Legal & professional services

Recession has speeded up the move towards a more commercial approach that has been under way within legal and professional services firms for some time. Changes that have already been embraced by leading firms have now become imperative for all. And modern information systems have proved to be the most effective way of measuring profitability, optimising resources and controlling costs.

Today, flexibility is vital: firms want to appraise the skills of individual lawyers or consultants so that, if necessary, they can be re-allocated between dormant and active practice areas or countries. ‘Customer relationship management’ can’t be left to personal chemistry: firms want to track and manage all contacts with their key clients and sharpen their focus on second- and third-tier clients. New business is much more important, so firms want to know how pitch teams can quickly tap into information and expertise that may be widely scattered across their offices and practice areas.

Currently, many firms are taking the opportunity presented by upgrades of core systems such as Aderant, Elite and SAP to discuss their future needs with Blueprint. Our long experience within the legal and professional services sector has given us answers to many of the questions they are now grappling with. These include:

1. Billing process and WIP lock-up: ‘We’ve done the work – so where’s the money? Whose desk is the invoice on, right now? Who should progress the situation with the client?’
   
2. Firm-wide utilisation and profitability management: ‘Should we re-allocate resources between practice areas or offices? How profitable are our clients and matters or assignments? Are our ‘trophy’ clients justified? What type of work is most profitable and why? What is the ratio of partners or senior consultants to more junior people on matters or assignments?’
3. Business development and key client relationship management: ‘Who owns the client relationship? Who else should get involved? What are we doing to sustain and develop the relationship? How should we target our marketing?’
4. Financial reporting and management accounting: ‘How can we make our management accounting more timely and efficient? Can we improve accuracy by devolving budgeting to our senior people, while maintaining central control? How can we make it easier for relationship-holders to predict future income? How can we link our billing, WIP and debtor information?’
5. HR and payroll management: ‘How can we predict our future HR needs? How can we monitor progress against skills and training targets? How can we justify our most expensive overheads, when measured against the profitability of individual clients?’
6. Risk: ‘How can we establish a consistent conflict-checking process, across all countries and practice areas? Internal policies are not always being followed: how can we establish an audit trail? How can we create a set of indicators that will help us reduce bad debts?’
7. Knowledge management: ‘How can we search for and integrate structured and unstructured information across the firm? Can we include third party data within our enterprise searches? Have we worked on a matter or assignment like this before, elsewhere in the firm? Who knows what, and where are they?