Category Archives: CRM

Nov 01

Download Validatum’s Report on Recovery of Expenses.

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It has for many years been customary for firms to include a variety of sundry charges at the end of the bill but a cost benefit/analysis may well reveal that whilst the practice generates additional gross revenue, this is probably outweighed by the negative effects on client perception and attitudes.  Firms have traditionally had a range of approaches to dealing with these consumables.

This free report based on a mini survey sheds light on what firms are currently doing.

Go here for your FREE DOWNLOAD

Oct 25

UK200Group Annual Conference 2012 – Lawyers Welcome

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The UK200 Group are the UK’s leading national quality assured grouping for independent chartered accountants and lawyers, who are looking to increase their law firm membership. 
 
Venue:  The Hilton, Newcastle-upon-Tyne
Dates:  21 to 23 November 2012
 
For background on the group go to the UK 200 Group.  You are invited to join their Annual Conference to experience how the network could benefit your practice. To find out who you are likely to meet, check out their Accountancy members and Law firm members listings.
 
This is an opportunity to explore new ways of developing your business and to create new connections that will help you generate new business through the people you meet.  They will mostly be accountants interested in developing working relationships with law firms, keen to collaborate with you.
 
The agenda can be downloaded below from our website.  Key highlights include speaking sessions, forums, Q&A’s and social gatherings with topics covering, for example: Business Strategy, Corporate finance, strategies to clarify thinking about the new world of business we are moving into post recession, profit improvement and successioin strategies for your clients … and much more.
 
To reserve your place or request more information – please go here
For more information contact Allan Carton.
 
 
 

Aug 17

Masterclass – Legal IT for the Non-Technical Manager

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Understanding technology is critical to how law firms can adapt and respond to meet the new demands of clients who want more value for less money; particularly with the increasing variety of legal services options available to choose from.

6 business-relevant CPD points for lawyers involved in management

Lawyers and managers in law firms now need to work hand-in-hand with IT to find new and better ways to improve and support legal services; then to work together to introduce new solutions to capitalise on the significant advances in technology that can open up many new and better options in delivering legal services.  This advanced level seminar will give you the opportunity to leap ahead of many competitors not yet prepared to take up the challenges and opportunities that technology can present.  Presented in layman’s terms, this master class will enable non-technical lawyers and managers to:

  • Evaluate and improve the performance of the current IT team;
  • Communicate more effectively with the IT team to improve results and shorten development time
  • Recognise and develop new opportunities where IT can add value
  • Review your IT strategy and its alignment with business strategy
  • Pre-empt obstacles in planning how best to introduce new IT supported initiatives
  • Work with and develop the right technology and IT team
  • Focus on outcomes – what solutions technology can support and deliver
  • Bridge the gap to integrate legal skills effectively with the IT team.
  • Integrate your IT team into a broader business development function

Who should attend: Heads of Departments, Managing Partners, Senior Partners, Practice Managers, Practice Directors, Business Development and other managers or anyone else with responsibility for ensuring continued improvement in the delivery of services, performance and productivity of fee earners in law firms.

What You Will Learn:  This seminar will cover the following topics:

  • Why the frustration with IT? – strategies, alignment of the business, piecemeal development, issues with suppliers and more;
  • Impact of New Business Drivers on IT – mergers/acquisitions, the role of IT, implications of external investment, secure hosted, cloud and managed IT solutions, demand for legal knowledge;
  • Key technology developments – Opportunities;
  • New priorities lining up – ISO 27001 – data security;
  • The Changing role of the IT team – managing the IT function, business development, recruiting the right team, focus on business process, understanding outsourcing, practical project management;
  • Redefining IT strategy into practice – where to start? Key components – infrastructure and applications, management information, CRM, workflow;
  • Getting focused on the best IT opportunities (practical exercise) – barriers and obstacles and how to address them and much more.

Presenter: Allan Carton Solicitor, MBA, MD at Inpractice UK. Inpractice UK is a multidisciplinary team of specialist consultants working with a wide variety of legal practices to develop new business opportunities, where most initiatives, that range from HR and IT to client experience management, benefit from the more effective development of IT introduced in this seminar.

Book Direct with MBL Seminars HERE

Aug 01

Sole practitioner red squirrel strategies

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I liked this comment from Mike Massen of Gartons on LinkedIn today in a discussion about whether there is still a place for sole practitioners on the High Street.

“… make like the red squirrel.  Go and live where there is sufficient protein to live and thrive but not enough to attract the interest of the grey squirrel.”

The analogy works for me.  Take control, get a plan for survival that takes account of your environment.  Think red squirrel.

Allan Carton

Jun 26

Good to know the big boys have to work hard at it too

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Clifford Chance want to do more to get closer to clients, creating opportunities to cross-refer business – just like everyone else and they clearly don’t find it easy either.  High on their agenda … with strategic cost reduction too.

There are a lot of blindingly obvious initiaitives that lawyers don’t do in practice and some of the biggest culprits are the more mature partners and the largest firms who can ignore and resist the need to change. So no harm in going back to basics and re-stating the obvious now and then. In fact, there should be a lot more of it.

Courtesy of the Lawyer

Did you know that by promoting a referral culture among your partners, a prized banking client can become an equally valuable corporate client?

Well, that was the message at Clifford Chance’s most recent partner conference in Barcelona. Global managing partner David Childs waxed lyrical about the need to stop partners working in silos and to start leveraging the firm’s banking clients to provide work to other areas (see The Lawyer story), while senior partner Malcolm Sweeting spoke about making the most of the firm’s offices across the globe.

This isn’t the first time this year that Clifford Chance has emphasised utilising resources to maximum effect. The firm appears to be on a bit of a cost-saving drive of late.  In May, The Lawyer reported that the firm was shifting its London corporate team to the same floor of its Canary Wharf building and trialling open-plan for its lawyers.

Allan Carton

May 31

Re-Engineering the Business of Law – New York Times

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Introduction and conclusions here to an excellent article from J. Stephen Poor, chairman of  international law firm Seyfarth Shaw, who were the first US legal practice to apply ”lean thinking” to legal business processes. 

From our experience in the UK, we wouldn’t say that improving productivity in the legal world is easy, otherwise everyone would have done it already … but it works to simultaneously reduce operating costs and to improve value for clients.  The starting point is to talk to clients about what they want that is different from what they get now to bring them on board.  They like it.  They want to work with you because it helps them get better value from you – but very few legal practices have that conversation.

According to J. Stephen Poor, whose experience is well worth exploring …

“True long-term success requires businesses to improve continually and reimagine how they operate in the face of changing competition and market forces. Yet this innovative urge, which drives so much of the rest of the American economy, is largely absent from large law firms. These address the traditional measures of law firm profitability …

What we did not anticipate was the resistance from other crucial stakeholders – especially clients. Much of what we’ve done is most effective when deployed in a collaborative change process with clients. What we overlooked at the outset is that, by and large, our clients are lawyers, too, and many of them are the products of the culture of their own business.

Understanding the various viewpoints and building the business case to involve this crucial constituency was something we learned along the way. The nature of the process requires a continuous, but slow march toward improvement and adaptation. Some things we tried worked and some did not.  Nevertheless, the continuous move forward takes persistence and, perhaps, a bit of stubbornness.”

Read the rest of this article in the New York Times (7 May 2012)

Contact us if you would like to receive a copy of a) our presentation to the Law Management Section on “Become a winning law firm – lean, agile, pro-active and innovative” or b) our recent article in the Law Management Section’s journal, “Managing for Success”

Allan Carton

May 07

MMU Law School – a unique and proven way to develop top level management skills in your legal practice

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All the Managing partners and others I have met and worked with who achieved this qualification to date have sung its praises - they all feel they’ve benefitted a lot from it; not just in added knowledge and tactics, but also from the relationships formed with others attending.  They learned from experts in the legal sector about Strategic Planning and Alignment,  Clients & Markets, Using Financial Analysis to Build Profitability, Motivating and Managing Teams, Leadership and Managing Change and Developing and Implementing Strategy.

If you or one of your colleagues want to do this, you still have time, but you need to get your skates on as the first “Induction” session starts on 26 June 2012.

MMU Law School’s CPD accredited post-graduate Certificate in Legal Practice Management is a 10-month, part time course of study for senior managers (lawyers and others) in legal practices who want to add more good management know-how to their practical experience – and to develop their understanding and skills in a safe, open environment, supported by active participation of others in a similar position in other law firms.  It is led and very actively supported by tutors with extensive management experience in legla practices – so everything here is relevant and real – where participants can work through common issues and potential solutions together.

Designed specifically by legal services market experts for managing partners, senior managers and practice managers to enable them to tackle significant change.  See MMU Post Graduate Certificate in Legal Practice Management for more detailed information.

The sessions are delivered by a combination of business school and external practice management experts who have extensive experience of working with and understanding the needs of law firms and legal departments.  The unique programme includes:

+  Six modules specifically tailored to allow students to meet the challenges of today’s legal services market.

+  Intensive Teaching Days that are interactive and practical, delivered by experts in leadership, strategy, finance, marketing, client service and managing people;

+  Extensive Reading Lists and Case Studies (see notes on the website);

+  Practical assignments that enable students to target specific issues in their firms or departments so as to implement real improvements; and,

+  The opportunity to share best practice with other managing partners and practice managers across the UK

For 2012, Modules and Teaching Days cover: Induction Day (26 June); Strategic Planning and Alignment (27 June); Clients & Markets (12 Sept);  Using Financial Analysis to Build Profitability (7 Nov); Motivating and Managing Teams (16 Jan); Leadership and Managing Change (13 March); and,Developing and Implementing Strategy (TBA)

Direct Business & Personal Benefits, according to last year’s students have been: achieving clarity of strategic direction and buy-in across the firm and department; targeted market expansion of client services and enhanced people management;  enhanced financial performance; improvements in team dynamics and quality of performance; greater confidence in leadership and management abilities; better personal coping strategies as a result of improved communication and trust; and, sharing of best practice with other leaders in the legal services market place.

Tangible Outputs to apply in practice include: detailed formal analysis of market trends relevant to your particular business; client service audits to identify key clients and performance improvements; financial management review; high performing team criteria and performance measures; agreed common values and a strategic plan with critical success factors and key performance indicators.

What they say about it – for example, Philip D’Arcy, Joint Managing Partner, Blandy & Blandy LLP  who attended the programme last time around is just one of their enthusiastic supporters, commenting  “I found the course to be of real value in providing a good overview of relevant management theory and combining this with very practical considerations and real life examples of applying the theories in practice.  I would recommend this course for anyone involved in the management of a law firm.  The combination of a deeper understanding of management theory with the practical application of the theory is of real value and has certainly helped me in my management and leadership role.” 

For more background go to the MMU site here  or contact Deborah Walker on 0161 247 2420 / 07917 370341 or deborah.walker@mmu.ac.uk for further information and place availability.

Allan Carton

Mar 22

Client relationships and CRM systems – now is the time to make some decisions

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If you have a CRM system that isn’t working well enough for your practice, or if you are looking at options to improve your management of client relationships, we can help you.

CRM is high on the agenda for most legal practices right now … and also a critical area of weakness for many, both in the lack of use of the technology AND because lawyers often struggle to understand why and how best to develop strategic relationships with clients.  If you are interested in Client Relationship Management (CRM) systems whether for a first time implementation or to improve what you already have in place, we can make sure you know …

A]  Which CRM system is the right one for you at your current stage of development, with your people and with your plans going forwards?    Is it …

  1. Your Practice Management System (PMS) supplier; 
  2. Microsoft CRM;
  3. LexisNexis InterAction
  4. Conscious (Sugar CRM)
  5. SmartCRM
  6. Microsoft CRM4Legal
  7. Microsoft xRM4Legal
  8. Sage Sales Logix / e-metis
  9. SalesForce
  10. Tikit ClientConnect
  11. Thomson Reuters’ Hubbard One
  12. CDC’s Pivotal; or,
  13. Do you think you should build your own? 

These are the key players in the legal sector right now, but how do you know which is right for you? We can save your people a lot of time in researching and evaluating all these options as we already know their strength and weaknesses in features, implementation and usage.

B]  How your people should make most effective use of CRM within the business?  This should of course be decided before you buy a system to meet your needs, to make sure you make the right selection.

We can help you make the right decisions to get your people actively engaged in using CRM effectively and earlier than if you try to handle all of your CRM projects internally.  External objective involvement in these projects makes a crucial difference for the better.

If you want to find out more … call Allan Carton on +44 (0)161 929 8355 or complete this contact request form suggesting some times to talk and I will call you.

Feb 09

Good pointers – where to start with "lean thinking"

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If you’re on LinkedIn, it’s worth checking out the comments in this discussion about first steps in introducing lean business processes.  For us, getting leadership from the top and engagement with the people doing the work are the key to implementing lean, focused on improving the working environment, reducing stress, reducing costs and delivering better value to clients.

http://lnkd.in/pwu6zK Some background here about our work on lean in law firms.  To find out more and how we could start to work with your practice, contact us here or call +44 (0)161 929 8355.