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.
Rethinking Performance Metrics
Old paradigms about how to measure performance might be preventing, rather than motivating, your law firm's success.
Law firms thrive on the quality of their legal services and client relationships. In this context, qualitative goals, not just rigid numbers, are more indicative of progress and can have greater diagnostic value in detecting and addressing problems before they become crises.
Tear Down the Silos
Is your law firm an integrated professional business or a collection of fiefdoms?
This is the tenth in a series of sixteen articles that will explore the relevance and, for some law firms the existential importance, of W. Edwards Deming's Fourteen Points.
Deming’s ninth point in his Fourteen Points of Total Quality Management stresses a vital, yet often overlooked, aspect of organizational effectiveness: "Break down barriers between departments." As the practice of law becomes more complex and competitive, with greater challenges to sustainable profitability, this point is more important than ever before, even among smaller firms who might have “silos” that are so small as not to be noticeable.
Driving Fear Out of Law Firms
Law firm leaders must foster environments in which everyone feels secure and valued.
This is the ninth in a series of sixteen articles that will explore the relevance and, for some law firms the existential importance, of W. Edwards Deming's Fourteen Points, especially for small and midsize law firms.
Leading the Way to Quality in Legal Services
The legal services industry is awash in advice about leadership. How can Deming's Seventh Point build better leadership in law firms?
Here are five practical actions that Walker Clark clients are taking that are consistent with Deming’s Seventh Point and the outcomes that they are experiencing from each one.
Continuous Improvement
To remain competitive and profitable in today's legal services market, law firms need to continuously improve how they work.
The fifth of W. Edwards Deming's Fourteen Points, Improve Constantly and Forever the System of Production and Service, calls for a never-ending commitment to enhancing quality and efficiency within an organization. This principle has profound implications for law firms, impacting not only day-to-day internal operations but also bottom-line profitability.
End the practice of awarding business based on price.
In an increasingly competitive landscape, law firms, like any business, might feel compelled to make decisions based on price alone.
However, the fourth of W. Edwards Deming's Fourteen Points for better management warned against this practice, arguing that cost should not be the primary consideration in business decisions. Instead, he championed a more holistic approach that weighs quality and long-term value alongside price.
Cease dependence on inspection.
"Cease dependence on inspection," W. Edwards Deming's third point for effective management, is perhaps one of the least understood principles in the context of service industries like law firms.
Conventionally, it translates into the notion that quality should not be an afterthought checked through after-the-fact inspections but ingrained in every step of the production process.
For law firms, this means shifting the focus from reactive measures to proactive strategies that enhance the quality of legal services by reducing or eliminating altogether the causes of mistakes and rework.
Adopt the new philosophy.
The second challenge in W. Edward Deming's Fourteen Points is Adopt the New Philosophy. It is particularly relevant in today's legal services industry, especially as many traditional law firms try to build and sustain a collaborative and productive workplace culture.
Constancy of Purpose
This is the second of a series of sixteen articles that will explore the relevance and, for some law firms the existential importance, of W. Edwards Deming's Fourteen Points, especially for small and midsize law firms.
The first of W. Edwards Deming's Fourteen Points for effective management calls for organizations to "Create Constancy of Purpose for Improving Products and Services." How can law firms do this in the face of changing client expectations and market dynamics?
Why Law Firms Need Deming’s Fourteen Points Now More Than Ever
Quality service, not price, rankings, or size, is what will differentiate successful law from from those that merely survive the 2020s.
Delivering the best quality legal services is a sincere aspiration of almost every law firm. For most of them, however, the word quality is little more than a slogan on their websites.
This is the first of a series of sixteen articles that will explore the relevance and, for some law firms, the existential importance, of W. Edwards Deming's Fourteen Points.
Eight Things for Indian Law Firms to Think About
As part of our ongoing experiment to test the potential value of artificial planning in law firm management, we asked the newest version of our chatbot, openai GPT-4, what Indian law firms should be considering in their planning for the incursion of foreign law firms into the Indian legal market.
The response outlined eight good starting points.
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: A Predisposition for Innovation
Successful law firms in the future will not only keep up with trends and developments; they will lead them.
Innovation is more than just doing things better. Rather, it is a fundamental change. It shifts the paradigms that control how we think and act today.
The Law Firm of the Future: 40-to-1 Leverage? 400-to-1?
The successful law firm of the future will be almost unrecognizable to most law firm members today.
Unprecedented workflow leverage will create opportunities for exponential increases in productivity and unprecedented challenges to manage it.
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: From “Factory” to “Shipyard”
The law firm of the future will probably be more like a shipyard than a factory.
The conversion is already underway in many law firms.
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.
Will 2022 be the year when everything changed?
For most law firms, internal operations and client service processes will not be the same in 2022 as before the COVID-19 pandemic. Many law firms have already announced how what began as temporary adjustments have already become, or soon will become, permanent components of their practice.
These changes will have substantial effects of law firm finances, lawyer performance, profitability, and in many cases, partner compensation structures and formulas.
There will be many responses by law firms around the world, but one response that will almost always be fatal eventually will be to throw up one's hands and say, "We'll figure it out as we go along — one problem at a time."
Four Guiding Principles for Uncertain Times
Ever since we formed Walker Clark LLC back in 2002, our firm has observed four core values that have guided our advice to our clients, many of whom have implicitly incorporated these principles into their professional cultures and day-to-day workplace environments.
As we look ahead into a new decade, we remind ourselves of them, remember how they have been reliable guidelines in rapidly changing legal markets and business environments over the past 18 years, and offer them for whatever inspiration and benefit they might provide in the future.
