Why Partner Integration Should Be On Your Agenda

Partner integration signifies that partners are working, both individually and as a group, in a manner that optimizes firm performance and is in consonance with their expectations.

Firm management is customarily occupied with monitoring the project pipeline, the productivity of professionals, client satisfaction, hiring the best professionals and winning and managing work. These are considered key contributors to a firm’s performance and success.  However, partner integration can be an element of even greater significance to a firm’s performance and cannot be neglected or taken for granted.

Any sub-optimal performance at the partner level can have a multiple effect on the performance of the firm. This is because partners inevitably assume some management responsibility, whether managing a practice area, overseeing a group of professionals, handling certain client relationships or developing services and new business.

Partners consider themselves “owners” in the firm and, at a minimum, feel they should have some influence on how the firm is governed and managed.  To the extent that is not achieved it can lead to dissatisfaction, a lack of motivation and even disruption, resulting in a significant, and often costly, distraction for firm management.

Do any of the following symptoms of a lack of integration sound familiar to you?

• complaints that a certain partner is not assuming his/her responsibilities or is not contributing sufficiently
• partners whose shortcomings (e.g. poor relationships with subordinates or lack of collaboration) are overlooked because they have good financials
• partners whose contributions are overlooked because their current financials are poor
• practice groups or business units operating autonomously and, perhaps, with distinct and even incompatible approaches
• lack of trust among partners reducing cooperation
• communication gaps between firm management and the partners at large, causing misunderstandings
• dissatisfaction with the fairness of the partner compensation system
• no effective performance evaluation process for partners (including feedback) leading to accommodations and misalignment
• partner promotion and advancement based on longevity rather than performance
• partner concerns as to lack of participation in decision-making
• controversial partner meetings without resolutions (disagreements allowed to fester)

Some of these situations may be overt (i.e. self-evident) while others may be covert (i.e. they exist but are not perceptible without specific questioning or analysis). All of them are examples of potential deficiencies in partner integration.

Where is your firm on the performance/integration map shown below?

Clearly performance and integration do not have unique definitions. They are a function of the values and objectives of a firm.  Their measurement is dependent on an evaluation of a series of characteristics, many of which are qualitative rather than quantitative.

For example, performance may not be based purely on revenue growth or levels of profit but also on levels of client satisfaction, growth in certain service areas or practices and retention rates of professionals and/or clients. Similarly, integration may include evaluation of such elements as time spent on partner issues, level of partner satisfaction, client feedback, level of cross-selling and partner turnover.

Can you plot your firm’s position based on your interpretation of the level of performance and integration?  Experiment doing this before reading on.

Let us now analyze the potential (common?) characteristics of firms in each quadrant of the map as indicated below.

Quadrant 1   LOWER PERFORMANCE/LOWER INTEGRATION

• Start-ups
• Group of disconnected partners
• Lack of management
• Unsuccessful merger (lack of trust/inability to change)

Risk: disruption, loss of partners/associates

Opportunity: improve financial returns, motivation and lifestyle 

Quadrant 2   HIGHER PERFORMANCE/LOWER INTEGRATION

• Star individuals/practices run separately
• Group of autonomous units – perform well individually but focused on own P&L
• Lack of governance

Risk: loss of stars and/or practices

Opportunity: collaboration/synergies/cross-selling/joint client development

 Quadrant 3   LOWER PERFORMANCE/HIGHER INTEGRATION

• Too nice – lots of “sticking together” but lack of drive/management discipline
• Tolerate non-performance

Risk: retention of performing partners, lack competitive advantage, lack of growth and retention of professionals

Opportunity: high growth opportunity and competitiveness

 Quadrant 4   HIGHER PERFORMANCE/HIGHER INTEGRATION

• Uniform practices and strong financials across the board
• Smooth working relationships and stable governance structure
• Healthy interactions and high degree of trust

Risk: low risk of partner issues or defection

Opportunity: focus on growth and development and market leadership.

Clearly Quadrant 4 is the place to be by maximizing opportunities and minimizing risks. There is no perfect firm and there is no such thing as zero risk, but moving toward the top right corner of the map should be on any firm’s agenda.

That move would consist of making adjustments to the firm’s structure, policies and procedures, its mode of management and partner expectations. These may be included in a Partner Integration Program (“PIP”) that could then evolve into an on-going process as the subject matter is fluid and requires monitoring.

A PIP may address the following, amongst other needs:

• Promotion – promoting the right people facilitates integration and avoids costly mistakes. Promotion based only on the need to retain expertise and certain competencies may not be appropriate and alternative career paths are an option.
• Training and orientation – alignment to strategy, provision of skills to progress and motivation to grow
• Partner performance expectations, measurement and feedback

An effective partnership does not mean that all partners need to contribute in the same way but rather that the individual strengths of a diverse set of partners are used to maximize the strength of the partnership as a whole.

• Partner compensation – a system that recognizes the relative contributions of partners and is seen to be fair
• Adequate governance structure, leadership and communication channels
• Strong cultural glue
• Incentives for collaboration

 A PIP will consist of the following phases:

• Define the components of partner integration to be measured
• Develop a plan to collect data and information for measurement

Remember that certain situations may be covert and therefore, to be complete, any diagnosis should include some form of consultation with the partners themselves (interviews, surveys, etc.). Such consultations should be conducted by persons independent of management so as to avoid conflicts and not constrain responses.

• Perform an evaluation of current status for each component
• Summarize findings and recommended actions for improvement
• Discussion and approval of action plan for implementation

Given that recommended actions will likely have a significant impact on partners’ roles and involvement with the firm, it is considered imperative that partners be consulted before any actions are approved. 

I would be delighted to explore further the idea of implementing a Partner Integration Program, (PIP) should it be of interest to you.

Partners: Escape Velocity Begins Now!

Well thankfully, it’s a new year! As you do all that you can to reach “escape velocity” and set the table for great things in Q3 and Q4, I caution my clients to make a psychological commitment to put things in motion now to create a rich set of opportunities later in the year.

I spend time with many of my clients during this time of year to encourage them to initiate many “January-February meetings.” My recommendation takes two steps: i) between now and the end of January, send out emails to suspects, prospects, or target-rich existing clients inviting them to join with you on a 20-30 minute call; and, ii) between February 1 and February 28 have your “January-February meetings” with those who responded to your invitation.

What are “January-February meetings?” January-February is a time of year when your CSuite contacts are: i) no longer hassled by year-end 2020 issues; ii) thinking about 2021 priorities that they can point to with specificity and clarity; iii) not yet consumed by this day/this week 2021 urgencies; iv) most open to engaging in high value “thought partnering” discussions with smart people like you; and, v) most forthcoming in sharing with you all of their gaps/exposures, as well as their hopes and dreams for the coming year.

Executing on this strategy requires you to have a sense of urgency. Many of you are managing a number of well qualified, well developed discussions with mature prospects. In other words, between handling your existing client work and advancing your mature opportunities, you have plenty to say grace over. However, I encourage you to resist the urge to blow off current efforts to set up your “January-February meetings.” You have an unusual luxury now to put leverage to work for you that will soon evaporate.

Leverage? What leverage? The leverage you can and should make use of now is the single email template you can send out (with minor recipient-specific tweaking) to get many people to consider your request for a “January-February meeting.” A single email form sent out to many recipients- now that is leverage! In business-speak we call this “doing something at scale.”

So, what does this “email” look like? Subject to recipient-specific customization, your email could look like the below:

“_________,

This time of year, I try to schedule time in January and February with select companies to learn more about what the year ahead is going to look like. Given what we do, I’m always particularly interested in the ‘experiments’ companies are planning to run beyond ‘keep the trains running’ and normal course priorities.  At this time, businesses are coming out of their planning cycle and isolating areas, gaps, and opportunities deserving of unusual attention. While these discussions on occasion reveal to us ‘engageable’ subject matter, more typically our listening tour helps us learn unconventional insights about company types/sectors on which we focus. In short, it helps us be smarter about you, and other companies like you.

Push me out as far as you need to but if you’d be game to get together this month or next, I’d welcome the opportunity to set up a call or schedule a virtual coffee . .  .”

Get going- now is the time to strike!

Partner Teams – the benefits, the challenges and why some partners don’t like them! (Part Two)

In Part One of this article I set out, in bullet-point form for the purposes of brevity, what I saw as the:

1. Benefits of teams and why partners like them;

In this Part Two I look at:

2. The disadvantages of not having them;
3. Potential challenges and disadvantages of a team structure;
4. Why some partners, in our experience, do not like them!

Remember that in Part One I said that by partner teams we mean a partner with tiers of lawyers by seniority or experience who report to her or him and for whom such partner is principally responsible.

PART TWO:

PARTNER TEAMS

2. The disadvantages of not having them;

LAWYERS & FEE EARNERS:

• There is a clear responsibility for lawyers within a team. There is nowhere to hide, from partners or peers, within a team;
• Capability to ‘run a team’ becomes a pre-requisite before a senior associate is considered for or elevated to partner status – this should be a sine qua non!
• Senior lawyers, like senior associates, learn leadership and management on the job – a great preparation for partnership, some would say, the only true preparation;
• Training & coaching takes place where it should, on the job, within the team & organically;
• It is the best way of getting the best out of people & ensuring that no-one ‘falls through the cracks’. A team becomes a supportive, challenging learning environment for lawyers but ideally, a trusting and respectful one. There is always someone to ask questions of or provide support or advice;
• A partner team contributes to ensure a genuine interest is taken in individual lawyers and support staff within the team. This is a foundational element of the Responsible Partner system we have developed and implemented in many jurisdictions. It also builds lawyer engagement (will a person ‘say’, ‘stay’ and go the extra mile);
• This structure facilitates teaching and developing specialist industry sector or practice area skills within the team. We have often seen new practice areas or industry sector specialties spring from this interaction and evolution;
• If something e.g. financial practices, should be done in a particular way, new team members very quickly come up to speed and learn from others in the team ‘how things work’;
• Work products and volumes are properly managed within the team; workloads, types of work and necessary training can be done ‘on the job’, in-house, within the team; and
• The only way to ensure every staff member, legal or otherwise, has a fair chance to reach their full potential. These are expensive resources in time and dollars; it is as well to do all you can to get a good return on the investment.

FINANCIAL:

• Budgets can be set on a team basis (the partner will have an excellent grasp of capability and potential within a team) and attainment is managed by the partner concerned;
• Financial management within the team creates consistency, ensures compliance and application, and the teaching/learning of relevant skills;
• The financial outcomes argument is unassailable, particularly where partners employ qualitative gearing or leverage within their team with high calibre, committed team players who work on quality assignments for good quality clients. Firms who have these tiered partner teams reap substantial financial rewards; and
• There is plenty of empirical evidence industry-wide to support this.

GENERAL:

• Employment Brand and engagement levels, critical success factors, are supported by teams. A firm’s employment brand is what others think and feel of the firm as an employer. This is directly impacted by all the factors mentioned above and in Part One of this article; and
• A well led team operates as a well-oiled team and is more powerful than the sum of the individual parts.

PARTNER TEAMS

POTENTIAL CHALLENGES AND DISADVANTAGES:

• There is potential for work to be held within the team (partners ‘clutching it to their chests’) thereby creating a silo effect;
• There is also potential for lawyers in other areas of the practice to not be used by the team, or lawyers within the team not being exposed to other partners, areas of practice or specialties;
• A team structure creates pressure on the team partner to find work and manage work and the financials within the team;
• Sometimes partners, particularly in larger firms, have been inclined to “over lawyer” (but this is not limited to firms that have a team structure); and
• Note that the issues outlined in the first four bullet points, above, are easily managed by having the partner team system in place as part of the fabric of the firm and having it monitored by leadership and management through various systems that have can be put in place to support it. We have evolved a Responsible Partner system and philosophy, Development Discussion system to support it and Contribution Criteria for partners to ensure they undertake their roles appropriately.

PARTNER TEAMS

DISADVANTAGES OF NOT HAVING TEAMS:

• Unless the firm, work type, type of market and individual partners are uniquely qualified, firms will never reach their potential financial outcomes;
• Most of the advantages outlined above are not possible to achieve;
• Partners get away with making much lesser contributions to the firm and partnership than is required in most successful law firms today;
• Too often, partners with specialties do not train successors in that area of work, do not introduce their clients to team lawyers in an organised, structured way and when they retire the ‘cupboard is often bare’ i.e. no real succession has been provided for in regard to skills transfer, personnel or key clients;
• Legal staff are left in a melting pot of uncertainty as to workflow, quality of work, coaching, feedback and whether an interest will be taken in them or their work and progression in the firm. This results in lowered self-esteem, potential is not realised and lower productivity and sometimes departure results; and
• Firms with an ostensibly good brand, good clients, good workflow, good infrastructure, good lawyers and good leadership/management remain mystified why they are not making more money or doing better.

PARTNER TEAMS

WHY DO SOME PARTNERS NOT LIKE TEAMS?

• A team structure makes it clear where responsibility and accountability lie, amongst other things, for what happens within the team and in regard to the quality of work, workflow and financial and overall performance of individual lawyers. Partners won’t admit this, but this often lies at the heart of objections to team structures;
• Team partners have to coach and train;
• Partners sometimes argue they want to be able to hand their work out around the office in a random manner based on the ‘best person for the job’ (the team structure still provides for this);
• Partners quickly realise they will be measured for how well they run and grow their team;
• Unfortunately, the reality is that many partners do not like this spotlight beamed on them.

PARTNER TEAMS

CASE STUDIES

• A leading senior tax partner and in due course Chairman of the firm, charging at the highest rates in NZ, was practising with no gearing, that is, no team. Following establishment of a team structure, which he enthusiastically embraced, he was over five years able to build a team including two fellow partners and half a dozen lawyers one of whom developed a leading GST specialty, another a highly successful Customs and Excise specialty;
• A senior high-profile matrimonial partner in his mid-60s doing celebrity divorces and settlements practised with no team. Even at that stage of his career he took on the challenge of developing a team and through that built succession and client comfort in dealing with lawyers at different levels of seniority. He achieved these goals within about five years; and
• A chairman of his firm in Australia and leading church law and charities practitioner ten years ago had no succession plan and shared one lawyer with another partner. He retired this year (2020) as chairman and partner leaving a successful partner leading the team together with a third partner as well as special Counsel appointed this year and a group of seven lawyers/fee owners supporting them, all fully trained in his practice and well-known to his clients.

NOTE: in each of the above illustrative examples, the partner-team structure was supported by the Responsible Partner and Development Discussion philosophies and programs.

The Law Firm Technology Landscape Post-Covid: Part Three

In the space of just a few months in 2020 law firms, along with many other organisations, have adapted to a very different way of collaborating and communicating.  With their people scattered across a constellation of remote working locations and with a vacuum created by the impossibility of in-person meetings, new ways of engaging have emerged and become commonplace.   Video has emerged from its relatively minor role pre-COVID to become a critical application.  In this third and final part of our technology focused series, co-authored with our expert technology partners at Lights-On Consulting,  we take this dramatic shift in the way lawyers collaborate and communicate as our start-point for a look at the many areas of law firm operations which could be transformed by the response to COVID.

Edge International author and Principal Chris Bull consults with legal businesses in the space between strategy, transformational change and operational efficiency.  Deploying and leveraging technology is at the heart of this practice and Chris is one of the three co-founders of The Intuity Alliance, a group specifically focused on cutting-edge advice legal industry IT, innovation and LegalTech.  Fellow founder Peter Owen leads Lights-On Consulting, one of the most experienced legal IT advisory firms in the market.  Lights-On have produced an extensive and impressive multi-part overview of IT ‘considerations for the post-lockdown law firm’ and Peter and our friends at Lights-On have worked with Chris to summarise in these EIC articles the biggest changes firms will face in the post-COVID world and recommend how firm leadership should be planning and acting to address the opportunities and challenges.

How law firms work has changed forever in areas well beyond agile and remote working

Our previous article in this series took a closer look at how the COVID crisis has provided the trigger for dramatic and, we believe, permanent changes in the fundamentals of how lawyers work.  In particular, that transformation is characterised by, first, a rebalancing in the location of work, with hybrid home and office working becoming an established part of the standard firm model.  And, secondly, by the need for both internal and client-facing processes that rely on paper and face-to-face interaction to be digitised.

Beyond these core questions of how legal work is done, the use of technology in a whole spectrum of other areas of the firm has been given a jolt by the COVID crisis.  This third part of the series takes a look at some of those other changes and opportunities, beginning with the most high profile and ‘in your face’ (very literally) implication of working through COVID; the emergence of collaboration and video communication platforms as one of our most business-critical tools.

Has video killed the radio (voice) star?

Back in early March 2020, maybe a few of us had used a video collaboration app called Zoom a couple of times and it had a bit of buzz around it; not least because there was a free-to-use restricted time version available.  Others were advocates of similar apps and they were used, from time-to-time, for multi-user calls.  Microsoft Teams was beginning to get rolled out across law firms, though many IT departments were in ‘we have the licences but won’t be ready to roll-out until later….’ mode.  Face-to-face meetings were still standard and the phone, especially mobile, was the most common medium for short 1to1 calls.  Video conferencing was still, in many places, something you only did in a conference room with multiple others.  In thousands of firms around the world each desk had a fixed line phone handset dedicated to the person whose desk that was.

Folks – that was just 6 months ago but it is a world already receding into memory and that you will never see again (warning: if this is, in fact, the world you now find yourself returning to over the coming months get yourself the hell out of there: you are living in some period drama re-enactment of old time lawyering!).

We have just witnessed an unforeseen and sudden hyperdrive leap forward into a very different communications culture where a big premium is put, in the absence of meeting in-person, on seeing the people you’re speaking to and the infrastructure to make that easy and attractive is widely available.  As firms return to some form of office working and settle into a new way of working, this has big implications for tech and operational support.  We’ve broken down some of those implications here:

Room video conferencing (VC) – on return to the office people will naturally expect to use your meeting room-based VC seamlessly combined with single user “Desktop VC”, probably connecting up with many people working at home or clients in their own workplace. Is what you have today compatible and do your user guides include how to do this? You need to test the various combination of set-ups and should produce new guidelines now for in-office and remote users on how to operate and manage hybrid VC set-ups.

Desktop video – with maybe only 25-30% of the workforce in the office, desktop VC is likely to be in permanently high demand for internal and external use. Usage in office can have some big differences compared to home VC.  At home, people may have used the laptop’s own microphones, speakers and built in web cam from a relatively private room, but that may not be appropriate for the office due to nuisance noise or confidentiality issues. Further complications come if the office set-up differs – for example the office-based laptop is docked and the lid closed.  Screen-top webcams and noise cancelling headsets are likely to be required for successful desktop VC in the office and yet may be in short supply globally.

In addition to equipment and set-up, the swapping from one configuration to another, as staff switch from home to work, may be an issue and will have to be tested and training guides produced. If short supply issues mean you are forced into a mixed technology set-up, this could quickly become complicated and hard to support.  It is not easy to get comms working seamlessly in this scenario, so firms should be chasing down equipment availability with suppliers now.

Office internet infrastructure – from an infrastructure point of view, the set-up of VC and internet remote access is fundamentally different at home than in the office. Ironically, if you add up all your staff’s home broadband internet bandwidth it is likely to be way in excess of what you have in your own buildings. New, extensive levels of VC use in the office may cripple your internet connection if you’re not careful.  Firms are advised to “do the math” and seek options, costs and lead times now to be ready for heightened use of VC in the workplace making much greater demands on internet connectivity.

Some firms only provide meeting room WiFi . A combination of social distancing and the need to use desktop VC may place increased pressure on your WiFi and extend high performance WiFi throughout the office. In many buildings, the WiFi network is now taking over as the primary network with the latest equipment providing gigabit throughput and support for IP-voice and video. Senior management should know what its infrastructure is capable of. To put it simply, your office infrastructure may be a US freeway with lots of lanes or it may be a single-track English country track that is just about to contend with summer holiday traffic levels – it’s best to know which one you are in advance!

Product choice – there is no doubt that the pressure will be on for a longer-term investment in the strategic collaboration tools and video platforms that are enabling this cultural phenomenon.  There are considerable differences between the available products. Some are obvious: take the limit on numbers of simultaneous video streams – Microsoft Teams belatedly managed to roll-out the increase from four to nine people mid-lockdown.   But other, equally critical but less visible differences exist. Careful consideration is necessary to choose your future product portfolio. Some areas of consideration are:

• Use-Case – it should go without staying, but what you want to use the tools for will govern what tools you select. Products differ widely with some being strong for webinars and others better for file collaboration and 1:1 VCs. There is a perception that all tools do all those tasks but, in reality, each of them has some clear strengths and, perhaps more importantly, real weaknesses; so know what you want to use it for
• Integrations and APIs – what you want to integrate with the collaboration product will affect the choice of product; the tight integration of Microsoft Teams with the Office suite is an obvious example, but it is sensible to explore the full range of integration on offer
• Cost – be wary about usage costs. They can rocket depending on various use-cases and licensing methods. These vary enormously between products and can only become obvious once you are up and running and incurring monthly usage bills with the product rolled out across your firm
• Telephony – some products lean towards voice (and therefore could potentially replace your previous telephony system) and others towards PC-based collaboration. Most firms want a product that can provide a combination. This is probably the time to abandon your attachment to physical phone systems and handsets, if you’re still there, and move to soft phones, headsets and integration with existing collaboration software and with mobile devices.  But this will depend on your existing phone investment, contracts and budgets
• Skills – managing these technologies on a big video call whilst also trying to focus on a message and delivery can be hard. New “broadcaster” skills will be required for presenters and hosts, but also for admin support in complex meetings who will handle the more technical elements of the session (such as Q&A, raising hands, note taking). Some lawyers already struggle with PowerPoint presentations so combining this with broadcast technology may need a little more support to be effective
• Reputation – don’t lose sight of public and client perception; some of your clients may block or actively mandate certain products. certain products. It may pay dividends to check with your larger clients before making a big selection decision.  However, don’t be swayed by press or advertising hype; the whole area of working from home, video comms and collaboration is subject to all sorts of rumour and myth right now and your decisions need to be founded in evidence and your own firm’s needs, not some stranger’s opinion
• Hidden technology – an example of this is mobile versions of some collaboration products using the phone’s GPS to be able to track location by default. Your IT team need to be very alert to these settings and features, many of which may also have privacy and data law (e.g. Europe’s GDPR rules) implications
• Policy and protocol – VC tools can come with a raft of other collaboration functions such as chat, presence, file exchange etc. What governance is there around the use of them and is it fit for prolonged use embedded in the working culture? Law firms have worked hard to control documents and enforce governance around files and document management systems (DMS), yet some firms may have paid little attention to locking down features in these newer tools or developing policies in the rush to get lawyers on-line remotely.

Not necessarily a ‘top 5’ technology investment decision in the pre-COVID world your firms choice of collaboration product(s) now looks like a critical one, which could have a major impact on your future way of working and may even become the keystone technology in your client service delivery armoury.

 The next digital, agile model will change many other parts of your organisation

Basically, we are into the realm of predictions and prophecy here – albeit, we like to think, we only do informed predictions.  We have tended to focus most of our analysis so far, understandably, on the core working use of tech by lawyers in the post-COVID world.  Looking beyond that to the way in which other parts of the law firm environment will change, we expect to see a host of other parts of the firm evolve as a direct result of the stimulus of the COVID period:

An overdue renaissance of training effectiveness – caught between over-busy, chargeable hour fixated lawyers, reducing attention spans and uninspiring training delivery models, imparting new skills and knowledge to experienced people in law firms has been in a rut for years.  The partial attempts to embrace online, e-learning and ‘just-in-time’ methods haven’t made enough of a dent in that challenge.  How do we continue to train and develop our people, not just in IT tools, but in legal practice?  Technology can be an enabler to achieve a new dynamic model for training, exploiting the collaboration and comms technologies we have all just installed and rapidly got used to; video, remote collaboration, machine learning and smart knowledge management tools.  The opportunity to reinvent legal training is there as it has never been before, but it will be easy for firms to overlook it amidst some many other priorities.

Centralised, relocated and outsourced back and middle office services – hardly a new trend, even in the relatively slow to adopt legal world.  We have seen various waves of outsourcing, lower cost location Shared Service Centres and managed service contracts over the last 10 or so years.  One truism often repeated during this period has been that the hardest part is the initial relocation of any service – IT support, accounting, knowledge management, typing – away from the lawyers/internal customers.  That’s the point at which we typically see ‘tissue rejection’ and a battle over whether the restructuring goes any further.  Once over this hump with service being provided from somewhere else for a period, process reengineering and further outsourcing have proved easier to implement.

Well, we have just been through an enforced, no-blame moment where almost all of these internal services are being provided from a remote, non-office location and face-to-face contact between lawyers and support, including secretarial, has almost disappeared.  With so many firms looking to reap the benefit of a more agile model by reducing their real estate footprint and responding to recessionary conditions with restructuring, the stars do appear to be aligned for another, more pervasive wave of centralisation and outsourcing of all kinds of support and administration.

Remote project management – both volumes of projects and demand for project resource are likely to be high over the next year.  Managing the project portfolio and inter-related strategic programmes of work (such as the migration to a hybrid / agile model) will be critical.  Doing this remotely can be difficult and project managers with limited experience may struggle. You will need to find different ways to deliver projects, train people, apply control and maintain effective project team communication.  Some projects just need people onsite and working in close proximity and the project portfolio will need to be re-shuffled if this remains impossible for an extended period.

Office 365 – firms already using this in anger and not just as a licensing approach have benefited from the flexibility it affords and licensing will mean that products such as Teams will make Microsoft 365 even more attractive. Office 365 migration is a complex project and not one that should be undertaken without experienced input.  There is a danger, in the rush to implement, that too many firms will underestimate the complexity of this environment and the depth of understanding and careful planning required.  Leaders should pay attention to Office 365 projects and not assume they will be quick, easy or painless to deliver.

Business Continuity Planning (BCP) gets real – for many firms COVID has been the first real-life test of at least part of their BCP and, for a few, it may have forced the creation of the first real draft! COVID has demonstrated the key role that IT plays in keeping a business moving and the importance of solid yet flexible infrastructure during unplanned disruption.  Whether this involves simply formalising the adopted plan, dry-run testing it with newly experienced eyes or identifying and implementing new infrastructure, it is important you set time aside to do this now and involve the owners and leaders of the firm. Now is the time that owners will be most receptive to accepting their accountability and involvement in what can sometimes be seen as a support department’s domain.

Sustainability and environment – with restrictions imposed by governments around the world and an understandable reluctance to undertake any travel unless absolutely necessary, both international and national travel for face-to-face meetings has been replaced by video conferencing tools. If there has ever been a time for a firm to embrace sustainability-enhancing technology and low carbon ways of working, it is now.  This will require drive from the top and governance around implementation and management in order for it to embed fully; only the best-led and most determined firms will truly achieve this and head towards what should be the net carbon neutral goal.

Admin processes – how well did your admin processes stand up to the tests of home working? Many HR, Admin and Finance processes may have suffered from lack of electronic based workflow.  Lockdown will have revealed the effectiveness of your digital workflows better than any review or debate has done.  Addressing digitisation of those processes that didn’t work seamlessly, including a focus on digitally handling approvals and notifications, will be critical to meet the standards of the 2020s agile law firm.

Virtual introductions – new client relationships may begin virtually far more often in the future. New techniques and skills are going to be required to be able to put the best virtual foot forward: reading the room and eye contact don’t work well on VC so do your staff need training on ‘effective Video conferencing’ for engaging new business, closing deals, pushing projects along?

Recruitment and onboarding of new staff – during lockdown, more law firms have interviewed candidates by video. This was already being used by large organisations before COVID and, as in so many other areas, we anticipate a dramatic acceleration of take-up now.  It can be a highly effective and efficient process, which also tests applicants’ ability to work in a digital environment.  Irrespective of changes to social distancing guidelines, video interviews are an approach worth exploring to help streamline recruitment processes.  Your initial engagement with potential recruits will also demonstrate the extent to which your firm has successfully balanced the efficient / digital and human / personal.

 Conclusion: The Agile Law Firm

This three-part series co-authored with Peter Owen from Lights-On Consulting has taken a look at what next for law firms from the perspective of technology change.

As anyone who is used to looking at the impact of technology on legal practice will be well aware, the implications extend far beyond the boundaries of ‘IT’ to touch every aspect of and every person in the firm.  Responsibilities for leveraging the competitive opportunities arising post-COVID as well as for ensuring the firm handles the multiple challenges and risks does not lie with the IT function only either.  We have produced this series at Edge International because we believe these are issues which demand immediate, Board and Partnership level attention and decision-making.

We are now focusing a lot of our time, research and insight into this emerging Agile Law Firm model and we welcome contributions, ideas and the opportunity to engage on agile strategies right across the legal marketplace.

Further Reading: the full Lights-On papers summarised in this article are available to read on the Lights-On Consulting website:

Thanks also to Lights-On consultant Christiaan Frickel for his great contributions to this piece.