PTOrganics Paperwork

IF YOU DROP THE BALL

In the 1980's there was a television series in the United Kingdom called 'Some Mothers Do Have Them' with a central character called Frank Spencer. This fellow was a disaster waiting to happen and was always falling into the most unbelievable situations to the eternal worry and shock of his wife Betty and laughter of the viewers at home. If there was a hole he would fall into it, if Betty sent him to the store he would set it on fire and he usually managed to come out unharmed. And where he tried to solve a problem he usually made it worse like once where he accidentally injected his dentist with a paralysing agent rendering him incapable of operating and then went on to try to pass himself off as the dentist to the patient who was already unconscious on the operating table.

In the real world, the response of some law firms and clients to errors is usually not laughter. The law firm may try the usual responses of denial, shifting blame to the client, a cover-up and finally a sullen apology when all else has proved unproductive. This is because such law firms see mistakes as negative things without any redeeming feature, a kind of total loss lacking any positive points whatsoever.
An alternative exists; in the words of a General Counsel we are familiar with who is responsible for assigning work to external counsel, 'the partner that was responsible for our relationship came to me and informed me of a mistake her firm had made in handling a particular piece of business they were working on for us. It's something we may not have noticed for a long time, if at all, but she came up and told us as soon as they found out about it. I trust her more now because I know that if they drop the ball they will not hesitate to let us know.
Jack Welch says that most business people play by the rules of the game and if you don't have integrity in your bones you should not be allowed on the field.
Since we live in an age of spin with an idle and hungry media eager to sell newspapers, being forthcoming can lead to horrendous media debacles hence the itch to hide which leads to worse debacles.
The choice for your law firm is that you can use the rap on the knuckles clients may give you to own the mistake to boost your resolve to do better or you can dissemble.

OFFERING ACTUAL INSIGHT

In most common law jurisdictions there are severe restrictions on the advertising and marketing moves that a law firm can engage in to promote its business and it was only in the 1970's that the Bates decision gave law firms in North America the right to use mainstream advertising and marketing practices. This doesn't mean that law firms do not advertise and market, they just have to do it differently using different methods.

Regular marketers say that you have to make relevant contact seven times to register in the mind of the potential client and music artists trying to stay relevant in the mind of the public sometimes come up with shenanigans that build their personality profile but are unrelated to the production of actual music such as street fights, conflicts with other artists.
Here is what a partner in a law firm does; she has a core list of about 150 clients and core contacts and every morning she carefully reviews the latest developments and news that could possibly be of interest to the individuals on that core list. She then creates customized, value added emails using her understanding of these issues and the clients as well as her expertise and sends it to this 150 contact list. The emails usually contain the core of the news and important developments as well as their specific implications for the days to come. Over the years being on this list has become increasingly important to the contacts who have found them valuable as well as other people who have heard of these insight emails so when some previous recipients call and say they have stopped receiving or others say they would like to receive them she replies 'Well, since you aren't doing any business with us it is impossible for me to know what your particular needs are'.

The core product in this email is not the salting method where you wet the clients appetite and set them up for bait and switch, neither is it the alarmist method where you exaggerate the danger to force a response. It is offering an understanding of and insight into the issues that are relevant to these 150 core list. Do you understand them, their businesses and their issues?

DOING SOME PLANNING

Deliberately improving the performance of your law firm is not a salary, skills gap, motivational problem or lack thereof ;It is really a design problem.
When roads are to be built and houses, bridges are to follow then whatever they are designed to be by the architect is what the engineers will put on the ground. The good news is that your law practice is a living being that is subject to continuous improvement the same way reconstructions and extensions can be made to bridges, houses.

Deliberately trying to improve the organisational performance of your law firm is a type of innovation where you are making the most of what you have, you are taking what already exists and working to use it to add more value to your clients and the profile of your law firm's practice areas. Some of the things you will be involved in achieving will invariably include; understanding your organization in excruciating detail, improving the quality of your services & products, understanding what the reasons for your reversals are, putting a plan into play to address your unique needs.
Redesigning your law firm's processes, the way you work is a first step to improving performance.
There is a certain way your law firm works and does things; from recruiting to solution selling, which has led it to where it is right now and during reviews you come upon debacles and near misses you would like to correct and with the passage of time you've gained insight from so you can change direction and restructure your firm. And this redesign is not always difficult as it is not a question of more effort but one of a change in gears and once the gears have been changed the progress you make is a reward for your efforts to change. For example, a Principal Partner is working hard on his Masters degree and half way through he gets the epiphany that the law is really a business so he quits his Masters and crosses the road to start his MBA. He is using mainly the same effort and an MBA doesn't require a new brain. Change of heart, change of gear, change of direction but not more effort or money or thought.
However, some redesigns will be a bit more difficult to initiate even if their effects will be lasting but if you study the entire process the difficulty will most usually be in making the mental transition, making that gear change from one accepted way of doing things to another.
The core of the design process is that it should be a solution that addresses the core of the challenge. It should not be a band-aid to paper over the challenge; what is the fundamental problem, what is the fundamental solution. Setting up a law firm marketing plan with funding and incentives which will be in play year in, year out is a solution; exhorting the troops with rah-rah motivational speeches and cracking the whip if targets are not being met while making noises about winners going to Barbados will not work. And it will bring you back to the same spot in a while.
When you succeed in integrating the marketing plan into your firm, year in year out, setting specific tasks that everyone in the law firm has a stake in executing and backing up it up with resources and rewards, you have a permanent solution. And when employees move on they can say that at your store everybody learns to bring in business and you have built a marketing system that keeps on working.

SEE YOU NEXT TIME

All businesses live on repeat business , 'Thank you for coming, see you NEXT time'. It really is no good if you only go to a restaurant once and never go back. Your law firm works on repeat business as well where, hopefully, clients regularly and predictably send business your way but since you have a crucial role to play in this paradise, let's examine the situation.
A long time ago it was possible to secure a key piece of business by calling on and satisfying a key decision maker but we live in democratic times with complex MNCs and every major piece of business requires multiple decisions and levels of approval and those decisions are made by different people in different time zones. This is the complex sale.
And since businesses are always evolving in response to the changing business environment and adjusting their priorities, the key players and decision makers change as well. So, how do you secure repeat business for your law firm if you have to start from ground level zero with every conversation and you have to check that previous parameters of engagement are still operational?
Your law firm needs a repeat business plan to address this reality so that you know what is going on within the company, how to position your efforts and who to address. Address this challenge clearly because it is a full team engagement.

Talking the other day with a CFO on general issues she remarked 'Our best relationships with our bankers, lawyers and consultants have one feature; strong individual relations at all levels. When we have a major transaction, I'll talk with my entire team about whom we are going to use as advisors. If we are moving towards a particular firm it is critical that I see every head in the room nod right from the junior staff to the treasurer. The really good firms build strong relationships throughout our organization'.

So here is how it plays out; if your law firm has been able to build meaningful relationships at all levels, when the questions arise you will have internal advocates and your name will keep coming up as the obvious solution for the business and if not? Well...

The Netflix series 'House of Cards' offers an example of how this works out. Recently appointed Micheal Kern has been involved in a scandal and has been kicked out as head of the Foreign Affairs ministry. His replacement is yet to be announced and Francis Underwood uses his secret reporter Zoe Barnes to spread it around all media outlets and rating agencies that they and the general public want Catherine Durant as the next Foreign Secretary.
Back in the White House where the conversation is still evolving and the opinion of the media outlets and rating agencies is being monitored, Linda Vasquez, Chief of Staff is bouncing the idea of Catherine Durant as the next Foreign Secretary off Francis Underwood and then she says something 'everyone seems to think that Catherine Durant should be the next Foreign Secretary, what do you think?. And so Catherine becomes the next Foreign Secretary.

Your law firm wants to be in the position of Catherine Durant where you have the popular vote, the electoral college vote and everyone seems to think you are the it-firm. You can do the work, the client organization is aware of you and sees the benefit in working with you at all levels and you actually have advocates for you in the organization.

SILOS

Your law firm practices as a single impenetrable unit and in its internal structure it has practice areas which deliver its services and products in an efficient manner. These practice areas and units are headed by practice heads with specific responsibilities. This arrangement works well but there is the issue of the silo effect; each practice unit is organized to do its work efficiently, is accountable for its responsibility and its responsibility is its contribution to the whole law firm. In effect this means that the unit will give priority to its own matters, not the overall issues of the law firm, it will tend to compete for resources with other units and most importantly, the massive benefits of a border less law firm will be absent. Especially if bonuses come from unit performance and the whole law firm performance is a minimal contribution to bonuses, units will not share insights and practices with one another unless a specific role is created to move insights and practices from one unit to the other, acting as translators that transfer intellectual capital and institutional comparative advantages from one part of the firm to another. As Jack Welch has said innovation does not have to be massive, it can be one inch at a time and it is about showing up everyday searching for a better way.
The silo effect forces heads of units to divert attention from high priority strategic concerns such as competitive assessments and client direction to use precious resources solving lower level issues which are usually escalated but could be headed off by a sharing-across-units, way of doing things. Individual lawyers who could be solving such issues take no responsibility for it and say it is not litigation support's problem, it is Merger's plus all we have to do is our job. They see themselves as implementers of decisions made higher up and this can lead to; issues falling through the cracks, lack of initiative, the stifling of ideas and a slow law firm.

For example, using a financial legal platform on the internet that is advertised as a 24hr platform to place a stock market order and the order is acknowledged as received but after three full weeks the order which was meant for immediate execution still has not been executed. What is the problem? Apparently on the 24-hr financial platform orders can only be placed between 12 noon and 2pm. This means that this financial transaction fell through the cracks because the chaps responsible for the different parts of the transaction are not talking to each other.

Back to the law firm.
The silo effect will make certain each law firm practice area pays the priority attention to its own work because that is how it is assessed and how it sees its job but the law firm as a whole will not do as well because connections, transfers and communication of insight from one practice area to the other never happen. This will eventually bring the firm down and you have partners wondering what on earth is wrong with this firm.
You can think of the law firm as the human body with different organs that do their work to keep the body going. The circulatory system moves resources to and from so the human is always healthy but if the circulatory system clogs up? Heart attacks, kidney failures, overweight, bloated skin etc.

The European Union is a mighty economic and political unit, far greater than any of its individual members could have been on its own and it is just getting started. However, some units such as Germany are stronger than others such as Latvia, Lithuania but because Germany is part of the EU it is especially solicitous of the welfare of currently problematic members such as Greece because if Greece continues its economic lassitude it will eventually drag Germany down. All the attention and potential meant for progress and consolidation will be diverted to prop up Greece with what result ? The EU is weaker for it.
In this situation there cannot be a silo effect as is in the law firm practice area because productive efforts will be delayed or even prevented. Imagine Latvia needing a vital transport network and getting the answer, we would've given you but Greece took it all. After a while no one will care. Bye bye EU.
What your law firm needs to do about the silo effect is to pay very close attention to the interactions, communications between practice areas as a Strategic Business Initiative. The bigger and more profitable your law firm gets the more important it is for each unit to get the resources it needs and for it to concern itself with how what is happening in other units informs its own work, contributes to the whole.

A NEW ORG CHART

As a law firm do you understand with clarity how your legal services are developed, sold and distributed? In the view you have in your mind of your law firm are you mainly focused on the inside of your firm? Since you spend most of your time within doing some form of producing legal work this tendency is quite possible. To get a clear idea if this afflicts you or if you have a flawed view of your law firm draw an organization chart and see if it has explanations for your clients, the products and services you provide, the flow of work from demand to supply. Does it show what you do, who you do it for and how you do it? Whatever diagram you drew probably did not address any of these things, probably showed the departments in your firm and you might have said in your mind I know what we are about.
But putting the opening questions above as vital and not forgotten after-thoughts is the key challenge. Having them at the centre of your mind as you practice is one reason why you will see opportunities others don't and why you will rise above the me,me,me is dull,dull,dull phenomenon.
Now, the organization chart you are used to would most usually address the departments and practice areas in your firm, who reports to who, and who is where such as; Board of Directors, Principal Partner, Practice Heads, Unit Heads etc. This is all well and good but when you see your law firm like this you begin to get the idea that this is your law firm, you think about your law firm like this and your law firm can only process things like this. Things have to fit into this structure and if they don't then they fall beneath the radar and no one pays attention to them.
Thus, a simple diagram has become Hadrian's Wall that blocks your mind and limits your operation to your own unit and getting to another unit is almost crossing the wall but you have to be able to do cross border work and be organised to move quickly enough to do it. The mere fact that Hadrian's Wall can be applied to the internal workings of your law firm is a major challenge.
Borders are terrific things and crossing one illegally is a violation of the Montevideo Convention on the definition of a state which is why they are such a big deal with sophisticated, weaponised reinforcements. A border has no business in your law firm because they have other vices; they make you slow, slow will not encourage initiative or innovative engagement with the drive, aggression and responsiveness needed with moving the business forward.
And all of this from a simple organization chart.