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Leaders in Legal Business
Chapter 3 Consultants to the Legal Profession Michael Roch1
Hiring a Consultant or Advisor KermaPartners
Principal
“Consultants merely charge a fortune for telling us what we already know!” (trad.)
Law firm leaders get input, information, ideas, suggestions, and advice from myriad external sources,
including conferences, universities, collagues of managing partner, information distribution lists — and the list
goes on. Internally, the leaders of the most successful firms often have good systems in place, good people to run
them, and good partners who provide constructive input regarding how the business should best be run.
With all of this knowledge, expertise, and experience around, why would you wish to engage with
management consultants? It’s a fair question, given the amount of scrutiny (and sometimes worse) you may expect
from colleagues anytime you suggest that your law firm may need assistance from the outside.
This chapter addresses:
1) Why law firms hire consulting firms or consultants in the first place;
2) Subject matter areas for consulting that add value;
3) What to expect from each of the three broad approaches to consulting;
4) What a typical consulting process looks like; and
5) How to hire a consulting firm or consultant (and how not to).
1) Why Law Firms Hire Consulting Firms
Even the largest firms with huge internal resources in finance,
human resources, marketing, business development, knowledge
management, and operational management eventually end up with
opportunities or challenges that their usual external informal networks and the internal management team cannot
solve.
These issues usually have one or more of the following attributes:
1 Michael Roch is a principal and the CEO of KermaPartners. He advises on all aspects of domestic and international strategy, organizational structure and
governance, and international mergers and alliances. He also advises law firms and other professional partnerships on all aspects of their partnership
organization, in particular partner remuneration and profit sharing. He has been an advisor in relation to partnership organizations (in the broadly commercial,
not narrow legal sense) throughout his entire professional career. His clients have ranged from domestic and international professional partnerships to multi-
million dollar joint ventures and strategic alliances, primarily in the professional services, financial services, energy, and technology sectors. He has advised
clients in more than 40 countries, primarily in Europe, North America, sub-Saharan Africa, and Asia. Many of the client relationships he looks after are
professional services firms that are market leaders in their respective countries.
In February 2014 Michael authored a piece of KermaPartners Research of how global professional services firms are resolving the many challenges of
the organizational matrix. Together with Rupprecht von Pfeil he also recently co-authored a chapter on partner remuneration in a leading industry text.
He is a member of the Managing Partners Forum in London.
Michael is qualified as a certified public accountant and New York attorney; he holds a J.D. and a Master of Accountancy from the University of Denver.
Having grown up in Germany, he started his consulting career with KPMG in the U.S., followed by 10 years as an international corporate lawyer, most
recently with Norton Rose Fulbright between London and Frankfurt, before returning to the management consulting profession.
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Chapter 3 Consultants to the Legal Profession Michael Roch1
Hiring a Consultant or Advisor KermaPartners
Principal
“Consultants merely charge a fortune for telling us what we already know!” (trad.)
Law firm leaders get input, information, ideas, suggestions, and advice from myriad external sources,
including conferences, universities, collagues of managing partner, information distribution lists — and the list
goes on. Internally, the leaders of the most successful firms often have good systems in place, good people to run
them, and good partners who provide constructive input regarding how the business should best be run.
With all of this knowledge, expertise, and experience around, why would you wish to engage with
management consultants? It’s a fair question, given the amount of scrutiny (and sometimes worse) you may expect
from colleagues anytime you suggest that your law firm may need assistance from the outside.
This chapter addresses:
1) Why law firms hire consulting firms or consultants in the first place;
2) Subject matter areas for consulting that add value;
3) What to expect from each of the three broad approaches to consulting;
4) What a typical consulting process looks like; and
5) How to hire a consulting firm or consultant (and how not to).
1) Why Law Firms Hire Consulting Firms
Even the largest firms with huge internal resources in finance,
human resources, marketing, business development, knowledge
management, and operational management eventually end up with
opportunities or challenges that their usual external informal networks and the internal management team cannot
solve.
These issues usually have one or more of the following attributes:
1 Michael Roch is a principal and the CEO of KermaPartners. He advises on all aspects of domestic and international strategy, organizational structure and
governance, and international mergers and alliances. He also advises law firms and other professional partnerships on all aspects of their partnership
organization, in particular partner remuneration and profit sharing. He has been an advisor in relation to partnership organizations (in the broadly commercial,
not narrow legal sense) throughout his entire professional career. His clients have ranged from domestic and international professional partnerships to multi-
million dollar joint ventures and strategic alliances, primarily in the professional services, financial services, energy, and technology sectors. He has advised
clients in more than 40 countries, primarily in Europe, North America, sub-Saharan Africa, and Asia. Many of the client relationships he looks after are
professional services firms that are market leaders in their respective countries.
In February 2014 Michael authored a piece of KermaPartners Research of how global professional services firms are resolving the many challenges of
the organizational matrix. Together with Rupprecht von Pfeil he also recently co-authored a chapter on partner remuneration in a leading industry text.
He is a member of the Managing Partners Forum in London.
Michael is qualified as a certified public accountant and New York attorney; he holds a J.D. and a Master of Accountancy from the University of Denver.
Having grown up in Germany, he started his consulting career with KPMG in the U.S., followed by 10 years as an international corporate lawyer, most
recently with Norton Rose Fulbright between London and Frankfurt, before returning to the management consulting profession.
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