Legal & professional services
A more commercial ethos has been evolving within legal and professional services firms, as changes that have already been embraced by the leading firms have become an imperative for all.
Today, flexibility is vital: firms want to appraise the skills of individual lawyers or consultants so that they can be re-assigned to more active practice areas or countries. ‘Customer relationship management’ can’t be left to personal chemistry as firms track and manage all contact with key clients and sharpen their focus on second- and third-tier clients. New business is much more important, so pitch teams need to quickly tap into information and expertise that may be scattered across their offices and practice areas.
Many firms are taking the opportunity presented by upgrades to 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:
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?’
Firm-wide utilisation and profitability management: ‘Should we re-allocate resources between practice areas or offices? How profitable are our clients? 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?’
Business development and client 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?’
Financial reporting and management accounting: ‘Can our management accounting be more timely and efficient? Can we improve accuracy by devolving budgeting to our senior people, while maintaining central control? Is there an easier way to for relationship-holders to predict future income? How do we link billing, WIP and debtor information?’
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?’
Risk: ‘How can we establish a consistent conflict-checking process, across all countries and practice areas? When internal policies are not always being followed, what is the audit trail? How can we create a set of indicators that will help us reduce bad debts?’
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?
