everyone in a legal services organization — but especially in law firms — needs to deal with some very disquieting questions.
Business Intimacy in an Age of Social Distancing
The COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 has introduced social distancing as a basic business practice.
We also need to master the skills of business intimacy.
The International Challenge to Asian Law Firms
As international law firms from outside the region become more deeply embedded in the legal markets of Asia, the leading local and national law firms, which previously may have held relatively secure market positions, must respond quickly and accurately to these new competitors, or face relegation to the lower, less-profitable levels of the market.
After We Hit the Iceberg
The massive systems failure at Delta Airlines on 8 August 2016 disrupted operations for more than 48 hours and left tens of thousands of Delta passengers stranded.
Delta Airlines is one of the largest airline companies in the world, with perhaps the world's largest and most sophisticated operations systems, but Delta's experiences over the past several days provide sobering warnings to even the smallest law firms that take don't take disaster planning and client relations recovery seriously.
So, before we all get into too much of a high dudgeon about Delta Airlines and other air carriers that have experienced similar systems problems, let's look at your law firm. There are some good lessons to be learned from Delta's misfortunes this week.
Five Obstacles to Effective Communications with Clients
"The most effective way to communicate with a client, is to communicate with the client."
Vlad Zabrodin's insightful observation at this year's Balkan Legal Forum points out a persistent challenge in the communications practices of many lawyers and in the culture of many otherwise well-managed law firms. We talk at clients, but often fail to listen to them.
Innovation: The Small Firm’s Secret Weapon?
In an era when the legal profession is buzzing about what some claim to be the inevitable triumph of “Big Law,” small and midsize firms are defying these predictions of their doom.
One of the ways that they are doing this is by innovation in how they deal with clients and deliver legal services faster, less expensively, and with better results.
“Zero-Tolerance” Profitability: Should you fire some of your clients?
One of the worst mistakes that small law firms make is to hold onto clients that are not profitable and probably never will be profitable.
This is the second in a five-part series of posts that focuses on profitability in small law firms and solo practices.
When does “professional courtesy" become “free advice?”
Law firms can lose a lot of money on what should be profitable client relationships by providing too many services "off the clock." This phenomenon usually arises when a partner repeatedly provides advice as a "professional courtesy" or as a "client relations" activity, rather than charging a fee.
Five Things Outside Counsel Don't Know
There was a very important panel discussion at today's session of the World Services Group North American regional meeting in Park City, Utah. Every law firm lawyer who works with a general counsel in a client organization could take away some valuable insights.
Internal Value: A Hidden Opportunity for Law Firms in Professional Services Networks
The internal value of membership in a professional services network has the potential to have a much greater positive impact on a law firm's bottom line than even a robust flow of referrals from other network members. In some firms it could be the compelling reason to join a network.
Currently, internal value is a largely unknown concept for most networks and their members. Law firms should now consider to what extent professional services networks could help them to increase the productivity and profitability of their internal operations.
Recession-Proof Your Law Firm: Innovations in Client Care
This is the third in a series of four posts about how law firms can anticipate, prepare for, and respond successfully to the next recession or economic downturn. We are investigating three basic rules that describe how a relatively small group of law firms — of all sizes, practice specialties, and locations — not only have survived the Great Recession that began in 2007, but actually have emerged from it stronger than before.
In this post, let's consider client retention tactics: taking care of your clients through innovations in client care.
Understanding How We Work
The British firm Addleshaw Goddard is taking a closer look at its internal work processes to make them less expensive and more efficient for clients. Under the direction of the firm's head of client delivery, Andrew Chamberlain, the people in Addleshaws have mapped the internal processes by which it delivers legal services in 46 service lines.
Their probing analysis of how the work gets done in a law firm is essential to achieving any serious improvements in client service and satisfaction. It is an essential element of a comprehensive approach to quality that is long overdue in the legal profession.
What will your clients need five or ten years from now?
Do you know?
Have you ever asked?
We can help you find out.
