Law Firm Growth

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I am interested in the interaction of a group of people who have a common goal, or a common obsession, each contributing something unique to make something greater than the sum of its parts. I don’t know why, but from day one, that has interested me. – Steven Van Zandt, Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band

The recent news of departures from Carlton Fields Jorden Burt is most interesting. The firm, was the product of the 2014 merger of Tampa based Carlton Fields with DC based Jorden Burt. At the time of the merger the synergies between the two firms was promoted as one of the real selling points. Now, 5 years late, at least 30 of the 48 original Jorden Burt partners have left, including name  partners Jorden and Burt.…

Continue Reading Law Firm Merger and Shared Aspirations

Every institution is vulnerable, no matter how great. No matter how much you have achieved, no matter how far you have gone, no matter how much power you’ve garnered, you are vulnerable to decline. There is no law of nature that the most powerful will inevitably remain at the top. Anyone can fall and most eventually do. –Jim Collins

Confidence

Jim Collins, the author best known for his positive and uplifting books Good to Great and Built to Last, wrote another provocative volume in 1999. How The Mighty Fallwhich looks at the causes and stages of organizational decline.…

Continue Reading Overconfidence and Law Firm Decline

It can’t be overstated. The legal services business is experiencing dramatic change.  For law firms as institutions, it is obvious because more work than ever before is brought in-house by clients, and alternative service providers are rushing into the competitive landscape.  Besides the increase in competition, there are technical and practice advances that have changed the way law firms do business.  Legal project management, once a novelty, is altering the focus law firms are expected to bring to a task.  Technology in law is evolving so fast that even law firms committed to investing in new tech have a hard time keeping up.  And artificial intelligence is finding its place in the ultimate objective of meeting the legal needs of clients.

With all the industry change, most firms know that settling on the status quo is risky. Still, more than a few firms are slow to change.  Some are overwhelmed by the idea of innovation itself or are worried about the appropriate time and capital to invest in its execution.  Without adequate experience or guidance, a firm can be paralyzed.…

Continue Reading Sustaining Success in the Changing Law Firm World: Four Fundamentals

Despite the seemingly “good” year that 2018 was for many law firms, experience tells us that ”good” can be  a relative thing.  While 2018 performance data compares favorably to the data from the prior years following the Great Recession, all is not completely rosy.  Today’s law firms face more competition than ever as market share is shrinking, and the industry is being disrupted in multiple ways.

The recently released Thomson Reuters State of the Legal Market 2019report provides some industry information about how the 2018 results should be viewed.  The report concludes that despite good results last year, a robust round of “high-fives” should be tempered.  As Thomson Reutersnotes, shared competitive industry information, technological advances, client control of legal service use and terms, greater competition among law firms and other resources, have all greatly altered the legal services market. This change in landscape has, among other things, stimulated a war for talent, causing valuable lawyers with valuable clients to move from one firm to the next in free-agency run wild.…

Continue Reading Four Ways a Strategically Designed Merger Can Strengthen Your Law Firm and Make it More Competitive

Law firm leaders understandably see lucrative client work as an important key to overall firm profitability.  Left to their own devices, those leaders would eagerly raise rates or otherwise take steps to ratchet up the yield on work.  In contrast, their clients often consider the containment of legal costs as a key component to valuable…

Law firm growth gets a lot of attention. Among the various approaches to law firm growth is the tactic of merger. Almost weekly we are treated to another announcement about two law firms fulfilling their desire to grow by combining. And although law firm mergers have been part of the landscape for years, the incidence…

As business organizations go, law firms are different because they can face greater stability challenges.  Sure, law firms with iconic names seem to rock along year after year.  But for every bedrock firm there are others that struggle to survive.  And even some of the firms regarded for their steady state are like the proverbial…

Law firm mergers happen-a lot.  While the mega mergers get the publicity, many mergers stay under the radar because they involve smaller firms being absorbed by larger firms. Whether for reasons of market dynamics, succession, or battling for growth, some smaller firms simply conclude that life will be better as part of a bigger shop.…

Law firm mergers have been in the news with combinations being announced seemingly every week.  So far in 2018, the many mergers closed have drawn the attention of the media and law firm leaders alike.  The rationale for any of the announced mergers depends on the specific transaction and the firms involved.  Whatever the reason,…