Page 38 - Legal Leaders 2018 Master Copy - 999
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Organization: This covers everything around the organization that supports the firm’s client
work and includes:
– Organizational design and structure;
– Decision-making, accountabilities, and overall governance;
– Incentives and remuneration of partners and senior managers;
– Partnership structure;
– Culture, values, and behaviors;
– Management system; and
– Succession planning.
Operations, finance, and risk: These cover all of the back-office functions, such as:
– Information technology;
– Facilities management;
– Risk management;
– Financial management;
– Administration; and
– Sourcing and outsourcing of non-core business functions.
The above can serve merely as examples of consulting areas. Each area will have hot
topics, trends, and themes and will differ somewhat from country to country. For example, a
country with a closed legal market that is opening up to international firms will see a flurry of
market entry, strategic, and merger advice; in countries with mixed ethnicities, law firms seek
consulting in relation to talent, diversity, social mobility, and economic empowerment.
No matter what the subject matter area, there often are more subtle topics to be
addressed, such as:
–Collecting fact bases and evidence to support recommendations. Through research and
market knowledge this may extend to peer group comparisons, sector analysis, client and
market opinion gathering, etc.;
– Identifying the options that are realistically available, the consequences of taking such
courses, promoting the preferred option, and offering clear rationale for such preference;
– Focusing the minds of partners and other stakeholders on the things that are important
and relevant;
– Leading an intellectual journey designed to reconcile (if possible) disparate views
and/or preferences and/or prejudices into a common or substantial majority
understanding;
– Identifying blockages (whether in systems, organization, or culture) that stop firms
being able to change or improve themselves, and showing what must be done to make it
happen. Paying for consultancy is wasteful unless the people who will have to do things
differently understand what must change, why it must change, and, crucially, agree to do
it;
– Helping leaders to understand what must be done to implement the solutions
successfully; and
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work and includes:
– Organizational design and structure;
– Decision-making, accountabilities, and overall governance;
– Incentives and remuneration of partners and senior managers;
– Partnership structure;
– Culture, values, and behaviors;
– Management system; and
– Succession planning.
Operations, finance, and risk: These cover all of the back-office functions, such as:
– Information technology;
– Facilities management;
– Risk management;
– Financial management;
– Administration; and
– Sourcing and outsourcing of non-core business functions.
The above can serve merely as examples of consulting areas. Each area will have hot
topics, trends, and themes and will differ somewhat from country to country. For example, a
country with a closed legal market that is opening up to international firms will see a flurry of
market entry, strategic, and merger advice; in countries with mixed ethnicities, law firms seek
consulting in relation to talent, diversity, social mobility, and economic empowerment.
No matter what the subject matter area, there often are more subtle topics to be
addressed, such as:
–Collecting fact bases and evidence to support recommendations. Through research and
market knowledge this may extend to peer group comparisons, sector analysis, client and
market opinion gathering, etc.;
– Identifying the options that are realistically available, the consequences of taking such
courses, promoting the preferred option, and offering clear rationale for such preference;
– Focusing the minds of partners and other stakeholders on the things that are important
and relevant;
– Leading an intellectual journey designed to reconcile (if possible) disparate views
and/or preferences and/or prejudices into a common or substantial majority
understanding;
– Identifying blockages (whether in systems, organization, or culture) that stop firms
being able to change or improve themselves, and showing what must be done to make it
happen. Paying for consultancy is wasteful unless the people who will have to do things
differently understand what must change, why it must change, and, crucially, agree to do
it;
– Helping leaders to understand what must be done to implement the solutions
successfully; and
24
