Tag: proposals

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Do you print in black and white or colour?

Compared to the amount of printing I was doing pre-COVID, I very rarely print these days. But, on the rare occasion when I do print, I try to make sure this is in black and white unless there is a graph that cannot be understood unless it has been printing in colour.

It would be well within your rights to be wondering right now: “Why I’m going on about this?”. Well, here’s the answer:

– a study funded by the European Commission Low Carbon initiative and the Liverpool City Region –carried out by the Eco-I North-West project based at Liverpool John Moores University, working with local e-signature company E-Sign: ‘The financial and environmental effects of digitalising paper documents in the legal sector‘

found that:

Medium-sized law firms could save around £400,000 every year and reduce carbon emissions by digitising paperwork, research has estimated.

Wow, almost half a million pounds a year – and that’s at ‘medium-sized’ law firms (having between 200-250 employees and handling 18,000 documents a year).

But, and this is the part that got me:

More than half the total, £210,000, could be saved by no longer printing colour pages. Together, medium-sized firms could save £336m each year.

Holy cow, medium-sized law firms in the UK could save 336 million pounds a year merely by not printing in colour!

So what does that tell us as we march right into a financially restrictive 2023?

Basically, don’t expect or ask for printed material from your law firm any longer. If you want glossy broachers, get them sent to you electronically and share them internally via email.

And if you do insist on printed marketing material from your law firm, expect to be getting this in black and white or with very limited colour pages!

As usual comments are my own. And I hope everyone has a great 2023!

rws_01

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Pareto optimality??

Pretty much everyone involved in legal business development/marketing should have heard of the ‘Pareto principle‘; where, allegedly (because I have some thoughts on this): 80% of your revenue comes from your top 20 clients.

But, have you ever heard of the ‘Pareto optimality‘?

Because, until I read this Seth Godin post I had not.

Which leads to the point of this post – there is something in Seth’s post for law firm leaders who think that lawyers can do it all to really think about:

If someone over there can do their particular work efficiently, and you can trade your particular work to them, everyone comes out ahead.

So, hint if you are a lawyer and:

cannot write a tender, blog post, social media update, newsletter, manage an event, know how to hire employees, etc, etc. – but are a great lawyer,

do what you are good at (lawyering) and hire other professionals (let’s call them ‘Allied Professionals’ in 2023) to take care of this ‘mundane stuff’ for you!

As usual, comments are my own.

rws_01