This past week my company, Manzama, had the pleasure of hosting a Chief Marketing Officer Dinner in New York City. The group was an intimate one, approximately 15-18 CMOs from some of the largest law firms in New York. And, while I am not at liberty to discuss specific firms or comments, I would like to share some of the big ideas I heard at the table as various questions were posed to the group as a whole:
(a) Profitability – The expectation is that it’s not just the accounting team’s responsibility to understand matter and client profitability metrics. The responsibility is a collective one, especially in light of the fact that marketing/business development are the first line of defense when it comes to interfacing with client teams and concerns;
(b) Business Intelligence – some firms have re-organized to fold library and other traditionally IT functions into the marketing departments – do we see a trend here as more of these folks are asked to perform business intelligence functions that need to closely align with the firm’s marketing strategies;
(c ) Contract lawyers – growing percentage of firms are using contract lawyers in a number of different contexts.
It’s a rare event to get a group like this together to share thoughts over dinner. In the event this blog entry finds them, I wanted to personally thank each and everyone for their time and interest.
Best,
Peter
Much is, and has been, said about the outsourcing of legal work product, law firm infrastructure, etc. In a former post, I commented on Seyfarth Shaw’s Lean Six Sigma, which is really (in some respects) a good response to outsourcing — become more efficient and effective, change practices long-term. Another method I learned of, after sitting down with a CKO at an AMLAW 20 firm was “insourcing,” higher lawyers that perform the more standardized legal work (1st yr – 3rd year associate type of work) in more affordable markets, secondary employment markets, thus, work gets done at more appropriate rates. To me, this was another indication of how much more savvy law firms are becoming with respect to the ever changing climate. Here’s a quote from the law21.ca blog that I thought did a nice job of summing up the point:
“If I were an LPO (Legal Process Outsourcing), I’d be nervous every time I read about a law firm that provided secondments, gave legal project management training, managed its workflow, unbundled its services, used decision trees, or even employed Lean Six Sigma, because it means they’re starting to adopt some of my stock in trade. The critical battleground in the legal services marketplace is not price, but innovation: inventing and implementing more efficient and effective ways to carry out legal work. That’s a tougher and far more important assignment than simply lowering the cost of associate work, and whoever figures it out first and best could, like Toyota and Sony, dominate this market. LPOs are in a strong position to compete in this race, but they’re not the only contestants.” The full-text of this entry can be found at:
http://www.law21.ca/2010/06/08/the-evolution-of-outsourcing/
Project/Case/Transaction Management just started to emerge when I was at my law firm in 2002, the processes were typically reserved for the largest of clients and quite rudimentary. Seyfarth’s work is just the beginning — it’s hard to see the pressure on fixed fees, alternative fee arrangements going away anytime soon. Recently, I had a chance to sit down with a managing partner (of one of its offices), he was very bullish on what the firm has accomplished to date. As our discussion turned to the future, he felt the firm was in a stronger position than just a few years ago to leverage not only processes, but technology and people as well — in part due to efforts related to Six Sigma effort. Here’s another blog post that adds additional color to the implementation, worth the read.
