law firm profit

What does success look like in 2023?

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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‘Stupid is as stupid does’

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In the 1994 movie of the same name, Forrest Gump is asked:

“are you stupid or something?”

to which Forest replies:

“stupid is as stupid does”.

Some 20 years later (yes, it really has been that long!), in general parlance this phrase has come to mean that:

‘an intelligent person who does stupid things is still stupid’ – (Urban dictionary)

and I have to say that this thought went through my mind earlier this week when I read that a third of [UK] commercial firms are likely to raise their rates in a bid to boost their profits (Solicitors Journal 6 May 2015 – “Number of law firms planning to raise charge out rates increases“).

Leaving aside the issue of whether a direct raise in your rates will equate to increased profits (for example, the psychological impact of rising rates/budgets on fee earners with no increased salary (cost)) –  what in the world would make 26 (1/3rd) of so-called intelligent finance directors of the UK’s Top 100 law firms say “it is likely their firms will increase their charge out rates in order to improve profitability in the year ahead“?

As I have blogged countless times before (the most popular being: ‘Is it time for law firms to break with the RULES when looking at profitability?‘), hourly rates are but one of the metrics in calculating profitability. And it’s probably not even the biggest metric driving your firm’s partner profit levels, which almost certainly would be better achieved via an increase in your realised rate.

Putting this mathematically (admittedly not my strongest area), say my hourly rate is $100 and my realization rate is 90%, then I’m being paid $90-. Taking this forward I’ve decided to increase my hourly charge-out rate to $110-, but find that my realization rate has now fallen to 80%. If my maths is correct, I’m now being paid $88-.

In other words, in real terms, I’m losing money!

Don’t think this could happen? Then take a look at Charts 4 & 5 from the ‘2015 Report on the State of the Legal Market‘ published by The Center for the Study of the Legal Profession at the Georgetown University Law Center and Thomson Reuters Peer Monitor (at page 5)

chart 4

 

chart 5

Those charts don’t make for pretty reading.

So when, as the article reports:

“…firms realise this is not going to be an easy sell to clients who are likely to negotiate hard to keep fees down, so their approach to increasing charge out rates is likely to be softly softly, rather than gung-ho”

my response would be: “why bother?”.

Instead,

  • try keeping your charge-out rate the same over the next 12 months;
  • try not to give discounts;
  • try to increase your realisation rate (by 3 to 5 cents in the dollar);
  • try to reduce your lock-up days;

and see where you end up.

You may just find that has a better impact on your partner profitability numbers than the likely impact that is going to come your way when you go annoying and off-siding your clients with the almost obligatory 1 July 10% rate increase letter.

But I could be wrong…