After a great holiday enjoying the Northern Hemisphere summer – and thereby avoiding some of the cold winter of Sydney – I returned last week to a read about law firm rates and pricing that really caught my attention, the ‘LawVision & Peer Monitor Pricing Survey: The Growing Prominence of Pricing within Law Firms‘.

Predominately North American based, it’s nonetheless an interesting read – with some contentious stuff (see the ‘LawVision Maturity Curve’ for example) – for anyone even remotely interested in following the current trends and traits affecting law firm pricing issues. But what particularly grabbed my attention in this Report was the ‘8 biggest challenges law firms associate with rates and pricing’ (Figure 3):

And what really, really fascinated me about this list is how few of them actually have anything to do with either rates (if that’s the way you want to do things) or pricing.

As you can see from the list, in desending order they are:

1. Managing cash leaks across the entire rates lifecycle (discounts, write­downs, write­offs, collections) – my comment: neither a rates issue  nor a pricing issue, but a behavioural issue
2. Educating the lawyers in the firm on pricing principles – my comment: neither a rates issue  nor a pricing issue, but a training issue
3. Managing rate discounts requested by clients – my comment: neither a rates issue  nor a pricing issue, but a behavioural issue (and are we seriously still having this conversation!)
4. Negotiating with clients about the firm’s value and rate/pricing alignment
5. Putting in place a disciplined pricing process – my comment: neither a rates issue  nor a pricing issue, but a training issue
6. Managing profitability – my comment: neither a rates issue  nor a pricing issue, but an accounting issue
7. Developing alternative fees
8. Pitching for work generally or through the RFP process – my comment: can someone please let me know what this has to do with either rates or pricing!

Which leaves us with:

• Negotiating with clients about the firm’s value and rate/pricing alignment, and
• Developing alternative fees

Both of which, depending where in the buying cycle these conversations are taking place with your customer, could actually have something to do with a rates and pricing discussion.

But seriously, Challenges 4 & 7 of 8, and we wonder why law firms struggle with the concept of pricing and the disconnect between firm and customer.

And if we are really being honest and true to our clients, then even inward looking the #1 issue should not be ‘Managing cash leaks across the entire rates lifecycle (discounts, write¬downs, write-offs, collections)‘ but should rather be: ‘How are we rewarding and incentivising in our staff?‘ – because if the answer to that is ‘utilisation‘, then everything above is relatively meaningless.

As always though, interested in your thoughts/views/feedback.

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