law firm strategy

Thomson Reuters Institute: Australian Law Firm Midyear Market Update

Last week (22 February 2024) Thomson Reuters Institute published its midyear market update on Australian law firm’s financial performance. Overall the sector remains robust, posting year-on-year “growth” of 7.2%. “Growth” here being defined as:

A measure of total billable hours worked by the average law firm

Leaving aside the flaws in that definition, if we are to use it as a yardstick for year-on-year growth and a like-for-like comparison globally, then the Australian legal sector looks positively healthy – particularly so for those practising Dispute Resolution (9.5% growth year-on-year, although I question the low starting bar here as DR has suffered a number of negative years as a result of COVID) and “General” Commercial (7.5% growth year-on-year; and while no definition of “general” is provided it clearly doesn’t include M&A, which sits in a different bucket).

Black clouds?
If there is a black cloud around the numbers it’s leverage and expenses.

As the chart above indicates, leverage between partners, senior associates, associates and lawyers still looks out of shape when compared against firms in other jurisdictions.

What this chart indicates to me is that partners (in particular, equity partners) are still doing way too much of the billable work and not pushing the work down to more junior lawyers (which might be understandable if it was salary partners looking to make equity; but kind of suggests it is equity partners looking to retain equity points – maybe a post for another day!).

Having said this, it might also be a trait of the Australian legal market. We often don’t follow the 10-20-30-40 leverage model here in Australia.

A potential second black cloud is on the expense-side: lawyer renumeration.

While this appears to have cooled – down from 13% growth in 2023 to 7.3% growth in the first half of 2024, for those of us who work in this market day-in, day-out, there is an acknowledgement and acceptance that mid-level lawyers (those between 4 and 8 years PQE) are rare as hen’s teeth.

And the reason for that is simple – most see Australia as a small fish bowl and want to spread their wings in Asia, London or New York.

Who could blame them!

Some come back, many don’t.

But what it does mean is this: we pay a premium for mid-level [good] lawyers here in Australia!

The last black cloud has to be lateral partner movement.

The Thomson Reuters midyear market update doesn’t include a section on lateral partner movement, but it should. Not only because it would make for interesting reading, but also because it’s a good indicator figure.

As always, get in touch if you want to talk through any of the above.

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From 996 to 1075 and a cap on billable hours – what’s going on?

If you missed it, last week TikTok owner Byte-dance announced that it was moving its employees away from their 996 work week to a new 1075 work week.

For the uninformed, which included me until last week, 9-9-6 required Byte-dance employees to work from 9am to 9pm 6 days a week. A time schedule that would make most lawyers blush. Fortunately for Byte-dance employees, their new – light-on – work schedule is 10-7-5, or from 10am to 7pm 5 days a week.

Clearly a step in the right direction when it comes to employee well-being and mental health.

Anyhow, I comment on this for three reasons:

First, Legal Cheek recently published a post that revealed the average working hours of junior lawyers in the UK. Of the 2,500 junior lawyers surveyed, junior lawyers at Kirkland & Ellis racked up the longest average working day, clocking on at a tardy 9:14am and off at 11:28pm. The survey is silent on whether this is a 5, 6 or 7 day week. I recommend you take a look at the full list, makes for rather sad reading (if junior lawyer mental health really is an issue of concern for the industry)
Second, last week the New York State Bar Association Task Force on Attorney Well-being suggested that there be a cap on billable hours at 1,800 hours per year.

The announcement had no less than Roy Strom comment on Bloomberg Law that:

Firms are too scared to impose a cap because it would be hard to hire the number of additional lawyers the cap would require. It would also put a huge dent in profits.

And

The billable hour serves as something of a measuring cup ambitious people pour themselves into. The unfortunate truth about Big Law is that it doesn’t have many alternative definitions of success.

If Roy’s comment is right, and it is an unfortunate truth that Big law has little alternative but to measure success by the amount of hours billed then, in my view, that is a really sad reflection of our industry. Because surely other metrics, such as the quality of the work provided and client satisfaction should have equal weighting. Not to mention churn and retention rates.

My third and last reason for commenting on all this is a personal one. I have long said that asking lawyers to work 2,000+ billable hours a year wasn’t a good thing – and there must be a reason why that is my most read post, so there is some comfort in seeing such an esteemed group as the New York Bar Association finally agree with me.

Have a great week all.

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Photo credit to Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

“This is not just a stop-gap solution…”

Business Development image

…or is it?

For the past couple of weeks, one of the most common themes I’ve been seeing about COVID-19, insofar as it relates to the legal profession, is how it has changed, and continues to change, the industry/profession. COVID-19, I’m being led to believe, is a “game changer”.

To this end, I have seen (and read) articles that I would not thought possible three to four months ago written about:

the changing nature of remote working in the profession, and
the importance of Zoom/Skype and Microsoft’s Teams,

to name but a few.

But I want us to stop here, take a step back, and ask: “Is this really likely to be the long-term outcome?”

When I ask this, keep in mind that this is a profession that has fought tooth and nail to keep to the same business operating model for over 30 years (if not 100) despite having already recently lived through one of the worst global economic downturns of all time (the GFC).

So I ask: “What can we really say is different this time?”

For sure we can say we have given our business continuity plans (BCPs) a tough workout. And, to be fair, I’d bet that even the most conservative of BCPs didn’t factor in a COVID-19 event.

And while we now know that most of our workforce can work remotely and, ironically enough, with the use of timesheets, we can also claim that they remain ‘productive’ whilst working from home – whatever that term may actually mean to a knowledge worker, does this truly foreshadow a change in the manner in which the industry is going to be managed?

My take is this:- while all of the above is true, it is taking place in circumstances that most of us had not predicted and many of us feel uncomfortable even being in (I’d bet there are very few people out there who are happy being locked up at home for four weeks – family or no family).

But this is a far cry from saying we will see the dawn of a ‘new normal’ whenever normality (whatever that may look like without a vaccine, which I am told is no sure thing) returns.

Because, while it’s critical that understanding our purpose is now more important than ever, and while we cannot hope to survive if we do not look to find the solutions our clients seek and need – which (as I mentioned last week) will be changing – in a post-COVID-19 world these will not necessarily bring about a change to the structure of how a law firm operates and is managed.

As any reader of this blog would know, it has been my long and strongly held view that to see real change to the business model of law, we need to start with the way in which we incentives and reward our partners and employees.

And to start this process we need to start to truly align our firm’s internal incentives/rewards to those of our customers so that we start to help create value for our customers. In short, our incentives/rewards must be aligned with our customers’ needs and incentives.

And yet nothing I have read in the thousands – possibly even tens of thousands – of words on how COVID-19 will change the legal profession has this even come close to being suggested or even discussed.

So my take from all of this is this:

If we want what we are currently going through to be truly more than a mere ‘stop-gap’ solution, if what we want from a post-COVID-19 world is true structural and ongoing change in the profession, then we need to start to have a conversation around the fact that the way in which we incentives and reward our staff is broken and worry a little less about where our staff are doing their job from.

And right now is the time to be having this conversation.

Failing which, all we really have is a stop-gap solution.

These are just my views, as always interested in your thoughts/views/feedback.

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Why most law firms don’t need to hire a Head of Pricing

Following a conversation I had recently with John Chisholm, I had reason to revisit Patrick Johansen’s website patrickonpricing.com and re-read both his Continuum of Fee Arrangements™ and his Roll Call of pricing professionals.

Let’s get controversial. Re-reading Patrick’s stuff it occurred to me that there are an awful lot of law firms have hired pricing experts (Patrick has over 300, but it wouldn’t surprise me if that number were closer to 500) on -most likely- really good money who, get this: don’t really need them.

Why do I say that?

Looking again at Patrick’s Continuum of Fee Arrangements, Patrick has sixteen different pricing options available for law firms to offer clients:

Hourly – the ‘go to’ pricing option for law firms. But are hourly rates pricing or billing?
Volume – nope, not a pricing mechanism. It’s a discount. Not even an alternative fee arrangement (AFA).
Blended – isn’t that an hourly rate?
Retainer (Periodic) – okay, now we are talking. Law firms may need some help from a pricing expert on this one. But wait up, how much of a law firm’s revenue is done on a retainer mechanism? Less than 5% would be my guess. Justify the cost of pricing expert on the books (as opposed to freelancing), unlikely.
Capped – OMG don’t get me started on capped fees. Known as the “heads I lose, tails I lose” pricing mechanism for law firms. I understand why clients love capped fees, they cannot lose. But any pricing expert on a law firm’s books who recommends capped fees as an option deserves to be sacked immediately.
Task – okay, but isn’t this really just a fixed fee?
Flat (Transaction) – okay, but again: isn’t this really just a fixed fee?
Phase – sounds like a fancy name for task to me!
Fixed – Nirvana. Now we need a pricing expert.
Contingency – implies it needs to be contingent on something.
Portfolio – my view is that this is one of the most misunderstood and under-used of the various pricing options. I’m not sure there are many pricing experts in commercial law firms who do this well.
Hybrid – yeah right. Are we talking cars now?
Holdback – this isn’t pricing. This is a reward mechanism. I could do all the pricing calculations in the world, but if the legal team provide a rubbish service then the client will withhold a part of the fee.
Risk Collar – is hourly billing with an up and downside calculation mechanism.
Success/Bonus – again, performance related.
Value – right, and how many law firms are really doing this? Few and far between. Hell, most law firms don’t even understand the ‘value’ they provide (see ‘discounts’ and google number one AFA offered by law firms). No, nice to say; but a very long way from getting it.

So looking at this list I ask myself: “How much science is involved in pricing legal services?”. And the answer I come up with is: “Not a lot”.

Taking all this on board, I get why law firms hire ‘pricing experts’ out of accounting teams. And maybe that’s where the real opportunity is being missed.

But trust me, for all but two or three of the above pricing options, you don’t need a pricing expert – you need an accountant. So don’t waste your money hiring one.

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Is putting profit before culture such a bad thing for law firms?

In 2004, while working at Linklaters, Tony Angel – the then recently appointed Managing Partner of the firm – introduced a new strategic direction that was to become known as ‘Clear Blue Water-– A Vision for Linklaters in 2007‘. Much as was being advocated in Renée Mauborgne and W. Chan Kim’s Blue Ocean Strategy, published around the same time, the intention of Angel’s Clear Blue Water strategy was to create a clear space (as opposed to red oceans) between the firm and it rivals.

For many of us who worked in the firm at the time, this represented a high-water mark. It was made very clear to all that Linklaters was now very much a business: profit trumped culture.

Sure culture was nice to have, but not if it had any material impact on profit.

But was this such a bad thing?

As someone who lived through the 2004-2007 era at Linklaters, I can honestly say “no”.

To be clear, there is little doubt in my mind the firm became more “professional”. Many of the business development, marketing and knowledge management work that had traditionally been done by lawyers was taken off them and given to dedicated teams. The firm introduced key account programs around their top clients. Blue Flag (Linklaters online client portal – that included early use of HotDocs) was a flagship program. Precedents and ClauseBank were core strategic projects.

But importantly, financial analysis was undertaken to determine the difference between revenue and profit and how both revenue and profit could be increased (which didn’t necessarily mean a reduction in costs – for example, the business case behind Blue Flag was the first example of an alternative revenue stream I saw in a law firm).

All of this was then extended to sectors when clients started to say they valued, and appreciated, sector specialists (Linklaters was the first place I worked at that had a virtual practice – The Indian Desk, back in 2005-ish which operated from London, New York, Singapore and Dubai).

Despite – or even because of – an overall strategy to significantly increase profit, large amounts of money were invested in putting in place strategic teams that could help implement and execute on this strategy. Professional KM, marketing and business development people came in to the firm from all walks of life and people who had never worked in professional services firms previously were now doing so.

Importantly, my personal experience was that their voices, counselling and advices were being taken onboard. Sure partners may disagree – and ultimately we all knew that the buck stopped with them, but it was also made clear that they appreciated and valued our input.

Another important aspect of Angel’s Clear Blue Water strategy though was transparency.

Everybody in the firm knew what we were trying to achieve. We knew what was required to get us there (including I might add an absolute understanding that this would involve an incredible amount of hard work). We knew how we were tracking and which parts of the business were struggling to achieve their goals. From my memory (and it was 10 years ago now), this wasn’t done with malice but so that we knew who needed help.

In short, the strategy bred a culture. A culture that many who were not in the firm may have considered elitist, but a culture nonetheless: to be at Linklaters at that time was to know you worked among the best (and if you doubt that, track the CVs of many of the leading BD/Pricing/KM people around the world and see who they worked for during that time).

So why, 10 years after I left, have I decided to bring this all up now?

HSF

The answer to that lies in the decision this week by Herbert Smith Freehills (HSF) to open a second office in Sydney.

This second office will be at 66 Talavera Road, Macquarie Park, while the principal office will remain at 161 Castlereagh Street. It is currently being reported that between 200 and 300 support staff (that may not – for now – include BD people) will be moved to this Macquarie Park office.

To my mind, this move eradicates all pretence of a ‘one firm’ culture having anything to do with the running of this firm. Conversely, it cements the ‘us’ and ‘them’ culture. If you are in Castlereigh Street, you’re ‘in’. And if you are in Macquarie Park, well you’re not! Worse, if you get moved from Castlereigh Street to Macquarie Park, you could consider it a demotion (especially given there will be no train line servicing that office for 10 months in the next year or so!).

But again, as someone who has advocated for the outsourcing of support services in law firms (in much the same way as a number of firms in Asia did post the Asian Financial Crisis) for more than 10 years the question should be: is this such a bad thing?

And my answer to that is “no”.

But my answer comes with an important caveat from someone who has been through similar strategic processes, and that is this: everyone at the firm in now on notice – perform, or you’ll be in Macquarie Park – or even out altogether – before you know 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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