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LEGAL PRACTICE MANAGEMENT 1BUSINESS INFORMATION FOR EVERYONE IN PRACTICE MANAGEMENT
EXPERT COLUMNISTS AND ADVICE FROM PRACTICE MANAGEMENT
PRACTICE MAKES PERFECTBlackhurst Budd’s practice administration manager on collecting Madonna
BOOK REVIEWBates Wells Braithwaite’s Sue Eve reads Inclusive Talent Management
LPMLEGAL PRACTICE MANAGEMENT
OCTOBER 2016
THE ONLY MAGAZINE
FOR LAW FIRM MANAGERS
Can SME law firms learn to more intelligently price legal services?
Fixingfees
Have
heard?you
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From new start-ups to industry heavyweights, Proclaim is the system of choice for forward-thinking law firms.• Fully integrated Practice Management Software solution • SAR-compliant legal accounting • End-to-end case and matter management workflow processes • Ready-to-go workflows for specific practice areas• Fast to implement, easy to use
LEGAL PRACTICE MANAGEMENT3
OCTOBER 2016IN PRACTICE Follow us and talk to us on Twitter @LPMmag
WELCOMEHow hard can it be to change how we price legal services? Quite hard, it turns out – but with a little cleverness, process thinking and some technology, legal business can find a life without the billable hour
Like economics, pricing is a mix of science and art, and it’s something law firms have never
really got the hang of.You’re going to disagree with that.
“We do fixed fees, Rupert!” But getting pricing right isn’t about just fixed fees – it’s about something far more fundamental.
To price properly, you need to know the value your customer places on the product – whether it’s a product only you do or if anyone else does it – and what it costs you to deliver. Law firms, and lawyers in particular, are often wrong about the first of those, deluded about the second, and blind or highly inaccurate on the third.
Lawyers and firms think their products are highly valuable, so they assume clients see that too. They often believe they or their firm provides services in ways others don’t or can’t. And the way law firms track the cost of service delivery is, in the main, amateurish or lacking in rigour.
Decision-making when it comes to pricing is often based on nothing more than a partner or fee earner’s ‘feeling’ about previous work, or a guesstimate. Fixed fees are often pegged against zero-data estimates on the cost of prior work, or just based on what other firms charge.
Management information is the key – analysing historic data with a keen eye on reality to know the cost of deliver – along with the determination to convert to process and technology wherever possible.
What can you do right now? Read the interview with ex-Irwin Mitchell man Richard Clark, now MD at Manchester SME firm berg, on p20. Then move on to the rest of this month’s feast.
Also, I’d like to give a special welcome to our newest columnist – Ryanne Kersten, BD/marketing chief for Bates Well Braithwaite. Our reader columnists give us their time for nothing, and we are enormously grateful to all of them for doing it.
Fancy such a selfless task? Email me or assistant editor Patrick – we’d love to hear from you. LPM
Rupert Collins-White, editor-in-chief@LPMmag | [email protected]
“Lawyers and firms think their products are highly valuable, so they assume clients see that too.”
05 Snapshot: LPM gathers the month’s headlines for SME law firms in one place
IN PRACTICE
12 Emma Sell at BDBF on the practical considerations of maternity leave for firms
13 Ryanne Kerste at Bates Wells Braithwaite on bolstering your firm’s brand
Book review: Bates Wells Braithwaite’s Sue Eve reads Inclusive Talent Management
07 HR Agony Aunt: Polly on freelance lawyers, complaints and skills check
Practice makes perfect: Anna-Clare Mumby on her life as a Madonna collector
FEATURES
COLUMNS
15 Doug Hargrove at Advanced Legal talks about being commercially-minded in legal
INDUSTRY VIEWS
26 Moorcrofts’ Andrew Katz on improving client service with Pentangle’s VoIP telephony
17Nigel Kidwell at Paragon delves into whether Brexit will impact most UK lawyers
20
FJG’s Peter Carr talks about how Tikit P4W made its legal aid services possible
28
Winscribe’s Vladimir Teodosiev on harnessing the power of your voice
30
18
1 1
08 LPM asks: Wright Hassall’s IT director on expanding IT, the cloud and training
09Your view: Is succession planning at the top of your law firm’s agenda?
Feature: Berg’s managing director on how firms can price legal work better
LEGAL PRACTICE MANAGEMENT4
OCTOBER 2016
Contact us
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VISIT LSN.CO.UK/LPMB2016CALL RIKKI CLARK ON 0870 112 5058
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@LPMmagWe’re listening, and we also have plenty to say. We love Twitter – and if you love Twitter too, share your thoughts with us
bit.ly/lpmgroupLSN runs LinkedIn groups for thousands of people in legal business services, and we run a dedicated LPM group, too
www.lsn.co.uk/practice-managementFind practice management blogs, news, resources, white papers, case studies, video and audio and much more online
0870 112 5058 or [email protected] Support Network20 Mortlake High StreetLondon SW14 8JN
Dictation services for this issue of LPM magazine provided by d u2 d i c t a t e 2 u s
Rupert White is editor-in-chief of LPM magazine. He has written about the legal sector since 2005, before which he endured years as an IT hack before tunnelling out with a plastic fork. [email protected]
Patrick Wingrove is LPM’s assistant editor. A history graduate and avid scuba diver, he snuck into publishing in 2014 by hiding in the offices of the Illustrated London News. [email protected]
Kayli Olson is our editorial assistant. A Kingston Uni graduate, she has spent most of her time here picking up British slang, playing board games and managing Kingston Uni’s newspaper. [email protected]
Emily Nash is LPM’s client services contact – and resident musician. Want to advertise in LPM magazine or feature in our awesome advertorial section? Then get in touch with her.
About usLPM magazine is published by Legal Support Network. LSN is a media company focused solely on people in legal business services and management – whatever size or type of legal services provider they work for.
We run LinkedIn groups with thousands of members, across several areas, from legal IT to legal process outsourcing. Find our LPM group at bit.ly/lpmgroup.
LSN’s website is where you can find news, views and resources from the established legal news providers and hundreds of suppliers to the legal industry, all rolled into one
useful information feed: www.lsn.co.uk.
LSN also run the popular Legal Practice Management conferences, tailored specifically for anyone working in management in SME law firms and ABSs. Join us for the LPM Birmingham conference in November:www.lsn.co.uk/lpmb2016
Sign up for our weekly practice management e-newsletters, which bring you the best of our practice management content and our social feeds, every week: www.lsn.co.uk/subscribe/ezine
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LEGAL PRACTICE MANAGEMENT5
OCTOBER 2016IN PRACTICE Follow us and talk to us on Twitter @LPMmag
IN PRACTICE
Summer is over, LPM readers. The kids are back in school, summer holidays are finished and the days are starting to get colder
and shorter – to quote one of our favourite HBO TV programmes: “Winter is coming.” But considering the uncertainty surrounding Brexit and the future of the SME legal market, perhaps we should be asking – is winter coming to legal? The answer, it seems, is that we still don’t know.
The SRA has suggested that no one currently knows how Brexit will affect legal, in a recent report released to help solicitors manage the risks associated with Brexit uncertainty. The report, entitled Exiting the EU: An update for lawyers, also suggests that there are several areas of legal regulation that could be affected by leaving the EU but emphasises that Brexit shouldn’t slow down reforms to the legal services market.
The SRA’s unwillingness to slow reform probably doesn’t sit well with the Law Society, which recently issued a damning critique of proposals for a streamlined code of conduct and planned overhaul of the accounts rules. The Society said that the proposals – for a seven-page code for solicitors and a six-page code for firms – were misconceived, unnecessary, unclear, threatened solicitors’ reputations and would create a two-tier profession.
But, it says these reforms aren’t the only issues dogging legal at the moment. A recent earnings survey suggests that there is still a considerable gender gap in salaries within the profession – with men on average earning one fifth more than women. The survey, Private practice solicitors’ salaries 2015, puts the average salary for male lawyers at £60,000 compared to female lawyers earning £48,500.
On the lighter side of the news, a new virtual reality (VR) game has been developed to help teach university
“No guys, I’m not watching Game of Thrones – this actually counts as credit for my law degree.”
Have you got a story or report for us? Write to [email protected]
Source: Close Brothers Group Business Barometer
of SMEs said they felt no impact on levels of business
of SMEs impacted said they’d seen an improvement in business levels
BREXIT IMPACTNew research shows how SME businesses have been impacted by the UK’s decision to leave the EU
56%
43%
IN N
UM
BE
RSSNAPSHOT
VIRTUALLYWINTER
students criminal law. The project called Real and Virtual Reality Law (REVRLaw) has been created by academics at Westminster Law School and is now being tested for its effectiveness in helping students with their criminal law modules. It virtually sounds like fun.
Meanwhile, a barrister is to be reprimanded by the head of his circuit after turning up to court drunk – and then leaving before a hearing had finished. According to a ruling by a bar disciplinary tribunal, Christopher Rhodri Ellison “behaved in a way which was likely to diminish the trust and confidence which the public places in the profession.”
Perhaps we need those virtual courts sooner than we thought – in virtual reality no one can smell your breath ... LPM
Edited by Kayli Olson
of SMEs impacted said they’d seen a decrease in business levels
40%
It’s our business to make the complex simple.We’re focused on delivering legal practice management solutions that fit and evolve with your business.
Looking to improve your practice? Then talk to us.
It’s the little things that make a big difference.
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LEGAL PRACTICE MANAGEMENT7
OCTOBER 2016IN PRACTICE Follow us and talk to us on Twitter @LPMmag
SORRY, STILL CAN’T HEAR YOU
HR AGONY AUNT
QWe are thinking of hiring some lawyers on
a freelance basis, but will we end up like the cab company Uber and be taken to an employment tribunal for failing to treat these lawyers as ‘workers’?
AWell here’s some positive thinking for you.
Your firm decides to embrace agile working and all things modern and you are worried about being sued. The Uber challenge is about whether Uber drivers fall into the category of workers rather than being self-employed – if they are onboarded as workers, this entitles them to holiday and sick pay. But this challenge is about more than just the pay. It is a sort of ‘rejectionism’ of something very new as well as a sense
of exploitation (these drivers earn very little compared with Uber’s creators who clearly earn a lot). Do any of these conditions apply to your proposal? I doubt it, so chill.
Q A female member of staff has complained
about ‘macho behaviours’ among male staff but does not want to make a formal complaint. We don’t want this hanging over us. What now?
A Embrace the disclosure. Thank goodness this
person has had the courage to speak up. You can certainly investigate regardless of whether or not she wants to make it formal. I would try again and urge her to give you some concrete evidence (she may
well agree if she knows you are serious). Offer anonymity, confidentiality and reassurance. You are likely to uncover something that you didn’t know about and which might, actually, be quite easily resolved (a quiet word to someone in particular, for instance). And don’t get defensive. No employer is perfect and it says a lot about your organisation that she feels comfortable in coming forward.
QA new hire has revealed himself to be
completely devoid of management skills, both with clients and with others in the office. We really like him as an individual but he never says the right thing at the right time.
A This is fascinating – I have an image of
someone whose behaviour is somewhere between Mr Bean and Bridget Jones. Part of me says that a new hire needs to be given some time to get over some initial shyness or over-enthusiasm. But the other part of me is reminded of a statistic I read recently: the vast majority of road accidents are caused by people not looking. Or to put it another way, don’t ignore the bleedin’ obvious – he’s not the right fit. LPM
Polly Jeanneret is an expert in HR and an employment lawyer at Halebury to boot – she’s seen and heard it all.
Send her your HR questions:[email protected]
Polly Jeanneret, LPM's HR guru, answers questions on dealing with staff complaints and talent
HUNGRY LAW FIRM LEADERSFREE BREAKFAST
We recently held a free editorial panel breakfast in the City of London to find out what issues are most concerning law firm managers.
Do you want to be part of the next editorial breakfast in early 2017?
EMAIL [email protected] OR CALL 0870 112 5058
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LEGAL PRACTICE MANAGEMENT8
OCTOBER 2016IN PRACTICE Follow us and talk to us on Twitter @LPMmag
LPM ASKS
QHow should legal businesses handle
growth in terms of their infrastructures?
AIt’s a good question – the first thing firms need is a
solid IT infrastructure in place that can be built on top of in the event of growth – having that solid base in place from the start is key to future growth. An IT infrastructure either needs to be cloud-enabled so that the firm can expand and scale up and out without capital expenditure, or it needs to be on the premises (depending on your views on data sovereignty). Wright Hassall, for example, completely changed its infrastructure a couple of years ago and implemented a private cloud solution predicated upon the firm’s expected growth.
QHow do you ensure new staff are up to speed on
your IT infrastructure?
MARTYN WELLSIT DIRECTOR, WRIGHT HASSALLIT training, the cloud, and the importance of a good IT infrastructure in a firm
ATraining on a legal business’s IT system is
important, which is why we have a dedicated IT trainer. The challenge when a firm recruits or has a sudden influx of employees through M&A is training people who have varying levels of experience or are used to using different systems. Firms might also find that there’s a trans-generational gap between staff. Younger staff coming in from other firms might not need any training, while older staff might need two to three days’ worth of induction. Having an IT trainer may be a luxury that some firms can’t afford, but if they can it’s a worthwhile investment to make sure staff become productive members of the business as quickly as possible.
QAnd for firms that can’t invest in a trainer?
AI would suggest building up a repository of
information and learning from what’s been successful in the past. You can create a ‘virtual trainer’ by recording one training session and screenshot it using screen grab software to provide an instantly repeatable message that’s consistent. Consistency is the key, because you don’t want to vary the content for individuals too much – you want uniformity in the way your staff work with the business’s IT infrastructure.
QIs legal moving towards the cloud?
AThe current infrastructure dichotomy is whether to
go cloud-based or remain on-premise – but the cloud is gaining more widespread traction. Practice management
THIS
MO
NTH
IN N
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BER
S
A STUDY BY MARKET RESEARCH COMPANY COMRES SUGGESTS MILLENNIALS BELIEVE LEGAL OFFERS A POOR WORK/LIFE BALANCE
of young people said a career in legal would offer a poor work/life
balance
POOR LIFE INLEGAL? of people aged 18-24
said a career in legal would offer a positive
work/life balance
of people aged 25-34 said a career in legal
would offer a positive work/life balance
80% 18% 20%
systems are becoming cloud-based, and from an information security perspective it helps mitigate some of your worst fears when your data and applications reside in a professionally managed data centre.
QWhat would you say to firms resistant to cloud IT
infrastructures?
AA lot of law firm managers say: “We’re never moving
to the cloud.” Yet they’re using Mimecast as their email gateway provider, so they’re already consuming cloud-based services (whether they know it, or not). The cloud is here, and I think the question for law firms is about finding the right time to implement it, because doing an infrastructure ‘refresh’ isn’t cheap. LPM
LEGAL PRACTICE MANAGEMENT9
OCTOBER 2016IN PRACTICE Follow us and talk to us on Twitter @LPMmag
With baby boomers due to retire in the next five years or so and millennials becoming a larger share of the UK labour market, we ask LPM readers: “Should succession planning be at the top of SME law firms’ agendas?”
Want to write us a letter? You know, that thing no one does anymore? You can email us a letter for publication to [email protected], or post us something to: LPM magazine, 20 Mortlake High Street, London, SW14 8JN. Or get in touch through our LinkedIn group at bit.ly/lpmgroup
Follow LPM on Twitter
@LPMmag
DUNCAN MACINTOSH SENIOR PARTNER,CAPITAL LAWWe all know the old saw:
“Clogs to clogs in three generations.” Business founders, more often than we might imagine, can struggle with the fact that their natural heirs don’t have the skills, or the energy, to take on their business. Two answers to that conundrum often arise – both of which are wrong. First: do nothing, and hope that a miracle happens. Second: let them have a go, and hope that a miracle happens. But there may be a third answer – find and work with a non-executive director who can help build the skills, encourage the energy and support the succession in a way that the parent cannot. It’s a special skill, but it’s out there, if you know where to look.
RICHARD NELSON SENIOR PARTNER,RICHARD NELSON SOLICITORSAll legal SMEs need a
succession plan to address the extraction of money invested and because the costs of closure are significant. The largest closure cost is run-off cover – the requirement to pay three times the annual insurance premium to cover future claims that may arise.
One option is to pass on the firm, drawing a line under its liabilities, but continuing to work to earn sufficient for the capital outlay needed for run-off cover. Succession has to be planned to take place before the practitioner wishes to cease to work to maximise any financial benefit.
OCTOBER 2016 IN PRACTICEGot a story for us? Let us know at [email protected]
PAUL HUNT MANAGING PARTNER, HIGGS & SONSIt’s never too soon to be thinking about succession.
Unfortunately, all too often it gets lost in the day-to-day challenge of running a business. Business owners think about it too late, by which time their options are limited and they may be forced into unpalatable decisions. They need to identify where the potential for succession lies in their business and have time to nurture it – or if the skills aren’t there, they need to fill the gaps from the outside. There is a particular dynamic with family businesses where the owner-managers don’t always have those important open conversations about the future. When they do, they can find that their ambitions aren’t the same as their co-owners or that of the next generation.
JAYNE NATION BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR,WYNNE-JONES IPSuccession planning shouldn’t
just be at the top of the agenda for SME firms – it should be enshrined in the business plan. With succession planning, an SME has a real opportunity for a smooth transfer of ownership when the time comes, thus avoiding business disruption. For Wynne-Jones IP, partner exit strategies typically need five years for completion and our partners have a clear succession plan that is written into the firm’s five-year business plan. Our HR director also has a clearly defined skills and competency framework for succession to partnership and we assess all candidates (employees and external applicants) against this framework.
NATALIE ORMEROD HEAD OF HR AND CLIENT RELATIONS,BAND HATTON BUTTON
Succession planning absolutely must be at the top of SMEs’ agendas, whether it be ensuring the right successors are in place when your senior team near retirement, or making sure you have considered other key employees should they decide to move on.
It is imperative that businesses ensure they have the right candidates who can be developed and nurtured so they are fully ready to take over the reins when the time comes. After all, what is the point in building up a sound business only to need to sell it or enter an expensive and time-consuming recruitment process?
SIMON SLATER CEO,THOMSON SNELL & PASSMOREYes, this should have been
at the top of firms’ agendas for at least a year already. The first hurdle is to get partners even thinking about succession. After a year of encouraging partners to ruminate on the issue, we resolved to create a five-year growth strategy centered on succession. This was convenient since the year 2020 is also the 450th anniversary of the firm – but for a partnership that had existed for 18 generations already, succession should have been second nature. Of course it never is, because these are people’s life-long careers and it is sensitive territory. In terms of approach, one size does not fit all.
YOURVIEW
LEGAL PRACTICE MANAGEMENT9
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OCTOBER 2016IN PRACTICE Follow us and talk to us on Twitter @LPMmag
OLYPMIC HEIGHTS
BOOK REVIEW
Perhaps it doesn’t seem the ideal choice as a holiday read on first impression, but coupled with a download track my husband played repeatedly (appropriately titled I’m a Black Man in a White
Man’s World), summer downtime afforded me the space for reflection on the significant themes emerging from this book – so much so that I was raring to spring into action once back at work.
This book tackles the ever-present challenge for more diverse and inclusive organisations which reflect our wider society – which goes further than protected characteristics and includes cultural, socio-economic, religious or linguistic differences. The authors, Danny Kalman and Stephen Frost, (Frost was responsible for inclusion as part of the London Organising Committee for the London Olympics and Paralympics), have spent considerable time researching the myriad of best practice and leading examples that can provide the stimulus for change.
The book starts by looking at the origins around bias – taking us back to Darwin to explain our inherent biases. Very early on, the reader is already seeing the urgent need to address diversity and find ways to be an inclusive employer. Early chapters are punctuated with many examples that reflect back to the reader the need to move from homogenous talent management to inclusive talent management – a shift from an approach which fails to account for, or benefit from, difference to one that takes potential and culture into account to optimise people’s contribution. If you can keep with the significant element which looks at the present and current state, “those who do not remember the past are condemned to live it again,” you will be rewarded with case studies galore of the possibilities to move to a more inclusive organisation.
I was struck by many aspects of the book, and so pick a few examples which resonated most for me: The authors stress that “diversity is talent, talent is diverse,” yet most companies have segregated diversity and inclusion functions. We are asked to think about why we do that in our own companies and who is responsible for both. For small firms, mine included, a diversity function in itself is not often possible and therefore falls by default to the HR or learning and development team. We need to rethink this – starting with executive/leadership teams.
There are many ideas to improve diversity in recruitment. One of the more enlightened examples is of KPMG which creates and publishes targets beyond gender for recruitment using proportionality. Whilst people may be
divided on whether targets are good, we are encouraged to at least analyse our data and find something which will work in our own workplace.
When considering promotions, there is much talk about the safe or known candidate. This is particularly true in professional services, yet we need to bring on people who are different. We need to therefore take risk and identify the qualities in individuals who will add more rather than the same – who are, or can be, different. Plenty of examples are given to avoid some of the traps – for example individual feedback sessions to avoid ‘group think’, group interviews, carefully selected interview panels (not all-white and male).
People perform better when they can be themselves and they need to be able to bring their whole self to work – for example, does the firm’s LGBT agenda encourage and support openness so an individual can live their life in work in the same way as they do away from it? Creating that environment was very much part of LOCOG’s aim when recruiting 70,000 volunteers for the games.
It is easy to think that SMEs can’t afford to implement some of the ideas that are being promoted. That would be foolish. This book stimulated ideas for the journey that firms can make to move out of first gear. While larger firms may be in fourth gear or cruise control, there is much to learn from this book, much of which does not add to the cost base but will bring firms a step closer to inclusive talent management.
My copy of this book is now on its way to the partner who chairs our diversity and inclusion forum. I expect it will find its way around the wider partnership before too long. LPM
LPM reader discount – use code HRLPMB to get 20% off at www.koganpage.com
Inclusive Talent Management by Stephen Frost and Danny Kalman
Publisher: Kogan PagePublication date: July 2016Price: £29.99
Reviewer: Sue Eve, HR director at Bates Wells Braithwaite
LEGAL PRACTICE MANAGEMENT12
OCTOBER 2016COLUMNS
Emma SellPractice managerBDBF www.bdbf.co.uk
EMMA SELL, PRACTICE MANAGER
FROM HERE TO MATERNITY
ABOUT
The Equality and Human Rights Commission recently found that there has been a significant increase in discrimination against pregnant women and new mothers returning to work after maternity leave. So what
can firms do to prevent issues arising?Shortly before an employee is due to go on maternity leave,
it’s important to discuss the level of contact they want. Women are unlikely to want to be hounded with work-related queries in their early days of leave, but equally, maternity leave can be an isolating experience and they may be grateful for some adult conversation. Check in with your employees every now and again, invite them to socials and (if they want to be) update them on general work news such as joiners/leavers or changes to the business. If you have regular know-how meetings, a lawyer may want to receive copies of the papers once things have settled down at home in order to stay on top of developments in their area of law. Employees on maternity leave can work up to 10 days without bringing their leave to an end. KIT (keeping in touch) days do not necessarily have to be used for work but can be for training, strategy days, or client events. Encouraging employees to use their KIT days is worthwhile, as it is a great way to stay connected, and can lessen the sense of overwhelm ment at the thought of returning to work.
If you have a joiner pack for new starters, it might be a good idea to adapt this for staff returning from maternity leave as a lot can change in a year. Indeed, we moved into new offices while one employee was off and so they hadn’t ever seen their desk, let alone worked out the lift system. This pack can include
anything from office logistics and facilities to changes in recent case law (if relevant). Perhaps a list of the firm’s or department’s current clients to bring them up to speed on what sort of work is being undertaken and by whom? It’s also a good idea to have some work lined up for them to find their
feet with straight away.Returning from maternity leave will often involve a
conversation about flexible and/or part-time working arrangements. Technology now allows for remote working, meaning that firms can adapt to their employees’ modern lives without disrupting the business. This enables firms to think creatively about how a new working model could work and not worry about setting a precedent.
Something that is not always thought about by businesses is the fact that some women may still be breastfeeding when returning to work, and so the practicalities of this might need discussion prior to return (such as use of a private room to express and fridge space for expressed milk, and so on). It can be an emotionally charged subject so being open, sensitive and non-judgmental is key.
Childcare is expensive wherever you live, and childcare vouchers are a government-approved, tax-efficient way of paying for this. No matter what the size of your firm, it’s easy to set up and can make a big difference for parents – it even benefits businesses due to the NIC savings. LPM
Childcare is expensive wherever you live, and childcare vouchers are a government-approved, tax-efficient way of paying for this.
LEGAL PRACTICE MANAGEMENT13
OCTOBER 2016COLUMNS
There are many brand definitions. Simply said, brand is the sum total of how someone perceives your firm. Or, seen from a firm’s perspective, brand is the
essence of your own unique story that distinguishes your offering from other firms in the market.
Brand is not quite the same as reputation, although there is a correlation. A firm’s brand can be perceived quite superficially. Reputation, on the other hand, is based on a real and much deeper experience of your firm and is the extent to which people believe you are able to live by what your brand is promising.
Brand isn’t something that develops on its own. It is most of the time carefully crafted, nurtured, promoted and protected. A successful brand gives you that competitive advantage which is important for growing your business. Reviewing (not necessarily changing) your brand every three to five years is good practice.
There are a number of signs that may indicate your brand is in need of some first aid. A simple way to find out is through external market research on how your brand is perceived. The outcome is often quite revealing. If your name produces blank looks and misconceptions of who you are and what you do, it may be time for a rebrand.
Firms evolve over time, and looking inward to check whether your brand still represents the way things are is equally enlightening. Rapid growth, a merger or changing your structure could all have an effect on your culture.
It is often mentioned how law firms struggle to find and express differentiating qualities, essential to defining a brand. Uniqueness, however, can be uncovered by looking at the combination of firm characteristics such as its values, culture, individual characters, style, way of working, level of innovation, offering and focus.
The legal industry is not particularly known for being an industry where brand innovation excels, and therefore venturing out into the wider business landscape occasionally to find inspiration is a great idea. Rather than looking sideways at your competition, there is merit in looking at what’s in front of you in terms of the markets and clients you wish to communicate with.
Not trying to be everything to all also pays off when refreshing your brand. Being less worried about losing out will help a firm to create a more confident message. Your brand will come across as a united shopfront rather than a range of isolated areas of expertise and experts. It’s good to bear in mind that while you actively market yourself to a specific audience, this doesn’t automatically mean that you have to turn down every client outside that audience.
Rebrand projects can be costly, time-consuming and complex, but when executed properly, they can bring your firm a wealth of positive things. Apart from helping you to attract the clients and talent that you want, it will also create stronger client and employee loyalty. It will make you less prone to only having to compete on price, as your brand will bring something else of value to the table. LPM
RYANNE KERSTEN, BD AND MARKETING DIRECTOR
ABOUT
IS YOUR BRAND WORKING HARD ENOUGH?
Ryanne KerstenBD and marketing director Bates Wells Braithwaitewww.bwbllp.com
LEGAL PRACTICE MANAGEMENT15
OCTOBER 2016COLUMNSSPONSORED EDITORIAL
DOUG HARGROVE, THE TECHNOLOGIST
A COMMERCIAL BREAK FROM TRADITON
ABOUT
I’ve found that when talking with clients, the term ‘commercial’ is something I hear used more and more. There was a time when it was used to describe the latest Nike or BT advert but now I hear it regularly when talking
with legal clients in phrases such as: “Be more commercial,” and “develop a commercial offering.” So what does the phrase really mean? Well, the purists will argue that being commercial is the pursuit of profit above all else, but I think it’s taking on a much grander meaning – it’s starting to encompass everything that a business stands for.
Are we commercially minded in the legal market? Maybe. Commercial awareness is certainly a prerequisite for the modern lawyer – understanding macro and micro impacts on the economy is something we all have to deal with, and commercial negotiations are becoming more commonplace when tendering for work. But I feel the whole market has some way to go before it can claim to operate commercially.
And the reason why is simple – the business plan. Not just the balance sheet but the full view of how the firm is going to move forward. Take it as a holistic view of the firm, its challenges and opportunities. As a firm, how will we attract new business? What’s the expected return on our marketing investment? How do we go about generating demand?
Beyond new business there is the new trend in the legal market of cross sell – how do we intend to not only retain our clients but grow the share of their wallet? And in preparation for all this predicted success, how do we scale to support our plans (in both personnel and infrastructure) to ensure we don’t drop our commitment to quality of service?
To achieve all this requires a break from tradition, the desire and confidence to embrace a new approach and and to think differently – but it requires one thing above all else: data.
We can’t afford to bet the future of the firm on a hunch or gut feel. Any strategically important decision has to be backed by quantitative intelligence. The good news is that firms have access to that intelligence in spades – it’s captured every day and stored in the practice management system at the heart of the business and will tell you the financial performance of the business right down to individual departments and fee earners. It can also highlight bad debtors and advise against taking risky cases. It will provide an opportunity to consider growth through prospect analysis and white space work.
But there is a catch (actually, two). First, you have to make sure the data is going into the system correctly (and that can be solved through the use of workflows, mandated fields and the correct training of staff), and second you have to analyse the data in a meaningful way to draw actionable intelligence from it.
When I encounter firms that are already on the road to commercialism, they all have the same thing in common – management intelligence (or BI, dashboards, KPIs, it goes by different names). They have found a way to distil the vast quantities of data they have into manageable chunks, giving them a way to gain real-time insight into performance and make critical decisions based on it.
Management intelligence is the one thing above all else that firms adopt when they’re looking to become more commercially minded. It allows them to become more reactive to those micro- and macro-economic changes, predict performance, outmanoeuvre the competition – and, circling back to the original definition of being commercial, become more profitable. LPM
Advanced LegalRevolutionary solutions for legal services Contact Doug on: 01476 573 718www.advanced-legal.co.uk
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BREXIT: ANY RELEVANCE TO THE UK LAWYER?
As the dust settles on a referendum outcome beyond even the Leave campaign’s highest expectations – Farage, it may be recalled, did make a speech all but conceding defeat at one point on the night of the
result – the word Brexit seems destined to join the fate of other words (for example, ‘bad’) that have rapidly come to mean different things to different people.
The referendum question itself: ‘Should the UK remain a member of the EU or leave the EU?’ was a disarmingly simple one. Even an overwhelming Leave vote would have left open the door to negotiated agreements with the EU on an issue-by-issue basis resulting in the same set of fetters and freedoms as currently obtained. ‘Brexit means Brexit’ means nothing at all.
If the question was intended to focus the electorate’s attention upon EU membership alone, it failed to do so. Polls of voting motives – pre- and post-referendum – point consistently to a huge diversity of reasons for choices made, most of no direct relevance to EU membership. There is a strong consensus that there was a lot of protest voting going on – but no consensus over what. Globalisation, immigration, excessive bureaucracy, domestic inequalities, big business protectionism – just part of a seemingly endless list. All that can safely be concluded is that, in a country with a traditional aversion to disturbing the status quo, sufficient numbers were upset enough about their lot to brave the dire warnings of impending economic and societal disintegration, and plunge into the unknown after 40 years of EU membership.
Lawyers with international practices will no doubt be monitoring political developments with care. But, as we spare a thought for the plight of the hard-pressed London-based investment banker – perhaps even a thought too for Brexit minister Philip Hammond, who appears to be on the receiving end of fervid lobbying over so-called passporting rights in the financial services industry – it is worth considering whether anything will change for the domestic practitioner.
There has been talk – even pre-referendum – of a review of continued participation in the European Convention on Human Rights. So far, there has been little or no focus on the wider rafts of domestic legislation beyond that, directed at the more prosaic day-to-day minimum rights of citizens, and originating from within the EU legislative machine: race, sex and gender equality, disability inclusion, employment rights, all have an EU source and origin. In wording (after translation and drafting negotiation), and in nature – EC legislation is generally meant for purposive interpretation, never part of UK common law –this body of legislation is unusual to the eye of a UK lawyer, and over time must increasingly appear anachronistic. And that is before one considers the maze of data protection and freedom of information machinery.
Some of the more quietly voiced and measured pleas on the part of Leave voters have been for a legislature under which they feel free to be English (or Scottish, Welsh or Irish) within the country to which they belong. Englishness, like Brexit no doubt eludes a single meaning. Nevertheless, strong grounds present themselves to parliament to review its approach to regulation of the rights of its citizens. If that were to result in reduced requirement to indulge in meaningless paper trails, and fewer technical brickbats for the excessively punctilious to throw at well-intentioned, hardworking members of the UK community (from whatever ethnic origin, including British), while enshrining virtues of tolerance and respect, Leavers could yet redeem themselves in the eyes of Remainers with a legacy of which all can be proud. LPM
ABOUT
SPONSORED EDITORIAL
Paragon LawSelect Brokering and practice improvementContact: 020 7280 8259www.paragonbrokers.com/lawselect
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PRACTICE MAKES PERFECTI
n terms of collectability you’ve got the Beatles, Elvis, the Rolling Stones, Michael Jackson and Madonna – I’ve always loved Madonna. I first
remember hearing her in 1985, but it wasn’t until I went to university that I became interested in collecting Madonna memorabilia. It started when I discovered I could buy multiple versions of the same albums, and began to snowball after I saw Madonna’s performance at the Drowned World tour in 2001.
My collection, which started off as a few CDs in a shoebox, has grown to fill an entire room – with music, magazines, concert memorabilia, posters and much more. My most prized possession is a Madonna-signed photo of my collection, which I won through an official Icon fan club competition. But a close second is my promo display for Madonna’s Like a Prayer tour that never happened – later relaunched as the Blonde Ambition tour after Pepsi cancelled their sponsorship following the release of the Like a Prayer video. I also have a top that she wore and threw into the crowd at one of her concerts, and acetates for some of her singles.
I don’t limit myself in what I collect, as long as it’s ‘official’ and not ugly – those interested can view the collection at www.annaclare.com.
But it’s not just about collecting, it’s about being part of a community. I’ve helped out on an unofficial fan site called Madonnalicious.com for several years, and through that and other forums have
become part of a band of Madonna collectors and fans. There’s a group of us that go to concerts in the UK together – some travel from as far as Australia and go to concerts across the world.
In some ways, helping manage an online community made the challenges I faced after joining Blackhurst Budd that much easier.
I joined in 2007 as practice administration manager and two years later the firm merged with three other Blackpool-based firms. Alongside the directors and other members of the management team I had to find a way of unifying staff with their own identities and ways of working. The solution was to maintain post-merger momentum – consistently emphasising training, unity, and the firm’s mission to be the number-one legal services provider in Blackpool.
The transition gave us the chance to rethink our business, its departments and staff structures. We created an operations and development team which has led to a greater focus on strategies to improve the client experience, working practices, management reporting, social media presence and community initiatives. We also created a staff strategy team to give staff direct input into managerial decisions – making the firm more transparent, less hierarchical and more attractive to legal talent. The move was highly commended at the Law Society Excellence Awards in 2014, which is an achievement the firm is particularly proud of. LPM
Anna-Clare Mumby, practice administration manager, Blackhurst Budd
Madonna aficionado Anna-Clare Mumby on her passion for collecting, culture and community
Blackhurst Budd
20 fee earners, 46 total staff
Offices: Blackpool
Specialisms: Domestic conveyancing, commercial, dispute resolution, wills and probate, family and fire safety law
LPM FACT FILE
LPM PEOPLEOCTOBER 2016
19 LEGAL PRACTICE MANAGEMENT
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Richard Clark, managing director at Manchester firm berg, speaks to Patrick Wingrove about how SME firms can attain competitive advantage by pricing strategically and adding value to their services
IS YOUR PRICE
Competitively pricing legal services to get an advantage is challenging. There’s a fine line between underpricing and overpricing that SME firms can’t afford to cross if they want to
keep clients happy while maximising profitability. To shed light on this matter, we’ve spoken to Richard
Clark, managing director of Manchester firm berg, who has taken more than two decades of pricing experience in the financial and BigLaw sectors into his role in SME legal.
“I started working for Halifax bank in 1994, just as the pricing revolution hit the banking sector, and became an operations and sales manager. I managed sales lines within one of the bank’s call centres – looking at which activities should go through retail branch outlets or call centres, and learning to understand the costs of processing services.”
Clark also spent a decade as an operations director for top 20 firm, Irwin Mitchell, undertaking financial analysis and developing operational models to maximise operating margins across a diverse range of legal services.
Clark says that strategically pricing legal services has become much more difficult. “Legal did very well as an industry until 2008, when hourly rates were the dominant charging model. Clients paid based on the seniority of the lawyer handling their case and the time it took to complete – but now clients no longer necessarily perceive the benefit of legal expertise in the same way and expect more certainty than ever in terms of what’s being delivered and what it will cost.” He adds that the recession and the rise of Google and the internet in general have made buyers more market-savvy (happy to shop around), and led them to expect cheaper prices and fixed fees.
Alongside this change, the recession created capacity within firms that lead to redundancies, which pushed legal talent into in-house roles – giving those legal teams a better understanding of how law firms price their services, and greater leverage to negotiate
for reduced fees. Buying behaviour in the SME legal market has clearly
changed hugely in less than a decade, but according to Clark, firms can still find competitive advantage through pricing.
“Firms need to improve delivery processes by undertaking legal process mapping and legal process improvement, while having better engagement with clients to help them understand the value of the legal solutions being provided,” he says. Like beauty, value is in the eye of the beholder.
“SME firms are better placed to improve delivery processes than larger firms because they have the capability to be more agile, which will give them a competitive edge over their big law rivals,” he adds.
HISTORY REPEATEDClark says the first step to attain a competitive advantage by strategically pricing services is using data and undertaking legal process mapping – to work out how much legal solutions actually cost to deliver.
“The way banks priced their services fundamentally changed after data became readily available – it helped them break down the process of delivering a service and work out how much it costs to produce. SME firms have access to huge amounts of traditional data that allows them to do the same thing,” says Clark.
Law firms have already started to use data to analyse delivery processes by undertaking time recording – but they need to take this a step further by looking at exactly how that time is being spent by fee earners within transactions.
“Firms need to ask: ‘What actually happens inside those hours it takes to produce a solution? What’s going on outside that process? What’s actually happening broadly within the transaction?’” says Clark. He adds that breaking down and analysing the delivery process as part of legal process mapping is the only way to work out what services cost the business to deliver, and allow them to price it appropriately while
right?
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providing valuable information to improve it.“There are always a number of repeatable steps
within a transaction that can be mapped and analysed. Renewing a tenancy on a commercial property, for example, has several repeatable stages which cost the same to deliver each time.”
He adds that commoditised work tends to have more repeatable steps than bespoke legal services – but even bespoke services have stages that can be mapped or key periods where time spent and cost incurred can be understood. Once a firm has worked out what the steps of a legal process cost, they can piece together those components to accurately estimate the cost of any service they provide.
And once that process has been mapped it can be improved upon.
“The next step is to work out how long it takes to
complete each stage of the service delivery and whether, for example, you have the right people on each stage of the transaction, whether you’re making the best use of technology, are auctioning the work in the right location, know the cost of client management or even if you’re over-supervising the transaction – from there a firm can start legal process improvement.” Improvements depend on how the service is delivered, but include involving the right members of staff and engaging better with clients at the right stages of the process.
Through legal process improvement, firms can make the delivery method more efficient and cost-effective, allowing them to pass savings on to clients and attain competitive advantage. Clark says that it’s also good for the books: “At the other end of the transaction you’ve got a business owner or finance director who
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wants a specific level of certainty around the costs that the business is going to incur and the profit it returns.”
But, legal businesses can’t just look at the process of a legal solution in determining price and undertaking legal process improvement. They have to look at the transaction from the client’s point of view.
ADDED VALUEThe value of a legal solution is in the eye of the client, and SME firms need to determine how their clients value their services in order to price strategically – and then work out where they can add value to the service from there.
Clark says an excellent model to help legal businesses determine the value of different legal transactions is a value spectrum – a pyramid of four distinct legal services categories listed by value. These categories (transaction types) are (from least to most value): commoditised, operational, high strategic value, and ‘bet the company’.
“The value spectrum is effectively polarised between commoditised and strategic corporate work. Commodity solutions, mostly purchased by private consumers or part of a contract to deliver volume work to a work source, are high-volume but have high price sensitivity and are low value for the client. High
strategic value and ‘bet the company’ solutions, however, are low-volume but have very low price sensitivity and high value to the client and can be priced accordingly taking into account the risk and reward for both the client and the firm.
As such, it’s not just the service that determines value to the client but the type of client they are – buying behaviour differs significantly between private and corporate consumers.
“Private consumers, for example, particularly those under the age of 30, are market-savvy, web-oriented and generally expect price certainty in the form of fixed fees.
“Corporate consumers, on the other hand, could be compared to the baby boomer generation – comfortable on the phone and happy to pay by the hour but not yet progressed to searching the market online.” But younger generations are maturing into legal services buyers, and the influence of purchasing retail goods as a consumer means that the demand for fixed and alternative approaches to pricing will continue to increase.
But the value spectrum and typical buyer behaviour are only guides to determining the value of legal services – to truly understand what their clients will pay for legal services, firms need to regularly engage with them. “SME firms need to regularly ask clients for
“At berg we spent considerable time training teams to understand the value of a legal transaction from a client’s, rather than the fee earners’ point of view. This enabled us to look at how we presented the transaction – including our terms of business and how we provided updates to the client (such as how we provided regular statements to keep the client informed on activity and costs). All of this resulted in improved relationships, further instructions and improvements in cash collections.”
“During my time at Irwin Mitchell we invested heavily in client relationship management to ensure that we knew what the client expected or needed from a transaction. This included asking clients post-transaction about how we delivered against their expectations. Any findings were fed back to our teams to help improve future transactions. At berg we took this a step further by encouraging colleagues to ask these questions during the transaction – this proved to be a valuable exercise, as it enabled the costs to date to be reviewed and allowed clients to feel a part of the process.”
CASE STUDY ONE: PRICE TRAINING
CASE STUDY TWO: CLIENT RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT
CLARK’S CASE STUDIESRichard Clark, managing director at berg, explains how firms can understand and add value to help them price their services strategically
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feedback and carry out client service reviews to enable effective pricing,” says Clark.
It’s also a matter of ensuring that clients are aware of the real value of a service – the value spectrum is a good guide.
“Lawyers also need to regularly engage with clients through the process of delivering a legal solution to ensure that the client understands the value of what they’re doing. We’re continually hearing of incidents in legal where firms are being challenged on the price of a legal service because it was more than originally quoted – usually because of unforeseen circumstances – but there was no engagement with the client, either before the work was undertaken or the bill presented.”
But if fee earners engage with clients throughout the process, notifying them that they’re adding real value to the service, the client feels informed, is given choice, and has been made aware of the value of the service provided. Challenges and discounting at the billing stage naturally reduce – and cash flow, debtor days and profits improve.
“The client needs to be made aware of the value of what you’re providing so that they’ll come back for more,” adds Clark (repeat business is, after all, good for business).
From there, SME firms can undertake legal process improvement to add value to the service, while driving efficiencies to increase profits. But the key way in which legal businesses can add value to their services is by educating fee earners – ensuring that they understand the importance of speaking to, and knowing, their clients, and appreciate the cost of delivery and the significance of continually offering value to them.
“In terms of commoditised work, value could be offering fixed fees or allowing clients to book services online.”
High strategic value and ‘bet the company’ work, on the other hand, requires fee earners to understand how they can support a client’s business – by learning what’s going on in the company and figuring out how to offer value in the transaction.
“I genuinely believe that better client engagement in this manner is the difference between strongly and poorly performing law firms.”
Clark says that his previous law firm, Irwin Mitchell, was particularly good at client engagement throughout the legal service delivery process. “ But, I left to join the SME law sector because, ultimately, SME firms are much better placed to revolutionise their pricing processes.”
SME ADVANTAGE Clark says that large firms are becoming very similar in terms of their attitudes to pricing.
“Regardless of whether they’re LLPs, have corporate structures or retain their traditional partnership models, larger firms tend to be more traditional in relation to partner reward models, where partners
expect a certain level of return and don’t really want to risk that on a new venture.”
SME firms, by comparison, tend to be more entrepreneurial – and because of their size and outlook are more prepared to look at clients on an individual basis and provide services to those clients, respectful of what they want from the firm, he adds. In this way, SME firms can add more value to their services and attain a competitive advantage over their larger rivals.
But perhaps the greatest advantage of the SME firm over big law when it comes to pricing and adding value is that they’re more agile.
“SME firms, like larger firms, have an awful lot of data available to them that they can act on – but unlike larger law firms they can act on this data very quickly to initiate change and improve their pricing processes,” says Clark. Larger law firms tend to have committees or partnership groups that have to be involved in major decisions before they move forward.
“Not that I’m knocking committees, as they help manage risk and provide essential governance – but in SME firms the paperwork can be agreed quickly, allowing them to be far more agile when it comes to pricing.” Clients want quick solutions, and if firms are going to add value to their service, they need to be able to do it promptly as part of a high-quality client service.
But what’s stopping SME firms from seizing this competitive advantage at the moment? Clark says there could be a number of reasons, such as not understanding the valuable data held within existing systems or lacking a solution to extract it. It could also be a lack of capability to change pricing and the approach to client engagement, a traditional culture that doesn’t see the value in this new approach, or perhaps a belief that we will all go back to the pre-recession model.
What is clear is that these changes are being driven from outside the legal market and it’s important to embrace them and change. Above all, one element that could be a real hindrance is the concept of change itself. Change isn’t an easy journey, but those who make it can reap the benefits.
In an ultra-competitive SME legal market pricing is a crucial element for attaining competitive advantage, but working out what clients can, and will, pay for a service isn’t an easy process.
Clark says legal businesses can strategically price their services through legal process mapping and legal process improvement, and engage with clients to find out what they’re willing to pay.
A key element in this is continuing engagement with clients to inform them of the value of your service – something which SME firms as agile entities are particularly well placed to do. LPM
Clark is keen to share his experience from berg’s journey and welcomes the opportunity to work with firms looking to realise similar initiatives.
berg
Revenue: £5m
35 fee earners, 50 total staff
Offices: Manchester and London
Specialisms: Dispute resolution, professional negligence, employment, real estate, corporate and commercial
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DictateBRIEFINGv2.indd 1 28/04/2016 13:36
LEGAL PRACTICE MANAGEMENT25
OCTOBER 2016INDUSTRY VIEWSSPONSORED EDITORIAL
INDUSTRY VIEWS
25LEGAL PRACTICE MANAGEMENT
Creating opportunities to work more efficiently, flexibly, on the go, or from home can be the difference between a prosperous and declining firm
INDUSTRY VIEWS INDEX
THE ENABLERS
25
SPONSORED EDITORIAL
26 INTERVIEW
The spoken wordWinscribe’s Vladimir Teodosiev on how to harness the power of your voice to aid document creation
28 CASE STUDY
30 CASE STUDY
Connecting clientsAndrew Katz, managing partner at Moorcrofts, on improving client service with Pentangle’s VoIP telephony
Enabling aidHead of IT at Fisher Jones Greenwood, Peter Carr, on how its committment to legal aid was made possible by Tikit P4W
INDUSTRY VIEWSOCTOBER 2016
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OCTOBER 2016INDUSTRY VIEWSSPONSORED EDITORIAL
In an increasingly competitive SME legal market, the delivery of legal services requires constant improvement to keep up with increasing client
expectations and the need to reduce annual delivery costs.
Winscribe’s business solutions executive, Vladimir Teodosiev, says legal businesses could significantly improve service delivery by changing their traditional workflow practices – but a key ‘easy win’ area where they could reap competitive advantage is document production.
“Legal professionals need to be able to create documentation and share that information quickly and effectively in order to reduce overheads and improve client service – this can be achieved by using
technologies like speech recognition (SR) dictation software, and document management software integration to create a seamless workflow.”
He adds that as legal becomes a more flexible and mobile industry, it’s also important that firms empower fee earners to streamline document production ‘on the go’.
TRADE IN TYPING“Having fee earners type documentation is an inefficient use of their time. Winscribe’s solutions allow lawyers to produce documents faster and more accurately – requiring little human input once they’ve been dictated.” Teodosiev adds that this applies to documentation across a legal
Vladimir Teodosiev, business solutions executive at Winscribe, talks to LPM about the advantages of seamless document workflow – at the office, on the go and as easy as your ABCs
Winscribe is a world leading provider of digital dictation software supporting business requirements for digital dictation, transcription, speech recognition, and workflow management.
www.winscribe.co.uk
ABOUT THE SPONSOR
THESPOKENWORD
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INDUSTRY VIEWS
business, including client correspondence (emails or letters), contracts, and meeting transcriptions.
“Today’s clients expect consistent contact and updates, often by email, from the fee earner handling their case as part of a high-quality client service. By using this kind of technology, SME firms empower their fee earners to make the client service more cost effective and to spend time improving a client’s perception of the firm,” says Teodosiev.
And while SR dictation software gives fee earners more time for client correspondence, it also makes that correspondence more efficient. Fee earners can use SR dictation technology to produce emails quickly and Teodosiev adds that in some cases, standard paragraphs of text or template structures can also be quickly introduced to the body of an email with a pre-defined voice command.
Beyond this kind of integration, when SR dictation software is used in conjunction with other technologies like case or document management software to automate the document production process, it further improves client service.
“Legal businesses can find competitive advantage by automating, eliminating the types of work that don’t translate into chargeable hours as far as possible – as well as giving the business the ability to improve client service.”
Using Winscribe as part of a wider system, including document management, law firms also gain resilience and business continuity benefits.
“The benefit of this advanced scenario is derived from the fact that the correspondence is stored within the DMS system. This means that the information can be accessed by other fee earners in case of absence or sickness to ensure a faster case progress.”
Teodosiev says: “It’s about integrating technologies. By streamlining document production and collaboration, legal businesses can reap maximum gains – which is why Winscribe endeavours to make its software compatible with most other types of legal software.”
DOCUMENTS TO GOTeodosiev says that a challenge for legal businesses in recent years has been maintaining document workflow as they become more flexible, mobile and remote.
“I think legal businesses that don’t do remote
working are significantly behind the game – it enables significant cost saving and recruitment benefits for SME law firms, because scaling firms don’t accumulate extra overheads and can provide their employees with a better work-life balance. It’s also great for client service because fee earners can visit and personally engage with clients.”
But, he says, remote working is only possible when facilitated by technology, which is why Winscribe has developed a comprehensive mobility suite to help fee earners work from home or on the go.
“The key advantage of using Winscribe’s mobile app is that fee earners can better use the time they spend travelling – perhaps on the way to or from a client.”
Fee earners can use the app to dictate their meeting follow-up actions or a follow-up email after a visit, which can be sent for proofing by business support back at the office.
“The key here is that the transcribed result is returned to the fee earner and they can send their follow-up email while in the field and directly from the app. Alternatively, they can copy the transcribed text and paste the result into a Word document, which can include their letterhead - and this can all be done while on the move.”
Fee earners can also enter a client and matter number within an SR dictation app and use SR to dictate meeting notes following a client visit.
Automation and integration of technologies plays a key role in document workflow on the go, says Teodosiev, because once a fee earner is back in the office the email will be automatically transcribed and stored within a document management system and can be distributed.
Although the SME legal market is becoming increasingly competitive, legal businesses can continue to thrive and attain competitive advantage by taking advantage of the technology at their disposal.
Streamlining document production by using speech recognition dictation software and integrating technologies can significantly improve client service, while giving fee earners a greater capacity to bill. Legal businesses can also benefit significantly from moving towards a more flexible or remote working setup while giving their fee earners the tools to effectively use time that might otherwise be wasted on travel. LPM
INTERVIEWSPONSORED EDITORIAL
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OCTOBER 2016INDUSTRY VIEWSSPONSORED EDITORIALSPONSORED EDITORIAL
Thames Valley firm Moorcrofts, an internationally-focused boutique firm, is vying to become one of the UK’s leading technology law boutiques, with specialisms in key areas
like open source and data protection and privacy. As such, it competes with some of the world’s most prestigious law firms, and despite being a fraction of the size, has an enviable roster of international clients. The key to this goal, from the firm’s perspective, is constantly improving client service – maintaining and improving its reputation with clients across the globe.
Moorcrofts managing partner Andrew Katz says the firm has pulled out all the stops to provide top-rate client service, including seizing the opportunity to adopt voice over internet protocol (VoIP) telephony when the firm moved office in June 2015.
“Moorcrofts’ aim is to help entrepreneurs and newly established businesses realise their potential, and use effective client communication. Making the firm an easily accessible adviser to the client is essential to that.” VoIP has significantly helped here, he says, by making Moorcrofts’ workforce more agile, flexible and accessible.
PHONE A FRIENDMoorcrofts’ biggest client service concern was that clients were, on occasion, finding it difficult to get in touch with their contact at the firm, because that person was working remotely, from home or visiting another client.
Remote working is an essential part of Moorcrofts’ business because it enables consistent direct interaction with clients and a better work life balance for its lawyers. But on the other side of the coin, says Katz: “Moorcrofts wants clients to be able to get directly in touch with the person they’ve been dealing with and who knows the details of their case – clients like to have consistent contact and, understandably, not be passed from one person to another.”
The firm’s new VoIP telephony has better enabled remote working, by giving the outside world a single point of contact, no matter where a fee earner is. “Lawyers are able to have a VoIP extension sitting on
their desks at home as well as a VoIP client installed on their mobiles, which means their phones will ring simultaneously when the firm or a client tries to get in contact with them,” he says. Fee earners are, consequently, much easier to get hold of, which improves client perception of the firm. He adds that there’s also something to be said for the personal touch of consistently speaking to clients in person or over the phone, rather than swapping emails.
Katz acknowledges, however, that even with VoIP telephony it’s not always possible for clients to contact the lawyer they’ve been working with – owing to sickness or annual leave. But the firm’s new VoIP-enabled voicemail system has also improved client service – by sending an audio file of the message directly to the lawyer’s laptop or mobile so that they’re quickly made aware their client has tried to reach them.
“Voicemail was previously only accessible within the office, so they’d only find out that the client contacted them when they got back – but now they’re quickly made aware so they can drop the client a message letting them know they’re away and that they’ll be in touch soon. The client feels informed, not neglected, as a result.”
FLEXIBLE SOLUTIONSKatz admits that he was initially sceptical of VoIP telephony, having read reports of unreliable and poor-quality connections. But IT solutions provider Pentangle, long-time IT supplier for Moorcrofts, convinced Katz that it was in his best interests.
“Pentangle has been with us for a while, we have a great relationship with them, and they’ve only ever suggested IT solutions to us that would improve our firm as a legal business. So they set up a couple of VoIP extensions for us to try out before we committed to anything and assured us that any quality issues would be addressed – alleviating my concerns and demonstrating the significant client service benefits of VoIP.”
Moorcrofts’ leaders were keen to make sure that they had a bespoke VoIP solution that would enable
CONNECTINGCLIENTS
Moving premises, Moorcrofts seized the opportunity to adopt VoIP telephony with Pentangle. Managing partner Andrew Katz tells LPM how the firm has significantly improved client service as a result
LEGAL PRACTICE MANAGEMENT29
OCTOBER 2016INDUSTRY VIEWSSPONSORED EDITORIAL
CASE STUDY
remote working and provide a central point of contact where receptionists could intercept and divert calls. Katz says that Pentangle was happy to cater to his firm’s needs, creating a switchboard number and, where requested, installing remote terminals in lawyers’ homes.
“Some IT providers I’ve worked with in the past have very much been of the mentality: ‘it’s either my way or the highway’. But Pentangle is far more flexible – to my knowledge we’re their only client with this bespoke VoIP telephony solution.”
Pentangle has also, according to Katz, been vital to the firm’s adoption of VoIP in other ways, such as providing fast, flexible and effective support across the firm’s IT infrastructure.
“We hired an IT manager to look after the day-to-day IT operations of the firm, but Pentangle provides us with additional expertise, including a deep knowledge of VoIP. They’re happy to be flexible and work with our IT manager when he needs them.”
More importantly, he says, if anything goes wrong with the VoIP or any other system, Pentangle will fix the problem “day or night or even over the weekends.”
“They’re like the IT fairies, my staff don’t even know they exist,” he adds.
FLEXIBLE FUTURES Since adopting VoIP, Katz has contemplated the idea of making Moorcrofts even more cloud-based and trusts Pentangle to help steer him in the right direction.
“Pentangle has been there in a strategic and consultant capacity, advising us on the pros and cons of cloud as well as the compliance considerations specific to legal businesses.”
Katz says cybersecurity is a principal concern for Moorcrofts as it moves closer to the cloud, and Pentangle ensures the firm is covered in terms of protection as well as the regulatory and client-facing requirements of cloud-based software that they choose to adopt.
VoIP telephony has proved to be a vital addition to Moorcrofts, making the firm more agile, flexible and client-friendly and pushing it closer to being the world’s top tech law specialist. But, according to Katz, this move wouldn’t have been possible without the flexible attitude, dedication and support of their ‘fairy-like’ IT provider Pentangle. LPM
ABOUT THE SPONSOR
Since its formation in 2000, Pentangle Internet Ltd has evolved into one of the foremost IT support and web development companies in the south east of England.
www.pentangle.co.uk
CASE STUDY
Moorcrofts
Revenue: £2.5m
15 fee earners, 24 total staff
Offices: Marlow and Marylebone
Specialisms: Technology, corporate, share schemes, intellectual property, commercial property and employment
LPM FACT FILE
LEGAL PRACTICE MANAGEMENT30
OCTOBER 2016INDUSTRY VIEWSSPONSORED EDITORIAL
Legal businesses’ capacity to conduct legal aid has significantly diminished in recent years due to government spending cuts. Essex firm Fisher
Jones Greenwood (FJG), however, has refused to let its commitment to access to justice falter. FJG’s head of IT, Peter Carr, says his firm is devoted to providing legal advice to those of modest means, and continues to offer high-quality services to clients who couldn’t otherwise afford it.
“We’re one of the few firms in the region that can still offer cost-effective legal aid support, and the reason we’ve been able to do that is because we’ve automated our day-to-day processes.”
AUTOMATING AIDWithout government funding, FJG’s key problem in providing legal aid to clients who fell out of scope was that it couldn’t commit
the time and personnel needed to turn out documents on an ad hoc basis in a cost-efficient manner. The firm’s management decided that it needed to automate its processes as much as possible to improve efficiencies, reduce costs and to pass on the savings to its clients. FJG consequently adopted Tikit’s Partner for Windows (P4W) case and practice management software.
Carr says that creating automated workflow in the firm has made the business significantly more efficient. “Forms are produced automatically, and information is pushed to, and captured from, the client and stored in our database automatically – we also have an SMS service that automatically sends out reminders of appointments or court appearances. All of this saves a great deal of time and money.”
This level of automation, according to Carr, enables FJG’s fee earners to push work like
After government cuts to legal aid, Essex firm Fisher Jones Greenwood automated its processes with Tikit P4W practice and case management. Head of IT, Peter Carr, tells LPM how it helped clients who fell out of the legal aid scope
ABOUT THE SPONSOR
Tikit is a leading provider of technology solutions and services to legal and professional service firms.
www.tikit.com
ENABLING ACCESS
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OCTOBER 2016INDUSTRY VIEWSSPONSORED EDITORIAL
data capture and verification down to paralegals and trainees – improving efficiency by freeing up fee earners’ time to focus on critical legal decisions and maintain a high-quality legal aid client service. This has the added benefit of making the firm’s business support staff feel more included in the process and creating an excellent teamwork ethic.
“Before we introduced automation into the firm, we’d have to charge roughly £175 an hour for private work, which isn’t sustainable for a legal aid client – but now we can get that down to a discounted fixed fee package.”
Automating the firm’s processes has also been vital in maintaining and improving client service in legal aid – as well broadly across the firm.
“The client feels engaged because they’re having regular contact with the firm - not necessarily face to face or over the phone, but through automated emails and text messaging that keeps them informed,” says Carr.
Having all the client’s information on a centralised database also improves client perception – allowing other fee earners or secretaries to access the details of a particular case and liaise with the client if they’ve asked for an update.
Managing client expectations and providing a top-rate client service is essential to FJG, and Carr says that it would have been impossible to maintain that standard in legal aid had it not been for the workflow wizardry of P4W. The firm has since been recognised by the Law Society for its efforts in providing access to justice for all, having been shortlisted for this year’s Law Society excellence awards in the category of excellence in technology.
BUILT TO SPECCarr says that his firm chose Tikit P4W because it was “by far the best” case and practice management software for working effectively across all sectors.
“FJG has large conveyancing and commercial
departments and we needed a practice management system that would cater for all areas and be able to administer legal aid. Tikit P4W also has a powerful scripting and document production engine, which we liked, as well as unlimited customisation that we could apply to the database.” He adds that the P4W database used by FJG has been so customised to the firm’s needs that moving away from Tikit would likely be economically unviable – indicating the committment the firm has made.
But the key reason FJG adopted Tikit P4W, says Carr, is that the software is designed with legal aid in mind.
“P4W is fully compliant with legal aid regulations and allows you to set up any civil or criminal case,
record time, post disbursements and expenses, draft and finalise claims and bulk upload to LAA online – it’s made the whole process much easier.”
FJG, a firm committed to high-quality client service, has also been particularly impressed with the support service offered by Tikit. Carr says Tikit has been a very supportive business, with excellent training services, and which is constantly striving to help its customers and, more importantly, improve its product based on what its customers have said.
“If there is an element of the software that doesn’t make sense or that we can’t get to work, or we think ‘it would be really good if it had this’, we can suggest it to Tikit, and within three or four months that will probably pull through to a live release – it’s an ever-evolving system.”
While access to legal aid is increasingly limited, and consequently many legal aid-specialist firms have disappeared, FJG has used technology effectively to improve efficiencies and reduce costs – enabling it not only to provide a legal aid service but also to offer award-winning high-quality client service. Carr says that this wouldn’t have been possible without P4W, which proved well suited to the firm’s legal aid process needs. LPM
Forms are produced automatically, and information is pushed to, and captured from, the client and stored in our database automatically.
Peter Carr, head of IT, Fisher Jones Greenwood
CASE STUDY
Fisher Jones Greenwood
Revenue: £7.29m
58 fee earners, 162 total staff
Offices: Colchester, Chelmsford, Clacton-on-Sea, Billericay, London
Specialisms: Corporate and commercial, commercial litigation, immigration, employment, healthcare, wills and probate, agricultural and rural, family, accident and injury, commercial mediation, conveyancing, landlord and tenant, advocacy, real estate, mediation, civil litigation, charity law, criminal law, education services
LPM FACT FILE
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Legal Software
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