Walker Clark
Worldview Archives
What is your plan for network affiliations next year?
Business planning should be an intellectually rigorous and disciplined process, not just the last-minute production of a spreadsheet.
Opportunities for network affiliations should be one of several unifying and coordinating themes in planning. In too many business plans and marketing plans, however, they appear to be little more than afterthoughts.
Three Suggestions for Planning for the New Year
For law firms about to begin their 2015 fiscal year, this is when they should be putting the finishing touches on their business plans and marketing plans for the new year.
This post offers a few suggestions on business planning and marketing planning. If you adopt even one of these ideas, you will significantly improve the probability of successful results.
Three Questions for Better Crisis Management
The closing weeks of 2014 are proving to be very challenging for many law firms, large and small, around the world. There are things that every law firm should do now so that it can manage a crisis if it arises, rather than try to rely on improvised responses.
Should your firm have a non-lawyer CEO?
When should your law firm start thinking about hiring a full-time non-lawyer CEO to run your business?
The answer is highly specific to the firm, its location, and its practice areas. However, in our experience advising law firms about this issue, we have observed four indicators that it is time to give serious consideration to hiring a non-lawyer CEO.
Seven Tips for Better Panel Discussions
Based on the author’s experience as a moderator or member of more than 200 panel discussions at major international legal conferences, here are seven tips for a successful program.
This is one of ten most frequently read posts in the Worldview Archives, with more than 13,000 views since it was first published in 2014.
Fire? Flood? Storm? Earthquake? Epidemic? Plague of Locusts?
To help our clients prepare for, and respond to, emergencies better, Walker Clark LLC has studied how law firms respond — or fail to respond — when a disaster strikes.
We have identified four common but usually critical weaknesses in law firm disaster preparedness. These are not the only potential problem areas; but a weakness in any one of these areas poses a very high risk to the continued success — indeed, the continued survival — of a law firm.
Spin-Off: A Little-Known Strategy to Improve Profitability
Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer has left Barcelona.
The restructuring of their Barcelona-based practice reminds us of an often overlooked strategy to manage the profitability: the spin-off.
What if we go to a three-day workweek?
What if your managing partner announced that lawyers in your firm were required to work only three days per week and could take unlimited holidays?
What would be the reaction of partners in your firm?
When Risk Walks in the Front Door
Some of the biggest business risks in a professional services firm arise at the beginning of the client relationship, but they are often overlooked or not detected at all until a crisis strikes.
The Succession Balance
First-generation law firms face a special challenge when planning and managing the transition of the firm from the founding partners to the "next generation.”
Is your management team a profit center?
Where (or who) are the most important profit centers of your law firm?
Most lawyers would reflexively respond, "Our partners, of course!" or, if they are in a generous mood, "Our lawyers."
Well, not exactly...
How strong is your bridge to the future?
We expect to see an unprecedented number of law firms go through their first generational transition of leadership between now and the mid-2020s, as founding partners retire and the next generation assumes leadership of the firm.
This will not be a smooth transition for many small and midsize law firms, especially in emerging and recently emerged legal markets in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
Seven Keys to the Future of Independent Law Firms in Asia
The effects of globalization of legal markets pose a unique set of risks and opportunities for independent law firms in Asia.
This brief article outlines seven observations of Walker Clark LLC members, some of whom have more than 20 years’ experience advising Asian law firms on strategic and operational matters.
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.
Could the end of the legal market as we know it be at hand?
Sir Nigel Knowles, the global co-chief of DLA Piper, and the architect of DLA's remarkable transformation from a regional law firm in England to a major global brand, has published some interesting thoughts in today's on-line edition of The Lawyer.
I am not sure that I agree with everything that he says, but I strongly recommend that lawyers everywhere, in large firms and small alike, read and consider carefully his interpretation of ongoing events in the legal markets.
What excites you?
A good business case can be persuasive.
Excitement is what can make it compelling.
Will We Succeed? Five Tests for Strategic Implementation
There are two phenomena that are far too common in law firm strategic planning.
The first is the the exciting, visionary, brilliantly-written strategic plan that collects dust on a remote bookshelf in the managing partner's office and is never implemented.
The second is the plan that consumes substantial resources — especially partner time — but produces disappointing results, and sometimes counterproductive ones.
Does your law firm play baseball or soccer?
This is an excellent question to ask your colleagues in your law firm.
One of the main cultural reasons why many law firms fail to achieve the success that they crave, both collectively and individually, is that the partners metaphorically play baseball, when they really should learn to play soccer (what the rest of the civilized world correctly refers to as football).
What prevents judges from being independent?
Most countries with reasonably developed legal systems recognize the importance of judicial independence to the rule of law. Judicial independence often can be more than a just an academic theory or empty slogan. Nonetheless, the independent judiciary is under assault today, including in the United States.
This is not new.
The Risks Within
The critical issues in a governance consultation can present themselves in many forms, such as: an outdated partnership agreement; a failure to think about succession until it is almost too late; disputes over compensation and the respective rights of partners; the absence of the flexible but reliable internal structures needed to manage change.
However, they almost all involve a profound need to identify and manage internal business risks, which are usually more dangerous than anything that the external market can throw at the firm.
