LPM

COLUMNS
APRIL 2016
CHECK YOUR
ENGINES
JANE PRITCHARD, SYSTEMS AND BD MANAGER
When the partners meeting
conversation is driven by the need
for more cash, the first victims on
the drawing board are usually
anyone in central resources. They don’t make
money, so they can’t increase revenue – right?
Since the 2007 recession, it’s fair to say the drive
for austerity has impacted on decision making
globally and across all business sectors. For SME
law firms, however, the failure to invest in central
resources – the engine room of the business – can
be catastrophic.
Whatever your plan for increased revenue and
profits, a detailed review to check that your
infrastructure is fit for purpose in delivering that
plan is essential. This may sound obvious, but my
experience in delivery of project work through
mergers and business growth is that too little
attention is paid to the design and size of the
engine room.
There are certainly economies of scale that the
larger end of the SME legal market can benefit
from, but what is the right ratio of support staff
required for a firm of four or 400? To assess this,
I would go back to basics. Draw your staff
organogram to include all fee earners across all
departments, all secretarial support staff, all
cashiers, accounts and billing personnel, and
reconsider (thinking outside the box) what should
be done by whom.
Consider splitting your staff into teams across,
and outside, traditional department structures.
Reconsider the skillset your lawyers and support
personnel need. Do they have it? Do you need to
retrain or recruit? Don’t build your teams around
what you have. Be aspirational. With that magic
wand out, what part do IT systems play? Is it
necessary to invest further or wiser to improve
performance and output? The best developed and
applied practice management system in the
sector won’t replace the need for skilled staff to
insert the data and moderate the contents.
To improve billing output, it's often first
necessary to invest in the billing team rather than
recruiting additional fee earners. This won’t just
help to liquidate WIP quicker – it can increase
capacity for chargeable hours and therefore
increase revenue without increasing the case load.
It’s a brave decision to invest in central resource
at a time when cash is king – the easy option is to
make easy savings through cuts. But turnaround
consultants and banks alike will tell tales of
businesses whose downfalls were due to
expanding their practice while ignoring
investment in the capacity of the engine room. Do
the maths – ratio of engine size to output – and,
despite market changes, you will have a machine
that purrs. LPM
ABOUT
Jane Pritchard
Systems and BD manager
and head of housing and
community care
TV Edwards
www.tvedwards.com
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LEGAL PRACTICE MANAGEMENT