Page 48 - 2019 - Leaders in Legal Business (n)
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accepted accounting standards that define lawyers’ and accountants’ advice they provide to their
clients. Experienced consultancies continuously refine their methodologies as their main reference
points in how they provide and tailor advice to help solve their clients’ challenges. For example,
we often rely on a proprietary assessment methodology that allows us to get to the heart of any
professional services firm quickly; the methodology combines the Balanced Scorecard,
Intellectual Capital, and the McKinsey 7S, and is uniquely suited to law and other professional
services firms. We also have developed a certain way of designing our partner workshops in a way
that is particularly engaging (and disarming!) of highly intelligent and equally critical law firm
partners.
Proprietary analytics technology plays an increasing role in consulting projects on the
operational end. This includes legal project management, law firm cost management, e-billing
effectiveness, and the like. Less “legal” areas include pipeline effectiveness analytics, talent
turnover cost projections, and robotics /intelligent process automation implementation.
In short, the firm’s approaches, methodologies and technologies need to be appropriate for
the challenge to be overcome or goal to be reached, and both approach and methodology need to
resonate with the law firm’s approach, culture, and way of doing business.
Additional things to expect in a proposal:
In addition to scope and fees, any proposal should contain a clear understanding of what
value-add the law firm seeks to gain from the consultancy’s involvement. Measuring this value-
add sometimes is simple (“help us achieve a reduction in WIP days by 20 days”); sometimes it is
not (“help us overcome our non-confrontational partner culture”). Where hard financial measures
are difficult to come by, law firm and consultancy could agree at least on a qualitative indication
of what the client hopes to achieve.
The consultancy also will usually spell out a short track record that proves the consulting
firm’s expertise in handling similar issues. Where relevant, specialist, or professional
qualifications of the team members also should be explained. In our experience, it is helpful to
have a team of several qualifications working with a client organization, whether this is in
consulting or in accounting, psychology, finance, law, economics, or banking, just to name a few
examples.
Terms of business should include assurances of confidentiality of your sensitive
information for a number of years. It is also common for consultants to ask that the client’s name
be included in their pitch materials but, if it’s non-competitive, to keep the nature of the work
confidential. We do make proper introductions to existing clients once a new client has made the
“but for” decision to work with us.
Some firms provide an unconditional satisfaction guarantee for most work. We are
comfortable providing this because we are experts at what we do, and we can always deliver
against the scope upon which we have agreed. This approach also sets up early discussions if there
is dissatisfaction looming instead of a soured relationship at the end of the engagement.
A Final Word on Consultancy
A statement of the blindingly obvious is that no law firm should seek to spend money
unnecessarily on engaging outside consultants. Some larger firms have dedicated internal
resources in order to help them find most answers for themselves. On the other hand, many firms
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clients. Experienced consultancies continuously refine their methodologies as their main reference
points in how they provide and tailor advice to help solve their clients’ challenges. For example,
we often rely on a proprietary assessment methodology that allows us to get to the heart of any
professional services firm quickly; the methodology combines the Balanced Scorecard,
Intellectual Capital, and the McKinsey 7S, and is uniquely suited to law and other professional
services firms. We also have developed a certain way of designing our partner workshops in a way
that is particularly engaging (and disarming!) of highly intelligent and equally critical law firm
partners.
Proprietary analytics technology plays an increasing role in consulting projects on the
operational end. This includes legal project management, law firm cost management, e-billing
effectiveness, and the like. Less “legal” areas include pipeline effectiveness analytics, talent
turnover cost projections, and robotics /intelligent process automation implementation.
In short, the firm’s approaches, methodologies and technologies need to be appropriate for
the challenge to be overcome or goal to be reached, and both approach and methodology need to
resonate with the law firm’s approach, culture, and way of doing business.
Additional things to expect in a proposal:
In addition to scope and fees, any proposal should contain a clear understanding of what
value-add the law firm seeks to gain from the consultancy’s involvement. Measuring this value-
add sometimes is simple (“help us achieve a reduction in WIP days by 20 days”); sometimes it is
not (“help us overcome our non-confrontational partner culture”). Where hard financial measures
are difficult to come by, law firm and consultancy could agree at least on a qualitative indication
of what the client hopes to achieve.
The consultancy also will usually spell out a short track record that proves the consulting
firm’s expertise in handling similar issues. Where relevant, specialist, or professional
qualifications of the team members also should be explained. In our experience, it is helpful to
have a team of several qualifications working with a client organization, whether this is in
consulting or in accounting, psychology, finance, law, economics, or banking, just to name a few
examples.
Terms of business should include assurances of confidentiality of your sensitive
information for a number of years. It is also common for consultants to ask that the client’s name
be included in their pitch materials but, if it’s non-competitive, to keep the nature of the work
confidential. We do make proper introductions to existing clients once a new client has made the
“but for” decision to work with us.
Some firms provide an unconditional satisfaction guarantee for most work. We are
comfortable providing this because we are experts at what we do, and we can always deliver
against the scope upon which we have agreed. This approach also sets up early discussions if there
is dissatisfaction looming instead of a soured relationship at the end of the engagement.
A Final Word on Consultancy
A statement of the blindingly obvious is that no law firm should seek to spend money
unnecessarily on engaging outside consultants. Some larger firms have dedicated internal
resources in order to help them find most answers for themselves. On the other hand, many firms
33
