Happy New Year to everyone!

At this time of the year you will likely receive a whole bunch of emails in your inbox coaching you on what success should look like for the year ahead, and how you can make sure you achieve your goals. The reality is though that by week 2 of the new calendar year most of us have moved on from any big picture goal setting ambitions we stupidly set on New Year’s Eve and are, by now, heavily invested in the minuter of day-to-day life of making sure we meet our billable targets!

So, with this background in mind, I wanted to say whenever I think about what success might look like, I go back and read one of the best articles ever written on this topic – a post by Mark A Cohen in Bloomberg Law way back in August 2015!

Straight off the bat, it’s notable that the title of Mark’s post is ‘What are the Right Metrics for Law Firm Success?‘ and not ‘What are the Right Financial Metrics for Law Firm Success?’ – and therein lies one of the primary reasons why I love Mark’s post so much.

Anyhow, in his post Mark sets out the following 14 metrics under the sub-title ‘How should a law firm be measured?‘:

• Excellence in areas that relate to client business
• Client retention
• Lawyer retention
• Innovation
• Effective use of technology
• Alignment of financial interest with clients
• Flexible billing model
• Collaboration with clients and others in legal supply chain
• Efficiency
• Mentorship and training
• Diversity
• Performance metrics — client surveys and internal
• Job satisfaction
• Pro BonoProgram and Community Involvement

If you take “getting paid for what you do” and “being profitable” as a given, then I think Mark’s list is about as close to perfect as you can get.

So, if you are still on the “What will success look like in 2023?” or even, “What will success look like in FY24?” (heaven forbid you are that forward thinking!), bandwagon; then take a look Mark’s Bloomberg post – it’s a cracker even 7+ years after it was published!

As usual comments are my own. And I hope everyone has a great 2023!

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