#Auslaw issues

Mid-year review of the Australian Legal Market

Thomson Reuters recently (27 February 2023) published its 2 page Mid-year review of the Australian Legal Market.

As usual, the Report is a very interesting read; but by far the two standouts for me were:

Expense Growth

Notice that rise in Direct Expenses?

That’s down to the pay rises you just gave to your 2 to 6 year PQE lawyers who are now sitting around very under utilised!

Where will clients need help?

The other chart in the Report that caught my attention was where clients anticipate their spend over the next 6 months.

Given the hangover from COVID, Workplace doesn’t surprise me too much.

Dispute Resolution, in difficult economic times, will always be a winner.

But, why Regulatory? We have moved past most of our Royal Commissions…

…and unless I’m missing something there is no growth mentioned for either Privacy or Cyber.

Given the ongoing changes in privacy regulation in Australia just announced, and global concerns around cyber (with IPH Ltd going into a trading halt following a potential cyberattack on two of its member firms this week), this must be an oversight.

If this all sounds too close to home to be true, feel free to drop me a line to talk through how we can fix this up.

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The ‘2022 Australia: State of the Legal Market Report’

The latest update on how the Australian legal market is fairing through COVID was published by Thomson Reuters Institute and Melbourne Law School yesterday (29 August 2022).

Some of my key take-aways from this ‘The 2022 Australia: State of the Legal Market Report‘ include:

FY22 (defined as being 1 July to 30 June) was a tale of two halves. In the first half, 1 July to 31 December, Australian law firms smashed it out of the park (6.4% growth in the first half), but the second half was much harder going and the market declined 2.1%, representing its weakest quarterly return since 2013
Drivers of growth were all the usual crowd: mergers & acquisitions, banking & finance, etc
Retention – especially at the Associate level – is a major concern with 31.6%, roughly one-third, of Australian associates having decided to move on from their firm over the past 12 months
Law firms are trying to counter this attrition rate by offering their star Associates more money, which makes sense when you consider how much it costs to replace lawyers, but more recently Associate demands have included demands outside of pure financial reward – including a belief that the firm is taking a strategic direction that aligns with their values
Your firm’s reputation in the marketplace is important if you want to keep your Associates
Diversity IS important:

Global research from the Thomson Reuters Institute found that female lawyers and/or those from under-represented demographics, as well as those who identified as LGBTQ+, were the most likely to leave their current firms.
Page 14

Lawyers in Australia from diverse backgrounds are NOT feeling the love:

lawyers from diverse backgrounds gave notably lower-than-average marks in both their own well-being and their leadership demonstrating the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) as compared to lawyers with non-diverse backgrounds
Page 14

Anyone who has read the ‘2021 Annual Profile of Solicitors‘ by the Law Society of NSW should be able to tell you why that’s a problem that’s not going away unless law firms demonstrate a change.

Innovation remains important, even though we are not actually too sure what that means as we continue to draw a hard line between “innovation” and “technology”

That said, there is a really cool ‘Innovation adoption checklist‘ on page 23 that is worth the download by itself!

Partners are leading the utilisation charge – there may be a whole host of reason given for this from “clients want partner time on the matter” to “we don’t want to over burden our associates because they may leave us” but an annual average utilisation rate of slightly over 1,200 billable hours tells me some lawyers out there are working very hard

Last, but by no way least, is an amazing graph on pages 26 and 27 that sets out the ‘4 roles of a law firm partner’ which is brilliant and makes me wish I had created it!

Well done it all involved and make sure you read the report.

As usual, comments are my own.

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What are the functions and responsibilities of the Managing Partner in 2022?

An article was published in today’s Australian Financial Review by Aaron Patrick (‘Ashurst should accept its purpose is not extraordinary‘) that, frankly, I disagree with. And when I say “disagree with“, I acknowledge and respect Aaron’s comments, but Ashurst (like Allens) are celebrating 200 years so we should cut them some slack.

Anyhow, that’s not why I’m posting tonight – although it kind of is.

Because, included in Aaron’s story is a 1978 memo written by Geoffrey Hone -‘Functions and Responsibilities of the Managing Partner‘ – that’s an exert from a book Ashurst have published to celebrate their 200 years – ‘Ashurst, the story of a progressive global law firm‘ (2022) which I think is light years ahead if its time (the memo that is, not the book):

So, aside from the use of “he”, which given who the MP of Blake and Riggall was at time could be forgiven, can you see any fault at all in this manifesto?

I’d go so far to say – not only is this a brilliant piece of work, if you want to set up a law firm in this day and age, follow it!

As usual, comments are my own and I welcome feedback from anyone who can think of a manifesto for your law firm managing partner that would include items outside this – because we should always remember, our MPs work for us!

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What’s hot and what’s not in #Auslaw

My article on ‘What’s hot and what’s not in #Auslaw’ was published in PM magazine this month.

My thanks to Matt Baldwin and the team at PM magazine for giving me this opportunity!

You can read the article here:

1263_pm_magazine_jun22_p.6-71 Download

As usual, comments are my own and I welcome feedback.

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Should your job title accurately reflect what you do?

It’s something that has troubled me for a number of years:

Is the title of the job you do more important than the job you actually do?

For a long time I thought the whole debate was rather meaningless and irrelevant: do the job, be present, be a part of the team, kick goals.

But last week I read a report by ALM Intelligence report that made me rethink this a little.

So, before I start, the ALM Intelligence report is an important study on equality of revenue (or lack there of) between the sexes in legal marketing. Nothing I write below should detract from that and we should all be horrified by the outcomes of the report.

Which then brings me to the point of this post – a totally unrelated graph in the ALM Intelligence report (I hope) on:

Which made me think again:

Is it the title or the job?

Because while I agree with the many in the discussion I had about this on LinkedIn: that it’s about the job, expertise and experience over the title…

I’m still left wondering…

…are Marketing and Business Development missing a trick here?

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When does the law of supply and demand not apply? – when you’re running a law firm of course!

The Law of Supply and Demand
The law of supply and demand is a theory that explains the interaction between the sellers of a resource and the buyers for that resource. The theory defines what effect the relationship between the availability of a particular product and the desire (or demand) for that product has on its price. Generally, low supply and high demand increase price and vice versa.

Results published in Peer Monitor’s Q2 2020 Report last week suggest that the broader economy has a lot to learn from running a law firm.

Why would I say this?

Well, what would you think would be the logical outcome from:

Average demand for legal services decreasing by 5.9%, and
Productivity across all fee earners declining by 7.2%?

In normal circumstances you would be given credit for thinking that prices would come down, or at least hold firm. But as we know, running a law firm is anything but normal circumstances because as the Report goes on to state:

Average worked rate charged across the market was 5.2% higher than at the same point last year.

That’s worth repeating: Higher! 5.2% Higher!

If you are wondering how that can even be possible, the answer is relatively simple: ‘partners [of law firms] have begun completing a higher proportion of [the] work by volume.‘

I would be the first to admit that one possible reason why this [partners doing more of the work in a leverage model – see my post here on leverage] can be the case is because the type of work being done by law firms has become far more complex since the onset of COVID-19 and this requires more grey-haired advice with a higher proportion of leverage at partner level. After all, none of us have lived through a pandemic of this nature and so there really isn’t much precedent for young lawyers to go looking for and so partners and senior lawyers are needing to be more hands on when it comes to file time.

But the cynic in me also thinks that’s a likely to be load of rubbish. Law firms (like many in the economy I will add) have been furloughing staff and making staff redundant during the pandemic. On the flip-side, budgeted number of billable hours for individual lawyers do not appear to have been reduced (other than pro-rata to the number of days lawyers may need to be taking off).

And so we find ourselves in this position where individual billable hour targets still need to be met, but overall demand for legal services is falling.

So what happens when this happens?

If we learnt anything from the data of Great Recession it is this:

In times of signifiant economic downturn, holding individuals to individual budgets results in an upstreaming of work.

Partners will hoard work in an attempt met their budget first
Special Counsel will hoard work in an attempt to met their budget second
Senior Associates will hoard work in an attempt to met their budget third.

And if you are outside of the gold, silver or bronze medal positions you’re pretty stuffed!

So what can we do about this?

For those sitting around wondering what can be doe about this, the answer is appears to be pretty clear – do away with individual utlisation and budgetary targets. Even in the best of years these so-called budgets are arbitrary in determining law firm profitability (primarily because they work on an opportunity cost profit basis rather than a real in the bank profit analysis), but more importantly because they create silos – individuals in law firms with personal incentives that outweighs those of the group/society.

And, they sustain bad behaviour in firms – ‘me’ over ‘us’.

But critically, firms that work like this create ‘Motels for Lawyers’ – not law firms.

As always, the above just represent my own thoughts and would love to hear your thoughts.

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Photo credit Alexander Mils on Unsplash

Presence of mind, not being present in the flesh

‘presenteeism’: (noun) the practice of being present at one’s place of work for more hours than is required, especially as a manifestation of insecurity about one’s job.

Ask any lawyer if they have stayed behind at work when they weren’t needed, whether or not that’s a a manifestation of their job insecurity – and it almost is, and I’d bet all could tell you a great tale.

Mine..

I was leaving the office and put on my jacket and my partner – seeing me do this – asked if I was cold.

So, the realisation that ‘presenteeism’ exists as a problem is no secret (‘It’s a waste’: Law firms plagued by ‘presenteeism’ culture and graduate ‘sweatshops’ by Michael Pelly in the Australian Financial Review [published on Feb 22, 2019] and ‘4,200’ – why it’s a prize not worth winning on this blog highlight this issue); but what really grab my attention was an excellent article in this week’s The Economist (‘Bartleby – The joy of absence‘).

The Economist article talks to two things that really resonate with me with regard to the futility of presenteeism in the legal profession – especially as we move forward.

The first speaks to the way we were (and some would argue still are):

Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce group, recently praised the 996 model, where employees work from 9am to 9pm, six days a week, as a “great opportunity”.

The second includes what is probably year-to-date one of my favourite lines (and the title of this post):

Turning an office into a prison, with inmates allowed home for the evenings, does nothing for creativity that is increasingly demanded of office workers as routine tasks are automated. To be productive you need presence of mind, not being present in the flesh.

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

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Report: 45% of Australian GCs are forecasting a decrease in their 2019 legal spend – How is this going to be achieved?

The State of Australian Corporate Law Departments Report 2019 – a joint publication between Thomson Reuters and Acritas – was published earlier this month. With more than 2,000 telephone interviews conducted and 73 interviews with Senior Legal Counsel based in Australia taking place, the sample for this report is robust. And while the usual rhetoric around “more for less” is reflected throughout the Report, one of the standouts is that Australian GCs are forecasting 45% projected budget cuts (over 2018 we have to assume):-

budget cuts

To put that into context, that almost twice the global average.

In a time when we have Royal Commissions being announced almost weekly, and compliance issues are on the front pages of the papers daily, you have to wonder where and how these savings are going to be achieved.

As to the ‘where’, given how much ‘top-end’ reputational compliance work that’s happening in Australia at the moment, and how little cost savings can be made from the margins in low-end commoditised work, you’d have to assume the most likely area will be in the mid-level contract drafting/negotiation/management space [the space in which about 30 out of the top 40 firms in Australia play].

As to the ‘how’, having read the Report my take is that Australian GCs will look to achieve this through:

innovation
panels, and
the elephant in the room

Innovation

‘Innovation’ has been a buzzword in the Australian legal world for over a decade. And, as one of the first jurisdictions to legislation the incorporation of law firms, to many outside Australia our system has been one of envy.

But when you ask Australian GCs to rate the innovation of Australian law firms, only 35% feel they’re working with service providers they find modern and innovative.

innovation

From where I sit this means that 65% of Australian GCs don’t think you’re really doing all that much in the innovation space!

Legal Panels

Led by procurement, the dreaded ‘legal panel’s’ stated aim is to achieve:

cost efficiencies and predictability
relationship building (de facto another way of cost savings)
less administrative burden
quality [of work]
responsiveness
access to experts, and
value adds on offer

All great and noble aims if you are looking for a 45% cost saving year-on-year – until you take a closer look at the reality:-

panels

This chart is from the ‘GC Thought Leaders Experiment‘ and it clearly indicates that having a panel in place isn’t saving you anything! Add to that lateral hire movement over the past 5 years, and I very much doubt any of the metrics of having a panel are being met.

It’s worth noting here that swimming against the tide of rationalising panels to fragment legal spend is A Verona Dorch – Peabody’s Energy’s Chief Legal Officer who stated (on the issue of appointing panels) that:

Expanding the pool allowed me to insert a few more midsize and non-money center firms than I otherwise could have. And that’s been incredibly helpful—just a few months in, I’m noticing that those firms are extra eager to impress and put forth their top talent.

So maybe, just maybe, if you get it right there is something to be said for legal panels – only not in the form we currently have them.

The elephant in the room

And so we come to the elephant in the room, where a lot of these savings are likely to be found:

40% of Australian in-house buyers of legal services have used alternative legal service providers (“ALSP”) for support on legal matters, and over half of those who used an ALSP did so as they felt it was a more affordable option.

Private practice we are on notice.

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

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Question:- Is your firm pricing the issue or the risk?

One of the first things you will be taught in project management is the difference between a ‘risk’ and an ‘issue’. For those not in the know, an ‘issue’ is something that has happened – and we need to fix it (preferably ASAP); whereas a ‘risk’ is something that has not yet happened but may foreseeably happen, so we need to factor this in.

In any discussion around the pricing of legal services we are faced with exactly the same problem:

there is an issue – the client has a problem: we can workout how much it will cost to fix it, yet;
there is a risk, the part we are not sure about, nor are we sure about the scope.

QED: 9 times out of 10 instead of looking at the issue/risk conundrum rationally, we take on the risk blinkers and either price to the issue and/or tell the client we cannot know how much it will cost outside of the risk (hence hourly rates).

Whereas the smart pricer/legal project manager in the room will typically white-board both the ‘issue’ and the ‘risk’ with the client and say to the client:

This is what we know (the issue). It’ll cost you X.
This is what we are pretty sure will happen (the risk). It will cost you Y.
And this is the remote (bad luck it happened element) – let’s reconvene and discuss.

But this is just my take. As always though, would be interested in your thoughts, views, feedback.

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Which kinds of businesses are most threatening to your firm’s future?

The December/January edition of Briefing magazine includes a supplementary report looking at the Legal IT Landscapes 2019. It’s a very enjoyable read, and includes the following graphic (answering the question from which the title of this blog is taken):

What this indicates is that despite my having blogged about this issue as far back as September 2017 (‘Do you know who your competitors are?‘) senior managers of law firms still hold that other law firms like theirs are the greatest threat to their ongoing commercial success (at 26%).

As I wrote back then,

With the level of work that clients are now taking back in-house, or not bothering to do at all, they are without doubt the “overwhelming competitive threat” to the current law firm business model. And, this is not cyclical but structural.

Crucially, understanding this is of paramount importance if firms wish to survive the next 5, 10, 15 years. Because it reshapes everything we do. How we try and win work. The type of work we are trying to win. And even the nature of the relationship we have with our client.

In the long term it will determine the way we measure and reward. It will dictate how we charge, and it will determine whether we succeed or fail.

and I still hold now, this view is misplaced at best, and out and out wrong at worst.

As the following quote taken directly from the National Profile of Solicitors 2016 report (most recent I could find) published by the Law Society of New South Wales, in Australia the seriousness of the threat that in-house legal teams have on the viability of your firm’s future success should not be underestimated:

Legal employment sectors are shifting. The great majority of Australian solicitors continue to work in private practice, with 69% employed in a law firm. However, the proportion of solicitors working in private practice has dropped from 75% to 69% over the last five years. This is due to a significant growth in the number of solicitors working in the corporate sector and government.

Between 2011 and 2016, there was a 59% increase in the number of solicitors working in the corporate sector, compared to a 17% increase working in the private sector.

Let that sink in for a second: a 59% increase in the number of solicitors working in the corporate sector [in Australia] over a 5 year period post the GFC.

Even coming from a relatively low baseline, that’s a staggering shift (indeed, some may even argue seismic)!

But ask senior management of law firms and only 10% will tell you that “in-house/client” is a business that is most threatening to their firm’s business.

Misguided pershaps?

As always, would be interested in your thoughts, views, feedback.

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