Make More Rain : disaster recovery, hr

Partner Income Will Depend on Women Lawyers

Admin — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 18:37:00 GMT

Following my post The Work/Life Balance Issue Continues to Damage the Legal Profession, Denise Howell of Bag and Baggage reminded me that accommodations extended to those with child care responsibilities should not be limited to just mothers:

“I know plenty of two-income families who have decided to have the father assume primary child care responsibilities due to pure economics -- mom makes more. There could be a host of other reasons (dad gets primary custody in divorce proceedings, etc.) why this discussion cuts across the genders. I think it would be shortsighted (and possibly actionable) for a firm to treat the issue otherwise.”

I agree with Denise that any solution should include fathers who assume the primary child care responsibilities. However, from the perspective of a business enterprise, the main issue is how to provide an environment that makes a legal career friendlier for women attorneys who now represent at least 50 percent of legal graduates entering the workforce.

With women accounting for 50% of the new lawyers, the primary child care issue is clearly important and getting more important so it is time to invest in exploring new ideas and investigating best practices. Yesterday I ordered the book by Lauren Stiller Rikleen that addresses the issues of Women legal professionals. Her book is titled Ending the Gauntlet: Removing Barriers to Women’s Success in the Law.

Partner incomes will increasingly depend on the talent of women in your firm. Thus for more partner income it is time to figure out not only how to attract women associates but how to hold on to those women as career members of the firm.

Morepartnerincome.com is sponsored by Juris, Inc. For information about Juris® products and services for increasing law firm performance and partner income, go to www.Juris.com.

The Work/Life Balance Issue Continues to Damage the Legal Profession

Admin — Fri, 21 Jul 2006 17:39:04 GMT

Denise Howell’s firing by Reed Smith was a shot heard around the legal blog world. See Dennis Kennedy’s post or read Howell’s post breaking the firing news. As Dennis points out, none of us knows why Reed Smith made what appears to be such a dumb decision. The reaction to the firing illustrates that much of the balanced life controversy in law firms is really “code” for the new mother issue as illustrated by Carolyn Elefant’s comments: “If you're a talented woman planning on having kids, why in the world would you EVER choose to work there?”

We need to discuss the new mother issues as the “new mother issues” and not under the politically correct cover of “the balanced life issue.” By cloaking the discussion under the wider net of the work/life balance moniker, we are being asked to condemn law firm work practices in total. If we would deal with child raising issues in an up-front way, more progress toward a woman-friendlier profession would occur. For the future of the profession, progress dealing with those issues must be made!

According to a study done by the American Bar Association in 2001, some 44 women held general counsel or chief counsel positions at Fortune 500 companies, 71 percent of women lawyers are in private practice, a majority of students entering law schools are female, about 18 percent of U.S. federal district and appellate judges are women, and two women have sat on the Supreme Court of the United States.

Women now equal or outnumber male law students. The profession can ill afford to make the pursuit of a private practice career unusually difficult for half of the lawyer population.

What is the answer? I do not have it, but history may hold a clue. Lawyers have gone to war and returned to become prominent members of their pre-war law firms. What law firms did and are doing for returning soldiers, they can and should do for returning mothers. Likewise, law firms provide flexibility to guard members to discharge their obligations; they can and should do the same for new mothers. The absences and special flexibility required for both extend over only a limited number of years. Those few years are insignificant in terms of one’s potential lifetime career contributions to a law firm. Another vexing issue to be resolved is health insurance. I will leave that to the experts.

But there is another side to this. Fair or unfair, there is a price to be paid by anyone returning after an extended absence or period of required special consideration and flexibility. While they may have the individual talent and will to catch up, they can’t initially return at the same place in line as their prior peers. That applies regardless of gender.

As it is at present, the “in” thing to do in media and among consultants, conference faculty, etc., is to portray the life of the attorney as an abandonment of family, friends, fun, and civic and religious obligations. At the same time, we note and report the importance that all those facets of life have played for the successful professional in relationship building and rainmaking.

The success of any “service” business or profession is measured by its service to others. Client interest comes before self-interest. That is why we call it a “service”. The legal profession recognizes the service aspect in spades, charging you with the professional obligation to honor, at your own expense if necessary, the paramount interest of the client.

Successful service professionals, business executives, doctors, and investment bankers all find a way to have family, friends, and fun while also participating in civic and religious affairs. Lawyering is no different from any of the above—lawyers do not carry a greater burden. Let’s stop pretending that they do.

Let’s turn this conversation around. On the one hand, let’s deal with the child raising years of lawyer-mothers; and on the other hand, let’s start celebrating the benefits of lawyering, including the satisfaction of service to others—of upholding “truth, justice and the American Way!”

PS: My above comments by no means excuse law firms of bad management, dumb decisions, poor internal communication, or a failure to value and develop its human capital. There are bad businesses as well as great businesses in every category. The business of law is no different.

Morepartnerincome.com is sponsored by Juris, Inc. For information about Juris® products and services for increasing law firm performance and partner income, go to www.Juris.com.

Law Firms Can't Protect Paper

Admin — Fri, 13 Jan 2006 20:00:00 GMT

The President of Juris, Inc., Stephen Collins, was one of two keynote speakers at the recent Houston, Texas, Managing Partner Forum organized by The Remsen Group, www.TheRemsenGroup.com.

Given recent events, it is not surprising that disaster recovery was one of the hot discussion topics. But this discussion was different from the usual checklist of prevention steps. What made it different were the real life stories and experiences from those shut down by Katrina. One eight-office firm had five of its eight offices shut down at the same time - all rendered inaccessible.

Their chances of full recovery are much higher than if these firms had suffered from more isolated individual crises. That observation was one of two important points to come out of the discussion. Law offices hit by Katrina were not alone. Because everyone was in the same situation, they got a competitive pass. Firms recovering from Katrina feel they learned a critical lesson—law firms have an obligation to be prepared and survival depends on it.

The second lesson is that "you cannot protect paper!" That is risk number one. You can replace office space, equipment, phones, etc., but without your "client and case stuff," you are out of business. The only way to protect the contents of paper is to convert it to electronic digits and images. Once you have done that, you have the ability to apply the same safeguards available to you to secure your computer records. But as noted in a prior post, traditional in-house backups are unreliable and nearby off-site storage faces the same risk as the law firm’s location. The right choice is to use an online backup service such as LiveVault.

Very large law firms view the proposition of digitalizing paper as impossible given the size of the task. It is a daunting task for any law firm. One firm pointed out that their off-site storage facility charges $3.00 to retrieve a box and $1.00 to store it. At $3.00 a box, the firm explained that it would cost $40,000 just to pull archived information for the purpose of scanning it.

Everyone needs to take a deep breath. This is not an all-or-nothing proposition. Every year that passes renders the archived information less essential to the firm’s survival. You don’t have to convert all the archived paper records. The key is to start.

Every one of us is at risk from something—hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, fires, floods, vandalism, broken pipes, terrorists, etc. The two most important steps you can take to protect the survivability of your firm and the interest of your clients from disaster is to 1) start converting new paper through scanning and 2) start using an online service to back up that information and safeguard it.

Law Firm Professional Development Investments

Admin — Thu, 25 Aug 2005 17:07:00 GMT

Beth Keno, who heads up the Professional Services area of Juris, Inc., sent me this insight which can have a big impact:

Most firms have a goal for the number of billable hours each timekeeper in their firm should achieve, but do they have a number of professional development hours? Is this a line item on your budget? If not, why?

Professional development should be viewed as an investment for the firm and a personal investment by the employee. More firms are finding that to attract top talent, they need to provide opportunities for professional development as well as growth opportunities within the firm. If your firm is not investing in building the skills and knowledge base of your staff, then you are missing out on a competitive edge.

In the recent 2005 survey of Law Firm Managing Partners, the top two major challenges facing firms today are “competition for business and competition for talent.” A firm willing to invest in itself and its staff reaps the rewards many-fold.

Ask yourself this – if your marketing message and firm message included “We invest in our people so they can provide you with the best business and legal advice," would that give you a competitive edge? Absolutely it would.

Beth is on target. It is also worth noting that continuing professional development has another benefit. Your team picks up new knowledge (information, trends and new twists). That new knowledge gives the firm a reason to contact existing clients to share that information. That action is likely to generate new business or, at a minimum, solidify the existing client relation.

Continuing professional development investments increase the long-term value of the firm’s talent and can also have an immediate payback—provided you have in place tactics for capitalizing on new knowledge to generate more business and more per-partner income.

Level 5 Leadership in the Law Firm

Admin — Wed, 24 Aug 2005 19:53:51 GMT

The International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) conference that I am attending does not just deal with technology. There is a heavy leadership component to the sessions. There is more and more evidence that leadership skills influence the bottom line—per-partner income. The Hay Group found that the most effective lawyers use six styles of leadership. Their news release, issued yesterday, included the following: “Clearly leadership makes a difference to the bottom line. The partners Hay Group studied were not in the outstanding group because of their popularity, but because their results were better”. To read the complete news release go to http://haygroup.com/press_room/press_releases/Lawyers_Who_Lead.asp.

Leadership comes in many forms, but what makes a truly great leader great? What leadership style will make a law firm truly great?

The current issue of the Harvard Business Review answers that question in an article by Jim Collins, no relation that I know of. His answer based on research, is a Level 5 leader. A Level Five leader has all of the prerequisite capabilities of leadership but in addition they have two dominant characteristics that separate the extraordinary from the good. Those two characteristics may appear to contradict each other but when present they put those leaders in a class all their own. What are the characteristics?

They are humility plus professional will. These extraordinary leaders are at the same time modest and willful, shy and fearless. They do not have egos that get in the way. They understand three things and they are consistent with it:

1. What their company can be the best at in the world

2. How its economics work best

3. What best ignites the passions of its people

Consistency creates organizational momentum¾something the author refers to as the "flywheel”. When you push an organization in one direction consistently, it creates its own momentum toward that objective. Merely good (or lesser) organizations in the author’s study never achieved the flywheel effect; “instead, they lurched back and forth with radical change programs, reactionary moves and restructurings”.

My own view is that while we cannot all be great leaders, we can emulate them for better results. Their humility can be summed up by the saying, “All I did was hire the right people”. Their will is a reflection of their experience and the determination to learn from it. They have acquired a strong belief in the right way to do things and through their own commitment to and promotion of those beliefs, their beliefs become the framework for the organization’s culture. It becomes what they are.

The result is an organization or law firm with top-notch people with a common culture pursuing a unified vision of their mission. When those things come together, you will have one powerful law firm.

Jim Collins’ article appeared in the July—August 2005 Harvard Business Review. (www.hbr.org).

Big Law Firms Shed Their Gray Hair

Admin — Fri, 12 Aug 2005 17:37:48 GMT

Few big firm lawyers work past 60, according to the July article in the Chicago Lawyer. Firms are making way for the younger guys and ladies. Since the firms are legally partnerships, they can get away with mandatory retirement. That is something the rest of us cannot do -- which I’m thankful for because I have crossed that 60-year mark. There is still some mileage left in modern sixty year olds.

What does it mean to you?

You may need to think about continuity and transition plans in your own firm. Your senior partners can’t work forever.

You may need to also implement plans to make way for those coming up or risk losing them and a part of your business.

You may be interested in shoring up your talent by adding some unemployed 60-year old gray-haired guys to your firm.

How Mid-Sized Law Firms Compete for Talent

Admin — Tue, 02 Aug 2005 19:43:48 GMT

Back on June 27^th and again on June 28^th of 2005, I posted entries regarding Generation Y. There is a good chance that the characteristics of this new wave of associates and lawyers are the perfect fit for mid-sized firms. It is likely that these firms will now have a competitive advantage for several years when competing against their larger peers for new talent.

An article by Kevin Marro in the July 2005 Canadian Lawyer titled “How Mid-Sized Firms Find Top Talent” never mentions Generation Y, but it is clear from his interviews with successful mid-sized law firms that they are selling exactly what Generation Y is buying.

First, one needs to understand that this next generation is not looking to join losers! Like all those before them, a firm has to be “profitable, have good people who are well-paid and well-appreciated” before the firm even gets on their radar screen. These new associates want to join winners.

When they arrive at their new firm, they expect to arrive as an equal member of the team. Generation Y associates are not, however, willing to live a single dimension life. They are hard workers. They get the job done! They get it done faster working smarter and then they are out the door to participate in recreation, family, civic, volunteer and self-development activities. They feel no guilt about it. They are good, creative and flexible in how they work. And they know it. Mid-sized firms that present themselves as entrepreneurial, that will put the newcomer face to face with clients, provide broad ranging opportunities to develop their skills, etc., can beat larger firms at recruiting—and they are doing it.

Marron’s article is a good read. The Canadian Lawyer Web site is www.canadianlawyermag.com.

It is worth noting that in a recent 2005 survey of Law Firm Managing Partners, the two most pressing issues facing mid-sized firms were “competition for business and competition for talent." That competition was indicated as coming from larger regional firms and from the mega firms. Responses to other questions in the survey would indicate that as a whole, mid-sized firms are doing a pretty good job at combating those threats on both fronts. If you would like a copy of the 2005 survey with responses and commentary, e-mail me at Collins@juris.com.

Generation Y

Admin — Tue, 28 Jun 2005 18:49:17 GMT

According to Eric Chester, we are shaped by the events and culture in which we grow up. Chester is the best known observer of Generation Y or, as he calls them, "Generation Why". He writes and lectures extensively on the subject. You can purchase his books on http://generationwhy.com.

The 24 and 26 year olds joining law firms have never known life without cell phones, pagers and voice mail. As Chester notes in “Employing Generation Why?”, their world has always included minivans, bottled water, cable television, overnight package delivery, and chat rooms. They would have no personal reference for a time before ATMs, VCRs, PCs, CDs, MTV, CNN and SUVs! They have never known a world without AIDS, crack, or terrorists. Sometimes referred to as the over-achieving, over-scheduled generation, their lives have been programmed from the beginning with school, sports, arts, clubs and activities. They have never known the slow pace of life of their grandparents. They see life as a drop-down menu of choices that can be accessed immediately with the click of a mouse. Speed, change and uncertainty are normal for Y’s.

I was interested in the observations about generation Y from representatives of a number of law firms as reported in The National Law Journal by Leigh Jones. In general, they were not favorable comments. But when one examines the standards by which law firms judge Generation Y’s, compared to the expectations of this new generation, one can easily come to the conclusion that the problem isn’t with Generation Y’s. It is with the law firm standards which unfortunately have not kept up with the times. Why should law firms change? The 68 million strong block of Gen Y is the only labor pool available to law firms for the next 10 to 15 years. Where are you going to get your new associates and, in a few years, your lateral hires if not from Gen Y?

Gen Y’s aren’t going to change, but they will change the successful law firms.

First among equals -- don’t expect the automatic respect and obedience just because you are an authority figure within your law firm. They have watched sports figures discredited, heard a president lie, and witnessed tell-all books debunking past heroes. Gen Y’s don’t accept authority or “the way we do things” as given. They ask why I should listen to you. Why should I do it that way? They don’t accept at face value that you deserve their respect or loyalty or that the “way we do things” is the right way to do things. They may arrive in the firm treating their seniors as peers rather than their superiors. By existing standards, many may view that as disrespectful. Law firms that welcome Gen Y’s as legal professionals rather than grips and gofers will enhance their appeal.

Fast paced, Generation Y’s are impatient with anything less than instant. They need instant feedback, instant validation, instant rewards, etc. Six-month reviews and year-end bonuses do not provide meaningful incentives to Gen Y’s. Law firms have to shed red tape. They have to develop fast tracks for advancement. Put in place mentoring with immediate reviews and rewards for progress, etc.

Creativity vs. Precedent -- Gen Y’s hit the ground as skilled time managers and multitaskers. They practice “management candy” by seeking the maximum results with minimum efforts. In short, they look for ways to work smarter rather than harder. They believe they can do it all. They strive to get the job done and still enjoy life. Firms may mistakenly view this as a lack of willingness to pay their dues (working long hours) as young members of the firm. Firms willing to encourage creativity and innovation and reward for getting things done with less, rather than rewarding for “hard work and long hours”, will attract Gen Y’s and make a great leap forward in client services and profitability.

Playing for a team, the desire to be a respected equal on a team may be the strongest motivator for Gen Y’s. Creating that team environment and welcoming Gen Y as an equal member are the most important things a law firm can do to attract the cream of this new generation of legal professionals.

Preparing your law firm for Gen Y is important enough to be one of the issues with which the firm’s planning team needs to deal. Adjusting the firm’s culture to attract and retain this new generation of legal professionals has to include the entire scope of the firm from recruiting, compensating, mentoring and advancement.

What are Gen Y’s looking for:

Rapid involvement in challenging, even exciting, experiences
An environment where they can be innovative and creative -- a place to make their mark
Fast-track environment, with immediate feedback and recognition
Technology on the leading edge
Teamwork and collaborations rather than one-on-one competition between individuals with an “eat what you kill” mind set
Acceptance and respect as an equal on the team
An organization that accepts, even encourages, challenges and questions to long-standing assumptions, procedures, practices, precedents, etc.

The truth is that Gen Y may well be the most talented, creative, tolerant, technology savvy labor pool yet. The question is, will the law firm be able to withstand this new breed of lawyers that arrive thinking he or she is one of you? Can your “old guys” handle that?

Generation X

Admin — Mon, 27 Jun 2005 17:58:56 GMT

Stephen Collins, President of Juris, Inc., and I were discussing the events of The 2005 Southeastern Managing Partner Forum held June 7 in Atlanta, Georgia. Stephen was part of the faculty of the Remsen Group event.

An issue raised by many firms is the question “how to deal with Generation X associates?". Apparently most felt that the work ethic had changed, yadda, yadda, yadda.

Being on the leading edge of Generation X, Stephen was surprised at the concern. He reports that “the more we discussed the topic, the more apparent it became that this was a perception issue more than reality. You know the routine -- when I was your age we walked 20 miles to school, in the snow, uphill, both ways, barefooted."

What did come out of the conversation was the realization by attendees that you don’t have to guess if associates are doing what is required. Use the technology you have to measure performance and to alert you when an associate is not pulling his or her weight, is currently unassigned and available, and/or isn’t turning in his/her hours on time.

Actually, most law firms are not behind in terms of technology. They are behind in using what they have; they are behind in “applied management”. I try to stay away from commercials, but managing the firm's resources (associates and paralegals) will become much easier later this summer when Juris® releases its new Practice Management tool for managing attorneys, supervising attorneys and the firm’s legal professionals. This business intelligence tool gives the attorney a drill-down, graphical field of view over their area of responsibility. You can tell at a glance what is happening and isn’t happening related to target. I think it is the first time that managing and supervising attorneys are getting a tool that gives them information in time to change the outcome, rather than just analyze “why” after the fact.

Generation Xers are not slackers. In fact, they are uniquely independent to the point that some would say they lack traditional employer loyalty. They include a high percentage of entrepreneurs. Among the non-entrepreneurs, they easily transition from one employer to another. Comfortable with computers and the Internet, they tend to work smarter and more confidently rather than harder and pressure driven. If you think Generation X has been a challenge, get ready for Generation Y. They are just entering the professional labor pool and have their own unique traits. Later postings will discuss more about Generation Y.