This week’s Quote of the Week is via Seth Godin in his post ‘Simple techniques for complex projects‘:
Stress test the go/no go parts of the project as early as possible.
Anyone who has done as many tenders as I have would whole heartily agree with that one!
Only got around to reading this interesting post by William Josten on the Thomson Reuters website this week. In the post – ‘How to improve handling of law firm rate increase requests through data: A view from in-house counsel‘ – Josten comes up with this gem that is well worth keeping in mind the next time you ask your clients for a rate increase and makes it my Quote of the Week for this week:
From law firms’ perspective, understanding the data that informs a client’s financial position is a helpful way to focus their rate increase conversations onto a productive end for both sides.
As usual comments are my own.
#QuoteOfTheWeek
This week’s Quote of the Week comes from a post I read by Seth Godin. In ‘Insightful data is called information‘ Seth writes:
The purpose of information is to inform, to help us change our minds. Information has a point of view, it’s useful. It turns data into actionable truth.
Getting more data isn’t the hard part. Turning it into information is.
This is absolutely spot on and something every law firm needs to keep in mind as it mines for the new oil – aka data!
As usual, comments are my own. And I hope everyone has a great and safe 2023!
#QuoteOfTheWeek
This week’s Quote of the Week comes from an article written by Steven M Bell in LawVision. The article itself is a write-up of ‘Leading Marketers Weigh in on Rethinking Law Firm Pitches and Proposals‘.
In the article Steven quotes Brandie Knox, Principal and Creative Director of Knox Design Strategy with the following:
“A firm should have a solid sense of its strengths, weaknesses, and its strategic direction as it decides to proceed…or not. Is this opportunity going to propel the firm toward its three-, five- and 10-year goals?”
And the part I love, which every BD person should keep in mind about every opportunity they are looking into is this:
Is this opportunity going to propel the firm toward its three-, five- and 10-year goals?”
#QuoteoftheWeek
This week’s Quote of Week is not without controversy and comes from BigHand’s Maintaining profitability in a global recession:
“Many firms went above and beyond to support clients during the pandemic – but the current economic situation, especially rising costs, means that clients are not returning the favour.”
Given the level of profitability law firms have enjoyed over the past 2 or so financial years, not so sure I agree with that statement…
… anyone else think they may be on to something?
As usual, comments are my own.
This week’s Quote of the Week actually comes from the fabulous ‘The Geek in Review‘ podcast. In this week’s episode, co-host (flying solo) interviews Alex Denne of Genie AI and Caroline Hill, Editor-in-Chief of Legal IT Insider on a recent article by Caroline that ‘63% of all legal contracts are gender-biased‘. It is a great interview, and you should listen to it.
However, the Quote of the Week – although a part of the podcast interview, is out of context as it relates to the last question Greg and Marlene Gebauer ask all guests at the end – ‘The Crystal Ball Question’.
And this week, at 37 minutes and 15 seconds, Caroline responds to this question with this:
Caroline Hill 37:15
So I think, perhaps, what you might not expect me to say, but I think my challenges are around culture. I think that there’s not enough change. I think that we talk about tech all the time, but I see lots of people talking about innovation, but actually, I don’t see very much change in terms of how real firms are structured in terms of the management in terms of, you know, obviously diversity being a part of that. And I think that, whilst we’ve got the same people doing the same things that we can’t really expect to really properly move on and innovate in the way that we should be. So for me, that’s, you know, that’s something that we’re now moving into hybrid working, right. So that’s going to be to, that’s going to be more of a challenge than ever, you know, and we really need the right culture to create, you know, to manage that situation as it needs to be met. It’s going to be a massive challenge from a tech and a culture perspective, really bringing on teams and you need leadership from the top. And what you’re seeing is leaders who actually want to just now work from home. And they’re telling their young team, they’re young ones to come into the office, right? There’s all sorts of there’s so many examples of how the culture needs to change. And until the culture changes, we can talk about tech till we are blue in the face. And we can talk about innovation till we’re blue in the face. But until the culture really changes until law firms start really being honest with themselves and probably corporate legal as well. I don’t think that much it’s going to not as much as it should change or change.
Okay, now read that again – then go and listen to Caroline say those actual words.
And that is my #QuoteoftheWeek
As Recession Looms, a Flurry of Price-Reduction Requests Will Follow: Don’t let customers throw you for a loop—be ready to answer their demands with data and a clear explanation of the market.
Stephan Liozu
“Knowledge workers were already exhausted by their jobs before the pandemic arrived: too much e-mail, too many meetings, too much to do—all being relentlessly delivered through ubiquitous glowing screens. We used to believe that these depredations were somehow fundamental to office work in the twenty-first century, but the pandemic called this assumption into question. If an activity as entrenched as coming to an office every day could be overturned essentially overnight, what other aspects of our professional lives could be reimagined?”
Cal Newport
This week’s Quote of Week comes via Tom Curry, Managing Partner, Lenczner Slaght on Slaw – A Managing Partner’s Perspective on Legal Marketing:
I also think it’s important for lawyers to remember that marketing and business development is a long-term game and consistency is key. You never know when your efforts will pay off, but they absolutely will if you keep at it.
Tom Curry, Managing Partner, Lenczner Slaght
What is a law firm? It is a collection of lawyers who are together because they want to be together. If they stop wanting to be together, then they leave, and the law firm ends.
Bruce Stachenfeld, Chairman of Duval & Stachenfeld LLP
Random Thoughts On The Business Of Law 