Walker Clark
Worldview Archives
Building a Culture of Quality in Your Organization
Introducing a successful quality assurance system usually requires profound changes in how people think about their work, how they interact with each other and clients, and how they prioritize and deliver legal services.
A culture of quality challenges traditional assumptions about how lawyers and staff contribute to the profitability of the firm and how they add value in their respective roles.
It can be challenging, but it is absolutely necessary for sustainable success in a competitive environment that has very little tolerance for poor service quality.
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.
Beyond Mere Words
Empty slogans, exhortations to work harder, and irrelevant "best practices" are not only ineffective; they often are counterproductive.
They do not promote clarity. Instead, most people are left to wander in the fog, from data point to data point, without understanding where they are going or why.
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.
Leadership in a Quality-Driven Law Firm
In a quality-driven professional culture, leadership takes on a unique and important role. Quality-driven law firms focus on delivering high-quality products and services to their clients, “the first time and every time," and effective leadership is essential in achieving this goal.
At the heart of quality-driven leadership is the ability to inspire and empower everyone in the firm to strive for excellence in everything they do. Leaders in a quality-driven culture understand that quality is not just a goal, but a way of doing things. They communicate this vision clearly to their teams and and colleagues and set high standards for performance and accountability.
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 Culture of Resilience
This is the final installment of a series of posts that have described and explored 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.
The bottom line for all of this can be described in a single word: resilience.
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.
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.
Three Things to Think About Now as You Think About the Future
Law firm leaders and planners — indeed, all lawyers — are right to be concerned about the future of the legal profession. We can expect significant changes, powered by increasingly sophisticated client expectations and the more powerful service delivery capabilities of advanced technology, to redefine what a "law firm" will look like and how it will operate in the 2020s...
...which are only a few months away.
Listening to Learn
What is the most important thing that a law firm or group of lawyers can do to respond better to fast change in their market?
Understanding Paradigms
Two of the biggest challenges for the Walker Clark "futures practice" are to break down the paradigms that prevent our clients from seeing the future — and sometimes even today — clearly, and to stimulate genuinely innovative responses.
Why Small and Midsize Law Firms are Especially Vulnerable to Mental Health Issues
What would you do if you suspected that one of your colleagues was chronically depressed or was abusing alcohol or drugs?
Unfortunately, most small and midsize law firms can't answer this question.
Some don't even want to think about it.
Buying Time as a Wise Investment
Lawyers tend to greatly value efficiency. They tell us that control of their time, above all else, is an important factor in their personal and professional success.
Yet many law firm decision makers get stuck in a downward spiral of procrastination, unwilling to make a financial investment in protecting their time and even their sense of well-being.
Leadership in Times of Change
Law firm leaders tell us “We now have to accept change as the status quo."
And this means making judgment calls when there is insufficient time to find perfect solutions, or even to get all of the partners to agree.
Silence is not always golden.
Law firms with poor internal communications skills and practices face great obstacles when they try to implement any decision, even minor ones.
One of the most important tools in a firm's internal "communications tool kit" is to schedule time for talking.
This is the first in a series of short posts about questions that I frequently receive about the importance of internal communications to "getting things done" in law firms.
Beware consensus.
Do you and your partners pride yourselves on the fact that "as partners we never proceed unless we have consensus?"
Or that "we have voting rules but never need to use them, because we prefer to come to a consensus?"
So, what does this commitment to consensus actually say about your partners' decision making process, your professional and business culture, and the ability of your firm to adapt to, and respond rapidly and efficiently to, a changing business environment?
Surprisingly, very little and not what you might expect.
Change Management and Strategic Success
Over the years — and especially in the past eight years — our firm has observed a direct positive link between the skill with which a law firm manages change and its return on investment in strategic planning.
Market leaders lead the market.
When a group of law firm partners discusses significant possible changes in their firm, at some point one of them often will say: "But no other firm in our market does this..."
My colleagues and I usually have three responses when we hear this from one of our clients.
