Date: Wednesday 7th March

Location: Allens Arthur Robinson, Level 27, 530 Collins Street, Melbourne

APSMA Advanced is a series of topical invitation-only roundtable dinners for senior practitioners in professional services marketing.

Our 2012 APSMA Advanced series is facilitated by Colin Jasper of Jasper Consulting.

About the featured guest:

Ron Baker describes himself as an Economist, Author, Speaker, Value Based Pricing Guru, Knowledge Worker Advocate.

Ron started his professional career in 1984 with KPMG Peat Marwick’s Private Business Advisory Services in San Francisco. Today, he is the founder of VeraSage Institute, a think tank dedicated to teaching Value Pricing to professionals around the world. He is a member of the Professional Pricing Society and currently resides in Petaluma, California.

Author of best-selling books, The Firm of the Future: A Guide for Accountants, Lawyers, and Other Professional Services (2003) and Implementing Value Pricing-A Radical Business Model for Professional Firms (2011)will be joining APSMA members to kick-off the 2012 APSMA Advanced dinner series

Australian Corporate Lawyers Association: Obtaining value and price certainty from your law firm

Date: 7th March, 14th March

Location: Melbourne: Harwood Andrews, Level 13, 15 William Street, Sydney: Marque Lawyers, Level 4, 343 George Street

See ACLA website for further information

In this 3.5 hour Masterclass, Ron Baker will challenge the largely out-dated current business model adopted by many in the legal profession with thought-provoking discussion and debate. He will present a new model that is being adopted by clients and their professional firm advisors worldwide. John Chisholm will provide hands-on assistance and anecdotes of the Australian perspective during this informative and interactive workshop.

Topics covered:

- The value curve for legal services
- The role of pricing in product and service development
- Cost-based pricing
- Why hours shouldn’t and don’t matter
- Value-based pricing and other forms of alternative fee arrangements and developments worldwide
- Importance of scoping
- Elements of a scope document
- Setting and managing expectations
- How do I know if the price is right?

Firm of the Future Forums & Masterclasses

Date: 2nd – 16th March

Locations: Hobart, Melbourne, Brisbane, Sydney

Ron Baker will be presenting a series of forums in Australia during March. Those of you that have heard Ron present before know what a brilliant, inspiring, entertaining and thought provoking speaker he is. Ron confronts the conventional wisdom embodied in traditional professional firm business models, which operate by leveraging people and hours. This old model works but is suboptimal.  There is a much better business model, offering bold, proven strategies for restoring vitality and dynamism to professional firms of all sizes and which is now being used by 1000’s of professionals all over the world.

See the website for further details – Firm of the Future Forums

You will find full details of dates, times, venues and ticketing information if you click on the Firm Of The Future Forum website.

In summary Ron will be presenting a Firm Of the Future Forum in Hobart on 2 March, a Forum and MasterClass in Melbourne (5th & 6th March), Brisbane (12th &13th March) and in Sydney (15th & 16th March).

This is an opportunity to hear and learn from one of the world’s foremost professional firm thought leaders.

These Forums though are not for everyone. Ron challenges many of the concepts upon which our current professional firm business model were based but which are now past their use by date. He does propose a new model that is much more effective and better for all of us – those of us that work in the professions and for our clients who deal with us.

Ron not only discusses the move from time based costing to value based pricing but covers other important Firm Of The Future topics including the importance of a firm’s purpose, value proposition, client selection, effective project management, key predictive indicators and why we should dispense with annual performance reviews.

The Firm Of the Future is not about tweaking our current business model- it is about embarking on a new mindset and implementing a better business model that benefits both you and your clients. There are 1000′s of professionals world wide who have already embarked on the journey to become a firm of the future.

There are significant discounts available for early bird registrations up until 17 February and a Same Firm offer if more than one person from your firm attends.

Every participant will receive a copy of Ron Baker’s latest book Implementing Value Pricing: A Radical Business Model For Professional Firms.

In line with Firm Of The Future principles there is a full service guarantee- so that if for any reason whatsoever you are not satisfied with the Forum you only pay for the value you believed you received.

If you have any queries at all please do not hesitate to contact me.

I look forward to seeing you at one of these Forums-I guarantee you will not be disappointed.

Ron will be presenting full day Firm Of The Future forums in Hobart, Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney plus optional Masterclasses. The full details of dates, times and venues will be announced by the end of January.

These Forums will be primarily based around two of Ron’s best-selling books, The Firm of the Future: A Guide for Accountants, Lawyers, and Other Professional Services (2003) and Implementing Value Pricing-A Radical Business Model for Professional Firms (2011).

Those of you that have heard Ron previously will know what a brilliant, inspiring, entertaining and thought provoking speaker he is. Ron confronts the conventional wisdom embodied in traditional professional firm business models, which operate by leveraging people and hours. This old model works but is suboptimal. There is a much better business model, utlilizing bold, proven strategies for restoring vitality and dynamism to professional firms of all sizes now being practiced by 1000’s of professionals all over the world.

A practice can be run more effectively when it becomes a knowledge firm rather than merely a product or service firm.

Together with Australian advocates of ‘firm of the future’ philosophies and value based pricing, these Forums will provide real life experiences and insights into how practices and their clients have and can adapt to this new and better business model.

Creating such a firm is not for everyone but if you are one of those who would like to learn more about a business model that has incredible benefits for you, your people and your clients then this will be a day you should not miss.

 In 2012 the Australian legal profession faces a number of key challenges which, if disregarded, pose a significant risk to the performance and sustainability of the industry. Briana Everett looks at the top 10 risks to the future of Australia’s law firms.

Mental health

It comes as no surprise that mental illness is one of the biggest threats to Australia’s legal profession.

Over the last few years, countless reports in the media have revealed the devastating e ects ofdepression and anxiety and the high incidence of mental illness in the legal profession, compared to any other.

But despite the increasing willingness amongst members of the industry to speak openly about mental illness, as well as the signifi cant efforts made by organisations such as the Tristan Jepson Memorial Foundation (TJMF) to increase education about mental illness, it remains a huge issue and threat to the legal profession in 2011 and beyond.

In September this year, members of the profession gathered in the Federal Court of Australia to hear a seven-member panel address the ongoing issue of mental illness in the profession as part of the TJMF’s annual lecture. Discussing his own battle with depression, panel member and managing partner of HopgoodGanim, Bruce Humphrys, highlighted the need to address ways of preventing the illness, rather than focusing on alleviating the symptoms.

“The key is to work out how to prevent the disease rather than how to deal with it once it has occurred,” he said.

Consultant and former Middletons chief executive John Chisholm says mental illness represents a huge risk and cost to the profession. “I think it’s much more open now in terms of talking about it and recognising it, reflecting society in general, but I do think, unfortunately, we’re still dealing with many of the symptoms and not the cause,” he says. “That’s something we risk as a profession if we don’t start looking at the causes and stop dealing with the symptoms.”

The billable hour

While agreement is yet to be reached as to exactly why the legal profession suffers a higher rate of mental illness than any other profession, the billable hour is a recurring theme underlying talks about the causes of depression and anxiety amongst lawyers.

“When you treat people on the basis of only measuring their time and not by the value they give to a particular client … you’re reducing that person to a very low common denominator,” said Damian Sturzaker, partner of Marque Lawyers, at TMJF’s annual lecture this year. “It’s a very lonely experience.”

But whether or not it’s the major contributing factor to mental illness amongst lawyers, time based billing continues to be categorised as an obsolete and inefficient way of doing business,
and as a result, a major threat to the progress of the legal industry in the future.

“My personal opinion is that I’m uneasy about it. I can certainly see the sense of it from a commercial pointof view. My worry would be the work that is normally done by younger people is not done here”

Alexander Ward, President, Law Council of Australia

“We’re not digits or widgets … We’re actually knowledge workers … [Time-based billing] is just a dumb and outdated business model.”“We continue to fail to recognise that clients don’t actually buy our time and that really, what we do, is sell intellectual capital,” says Chisholm.

Chisholm says while he is seeing some change within the industry with a number of firms embracing alternative methods, many firms are still “clinging to old” ways.

“[Time-based billing] is a big issue and there are much better ways for lawyers to sell their value to their clients than just by time,” he argues.

While more and more fi rms are adopting value-based pricing methods, such as Marque Lawyers and Slater & Gordon – which this year rolled out fi ed fees in its family law practice – other firms are utilising new software to automate the process – a decision which has received significant criticism from some members of the industry.

After Corrs Chambers Westgarth announced in November that it had purchased automatic time billingsoftware to help track and report on lawyers’ daily work activities, Michael Bradley, the managing partner of Marque Lawyers, voiced his concern that the legal profession had “finally jumped the shark” in an opinion piece for Lawyers Weekly.

“Of all the steps our profession has been taking, by progressive inches, to dehumanise lawyers over the years, this just screams out for someone to say, ‘Enough!’” said Bradley.

“I’m outraged that this software even exists. But that’s different to being surprised. I’m not surprised.”

Workplace bullying/ harassment.

The toxic workplace culture of a number of law firms in Australia and the resulting bullying and harassmentcases that have surfaced over the years continue to pose a threat to the recruitment and retention of lawyers.

Closely linked with the time-based billing methods of law firms and associated mental health issues, in many cases the negative environment of some law firms has resulted in the decision of many lawyers to leave the profession.

Speaking at the TJMF 2010 annual lecture, professor Patrick McGorry likened the law firm environment to a Victorian era workplace.

“[A law firm is] a 19th century working environment. Twenty-first century working environments promote autonomy, mastery and purpose,” he said

Talking to Lawyers Weekly earlier this year, Freehills partner and TMJF board member Peter Butler also discussed the toxic nature of law firm culture.

“There are some that say the culture of law firms at worst can be toxic and, even if that’s not true, they can lead to stress levels which aren’t helpful to someone who may have a predisposition to anxiety or depression,” he said.

This year, behaviour experts at The University of Queensland (UQ) Business School joined forces with law societies across Australia to confront the “unacceptable workplace behaviour and toxic organisational structures” of the profession.

“Our terrific national firms are not doing what they’re doing for no reason. I think firms have got to accept that we’re part of Asia and that we’re global – those firms that don’t do so at their own peril.”

 John Chisholm, consultant, John Chisholm Consulting

According to UQ, low employee retention and potential exposure to legal action arising from workplace mistreatment, such as harassment and bullying, are just some of the signs of a toxic working environment.

“Cut-throat cultures such as those common to the legal profession can either encourage or simply allow employees to overwork, exposing them to well above average stress levels and a critically poor work-life balance,” says UQ Business School PhD candidate Rebecca Michalak – a former human resources director at a large Queensland law firm.

“With a number of workplace mistreatment, intimidation, harassment and bullying cases recently coming to light in the media and elsewhere, the legal industry, and employers in general, can consider themselves on notice.”

Legal process outsourcing

In October this year, Mallesons Stephen Jaques made the big announcement that it will be using 200 trained lawyers in India for legal work after signing a legal process outsourcing (LPO) contract. As the first large law firm in Australia to sign a formal agreement with an international LPO provider, with Blake Dawson soon following, Mallesons managing partner Tony O’Malley described it as a “watershed moment” for the Australian legal sector.

But while LPO has, for a number of years, been at the hub of developments regarding the delivery of legal services internationally, many Australian law firms have stood by and watched, reluctant to jump on the LPO bandwagon.

For some industry members, while it makes business sense, LPO presents a threat to the development of the country’s young lawyers.

“My personal opinion is that I’m uneasy about it. I can certainly see the sense of it from a commercial point of view. My worry wouldbe the work that is normally done by younger people is not done here,” says Law Council of Australia (LCA) president Alexander Ward.

“If it’s getting someone to do transcription services [much] cheaper, then of course it’s a sensible thing to do, because that’s not going to be the work of the young lawyers anyway. But if it’s to the extent to which it’s actually legal work, even if it’s low level, then that would be of more concern to me.”

For Chisholm, LPO is something that can’t be ignored. And to those firms that don’t embrace it, he says “do so at your own peril”.

“There is an element of work that is commoditised. I don’t like the word but it happens. Get used to it and learn to deal with it,” says Chisholm. “Those firms that are embracing it and acknowledging it will do really well. But for the firms pretending it’s not happening … or that there’s no benefit to it, then good luck.”

In response to concerns about the effect outsourcing agreements will have on the recruitment and retention of young lawyers,

Chisholm says the “smarter firms” will give their young lawyers “much more interesting work” instead of “mind-numbing discovery”. “Firms are embracing LPO much more now. Mallesons and many other firms are doing it,” he says. “Much of this legal process outsourcing is much more effective than what we’re doing.”

Global market uncertainty

During the global financial crisis, the Australian legal industry certainly underwent a great deal of change, with new developments such as LPO gaining momentum thanks to its cost-cutting benefits for law fi rms.
But despite the world economy’s recovery from the GFC, the Australian legal industry is not out of the woods in 2011.

As the European debt crisis unfolds and the United States struggles to avoid another recession, the performance of the Australian legal industry – while in a better position than many others – faces the threat of further global market turmoil.

In October, Foreign Affairs Minister Kevin Rudd conceded that Australia is not immune to the market turmoil in Europe.

“What happens in Europe in the financial markets and the stability of those markets affects Australia,” said Rudd at a CHOGM press conference. “It affects Asia, it affects the rest of the world, including Africa, Latin America and all the countries represented here at this Commonwealth Forum.

”For Chisholm, while the Australian legal profession is “very well managed” compared to many other professions, the global market uncertainty is unquestionably a risk.

“We are going to reflect how our clients are travelling and our clients refl ect how the economy is travelling,” he says. “Nearly six months into this financial year I’m seeing many firms that have not reached budget. They geared up again for work at the end of the last financial year, with salary increases and all these sorts of things, but there are some firms in some areas for which the work hasn’t come. Having said that, there are some firms doing really well, but I’d be surprised if most firms are not at, or under, their targets at this time of year.”

Arrival of global law firms

The influx of global firms in the Australian market over the last few years has undoubtedly had a considerable impact on the competitiveness of the industry, but according to some industry members, their arrival poses a considerable threat to local national firms which choose to ignore the globalisation of the industry.

“I think rival global firms are a threat,” says Chisholm. “Our terrific national firms are not doing what they’re doing for no reason. I think firms have got to accept that we’re part of Asia and that we’re global – those firms that don’t do so at their own peril.”

For Sydney-based Jones Day partner Matthew Latham, who spoke to Lawyers Weekly in September, the recent merger between Blake Dawson and Ashurst put the spotlight on the future of national firms in Australia.

“What looked like a trend on the international global side is starting to look like a tsunami,” he said. “The Blakes and Ashurst merger will put additional pressure on the other big national firms to determine what their international strategy is.”

Recognising that some firms will aim to differentiate themselves from those firms taking the global path, Chisholm says those fi rms need to have a very strong alternative strategy.

“There is certainly room for focused, strong firms that just concentrate on their own market,” he says, “but if you’re not well connected or networked, then you’d better be pretty good at what you do.”

In contrast, Allens Arthur Robinson partner Paul Quinn told Lawyers Weekly in September this year that the global fi rms have not had the huge impact the industry was anticipating.

“We have not seen a signifi cant impact from Allen & Overy or Clifford Chance in Australia because they don’t have the scale that we have,” said Quinn. “In Australia, we don’t see them as a significant threat yet.”

Similarly, for Corrs Chambers Westgarth chief executive officer John Denton, the threat of partners being lured from national to global firms is of no concern.

“[Global firms] are not a great concern for me in terms of recruitment because we haven’t actually seen a lot of that luring of top partners away,” he told Lawyers Weekly last month. “It’s not a priority concern for me at all.”

Shortage of lawyers in rural, regional and remote Australia

Attracting and retaining lawyers in rural, regional and remote (RRR) Australia has been an issue confronting the country’s legal profession for some time.

The LCA’s 2009 RRR Area Lawyers Survey revealed that RRR law firms and community legal centres are unable to find suitable lawyers to fill vacancies and that the problem will worsen in the next five to 10 years as experienced country lawyers retire.

But despite the efforts of the Commonwealth Government and organisations such as the LCA and the states’ law societies, the recruitment of lawyers into RRR areas remains a huge issue for the profession and a threat to the sustainability of regional legal practices.

“It is certainly a challenge that needs to be addressed and if we don’t address the challenge of getting more people out there, [law firm owners] are getting to the point where they’ll retire and won’t have anyone to take over their firm,” says Ward.

No-one to take the reins

Closely linked to the issue of retaining lawyers in RRR areas is the lack of succession planning amongst law firms across the country – an issue that continually arises as a key threat to the sustainability of legal practices.

Despite talk in recent years about succession planning and the elements required to implement an effective business strategy, a number of law firms and sole practitioners still fail to recognise the importance of planning for the evolution of their business and the ongoing effort that is required to ensure its longevity.

“Every firm I work for, succession planning is high on the list,” says Chisholm. “More than 10 per cent of private practice lawyers are over 60 [years old] and more than 30 per cent are over 50. I think it’s a huge issue, [aggravated] by the fact that we’ve still got too many people leaving the profession by the time they get to third or fifth year.” Similarly, partner at business advisory firm Grant Thornton, Bill Shew, says succession “is absolutely a risk for practices, given the changing dynamic of individuals”.

“Younger partners don’t have the same mindset as older partners and what they’re willing to step into is not what partners used to [step into] 10 years ago,” he says.

 

Lack of innovation

Underlying the number of challenges facing the legal profession in 2012 is a lack of innovation amongst Australian law firms.

According to Chisholm, one of the greatest risks for law fi rms is complacency and inertia, and a lack of innovation. “I haven’t been into a law firm that doesn’t say that they’re innovative on their website.

Some firms genuinely are but, for most, what we think in the profession is innovative, other industries look at us and go, ‘What? You’re kidding’,” he says.

“A lot of innovation we’re seeing is unfortunately coming from people outside the law. The disruptors to our profession are non-law firms. [We must] realise that one of the biggest threats to private law firms is competition from non-lawyers or non-law firms.”

Chisholm says the legal profession needs to stop dividing its business from others in ‘legal’ and ‘non-legal’ terms, and says it could learn from the accounting profession, which long before the legal profession differentiated itself and established consulting businesses.

“Accounting firms thought outside the square. We still, at times, just think we’re lawyers. I think the value law firms add is their business skills or being able to give commercial advice. Legal skills are just one little part of it really. Many organisations can do that and you don’t have to be a lawyer. I think that’s a real threat.”

While he says law firms must innovate to survive, Chisholm recognises that innovation is not easy within the legal profession as it is now. “We penalise innovation and penalise creativity, and we reward command and control,” he says. “Most firms don’t reward innovation and it’s a big risk.”

Losing relevance

Coinciding with the lack of innovation amongst the profession is the risk that the relevance of some fi rms will disappear unless they differentiate themselves and specialise.

“If a practice remains all things to all people, then their relevance can be called into question when their peers around them are becoming specialists,” says Shew. “Clients, certainly the larger ones, are just as likely now to buy a certain service from one firm and another service from another … Not having specialisation puts the practice at risk in terms of their relevance to their market.”

Chisholm agrees and says generalist, undifferentiated, full-service fi rms are “dying, if not dead”.

“The trouble is, in our profession, too many firms go for anything that moves,” he says, noting the ‘I have never met a billable hour I don’t like’ mentality amongst law firms. “Smart firms have a focused strategy and stick to it.”

 Article can be downloaded here

Click here to go to the article at Lawyers Weekly Online

 

 

After all you market for growth but innovate for profit.

But lets face it many organizations, especially professional firms, struggle with innovation despite just about every firms website mentioning just how innovative they are.

When I ask some firm leaders to give me examples of what their firm does that is truly innovative either the silence is deafening or the examples provided relate to efficiency gains, are pretty underwhelming and moreover are usually things practiced (often better) by their competitors. This is not to say such examples are bad or a firm should not have them- merely that they are not innovative per se.

Most professional firms like to benchmark themselves against their so called competitors to either feel good about themselves or to establish just how far they still have go to copy those they perceive as leaders, but this is hardly being creative or innovative. The real leading firms, those that are truly innovative, do not waste their energies benchmarking themselves against the more average firms. Most firms also tend to benchmark themselves against others in their profession – despite the fact that competition is increasingly coming from outside. Such benchmarking at best creates a race towards mediocrity.

True leading firms often find their creativity and innovation in one of two ways.

• They look outside their own industry and see what disruptors have done and then consider how something similar might apply to their industry.

• Alternatively they find their innovative ideas from within-because they have fostered and nurtured a culture that encourages and rewards creativity and innovation.

Regrettably the professions are not known for always encouraging such a culture and in fact the traditional firm business model and the internal rules and conventions built to support it can actively discourage and even penalize creativity and innovation. (The best example of this would be firms that continue to price their services solely by time-what incentive is there in those firms for anyone to come up with an innovative way to get a clients problem solved more quickly? None…  The firm loses revenue and most firms KPI their individuals on revenue- as such creative solutions may not be a good career move.)

For the most part and for understandable reasons, our professions like our people to be obedient and diligent –to conform to the file opening procedure, send out a Costs Agreement, make notes of every conversation, enter time on your timesheets, etc. And to be fair much of the work undertaken for clients requires a fair slice of diligence and discipline, operating within rules and timelines and conforming to convention.

Our professions of course measure all this ad nauseum and reward those that do these things well- whilst penalizing those that behave otherwise.

For all our fixation and eons of experience on measurements, I do not come across many firms that either measure or reward creativity and innovation. Creativity does not come from invoking a rule or an order or a formula from management. You might be able to make people stay late at the office and bill upwards of 5.5 chargeable hours per day, but you cannot force anyone to be creative. One of the world’s foremost business thought leaders Gary Hamel in his excellent book The Future Of Management sums this up nicely- “…while the tools of management can compel people to be obedient and diligent, they can’t make them creative and committed”.

Yet if most of the pundits are correct in that firms that do not innovate simply will not survive in the medium to long term (and some have not and will not even in the short term) or will be left languishing at the bottom competing for their commoditized services mainly on price, are we not measuring and rewarding the wrong things? At the very least can we not find room to also reward the right things?

Why is it then that some firms foster a culture of continuous improvement and encourage creativity and innovation (not just talk about it or use it as marketing hype) yet others fail miserably- even if their intentions are well meaning? Some reasons include:

• In any organization the culture is of course set by the top so firm leaders have to genuinely believe in their heart of hearts that creativity and innovation is good for their firm and for their clients.

• Many professionals however are inherently conservative and risk averse (that is why many became lawyers or accountants in the first place) and thinking creatively does not come naturally nor is it part of our training or conditioning. As such we are often scared of anything seen as new or untried, untested or worse still if no one can give a guarantee of success. Lawyers in particular work in a precedent based environment in their daily lives so if something has not been done before (successfully) by someone else (they respect) they will rarely give it a go.

• The traditional partnership model itself is far from conducive to innovation. If consensus is necessary at partner level to push a new idea through on a firm wide basis it is often hard to bring everyone along for the innovation ride and a good idea is often killed or is so watered down once the LCD (lowest common denominator) factor takes hold the status quo is effectively maintained.

• The professions also still primarily work on the old “command and control” model and whilst- at least in the short term- this maybe good for the discipline/obedience side of things again this is hardly conducive to establishing a creative culture. You have to empower people before they can ever hope to unleash any creativity but many leaders just cannot bring themselves to let their brood off their leash.

• Innovation is not short term and for many firms that have their measurements and rewards built around short term goals (e.g. 5.5 billable hours per day) they just cannot see the point in investing in something at the expense of their short term goals. Particularly when the results of which, even if it is successful, they may never see (and never be rewarded for).

Being innovative does mean being different or unique and whilst many firms talk about differentiating themselves in the market this is often far from the reality as there is understandable comfort and safety in the warmth of a herd.

Despite all these inherent obstacles, there are firms that seem to consistently come up with really innovative ideas and practices.

You don’t need a firms website to tell you whether they are innovative or not. In some you only have to walk in and you can feel and smell the air of innovation-much like when you walk into an Apple store. But the real test  is when the stories and experiences are told and shared by the firms team members and their clients.

They know what it feels like to be part of a Firm of the Future- not part of a Firm of the Past.

As William Gibson said “The future is already here…it’s just not evenly distributed”

I have read many books on pricing, given my interest in the topic, and this is one of the most comprehensive yet understandable for lawyers.

Ron Baker, founder of The Verasage Institute, a think tank dedicated to teaching value-based pricing to professionals around the world, has written many books on this topic but his latest combines an up-to-date healthy mixture of the theory of value-based pricing and hundreds of practical tips and case studies to enable the theory to be put into practice.

This book is a must read for any lawyer even remotely interested in pricing their services other than by time. Even those who may not see any change happening in the legal profession or are not inclined to move away from time-based billing should read it, if only to be aware of what an increasing number of their competitors are doing.

It is also a book for those who say “value-based pricing is OK in theory but it just won’t/can’t/is too difficult to work in practice”. It is filled with proven, practical examples of how firms can and do price their services other than by time and successfully answer those critics who say it cannot be done.

The book provides valuable insights and guidelines into what works and does not work – more than enough to allow individual firms and their clients to decide what might best suit them.

Covering more than 350 pages it is an extensive but absorbing read from this veteran speaker, writer and educator. One of the best features of the book are the seven appendices for downloading free from a website containing a myriad of checklists, sample forms, case studies and strategies.

While largely US-centric, the book does cover case studies of UK, New Zealand and Australian firms and both theory and case studies are easily converted to the reader’s individual circumstances. After all, pricing is based on economics and economics knows no jurisdictional boundaries.

I guarantee this book will change your practice, the way you measure and reward your staff, and the value of the services you deliver – or don’t – to your clients.

By JOHN CHISHOLM, JOHN CHISHOLM CONSULTING

(also fellow of The Verasage Institute and a friend and colleague of Ron Baker)

 * Access the online version here

Lawyers Weekly article by Brianna Everett

Goldilocks Solution key to lateral hiring strategy

Posted Nov 23 2011, 12:46 AM by Lawyers Weekly

Law firms with a conservative lateral hiring strategy tend to be more successful than their more active or minimally-active direct competitors, according to new research from the UK.