Julian Summerhayes

September 2nd, 2010

Excellence in Professional Practice: Part 1 (of who knows…)

I am huge fan of Tom Peters the co-author with Bob Waterman of In Search of Excellence and numerous other books, one of which, the PSF 50, deals with professional service firms.

He is a great list maker; I am not.

But, given the breadth of the subject, and hence the reason why I don’t yet know how many parts there will be to this series, I have decided to go with a short, almost list style, series of blog posts on Excellence in Professional Practice.

To say that this is a monumental task is an understatement; but, absent some meaningful, contemporary debate, I am not sure how Professional Practice can otherwise expect to change its guise from a rather wooden, predictable paradigm to something that resembles modern(ish) day commerce.

Excellence is not gobbledygook!

It is:

Action biased;
Unrelenting;
Real;
Measurable;
Vocal;
Deliverable;
A key component of Professional Practice;
Exciting;
Fun;
Stimulating;
Visceral;
Dynamic;
Is a life-long journey;
Fights the status quo;
Puts people first;
Cuts to the chase; and
Doesn’t accept 2nd best!

Of course, professional practice is subject to enormous regulation, competitive pressures, dwindling markets, a (often) disillusioned clientele and motivation issues amongst its workforce, but none of these are reasons to ignore Excellence.

Excellence begets Excellence begets a sustainable, profitable Practice.

If I were asked where Excellence could make the biggest impression in the shortest period of time then my answer would be unequivocal: INVEST IN YOUR PEOPLE – NOW!

Let’s cut the talk about being the best employer in professional practice – not that there is anything wrong with trying to get recognised in a National list – and just focus, for the moment, on the basics:

Get used to saying Thank You/You Matter/We Value Your Massive Effort/Thank you for Going Without [??????];
Over communicate with everyone; ignorance just breeds frustration and resentment;
Make sure people know what is expected of them; forget the smoke and mirror technique;
Stop managing your people by looking in the rear view mirror as to what may have worked previously. Look forward and be inventive;
Start building trust between everyone from the office junior to the most senior person;
Get used to criticism: What do they say: “If you can’t stand the heat get out of the kitchen”. If you can’t stand criticism then how are you going to get an honest or serious appraisal of what is working or more likely in the beginning what is failing;
Reward failure! Yes you heard me. Stop looking for success in everything. Of course, make it clear what success looks like but reinforce that it is better to have tried and failed than not to have tried at all;
As Tom Peters says: “Boring begets Boring”. Stoping recruiting people that all look and sound the same;
Be clear what leadership means; treat people with dignity and respect and remember that your motivation for doing what you do is not the same as everyone else;
Don’t be afraid to say you don’t know the answer to an issue;
If you have some foible don’t mask it with a more disdainful one. If you need to ask for some coaching then do;
Talk straight;
Allign your values with those of the firm by all means but don’t think that to keep the troops in line you have to act like an automaton. For pity’s sake you are not in front-line politics. I am not suggesting that you look to rehearse your turf war out in the open but individualism is to be encouraged;
Spend some proper money on training people;
Put your people first. If they suceed then so will the firm. Simple.

{Interim} Conclusion

Assuming that you recognise the importance of Excellence, it is important that the mantra of the firm embodies the key components of Excellence, as you see them.

My suggestion is that at the very least you have a set of guiding beliefs that underpin an Excellent Professional Practice. Perhaps this could be sewn into the firm’s business cards. Excellence can just mean that you offer a bullet proof guarantee – one that perhaps states that if the client is not completely satisfied with the job that you offer the option of [... and you decide what works for you].

Kick start programme

First thing today take one project that has to be completed this month, put your new Excellence glasses on and decide how you will now approach it;
Look at the people issues above and take 2/3 of these and start working with some key people, give yourself 21 days by doing one small thing differently and see if it makes a measurable difference;
Ask your clients what sort of guaratee they would like to see built in to your invoicing structure if your service delivery is not Excellent.

If you want to discuss any of the issues raised then please feel to email me on juliansummerhayes@gmail.com.

2 Comments | In: Accountants, Excellence, Law Firms, Professional Services, Solicitors, Surveyors | tags: accountants, law firm marketing, Lawyers, professional services. | #

September 1st, 2010

How to Run a (Really) Successful Litigation Practice

As someone who, over a period of 14 years, ran various forms of litigation/dispute resolution teams, I have seen substantial change in the market. But I have a clear view on what makes for a successful practice.

In simple terms, clients are interested in outcomes and not the process. Unfortunately, too many lawyers get caught up in the minutia of the case, the Civil Procedure Rules (“CPR”) or a plethora of case law and forget that nearly all clients see litigation as a necessary Evil and recognise in most cases that the only parties to benefit are the lawyers!

This is the simple message but, as practitioner of Excellence, I believe there are some house Rules that, if followed, can lead to the development of a successful and, more importantly, a sustainable practice.

I say “Rules” but they are nothing more than common sense; but seem, very often, to get lost in the translation of best practice.

Rule #1

Does the client need to pursue the case or defend it prior to issue?

They may want to but that is not the same. Yes, there is a requirement to weigh in the balance the costs/benefit and there might be a strong or even a compelling case, but I would still push back with the client and ask them if they (genuinely) need to pursue or defend the case. Don’t be afraid to answer perhaps the most telling question – and one that I was constantly asked – if it were your case/money would you pursue it? If there is any element of doubt or you wouldn’t, then be up front with the client!

If, after this sort of critique, the client still wishes to push on then the moral questioning that undoubtedly goes on in your mind as the client spends more and more money is, I would hope, sufficiently assuaged.

Rule #2

Can the client afford to fund the case?

Even in modest cases, we all know the costs can quickly escalate. Try to give the client the worst case scenario, and, save where they might have insurance in place, it is absolutely right that you give consideration to the client’s ability to fund the case.

If they have a limited budget then be very careful: as we know, litigation is a fast-paced escalator and once on it, it is difficult to extracate your client and worst still your firm.

Rule #3

Conduct an early costs/benefit assessment. If the case is marginal then you need to be cautious about taking on the case.

I have seen far too many cases where the arguments are so finely balanced – perhaps as fine as a cigarette paper – that you wonder why anyone in their right mind would have lent their firm’s name or reputation to the case.

Rule #4

Please use the telephone – both in speaking to you client and your opposite number.

Why is it lawyers like to hide behind a prolix exchange of emails or worst still faxes?

If you must send an email or fax then one a day is normally sufficient.

Sometimes I felt like it was like WWII with emails: Who could send the earliest or latest and who would get the last blow in even if that meant that in excess of 5/6/7 emails had been sent.

Is a client really going to be that impressed? In my book it makes you look desperate.

Unless there are matters that require urgent attention – and they do arise from time to time – litigation is not a game. Treat it seriously. If in doubt speak to your client. Also, set some ground rules with the other side.

But, when all is said and done, there is nothing or practically nothing that can’t be sorted over the phone or even by video conference. I think as lawyers we have got into the habit of practising defensive law, and there is an increasing tendency to want to have the blanket of lots of written communication even though so much gets lost in translation or worse still it gets misconstrued and just raises the temperature and pushes the sides further apart.

Rule #5

Think settlement at the first and every opportunity.

This speaks for itself. But I think a lot of lawyers seem to want to pontificate or exaggerate the difficulties before any serious engagement takes place.

In my experience no case that I ever dealt with was not suitable for settlement of one sort of another. Yes, mediation is very effective but there are other ways: mini-trials, expert adjudication (even without an express clause), involving a neutral third party or just bringing together both sides.

Rule #6

Stop thinking like a lawyer and put yourself in the position of the client.

Yes you still need to be sufficiently disinterested to advise objectively, but never forget that you are plying your trade with someone else’s money and putting at risk their potential livelihood etc. Again, this picks up the point of Rule #1.

Rule #7

Don’t try to run too many cases. Less is more with dispute resolution.

I once worked with a brilliant litigator and I can’t ever remember him having more than a dozen cases at one time. Admittedly they were all substantive cases and perhaps you are not in such a privileged place but attention to detail, working out the issues, dealing with settlement and keeping the client regularly informed will dissipate the more cases you have.

Rule #8

Use language that a 10 year old would understand when communicating with your client.

Lawyers have this ingrained habit of thinking that the more impressive they sound to their client the more complex the case is made to appear. This presumably begets higher charges! Nonsense. If you think you are writing to a 10 year old child you are unlikely to use very, very simple language but it will make you think more carefully about what plain English actually means. And I don’t just mean the choice of words but also the sentence construction or sending through court documents with a clear and carefully worded explanation. Why on earth would a client understand what a Tomlin Order was!

Rule #9

Keep reviewing the case and talking to your client.

Rule #10

Don’t be afraid to turn your “Taxi Meter” off from time to time. [These are not my words but that of a High Court judge!]

Can you really justify every 6 minutes or more likely can you answer the question: Are you adding value?

I remember one firm (that of course shall remain nameless) who used to send a letter to acknowledge a letter even if they said nothing else. Now you can bet that that went down as 1 unit.

Start with the First Rule of The Go-Giver co-authored by Bob Burg and John David Mann:

“Your true worth is determined by how much more you give in value than you take in payment”.

If you must record every single item then still consider at the billing stage if you can answer this question.

Rule #11

Believe in your case.

Solicitors have fees pressures – in some cases they are expected to generate up to x5 of their salary – but they don’t operate under the Cab Rank Rule. Now I am not naive enough to believe that where you are acting for an important commercial or private client you have the luxury of saying: “The case sucks and I am not taking it on”; but if you have gone through the above Rules I would hope that you arrive at a point where you have a strong belief that you are acting in the client’s best interests and more than that you are passionate about getting the very best outcome you can for the client. When it comes to service delivery it makes such a difference. The client frankly is not interested in your reasons for a delay in responding to their email and the basis of your massive case load or the fact that you don’t really like their type of case. They want to believe that you are giving your heart and soul to the outcome.

Conclusion

Like all lists this is not exhaustive and no practice is perfect, but I strongly believe that if you adhere to these rules you will quickly garner a very good name in the market and Word of Mouth marketing will ensure that you have a steady stream of cases referred to you. And that is not just from the external market but from the internal market.

Take Away

Litigation is often the poor relation when it comes to training. There are some great providers out there but frankly knowing the minutia of the CPR just doesn’t cut it for me.

My advice is at the next team meeting you take some of these issues, or indeed your own, and discuss how you can improve your profile and attract more clients by reputation management, which is what a lot of this is about.

I would be really pleased to hear from you if you have any recommendations that you can share or strategies that have reshaped your practice. My email is juliansummerhayes@gmail.com.

2 Comments | In: Dispute Resolution, Law Firms, Professional Service Firms, Professional Services, Solicitors | tags: Litigation, solicitors. | #

August 31st, 2010

Does Social Media have a place in Legal Practice?

I have a firm view on this – some would say, perhaps, a fixed view – which is that whether you like it or not, Social Media is growing in importance, and it is only a matter of time before it becomes an essential element in the delivery of legal services. And, perhaps, more importantly, a key component of differentiation in the market.

Now there will be a steadfast few, and this will not be rooted in one generation or another, who refuse to acknowledge, let alone accept that Social Media, New Media or new channels of communication have a place in Legal/Professional Practice. It is not just unlearning what they know but it is the loss of control that comes with letting people have a voice on Twitter, express a personal view on LinkedIn or heaven forbid might try to set up a commercially focused page on Facebook.

I would love to be proved wrong but I would hazard a bet that in 10 years time there will still be a large number of law practices who have missed out completely on social media and will spend the next 10 years trying to catch up or more likely they will see their markets dwindle to the point of near extinction.

The classic response will be:

“Why on earth do we need to know about Social Media when our clients aren’t on the internet”.

Duh, what about mobile phones? More and more of the services available will undoubtedly be driven through mobile devices and will not be limited to the capability of the older client base to familiarise themselves with Twitter or such like.

Worse still, if the market moves in the direction of offering more services on line because it is cheaper, more convenient, removes the nervousness of attending at a solicitors office and all your friends and relatives are doing it, then it is highly likely that absent social media integration this form of delivery will not work.

The thing about social media, which everyone seems to forget, is that it is a People to People paradigm and has nothing to do with this platform or that platform.

If you have not yet thought about how social media can influence, develop or build a professional practice then just consider the genre as another means of communication (not as a means to spam the market) with your clients – and a very immediate one at that. Wouldn’t it be great to able to offer as many means of communication as possible? Why not? Surely that is the point of your capture page on the website. You know to capture a new enquiry or passing bird. Why not set up a firm Twitter page for those people who are comfortable contacting you on line. Or try something like a blog which has to be one of the best means of generating interest in your firm – particularly if the content is fresh, innovative and is not laden with the usual marketing speak.

If I was starting up my own legal practice, I would look at a model that put social media at the heart of the business so that it was inward as well as outward facing. Yes technology would be important but it is that People to People thing that trumps all.

2 Comments | In: Excellence, Social Media, Solicitors, Uncategorized | tags: Law, law firms, Social Media. | #

August 30th, 2010

Think & Train like a Professional Athlete

This is a clarion call to all those people in professional practice to start thinking more as a professional athlete and less like a *professional*.

Think of it like this: How many professional athletes do you know who once they get to the top, the very top, stop training?

I bet even someone as gifted as Usain Bolt still has to spend time on the track and in the gym if he wants to continue to run under 10 seconds for the 100m. Lance Armstrong? Trust me, there are countless stories in his books (Every Second Counts is a great read) of him busting his gut to get in shape for the greatest cycle race on the planet, the Tour de France.

But in my experience this is what happens in professionals practice – people stop training. Showing up seems to be enough.

The reason I am so drawn to this analogy is that very few people in the legal profession think and act in this way. In most cases, they go through the exhausting process of getting qualified, work really hard to bill and impress their seniors and, if they are lucky, reach the Holy Grail of Partnership. Along the way they will have spent the minimum amount of time developing their persona outside of garnering a whole heap of legal expertise which usually means growing some grey hairs and having juggled too many cases to give WOW experience to their clients but it sure impresses everyone that they can manage a big fat case load and better still can bill like crazy.

Ask yourself the question: When was the last time your firm sent you on a non law course? Or how many lawyers in law firms have any non legal qualifications like an MBA? In these difficult times it is easy for training managers to push back and stick to the CPD material but law firms don’t have to spend money to see their lawyers trained or get experience outside of the law. They could look to all manner of business as fertile training grounds. Wouldn’t it be cool to spend some time with a client on the basis that you wanted (a) to understand more about your client’s business and (b) wanted to develop experience in a non legal area – purchasing, customer service or the shop floor….!

I still remember the immortal lines of my original mentor in sales, Tom Hopkins: “If you want to earn more then learn more”. I didn’t just take this to mean lots more £££ but to develop as a person.

Now I have bought a ton of books, invested in various tape cassette programmes, read masses of blog posts and listen to uTube when someone sends me a good link and still I know that I need to put more hours in working on myself.

I wonder how many professionals have read a book outside of law – say in the personal development genre? I would wager very few.

The only book that I was told to read by one of my firms was Who Moved My Cheese by Dr Spencer Johnson. A great book but the lawyers treated it as an exercise of “Right, done that…” and did not think or were greatly encouraged to read beyond this book. Even if asking someone to read a Dale Carnegie book like How to Win Friends and Influence People seems too radical then why not buy every fee earner a copy of David Maister’s excellent book Managing the Professional Service Firm and then set up a workshop group to see how his ideas can be implemented within your firm.

If you truly want your firm to take on the challenges of the market then start getting everone to think and more helpfully train like a professional athlete.

1 Comment | In: Excellence, Leadership, Professional Service Firms, Solicitors, Uncategorized, Well being | | #

August 29th, 2010

Winning and Retaining Clients in Legal Practice

I would wager that there is a constant theme running through all law firms up and down the breadth of the land – we need more/better/bigger clients. This will be driven either by an economic imperative (the need to grow in accordance with your firm’s 3 or 5 business plan) or, in some cases, it will be a matter of survival!

Up until fairly recently, most legal practices have relied upon a small but loyal cabal of clients to grow their practice and these have been quite easy to manage but as the firm has expanded so there has been pressure to grow the client base. This has usually meant the focus has been on a few (senior) Rain Makers to bring home the bacon. You know the type of person – the one who embodies the DNA of the firm – and clients come to him/her based on personal recommendation from other satisfied clients, friends or other professionals who have a good reciprocal arrangement.

The problem is that a lot of these people are either coming up for retirement or those people who might have the innate skills to garner long-term professional relationships are unlikely, in these 24/7 times, to have the luxury of being able to spend the same amount of face time as their predecessors. Even where it is patently clear that these ‘goodwill’ clients may not continue to instruct the firm once the person steps fully away from the practice, not enough time and attention is being spent working out a succession plan to keep these clients loyal to the firm.

As someone who has worked in legal practice since 1996, I have seen a seismic shift in the way that law firms approach the task of retaining and winning new clients. There has been a realisation that sales/business development is a key component of legal practice.

One of the first questions I am asked when meeting with a prospective client (normally in professional practice), is how they should go about winning new clients. Very little enquiry goes on (of me) around the existing clients. This is possibly because they have already worked out the startling reality that their client base is too weak to grow the practice. By weak I mean the fees per client are too low. In these days of ever increasing regulation, more firms are moving away from processing low value work, unless, of course, it is the proverbial sprat to catch a mackerel or the Trojan Horse scenario.

Some firms will not be sophisticated enough to have worked out their average client billings or the profile of their client base, and if that is the case, my advice is that before you start down the “we need more clients” route spend some time in properly analysing your existing clients. Don’t just look at the plethora of databases that will be available to you but go and speak to some of the more influential fee earners about current or past clients to understand the likelihood of those clients being capable of growing further than the current legal spend. I don’t just mean the perennial questions about cross-selling but about going deep with that client and understand if they have the ability because of their own profile, management or market to develop into a more progressive client. And don’t forget those clients that even though not substantial in terms of billing have a number of people who are influencers either in the local market or in the sectors that you operate.

Once you have worked out the strength of your existing clients, then my advice is to go deep with the Pareto Principle – the 80/20 rule – and figure out a way to go OTT with your service delivery and adding value to the 20% of clients that give you 80% of your business. Think “Remarkable”; think Best in the World; but just focus on these clients and don’t get distracted by the naysayers who are reluctant to work with such a seemingly small group of clients.

It is not just that these clients are your biggest clients but it is also those that:

Fit your firm’s profile, culture and style;
Have the greatest potential for growth;
Have a number of key individuals who will be your walking ambassadors within the sector that you are focused on developing and will generate referrals for you; and
They are likely to be a source of recommendations that will give you extra or increased profile in the sector in which you wish to operate.

Now I am not blind to the financials. You are not going to change this model over night but the mindset of less is more is what is important. The experience counts for everything and if you have the mentally that you must act for everybody then the service levels will be severely compromised.

As to new clients, my advice here is to not worry initially about the roster of clients that you would like to work for (they are likely to the same list that has been put together by every other law firm in your neighbourhood) but rather look at your firm’s expertise, capability and most importantly mix of personalities. Why personalities? Well, simply put, people (yes they stand behind all large businesses) buy from people they know, like and trust.

Even in a fledgling scenario where you know nothing about the client, you need to carefully consider if you have the right blend of skills, legal and people, to work effectively with the newbie client. I have to say that I would be concerned if you were starting this far back in the sales cycle? This is particularly with a new client on your patch. Leaving to one side some of the sophisticated CRM systems, I would be surprised if your team didn’t know some of the people in the organisation so that when it came to the sales-planning exercise you could consider the essential question about doing business with people with someone they “know, like and trust”.

Once you have cracked this exercise then you should arrive with a fairly small list of potential clients. You should then consider:

Assigning a lead person and small team to work up a client plan. This will be focused on understanding more about the client – the movers and shakers, their key clients, and their likes and dislikes concerning their suppliers;
Do a SWOT analysis of your firm’s service capability;
Undertake a PESTEL analysis of your potential client. PESTEL stands for Political, Economic, Societal, Technological, Environmental and lastly Legal. Here you are looking inside out and asking the perennial question, under these discreet headings, what is likely to be keeping the management up at night and worrying about what? Within these themes you will able to work out which type of collateral or newsworthy material you think they would be interested in. At the moment you will be thinking about your off line material – newsletters, brochures and networking events – that you can dispense in a timely and consistent way. The whole idea is to have something that you can follow up with a telephone call to arrange a meeting or an invite to an event, ideally an event that is industry focused as opposed at this stage to a social event;
Make sure that everyone is accountable;
Place some strict time lines on the outcome. In sales methodologies, one of the techniques you ware taught when dealing with cold calling is that it is a numbers game so that for every x number of calls you will receive y orders. It might appear a crass way of approaching the selling of professional services which I have long espoused requires a completely different methodology to the industrial sales paradigm but the hard truth is that you need to get to the point of understanding and knowing if your new client is likely to buy from you;
Make sure you have your sales presentation or service offering worked out in advance. If you do find that the client contact agrees to see you, it is very important that you don’t wing it;
Make the process as enjoyable as you can. Celebrate your victories. I am not suggesting that you make it too cheesy like having a bell to ring when you win a new client or dole out chintzy gifts but just think that not everyone will have as much invested in the outcome as others and a financial reward might just make the difference between success and failure.

The other important factor to bear in mind is training. Don’t think that the sales skills are innate to all lawyers and if you need to buy in some external help then do so. My own experience of being trained and now delivering my own personal brand of sales training is that a small amount can go a very long way. Yes I know in these straightened times, it will be difficult to see the immediate value but that feeling will be forgotten fairly quickly when you win your new client.

Make sure there is a bigger purpose that people are working towards. If it is to change the culture and ethos of the firm then make that explicit. Success begets success begets better clients begets a firm that people feel energised to work in.

Finally the greatest piece of advice I can give is to be persistent. Don’t give up, EVER. If you need some inspiration then there are an abundance of great books out there but my favourite will and still remains Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. Master the principles in that book and success is around the corner.

3 Comments | In: Law Firms, Professional Service Firms, Professional Services, Selling, Solicitors, Think and Grow Rich | tags: Clients, Professioanl Practice, Selling, solicitors. | #

August 28th, 2010

MBWA – Managing by Wandering Around

For those of you who have worked in professional practice, you will all be familiar with the increasing use and demands that Information Technology (“IT”) places upon us.

Imagine trying to do your job without the use of or access to a computer and the underlying support programmes. Forget cloud computing and the iPad for the moment and think about that PC or lap top that you find yourself ‘stuck’ to for the majority of your day and most of all the use of emails.

It is unquestionably the case that IT has made the job easier in many respects and allowed us to process more work in less time but it has also caused a not so subtle shift in the way that people interact with each other. And in this instance, I am talking about the internal market and not the way that clients expect to have 24/7 access.

MBWA is a phrase that Tom Peters, of In Search of Excellence fame, says is as powerful now as it was when he first came across the term in 1977.

As I understand it, he and Bob Waterman his co-author on In Search … decided to go out of town and avoid a few of the behemoths that he was at that time analysisng and instead visit a fairly modest outfit based in Paolo Alto by the name of Hewlett Packard (“HP”). There they met with the CEO who told them about MBWA. For HP it kept them closer to the action and made for a more stimulating work place.

I think we should all give ourselves the opportunity to MBWA, and I don’t just mean those people who are in a management role but everyone. There are of course lots of reasons not to spend time *wandering* – that wretched clock that sucks your soul every 6 minutes is sure difficult to break away from – but if you truly want to know what is going on within your practice, find out the latest wins and try to align a message then nothing beats some proper face time.

In my experience, the best managers I have worked with were the best communicators (and listeners) and I just don’t believe that you can gauge the temperature as well, disseminate a message or just test the pulse of your firm without spending time out of your office, away from the computer and going native. Try it. Don’t just stay in your comfort zone and speak to the people that you know or associate with but how about going to speak to someone in another department (and not just a fee earner) but someone in accounts or IT. Yes, it may feel strange to begin with and you may have to have a reason but don’t put it off on the basis of time.

Even if this seems too much of a stretch, pick up the phone and talk to someone. It sure beats that flacid email that everybody seems so settled in doing – a cop out if you ask me.

3 Comments | In: Business Excellence, Excellence, Leadership, Personal Development, Professional Service Firms, Professional Services | tags: Excellence, Leadership, Professional practice. | #

August 22nd, 2010

Excellence in Professional Practice

Introduction

You will see in the sub-heading to the blog a subtle but important change.

My blog is now focused on Excellence (and innovation) in Professional Practice. This is because, since stepping away from practising as a solicitor 3 weeks ago, I have now taken on a new persona focused exclusively in this area. I have a separate TypePad blog for my other passion of personal development, but I thought it was becoming confusing to try and run one blog to cover both subject areas.

Excellence in Professional Practice

Excellence has been much written about by Tom Peters of In Search of Excellence fame and I shall not labour the *dynamic* of Excellence to bring about a paradigm shift for professional services (if you want a good introduction I would highly recommend that you read Tom’s book, Professional Service Firm 50) but, for me, it means going beyond challenging and/or disrupting the status quo and taking a leap of faith and having self belief to see how Excellence has the power to redefine and change the whole notion of professional practice.

I think a lot of people now in professional services have forgotten that they and the firms/businesses exist for one reason and one reason alone: to serve their clients.

No clients = No employees = No business.

Yes I can accept a degree of disillusionment and fatigue – who wouldn’t be ground down with having, as in the case of law, to account for every 6 minutes of the day and being asked to bill more and more without necessarily seeing the correlative return – but I want to see, indeed it is my ration d’être, a reawakening so that the passion that inspired people to enter the professions (to change the world or make a difference to someone’s life) is reignited.

Too lofty an ambition? Possibly, but I have never been one to accept that this is all there is or that there is no other way of doing something.

I know for some this may sit uncomfortably with the notion of running a Professional practice but I truly hope that the material presented in this blog will, when implemented, raise the bar beyond any place that you thought possible, and challenge the very idea of what it is to deliver on your “vision” for professional services.

No Comments | In: Accountants, Business Excellence, Law Firms, Professional Service Firms, Professional Services, Solicitors, Surveyors | tags: law firms, professioanl services, Professional practice, solicitors. | #

August 16th, 2010

Social Media for the Legal Profession: Top 10 Guidelines for Twitter Use

Who is this post aimed at?

Those legal practices who want to Get Better with their use of Twittter;
Partners or senior fee earners who are having to make the decision whether to allow their staff to engage with Twitter;
Risk managers who want to assess the risk profile of allowing people on Twitter;
Fee earners or anyone else who wants to build a case for the use of or engagement with Twitter;
And anyone else who needs a reference point for engagement on Twitter.

Introduction

I recently tweeted about my follower/following numbers (not the figures) but the fact that about 3/4 months ago I followed a series of well known firms of solicitors. I say “well known” in the context of the legal profession not necessarily the general public or the business community (outside I suspect of a smallish geographical territory).

My theme – which I got a lot of comments about – was that in nearly every case (certainly well over 95%) not one of them had followed me and looking deeper into their feeds it was difficult to find any or any meaningful engagement. What I did see was a broadcast mentality, largely focused around their off line material: client wins, legal news relating to their firm and a bit of CSR news in a few cases.

I didn’t get into their own follower/following numbers but certainly one large firm that I looked at seemed to have a reasonable number of followers – well over 700 – and I was therefore even more surprised to see an almost completely lack of engagement.

Now, I know it is easy to criticize, and in fact I should be embracing and complimenting those firms that have that have taken the trouble to occupy one of the new media platforms but I don’t just think this is helpful to those firms that may be looking to replicate their pattern of behaviour, particularly given there are so many great examples of business that use Twitter as part of the customer experience (I assume legal practices have the client in mind with Twitter?).

One issue that is also synonymous is the fact that all these are House Twitter accounts, being the name of the firm. Now I am not saying this is wrong but as Brian Inkster of Inksters has shown, it is possible to combine both a House Twitter style but also allow people in your firm to have their own Twitter accounts. I will come back to this dichotomy in a subsequent post, but for now I would just ask you to consider that there is bound to be the perception that Brand [XYZ] firm of solicitors is unlikely to be as authentic as a person tweeting in their own name, even if they are subject to the same or similar Twitter Guidelines.

Apart from this point, here is my initial top 10 Guidelines for law firms. I say “initial” because it is just a foundation and it is up to you to consider what works best for you and your practice but I do recommend that you have something written down before engagement starts.

Top 10 Guidelines for Twitter

Check the firm’s IT, HR, Social Media policies (if they exist) or at the very least your contract of employment and staff handbook. More firms are looking at relaxing their firm’s rules for engagement. Don’t score an own goal of going against an express rule that forbids the use of Twitter in firm time, where you either set up a firm account or immediately start tweeting as if you are tweeting on behalf of the firm.
Assuming that you have got the go ahead to use Twitter, make sure you have the time to engage with the platform. I use the work “engage” deliberately because it is not a case of sitting at your computer and bashing our a series of tweets and expecting that to be end of the story. Twitter followers expect engagement – you know a two-way process. And don’t forget a lot of these folk may not be clients, in profile, type or interest. I am not saying you cannot block those people that are hell-bent on spamming you or sending inappropriate messages but if someone sends a message to you or comments on something that is relevant to your reason for engagement on Twitter, then you will be expected to say something, limited of course to 140 characters.
Be transparent and if you are allowed to use a Twitter account that bears your initials and also the firm name (my preferred choice for those firms that do allow their staff to use the medium), then talk as you would normally do so. Please don’t be overly formal and use appropriate language. Unfortunately the ubiquitous disclaimer won’t fit into 140 characters although you may have decided in your Twitter profile to have something that makes it clear you are not seeking to or giving legal advice and nothing you say should be relied upon etc.
Post something that has meaning and does not link automatically to your firm’s website or latest published newsletter. How about a piece of news from a relevant site making it clear the source of the news or re-tweeting a blog post that you like and has depth of content to your followers and those that you think may wish to follow you.
NEVER represent yourself or the firm in a false or misleading way. I tend to adopt a pause button with a lot of my tweets. I like to pause and look at the tweets for at least 10-20 seconds before I hit the send button and in that way I have given myself a tool to moderate what I say.
It is perfectly acceptable to reference your firm’s blog, particularly if you have written it, but don’t sit there for the next two hours shouting out the blithe message “My new blog post just up” or another one I see a lot “Just in case you missed it here is my latest blog post”. Now that’s fine once or twice but not every time as I see with a few people. No broadcast please.
If you want to tweet about the competition then be very careful. They may bite back. I would speak to someone internally before you go near this area.
Please, please respect your clients’ confidentiality, privacy and rights. Don’t comment on current cases that you or the firm are involved in. I know this sounds obvious but you may find yourself contacted by a client. In those circumstances you should seek at the very earliest opportunity to set up an off line discussion or communicate via email or as a last resort I would DM on Twitter. Remember that content on Twitter will be around for a long time and certainly as the Dr Gillian McKeith exchanges showed things can go quickly awry.
Respect your audience. Don’t become personal.
Try to add value.

Now this is not by any means an exhaustive list but it should give you a starting point to consider how best to use Twitter.

These Guidelines are unquestionably generic in their nature and if you are thinking that they need to be more prescriptive then that is just fine, but do bear in mind that when you have a conversation with someone you apply a sense of decency, there is a level of trust and you use your good sense as to what to say and not to say. And that is no different with Twitter. If you have too many rules then there is a risk that it comes across as a very stilted, unimaginative and non-authentic conversation. Ask yourself would you want to have a conversation with someone who conveyed those characteristics.

Your thoughts

I would interested to hear about your own experience of using Twitter. What do you like/not like? Has it become too noisy to make sense of the conversations going on? Have you been able to find the time to engage? Will mobile technologies have an influence on habits of people of using Twitter?

I think for those who have taken the plunge there is a lot we can do to help those who are standing on the sidelines and I will be returning to Twitter with some further posts, particularly around the question of how to earn attention and use it meaningfully.

8 Comments | In: Uncategorized | | #

August 14th, 2010

Trust is EVERYTHING

I have become wedded to Stephen M R Covey’s book The Speed of Trust. So much so that the CD version I bought first, before the book, has been running almost continuously in my car for 6 weeks (in between the children playing Dizzie Rascal and an assortment of musical extravaganza).

I have now picked up the book and it feels like a real comfort to see a lot of the exact words repeated – I suppose there is no point reinventing the wheel.

My stasis arises because, now that I have fully grasped the 4 cores of Self Trust and the 13 behaviours of Relationship Trust (2 of the 5 waves of trust; the other 3 being Organisational Trust, Market Trust and Societal Trust), I can see that everything that I do whether at home or work starts first and ends with Trust. Or rather it should do.

The point is that I think we have forgotten how to trust. This point, which for me is the most powerful, is dealt with as the last of the 13 behaviours: “Extend Trust”.

To call in aid Mr Covey’s book, this is a mixture of both character and competence, but, more than that, perhaps much more basic, it requires you to trust your inner self before you Extend Trust. You need to become more trusting as a person and considered more trustworthy. This will require, for a lot of people, a paradigm shift, particularly where they have been burnt or been taken advantage of.

Personally speaking, I have experienced long periods of quiescence where I felt it better to keep myself to myself. This self-dependence was as much rooted in the need to or experience of doing things for myself, but also not being trusting enough.

Sometimes, and let’s be quite honest, it requires you to be convinced that there is something in it for you and whilst I totally get that I would rather take the plunge in getting it wrong (not being burnt) than not trying at all.

I am not suggesting, if you want to break (into) this cycle that you should extend trust indiscriminately or with a lack of thoughtfulness but next time you find yourself in a relationship where you are unsure, I would challenge you to let go of your reservations, worries or concerns and extend trust.

For me professionally, give that up until very recently I was a practising solicitor, it is quite a challenge. In the past I have had to be very guarded and sometimes quite circumspect in my dealings with clients, colleagues and certainly with regards to my opposition (that’s how we refer to solicitors on the other side of a dispute – hardly sounds like there is much trust there).

Now, I am having to let go and put myself in situations, particularly around my business interests, where I am having to take a lot more on trust. That is not to say that my Spidey Senses are not still flashing up from time to time but I am learning slowing to extend trust and I think it is making me a better person as a result.

Now for you sceptics out there who require some ROI language, consider this (taken from the CD): “When Trust Goes up, Speed goes up and Cost goes down.”

I challenge you to think of a recent transaction where had there been greater levels of trust it would not have had a measurable effect on the outcome.

In conclusion, I wouldn’t want you to think about trust in purely economic terms but rather as a factor that we can all work on and which has the power to reshape our lives, relationships and ultimately make a real difference to our socity.

3 Comments | In: Business Excellence, Professional Service Firms, Trust | | #

August 13th, 2010

Service ALWAYS comes 1st!! in Professional Services

I don’t know about you but these day I practically hallucinate when I find a company or service provider that Rocks me with its service. And I don’t just means the service that takes *care* of things, but rather the service that is so super sensitive that nothing is too much trouble and you almost feel obliged to pay double for the offering.

Can you think of someone like this? Few and far between I bet.

The principal issue is that we have become accustomed, or perhaps anaesthetised, to mediocre or even sub-standard service. Perhaps also we have forgotten what good service looks or feels like.

Think of some examples:

Banks: when was the last time you had a quality face to face meeting with someone from your bank (or even a decent chat with the cashier) where you didn’t feel that time was of the essence or worse still you knew you were being lined up for a sub-sale of products or service lines that were of no interest to you?
Your Internet provider.
Your mobile phone provider. Mine told me that they hadn’t sold me a handset when it went wrong for the umpteenth time but just a “contract”. Somehow they couldn’t answer me when I asked them how I made and received calls on a “contract”.
The garage where you buy petrol. I can’t remember the last time I saw the same face twice at mine and the offering at the pump was very much geared to paying by credit card so that we didn’t have to have any contact with the person on the till. So much for the “Service Station”.
Oh, and I nearly forgot the checkout at my local supermarket. I was told by someone who seemed to be in the know (a more regular shopper than me I figure) that check out staff were likely to be phased out and we were all going to be forced to use the self serve checkout. You know the one that never works and there is always a person hanging about to sort out the bag which seems to cause no end of problems! Now there’s progression for you.

And I could go on but you get the picture.

To keep things balanced, I am sure all of the above mentioned would say that this was progress – the usual trite stuff would be trotted out: this is what the customer demands; and there is a cost imperative.

I don’t know about you but I don’t buy it (well I do actually because I have no choice in most cases).

This is no longer the thin edge of the wedge. NO – the wedge is firmly ensconced into our psyche. We seem to have meekly accepted the inevitable weakening of the bridge between the provider and the consumer to such an extent that we have passed the point of no return. Proper service is a really a bygone notion.

Now, what does this have to do with professional services? I would have thought it was obvious.

What we are now seeing is the same paradigm shift with: (a) an increasing focus on cost with the lowest possible level of fee earner being required to deal with a transaction; (b) hourly rates being the epicentre of the client relationship rather than service delivery being paramount; (c) commoditization of legal services at the low end (in other words bundling up of a product to dispatch the service with all haste): (d) more services being delivered remotely and across the Web; and (e) a drive at winning work from competitors which usually means undercutting the opposition.

I am not a dinasaur (or at least I don’t think I am) and I accept that change is inevitable – indeed as the late Sir John Harvey Jones wrote about in his first book, Making it Happen, absent change (and more than tinkering with the product or serivce propostion) businesses eventually die. I agree; but my complaint is that this *inevitable* paradigm shift should wherever possible enhance and not diminish our customer experience.

Having spent over 10 years in the delivery of professional services (I am no longer practising as a solicitor), my modus operandi was, despite the hubris surrounding my hourly billing, to put service centre stage. I never faltered in that commitment.

Of course, all businesses will say that clients are important but my experience is that billing or charging the client was always centre stage.

I don’t care what market you operate in, if you really want to make a difference put Service (yes with a capital S) as the central tenet of your business (right behind the mantra of making sure your people are recognised as the prize asset) and the business will be successful and I mean really successful.

If you don’t know what Superpleasing looks like – going beyond the call of duty- ask your best clients what they like about you and make sure that the bar is set no lower than that but ideally much, much higher.