#Auslaw issues

How are Australian law firms fairing in this post-pandemic world?

Citing a recently published Thomson-Reuters ‘State of the Legal Market 2020‘ report, The Australian Financial Review (AFR) published two articles last Friday (28 August 2020) that, collectively, provide one of the first insights in to how Australian law firms are fairing in this post-pandemic COVID-19 world.

How is Australia doing compared to the rest of the world?

The first article ‘Law firms prove world-beaters as virus strikes‘ by Michael Pelly would, at first blush, seem to suggest that law firms here in Oz are doing far better than the rest of the world.

Looking at the five key metrics of:

billable hours,
hourly rates,
fee revenue,
productivity, and
lawyer growth,

Australia’s results look spectacular.

But kick the tires a little and you’ll see that a June Q19 to June Q20 period is an Australian Financial Year – and not all, in fact none of the other regions, works to that same time line.

So these results should be read with caution, in that they are a moment in time which may not be a true reflection of how the other markets are fairing (it would be interesting to run those same numbers on a Jan to Dec timeline which would probably be a truer period [admitting that even then the UK numbers would be out] because, as we know, not every month is equal – in that we don’t split an annual budget by 12!).

Nevertheless a good result for the Oz firms – but that ‘red blip’ of productivity would be a concern to me if I were a Managing Partner.

Which leads us to…

…who is doing the work?

One of the more interesting takeaways from the chart above is how the hourly rate in every geographic region has increased, even where fee revenue and number of billable hours has decreased (and in some cases significantly).

If you are asking yourself how can that possibly be, look no further than my post of two weeks ago – ‘When does the law of supply and demand not apply? – when you’re running a law firm of course!‘ – and this is also (in my opinion) reflected in the second of the AFR articles last Friday: ‘Law firm partners working harder during pandemic‘:

Look at that spike in partner hours!

For those who may not have read my post of two weeks ago there are, in my view, two reasons why you get that kind of spike:- (1) the work is more complex and needs more grey-haired thought, or (2) senior lawyers need to protect their budget – your choice.

So where are we at really?

I’d treat the financial results of the Australian law firms above with a pinch of salt till the end of February 2021, which -in my opinion – will be a truer barometer of how the industry is doing down here.

As always, the above just represent my own thoughts and would love to hear your thoughts (and; ps: if you want to know why I say end of Feb 2021, email me).

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This week’s photo credit shout-out goes to Joey Csunyo on Unsplash

‘Annuity Revenue’ – who wouldn’t crave some financial certainty in current circumstances?

Annuity revenue – a predictable revenue stream from new or existing customers who buy products and services associated with new or previously purchased products.

As the Managing Partner of a law firm today, what would you say if I walked into your office and told you that I could:

provide you with a guaranteed monthly revenue income,
with a product that creates loyal customers, and
where those customers become – at no additional cost to you – brand champions and refer your services to their network, free of charge, via the Holy Grail of marketing – positive ‘word of mouth’ referrals.

Sounds great doesn’t it. Almost too good to be true.

Well all I can say is that if you were anything like one of the Managing Partners servicing customers who responded to the Pitcher Partners recent ‘Legal Survey 2020 Report‘, that’s exactly what you would be saying: “thanks, but no thanks we are happy with the billable hour”.

Pitcher Partners - Billing Methods

The fact that the billable hour remains the ‘go to’ method of billing (not the same as pricing) for Australian law firms and their customers does not, in and of itself, surprise me. I must admit, however, to being a little surprised with the 1% increase in this billing method (up from 58% to 59%) year-on-year.

Given the times (even pre Covid-19), I was also a little surprised to see that both ‘fixed fee’ and ‘value-based’ pricing remain relatively static (although it should be added that from what I could see the report lacks a definition of ‘value-based’, probably purposely so).

To me this represents a massive lack of foresight on the part of law firms and a significant lost opportunity.

In much the same way as software as a service (SaaS) companies have come to realise that one-off payments around shrink wrap contracts were not servicing the long-term financial interests of the company (unless it’s a legacy product that will no longer be supported), the time has come for law firms (and professional services firms more broadly) to realise that if we want to maximise revenue and, potentially, profit we need to rethink how we generate that revenue.

One alternative that the likes of Ron Baker and Mark Stiving have been banging the drum about for some time is ‘subscription based pricing’.

The benefits of adopting a subscription based pricing model

I have posted previously on this blog about the benefits of subscription based pricing (see here), but leaving all that aside for a second; as Amy Gallo wrote way back in October 2014 in the Harvard Business Review (see ‘The Value of Keeping the Right Customers‘) with the acquisition costs of acquiring new customers running being between 5 and 25 times more expensive than servicing existing customers, it makes economic and financial sense to find, and keep, the right customers.

How you price this is probably the most important step along that path.

The weakness of having billable hours as your default billing method is that you are pricing to the transaction. Whereas one of the greatest benefits of the subscription based pricing model – or even a retainer based pricing model if you must at the start- is that you start thinking about pricing the customer or even the portfolio.

In other words, you start to think about the customer and their needs first. And for an industry that always talks about the customer being at the centre of everything we do, doesn’t it makes sense that our pricing structure reflect this claim?

But it also makes sense internally, because it:

is smarter pricing
leads to smarter collaboration
moves you away from seasonal end of financial and calendar year pressures, and
helps remove any discussion around the ‘commodity’ tag.

Not to say, in these COVID-19 times, when you are talking working capital facilities with your bank, it provides you with a guaranteed annuity revenue stream.

Now who would not want that comfort right now?!

These just represent my thoughts though and always interested to hear your views.

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2018 was a great year for AusLaw firms*!

As we close out the year that was 2018, the graph below – from the recent (December 2018) Commonwealth Bank ‘Professional Services’ report – would appear to support the fact that 2018 has been a financially beneficial one for all those involved in private practice in Australia:

Screen Shot 2018-12-30 at 8.37.01 pm

The question I have though is this: is this a true correction?

And what I’m really asking here is this:

have the underlying structural changes that we all know need to be made been put in place?

if so, are we starting to see the benefits of these, or does this chart represent a false dawn?

And as we entered 2019 I’m going to leave those two questions out there, as I think many of us know what the real answers are here.

As always, would be interested in your views.

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* or was it?

Podcast: In conversation with Ian Mountford – some thoughts on how well law firms use Social Media

I was fortunate enough to have recently been invited by Ian Mountford, of Fit for Social, to join him in a general discussion on our mutual thoughts around how well #Auslaw firms are doing with their use of social media as a business development tool.

Chat lasts about half and hour and can be heard here.

For those of you who listen, hope you enjoy it.

As usual, feel free to let me know whether you agree or disagree with my views.

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Why asking someone to work 2,000 billable hours a year will kill their spirit

According to a post by Casey Sullivan of Bloomberg, earlier this week US law firm Crowell & Moring announced that it would increase its billable hour requirement for associates, from 1,900 hours per year to 2,000 per year. This new target will take effect 1 September 2016, but on the plus side 50 pro bono hours will count as billable.

15 Years ago I would have cried out “all kudos to you”. Back then my yearly billable target for an English ‘Magic Circle’ firm was 1,400 hours and I flogged my guts out to achieve that. So if you can effectively put 50% of billables on top of what I was doing (and trust me when I say I wasn’t going home at least one day a week), then you’re a better person than I (or so I would have said then).

But if you really need validation of what asking someone to work 2,000 billable hours a year means, then I would like to recommend you read “The Truth about the Billable Hour” by no less an institution than Yale University. In that publication, Yale caution aspiring lawyers that if you are being asked to “bill” 2201 hour, you need to be “at work” (includes travel time and lunch, etc.) 3058.

Taking that further, from an Australian law perspective, if you are being asked to bill 2,000 hours a year then you need to bill 8.3 hours a day (assuming a 48 week year and you never get sick; which, if you are being asked to do this, you most likely will be). That means you are very likely going to need to be “in the office” around 12 hours a day – and that assumes no write-off by your partner or leakage.

But here’s the question: “What difference does this make?”

I ask this because I wholly agree with the following comment my friend Kirsten Hodgson made when I posted a link to this article on LinkedIn:

“why would you reward the number of hours someone spends working? Surely it would be better to focus on how to deliver value smarter and more quickly. This doesn’t incentivize innovation or any type of process improvement.”

Exactly right, you’re measuring all the wrong things!

Leaving aside the Balance Scorecard argument, asking someone to do 2,000 billable hours a year doesn’t take into account:

client satisfaction
realisation (it’s a utilisation metric)
working smarter
innovation

or many other metrics.

And for those who may point out the benefits of this including 50 hours pro bono I say this: the Australian Pro Bono Centre National Pro Bono ‘Aspirational Target’ (ie, where we would like to get to), is 35 hours per lawyer per year.

But probably more importantly than all of this is this:

– if you ask someone to do this, then you really leave them very little time to do anything else.

This really should be a concern, on the business front because you leave almost no time whatsoever to train them in the business of law – ie, you kill any entrepreneurial spirit they may have. And, crucially, the only metric that really counts to them is that all important 2,000 billable hours (keep in mind that like I was, they’re very young). Which for a profession that has the mental health issues we do, is not good.

For all of these reasons, I’m hoping no other law firm follows this. But sadly I think they will.

Oh, and if you are a law firm client reading this post you might just want to look up whether your local jurisdiction has a “Lemon Law” rule that applies to provision of a service.

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Survey: The role pricing specialists play [or don’t] in RFP responses

Last week the USA’s J Johnson Executive Search, Inc and the UK’s Totum published their combined ‘RFP Survey Responses: U.S. and U.K. Data 2016‘.

A fairly evenly distributed demographic of large (defined as being 600+ lawyers), mid-sized (defined as being 100-600 lawyers) and small (up to 100 lawyers, for the U.S. only) law firm respondents, insights from the survey include time spent responding to RFPs, persons within firms charged with project managing responses, as well as tools and expertise made available to responding teams, in both the U.S. and the U.K.

As with most surveys of this nature however, it is the role that pricing plays that typically grabs my attention and given this survey’s combined U.S. and U.K. perspective even more so in this case.

Given ongoing market pressures, it should surprise no one that responses of “strong” from the U.S. (58%) and the U.K. (64%) to the question of what current “price pressure” for proposal & RFPs were fairly similar.

A little more surprising to me was the difference in responses between the U.S. (40%) and the U.K. (60%) to the question “when developing proposals and RFPs, I have easy access to” the answer was “pricing guides/professionals“.

Now don’t get me wrong, even these days I think it is particularly progressive and somewhat comforting to know that 60% of my colleagues in the U.K. have access to some sort of “pricing guide/professional”.

Until, that is, you get to see who actually gets to sign-off (i.e., the “decision maker”) on the all important issue of pricing in RFPs in the U.K.. Here, and I kid you not, the response in the U.K. of “pricing specialist” (that same person who 60% claim to have some form of access to – either via guides or in person) was 5%.

I think that is worth repeating – 5%.

Put into context, that means in the U.K. pricing in your RFP is more likely to be signed off by Marketing & BD (9%) or Finance (14%). Indeed, in the U.K., “It varies” is likely to have more of a say on final pricing in the RFP response than the so-called pricing specialist.

I’m not so sure why the results of this particular survey so surprise me. After all, time and time again survey results show that we typically say one thing about pricing, but do quite another.

What I will say though is this: if you have access to a pricing specialist, and pricing by your pricing specialist is being determined in 5% or less of your RFP responses, my guess is going to be one of two things: (a) you have no idea if you are making money from your RFP “wins”, or (b) more likely, you are leaving money on the table big time!

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* images should be enlargeable, apologies if they appear a little blurred.

How long before we see a ‘Red Team’ service in #Auslaw?

Of note overnight (OZ time) was news that Bernero & Press (Wendy Bernero and Aric Press) have launched a service called: ‘The Red Team’. Described as being “A Lifeline for Marketing and Business Development Departments” the aim of The Red Team is to provide:

“…high-quality, experienced marketing, communications, and business development professionals to law firms on a project basis or to fill temporary needs.”

Sounds very similar to the sort of lawyer placement service we are seeing from the likes of Crowd & Co here in Australia, only in this case the target market is specifically support services.

I have to say that outsourcing back office services such as marketing and business development was something I saw becoming popular in Asia during the Asian Financial Crisis in late 1998 and I have often wondered when we would see such a move take hold in the West.

Today may just be that day.

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Independence Day & The Billable Hour

Two things got my attention on Friday. The first was the decision by the UK to exit the EU (so-called “independence Day” by some of the more fanciful politicians and “Brexit” to most of the rest of us). On a much smaller scale, the second was an article in The Australia Financial Review that “Ditching the billable hours case a struggle“. (print edition – NB: online the article title is “Billable hours to always hold a place in law firms“).

With the first of these two items, I have very little to no control over and am left at the mercy of others.

The second on the other hand is absolute rubbish!

To be clear, mention of the billable hour in the opening four (4) paragraphs of this article are all to internal metrics; specifically how many hours fee earners need to bill each day to make budget (and a side note here, anyone else note how this changed from an annual figure of 1,400 hours to a daily figure of between 6 and 7.5 hours depending on which firm you work for? Is this because a daily figure is much easier to live with than an annual figure that daunts you by its task? If so, kind of simplistic thinking towards people who are supposed to be in the top 1%).

Anyhow I digress as this has nothing to do whatsoever with how clients are charged, much less how they want to be charged, and whether or not the billable hour needs to remain the “go to” fee arrangement of choice by firms and paragraph five (5) of the article tackles this issue head on when it says:

“However, the majority of firms said they worked with clients and offered alternative fee arrangements if suitable.”

You’re kidding right?

For those of you who have not seen it lately, here is the Thomson Reuters Peer Monitor ‘Chart of Billed and Collected Realization Against Standard‘ for the period 2005 to 2015:

That squiggly little line in free-fall tells you realization rates have fallen from roughly 93 cents in the dollar in 2005 to just over 83 cents in the dollar in late 2015. It also tells me that you are not doing a very good job if you are working with your clients vis-a-vis how you charge them for the work you do and it puts to rest any attempt to suggest that billable hours are the preferred method of clients to be billed (unless, that is, you’re suggesting that clients know they can get discounts, or just not pay, bills that accrue on an hourly basis).

So over the weekend I got to think: like the article says, pretty much all of the reasons why the billable hour continues to be a struggle to ditch are down to internal measurement metrics. So, maybe, just maybe, like the UK did on Friday, it’s time for Australian law firms to opt out of the known and disruptive itself – and maybe the rest of the world with it!

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Will a ‘One Asia’ strategy work for BLP?

I spent just over a decade in Asia between the 1990s and mid-2000s. In all the time I spent there I never considered the Region as ‘One Market’ – but rather as a multitude of diverse and different markets.

By way of example, almost everything we did in Asia was “ex-Japan“. This wasn’t because we didn’t see Japan as part of “Asia” – as it very much is – but rather because the international legal market there (NB, the Japanese local legal market is a very different issue) has far more in common with the US market than the Asian. As a result, we lumped Japan in with the US when discussing strategy (and you’re free to question that thinking/strategy).

Likewise, any strategy discussions we had that involved Singapore almost always included India, the Middle East and the Philippines. Similarly, strategy discussions that involved Hong Kong included not only mainland China but also Indonesia.

Finally, SE Asia (Thailand – where I was located, Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam) was its own regional discussion.

All up then, when discussing “Asian” strategy we had four or five discussions – not one.

That said, I worked with (but not for) firms (notably Herbert Smith as it was then) who operated on a fly-in fly-out basis. In my day we called this the “hub and spoke” approach, where the expertise went to the client need and, I have to assume, strategic discussions were done on a Regional basis.

While not criticising firms who took this approach – some did very well out of it – I didn’t think it worked for the firms I worked with as we held the view that, probably more so than any other market in the world, Asia operates on a relationship basis. Our experience was that relationships trumped expertise, and in the very family operated business world of Asia at that time, cost.

So why the history lesson?

Last week, in the Asian Lawyer, I read Bob Charlton – Asia Managing Partner of Berwin Leighton Paisner (BLP) – comment, following the firm’s Asian retreat, that:

“…in broad terms we agreed we must have a one Asia approach.”

Interesting, I wonder what BLP could mean by “a one Asia approach“?

Fortunately the article sets out exactly what that means:

“BLP’s “one Asia” strategy means the firm is doing away with the concept of geographic and practice area distinctions, focusing instead around sector groups. These groups include aviation, construction, oil and gas, private wealth and shipping.”

Now that really is interesting because, frankly, I’m not sure it is going to work.

A sector focus in Asia is a sensible move. A sector only approach to market in Asia is gutsy to say the least.

I say this for two reasons: (1) ‘relationships still trump in Asia’, and (2) Asia is not now, nor will it be for a very long time (if ever), one economic zone. That’s the case both for inbound and outbound work. And even if you don’t want to have people on the ground (which I would strongly recommend you do), you need to consider the geo-political economic implications separately.

And I’ve said all of this without mentioning the elephant in the room: “AdventBalance”. I wonder if they take a sector approach to their strategic thinking in Asia…

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$180K for a First-Year Associate – so what!

One of the big news items this week has been the decision by Cravath, Swaine & Moore to raise its starting salaries for first year associates to $180,000. Cries of “Not worth it!” and “What value do first year associates provide clients?” (answer: probably none) can be heard from all four corners of the planet.

My view on this though is so what? I don’t really care what you pay your first year associates. In the same way I don’t really care what you pay your other associates or partners. Nor do I really care what your rent is costing you.

Unless, that is, I get to thinking that: I am the one paying for all this. In which case, I suddenly become very interested.

But here’s the thing: I’d only really start to think that I’m the one paying for all your luxuries – the boat you have moored at the marina, the sports car you drive, the house you live in, the first year associate you can call on day and night – if I didn’t value the service you provide me. In other words: If I didn’t think I was getting value for money.

So if you’re one of the many private practitioners questioning the move by Cravath, Swaine & Moore, my only comment/question is this:

If you are providing your clients with a value for money service offering – and you are able to communicate this, why should it bother you?

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