Tag Archives: Business Case

Jan 29

Insights to inform your IT Strategy

Posted on by

Check out these questions please as I’m sure you’ll want to hear what others have to say in these areas to help inform your decisions on IT going forward.

We’re getting good responses and revealing insights back from good IT people in legal businesses in this short, candid (just 5 minutes to complete) snap survey of legal IT Directors and Managers, but we can only share them with you if you take part.

GO HERE TO COMPLETE THE SURVEY >>

Completing this questionnaire really will take no more than 5 minutes, although I know even that is hard to find; but you can then sit back and wait for us to come back with a report on the compiled results.

Your responses will be treated in absolute confidence and we will provide you with that report on our findings within 28 days.

Allan Carton

Jan 06

Test Drive 4 Key Initiatives for 2013 – CRM, KPI’s, Lean Thinking, IT

Posted on by

As we head into a second critical transitional year for the legal sector, there is a driving need to be pro-active in developing any legal practice to meet the demand from clients to “do more for less” and to also maintain and improve profits.  These are challenges we are helping law firms meet in a variety ways for firms at different stages of development and with varying priorities. 

They are aimed primarily at medium sized and larger practices, but items 2 and 4 (in particular) are as realistic and appropriate for smaller (up to 35 people) practices, although the approach to implementation is different. 

The 4 key solutions we are working on across the country that you might want to consider as part of your strategy include:

1.  On Screen KPI Dashboards and Automated Management Reporting - giving fee earners, heads of departments and the senior management team easy access to the key financial, marketing and matter information (Key Performance Indicators) needed to drive performance of the business.  It enables fee earners to manage their own performance, record more time, bill more quickly, get cash in more quickly, progress cases faster and can radically improve the impact of  appraisal and performance management initiatives.  This fills a significant gap in performance management and delivers a quick return on investment.  The solution can also be moved to support any new practice or case management system you move to in the future.

Contact us to ask for a free online demo

2.  Client Relationship Management (CRM) – where getting closer to clients and introducers is essential for survival and success going forwards.  A variet of different initiatives here, depending on where clients are starting from, ranging from market research, through workshops with partners to implementing new systems.  We talk direct to clients of our legal clients and introducers of business to identify new business opportunities and strategies. We implement CRM systems that create the structure and tools to be proactive in developing relationships, where the starting point is to get an agreed single shared view to work with. 

Contact us to discuss how we have used client feedback to develop new business strategies and generate new business for law firms.

3.  Introducing “Lean Thinking“ to reduce operating costs whilst also improving clients’ perceptions of value and reducing work in progress - where we have brought in specialists in this area from business sectors to work with law firms … and it’s working well.  Clients have achieved radical improvements in internal operations and cleint communications, learning to roll the initiatives started in one department across the rest of the practice.

Contact us to request a copy of our FREE introduction to lean in the legal sector, “Lean for Legal Staff – The 7 Hidden Wastes”

4.  Radical Improvements in IT -  Infrastructure, Integrated applications, Processes and User Adoption.  Initiatives range from selection of new PMS solutions to implementing Microsoft solutions that incorporate legal-customised SharePoint and CRM solutions integrated with Office and Lync on premise and also in an affordable, securely hosted environment, incorporating full business continuity as part of the solution. 

Contact us to arrange a free demo of a hosted solution to see what it feels like

You can’t do it all at once, so which of these initiatives would produce the best returns for your practice and what is the best approach to making it happen successfully?

To find out more, just call Allan Carton on 0161 929 8355 to discuss how they might apply in the context of your particular business – or email acarton@inpractice.co.uk to set up a time for a preliminary telephone conversation. 

To take any of these forwards, please contact us to:

  1. Ask for a free online demo of the KPI dashboard and automated management reporting system.
  2. Discuss using client feedback to develop new business strategies and generate new business.
  3. Ask for a copy of ”Lean for Legal Staff – The 7 Hidden Wastes.”
  4. Arrange a demo of a hosted Microsoft-based IT solution.

Allan Carton

Nov 01

Download Validatum’s Report on Recovery of Expenses.

Posted on by

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

Jan 03

Stay in the Driver’s Seat – Agile, pro-active and innovative law firms are winning

Posted on by

Leaner and better managed firms are making their mark now as they benefit from the fallout from less successful firms that have struggled to manage their practice effectively and just can’t carry on any longer.  The most recent examples in Leeds and Manchester …

Brooke North - 3 January

One of Yorkshire’s oldest law firms, Brooke North, has closed after being hit by the recession. All 15 lawyers at the Leeds-based practice, which is thought to have been established around 150 years ago, have found work at other firms. Rodney Dalton, a senior figure at Brooke North for 16 years, said the effects of the economic downturn and the firm’s business model had impacted on recent performance. 

Mr Dalton said Brooke North’s approach of offering a bespoke service for its clients across different areas of law, rather than a “one stop shop” for all its clients had actually had a negative effect. This was because many of its owner-managed business clients had stopped using the firm when the recession hit as their own organisations had been impacted by the downturn and other work hadn’t filled the gap, he said. “If you add all that up it doesn’t present a particularly encouraging picture,” Mr Dalton said. “We tried to do a deal with our landlord to enable us to continue, albeit in a slightly different format. But unfortunately we couldn’t do a deal.  “We then looked at ourselves and another problem was there was little opportunity of a solution across the board. We didn’t have the bulk stuff such as second mortgage items to fall back on.

“We prided ourselves on giving a bespoke service to individual clients. The recession just slaughtered us.”  Mr Dalton, a property expert who has joined Lupton Fawcett following Brooke North’s break-up, said the firm had considered a merger with another firm but had decided against the move. He also claimed the firm had been approached itself by suitors in more prosperous times. “All we could see is that in 2012 we’ll be looking back at 2011 and saying that was a good year,” he said. “In the long run a takeover might have done us less good than a break-up has done. This has given us the opportunity to negotiate our own deals.”  The majority of the remaining staff at Brooke North, which numbered around 30, have found work elsewhere.

Rowlands Field Cunningham – 22 December

LAW firm Linder Myers has bought the business and assets of fellow city centre firm Rowlands Field Cunningham from administrators.  Insolvency firm MCR were appointed as joint administrators of Rowlands Field Cunningham on 22 December.   Linder Myers has said the deal will create a £16m-turnover business with almost 300 staff, including 43 partners. It will take on all 80 former Rowlands Field Cunningham staff currently operating out of offices on York St in the city centre and in Swinton.  The last filed accounts for the 12-partner Rowlands Field Cunningham show that the firm had a turnover of £4.8m in the year to April 30, 2010, but no profit was declared.

Rowlands was established in 1887 and only merged with Field Cunningham just over a year ago – a deal which was described at the time by managing partner Jon Andrews as “a very good fit”. However, the firm is understood to have since suffered with cashflow, which eventually led to it appointing administrators.  Bernard Seymour, managing partner of Linder Myers, who will head the enlarged practice, said he expects to achieve turnover of £16m in the next financial year and £20m within 18 months.

Earlier this year, Linder Myers bought an eight storey, 47,500 sq ft building at 55 Spring Gardens for its new headquarters building. It paid £8.1m.  Mr Seymour added that Linder Myers would continue to seek further mergers in Manchester and was in discussions with a number of potential targets.  “This is our biggest merger to date. It will give us greater critical mass and expertise, and will enable us to penetrate better in some markets,” he said.

Berkson Wallace from Ellesmere Port in administration, June 2012

Founded in 1902 fell, based in Ellesmere Port with work across the North West, employing 12 staff and posting turnover of about £400,000. It has been run by its current partnership team since 2006 and specialised in property transactions, personal injury and matrimonial matters.  Skelmersdale-based Refresh Recovery, which is currently managing the firm’s affairs, said it had suffered under a downturn in the property market and general economic malaise. “Prior to administration, most of the clients’ files transferred to other firms of solicitors,” Refresh told Insider. “All staff at the Ellesmere Port office, including the partners, have been dismissed but most of the staff in the Wallasey office transferred to another firm.”

Courtesy of  TheBusinessDesk

Oct 20

How good to not fret about IT – today's experience

Posted on by

I just got back to the office before lunchtime today to find that I couldn’t access our CRM system, which sits pretty much at the centre of our business, but is hosted off site with all the rest of our applications.  Inconvenient, but I can relax because I know there is a team already working on it.  More resource with more expertise and clout with suppliers to address this problem than we could ever expect to muster with an in-house team. The interim report back …

“HP are continuing to work with our engineers on this issue.  Essentially … [outline of the problems] … there are two lines of work being conducted to restore services as soon as possible for each customer.  We have an HP engineer on site and two HP engineers who are known as HP best dialled into the SAN from Japan and The Netherlands.  These engineers can see what is causing the [problem] and are working through three steps to try and bring the drives back on line …  in parallel we have a separate team of our own infrastructure engineers who are configuring a new file cluster and have initiated [ outline of steps being taken as a fallback].”

We all know IT breaks sometimes – so how good it is to be able to relax and know that I can be assured it’s going to be  up and running again within a reasonable time.  The issues and resolution may not be as straightforward as they suggest, but they have a big incentive to get this all fixed very quickly

I’ve got plenty more work and business to get on with, so that’s enough for me and I don’t need to fret!

Allan Carton

Jun 24

Making the right decisons on PMS?

Posted on by

Improving the use and outputs from practice management systems is increasingly on the agenda, where we can streamline the review and selection process (allowing the in house team to get on with their work, making sure their views are heard) and help senior management to make sound decisions relatively quickly with confidence because we start with knowledge and experience with a wide variety of  potential options.  This recent response to an enquiry from an IT Director will give you a feel for how we operate to support IT Directors and Managers in developing the business case when considering a change of  Practice Management System (PMS).  

” … we aim to develop an interactive working relationship with you and your team.

Our approach varies from firm to firm depending on resources and skills available and the current environment in the firm.  For example, the extent to which the project also involves change management; helping lawyers and support staff who use the systems to be a part of the selection process, so they have a better understanding and take more ownership of the systems that arrive on their desk.  Sometimes it is needed; other times it is not – but also, sometimes partners are prepared to pay for it; other times they are not.  Variations also relate to the extent of detail wanted in evaluating the tender responses (to generate like-for-like costings and scoring of solutions as an aid to making decisions) – and the extent to which we are involved in managing the demonstration process.  Also the extent to which you need to develop a business case to justify the investment in different areas of the business.

A staged approach is usually best, within a framework with timescales to work to.  Key stages are:

  1. Evaluation of the current situation and requirements, involving interviews with people at all levels – the extent of this varies, with politics often playing a part in how this can be used to maximum effect.
  2. We can develop the business case/s to justify a) investment and b) a defined level of investment
  3. There will generally be discussions at this stage about IT strategy, exploring options to improve productivity and returns from IT investment generally.  
  4. Identification of potential (infrastructure and) applications providers – with preliminary discussions 
  5. Development of a specification of requirements (level of detail varies and a more pragmatic approach can include a focus on key differentiators)
  6. Demonstrations where our involvement varies
  7. Evaluation of tenders – generating like for like numbers can be a challenge – filling gaps, advising on best options based on user feedback etc
  8. Shortlisting – presenting the business case to the management board if needed 
  9. Negotiations 
  10. Involvement in some aspects of project management if needed

However, the first stage is to get in and do a preliminary evaluation of the current situation and requirements – so we can begin to consider options.  In some cases our role in selection can stop there if any particular route is a “no brainer” in which case we focus on helping manage a transition.

The team here gives you access to the best range of appropriate expertise would involve Damian Griffiths (strategic), Allan Carton (user requirements and supplier options) and Richard Blasdale (detailed analysis and evaluation). ”

If you are considering your options on developing your IT systems (PMS and beyond) and have any questions, call Allan Carton on 061 929 8355 for a preliminary discussion, with no obligation.

Jun 07

4 simple, proven steps to generate more profit from your practice … quickly.

Posted on by
Andrew Taylor, financial management, law firm, business improvement, merger

Andrew Taylor, Inpractice UK

This short article focuses on just 4 fundamental areas of sound financial management that enable us to help law firms generate more profit from the work they already handle in the business; the best starting point to develop a plan to improve the firm’s performance, without the need to generate new business.

  1. Prepare a Funds Flow Statement. Profit and cash are different things – cash is entirely dependent on profit. To start understanding your business better, we complete a simple exercise to reveal what happened to the cash between two dates, e.g. between last year end and this, in a Fund Flow statement. It quickly reconciles profit to cash and the movements in the bank balance. It takes into account such things as whether more cash is locked-up in WIP and debt than last year, the movements in how much you have “borrowed” from suppliers by taking credit from them and, importantly, it accounts for how much partners have drawn.
  2. Track working capital. It’s not how much you bill or how much profit you make, but how well you manage Working Capital (and cash) that will determine whether you survive in the current economic climate. Profit Per Equity Partner (PEP) is interesting, but it has little to do with staying afloat when cash is running out. Being armed with where your cash went last year, is only a starting point to understanding and managing the daily dynamics of your business.Working Capital – the difference between current assets (WIP, debtors and cash) and current liabilities (creditors (including VAT), overdrafts and short term loans is a measure of whether you have enough cash (or potential sources of cash) to meet your payments, such as salaries, rent and VAT, as they fall due.
  3. Focus on Lock Up. Managing lock-up is not just the responsibility of the accounts department. It’s up to partners and fee earners to take responsibility for billing and debt collection and this needs to become a major element of monthly Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and of the appraisal process. Here’s a simple example of the impact an improvement in lock-up can bring: A firm with a turnover of £6m has WIP and debt totalling £2.5m. This represents about 150 days of turnover – so on average, this firm carrying out work on 1st April won’t get paid until 1st September. If the firm can improve its lock-up by (say) 30 days, the cash position can potentially be improved by £500,000!
  4. Develop a structured set of KPIs relevant for the practice and for individual departments. Lots of firms have a “monthly reporting pack” that can be anything from 20 to 50 pages thick, that contains the key information you need, but because of the volume, it’s invisible! These firms suffer from information overload and “analysis paralysis”, leading to poor management through a lack of focus on what’s really important. These reports should be tabulated on only a few sheets of A4. Other measures should be included where they are significant and relevant for particular types of work. For example. firms with PI departments might include reports on disbursements and CFA success rates and fees achieved. Anything else can be run on an as-needed basis, perhaps to drill down to the cause of a specific problem.

The added value that can be gained from implementing measures as simple as these can is easily measured – they usually result in the business having more cash available! This article has highlighted only a few simple things that can quickly make a difference. Future articles will focus on profit improvement exercises, productivity measures, the continued need for time recording (especially in a fixed-fee environment), budgeting and forecasting, more on cashflow management and a more in-depth look at KPIs and how to use them.

For more information about our practice improvement reviews and half-day partner workshops, contact Andrew Taylor, Inpractice UK

Jan 05

Tackle e-data security; differentiate where it matters

Posted on by

Another way to reduce costs, manage risks and make your practice a more attractive proposition when you are competing for business.  Just picking up on an increasingly important  issue raised by Rupert White in his LSN blog on solicitors becoming too casual about how they handle confidential electronic data.  He quotes the recently reported example of A4e, a law firm in the Midlands, that was fined £60,000 for allowing a laptop with 24,000 clients’ details on it to leave the premises unencrypted.  It was later stolen in a burglary.

Should more legal practices be working towards certification in the global ISO 27001 information security standard following the lead of Irwin Mitchell and a small number of other law firms that are taking this initiative, which should be of particular interest to the larger firms and others regularly tendering for business to clients becoming increasibly nervous about data security.   Irwin Mitchell reduced the number of security incidents from 25 a year ago to seven in the same period this year, after becoming certified.

Go here for a summary of the ISO 27001 standard, which makes good business sense  for the right law firms.  For more information on how to tackle certification to the 27001 security standard at your legal practice, contact Allan Carton on 0161 929 8355 or at acarton@inpractice.co.uk

Dec 11

Update from the SRA on the move to OFR and ABS

Posted on by

Any lawyers and managers involved in any aspect of developing a legal practice should find this extensive overview of where we stand on OFR and ABS helpful; an informative and enlightening review from Charles Plant, Chair of the SRA, given in November 2010 which covers key issues and actions being taken on introducing these new initiatives.  There is a lot here about the rationale for some of the important measures and next steps to work through remaining issues. 

Read the article online here or you can also download a pdf here, which will let you read and digest over the Christmas period if you can find the time.

Key areas covered:

  • Useful summary of where we are up to; the 3 generic ABS modules; particular issues in the MDP model and steps to address
  • SRA’s objective to be sole regulator of ABSs – level playing field
  • Retaining elements of established compliance procedures; transition to and from ABS; attack on poor, unregulated providers of non-reserved legal services
  • SRA regulation of providers of non-reserved legal services within an ABS - NOT exclusion of non-regulated services from SRA role. Section 69 order to amend legislation – how being progressed with LSB
  • Compensation fund – apply to all as an interim measure; charge investigations to defaulting businesses
  • Roles of COLP and COPA (formerly HOLP and HOFA) maybe one person - all regulated organisations, not just ABS
  • Impact of external ownership and potential conflicts; ABS requirement – systems to identify potential conflicts
  • Criteria for refusal of applications for authorisation as an ABS; conditions, suspension and revocation of ABS authorisation
  • Guarding against pre-emptive ABSs – conditional contracts; timescales – on target?

Allan Carton

Oct 18

Legal Process Outsourcer Launches In Manchester

Posted on by

Our business partners, Mangalam Information Technologies have set up a new office in the centre of Manchester as the UK base of their legal process outsourcing (LPO) business.  Services to law firms can be provided at between 30% and 40% of the UK costs compared to in house lawyers and support teams with guaranteed high quality of service.

Mangalam are a division of  US $500m Electrotherm group listed on the Mumbai Stock Exchange, providing non client-facing back office services such as e-discovery, document bundling for litigation support, legal research, contract review and drafting, medical records retrieval and medical & legal transcription for – until now – law firms in the US; also in other sectors such as financial services, accounting, recruitment and healthcare.

Mangalam’s legal sector service offerings

  • Electronic Discovery Production Services: Along with document reviews for materiality and relevance in litigation along with e-Discovery production services typically involving the use of a software solution to convert all digitally stored information into .tif images or .pdf pages.
  • Litigation Support Services: subjective and objective coding services, which involves creating meta data on scanned documents, which can then be used to create a searchable database of all the scanned documents relevant in litigation. This is designed to significantly improve the efficiency of lawyers involved in litigation cases and allow them to sift through thousands of documents in a very quick and efficient manner.
  • Para Legal and Support Services: services such as legal transcription, creation of deposition summaries, case summaries and chronology charts.
  • Contract Lifecycle Management Services: to manage the entire contract life cycle for a corporation directly or for the corporate clients of a law firm. After initial training to understand the preferred  templates for contracts, the Mangalam team of qualified lawyers can provide contract drafting, contract review and contract revision services.  The same team can also be responsible for ensuring contract compliance during the life cycle and appropriate action at the time of expiry of the contract. For older contracts, they could provide contract abstraction and consistency check services.
  • Due Diligence Services: qualified lawyers can provide due diligence services related to M&A transactions, IPO, and Real Estate identifying the documents relevant to a particular transaction, review and produce a list of items to be addressed for successful completion of the transaction
  • Legal Research, Business Research & Competitive Intelligence Services: to provide specific business information and solutions for clients based on an array of industry leading data sources like Westlaw, Lexis Nexis, D&B database, leading finance sites, SEC filings etc.  Typical deliverables include company profiling, competition profiling, industry landscape, litigation history, multi jurisdictional surveys etc.

How to begin the move to using outsourced services?

In many ways it is as though the work is being done in a different office of a law firm, but the other location here is not in UK and at a much lower cost destination like India.  The staff in India are well trained in English, well qualified to work on the tasks assigned to them, and integrated seamlessly with UK based businesses, making use of global technology advances via e-mail, telephone and the internet.

Other Advantages

While cost can be the obvious and most significant advantage in this business model, other key benefits include:

  • Use of Six Sigma and Lean principles to review and improve business processes, which can in turn provide benefits in costs and performance back to UK law firm clients.
  • Managlam have the ISO 27001 accreditation; the highest certification for information security, which should be a minimum requirement for potential outsourcing and IT hosting activities. The 3 levels of security arrangement ensure data privacy & information security for client data.

Case Studies

 

For more information, contact Allan Carton