INNOVATION IN DEED

Everyone talks about innovation but few know what innovation really is.
Putting out the word about your legal services to generate business and be of assistance to clients means knowing what your legal services are, knowing what you want to help the client do. This is elementary and yet a lot of the challenges law firms have is knowing the ABC's of the services they offer and how to put it across to the client.

Innovation is another world entirely. It is not adding bells and whistles. In fact innovation could be said to be so different from current reality that you might as well be speaking Greek to a Yoruba man.
Innovation is a substantial departure from your regular legal service levels in a bid to serve the client or to put your law firm in the first. You may have a vague notion that your law firm is a me too law firm and this is justified by the realities of your marketplace but the moment some other law firm 'innovates' you will line up to copy the new market realities.

In one sense innovation is the application of common sense and in others it is combining ideas from other industries and using it in your own work. It is searching for the moves other chaps from everywhere use to show that they are thinking about their work and their client.

The innovation may be as small as using 37 drops of gum to seal an oil barrel instead of 40 drops which will save you tons of cash across industries or as large as allowing the clients determine how much they think your services are worth and letting them pay it with no questions asked ( The Summit Law firm and the Exemplar Law Firm use this model)

An 'innovation' to consider is Value Billing which is getting paid for the value of the work to the client and not not he cost of production if the law firm. A senior Partner commands a specific fee irrespective of the matter.
This not Value Billing.
The down side to running away from value billing is that when the matter is with so much more you are stuck with your fee scale because if you try to plead value the client will naturally apply it to other matters where you got paid not according to value but to your fee scale.