Mike White

Mike’s over 25 years in the legal industry has seen him work in private practice, in-house with a public company, and for the past 17 years as a management consultant serving commercial law firms. As part of his management consultancy practice, Mike also works with other non-law firm business services firms and advisers that are structured similarly to law firms.

Mike acquired a deep knowledge of his business litigation craft while he was in private practice and gained experience in internal processes, technology, delivery and management issues associated with legal work while working in the law department of a large public company. Immediately prior to his management consulting career, he acted for 8 years as a non-lawyer senior executive to help run two systems software companies. It was here that Mike was immersed in business  methods, process, technology and the language of business; additionally, he  gained a deep understanding of consultative selling methods and how to sell sophisticated intangible products and services to other businesses.

Mike’s work focuses primarily on growth issues including:

• Multi-Year Strategic Planning and Implementation – typically at a firm level but also at a practice group or team level, mapping out firms’ 5-7year journeys and priority sets and driving implementation.
• Business Development Consulting, Training & Coaching – working primarily with groups of partners who need to understand the entire toolbox of skills and competencies associated with cultivating clients beyond just matching up needs with capabilities.
• Law Firm Transformation – assisting firms on how to predict/project the disruptive forces in the market and then devising appropriate cultural and business model changes to adapt to and exploit such changes.
• Client Experience Innovation – helping firms understand all the sources of client value that they confer while creating a portfolio of articulable differentiating features in support of such, thus delivering a “signature client experience”.
• Compensation Studies – restructuring partner compensation systems and non-partner compensation systems to best support strategic priorities and improve overall performance.
• Lateral Partner Integration – creating a set of processes and incentives to ensure that each recruited lateral is successful/integrated and helping firm leadership to improve recruiting yield

Mike attended Duke University (AB, 1983) and Emory University School of Law (JD, 1986).