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Post #152 - Monday, September 25, 2006
International Professional Legal Management Week
The Association of Legal Administrators (ALA), the professional society for law firm administrators and corporate and government legal department managers, along with the support of eight other co-sponsoring organizations, has designated October 2-6, 2006 as International Professional Legal Management Week.
 The objectives of International Professional Legal Management Week include: to provide awareness, understanding and education about the legal management profession; to increase knowledge of the diverse roles within the profession; and to communicate to stakeholders, and others, the importance and need for a professional management team in all facets of enterprise leadership.
"The week provides a forum for recognizing those in legal management for what they do and the role they play in the success of the organization, and in its service to its clients and those who work in the organization," said John J. Michalik, ALA executive director.
International Professional Legal Management Week will be observed annually during the first full week of October and is spearheaded by the Association of Legal Administrators. Co- sponsoring organizations include the American Bar Association's Law Practice Management Section, the American Association of Law Libraries, the Australian Legal Practice Management Association, the International Legal Technology Association, the International Paralegal Management Association, the Legal Marketing Association, Managing Partners' Forum and NALP - The Association for Legal Career Professionals.
For more information on International Professional Legal Management Week(SM), visit http://www.plmw.org.
Post #151 - Saturday, September 23, 2006
My Naiveté Was Showing!
 I had the most interesting e-mail this past week from an organization known as IQPC – which I later found out stands for International Quality and Productivity Center. The message read:
“I am writing to assess your interest in participating in our January 2007 Law Firm Management Summit taking place in Central London. The conference is bringing together Managing Partners, Practice Heads, Law Firm General Counsel, CIO'S, Senior Partners and Practice Group Heads from the UK for two days of high-level discussions. We are currently looking for outside legal experts who have the experience and expertise to participate. Would you have some time tomorrow to have a brief call to discuss the January meeting in more detail. I look forward to hearing from you, and to the possibility of working with you. Kind Regards”
I thought to myself that this might prove to be an interesting opportunity as the note went on to promise that attendees would most certainly include the likes of “Managing Partners from firms such as Simmons & Simmons, Linklaters, Lovells, Freshfields, Herbert Smith and Clifford Chance.”
Now there are times when my naiveté shocks even me; and this proved to be one of them.
When I finally received the call from the IQPC representative, I learned that what he really wanted was to sell me a “sponsorship” which would then allow me to be a speak on their program. IQPC then makes money at the front end, from those who choose to pay to speak and at the back end, from those who choose to pay to listen. Now that is what I call a GREAT business model.
And silly me, I thought offering to speak for expenses only was a most generous gesture . . . and silly you, you think that you are paying good money to attend a Conference and hear speakers chosen for their expertise!
I wonder how they get the Q in IQPC to stand for quality?
Post #150 - Thursday, September 14, 2006
Living Beyond Our Means
This week from my friendly neighborhood economist . . . a report from the CIA (!) ranking nations in order of their current account balance. The current account is like the operating statement of a business or an individual. Income must exceed outflow or your upkeep is your downfall. The difference between what comes in and what goes out, if it is positive, accumulates as though it were a profit. If it is negative, it builds up - in the form of debt.
So what do we see? The country with the best position is Japan - with a current account balance of plus $165 billion. China is in the number two position, with almost as much. And here we pause to give readers a chance to gasp. China - a country run by communists - has the second best current account balance in the world. Figure that. In other words, Marxism . . . at least as practiced in the Middle Kingdom . . . has proven no barrier whatsoever to capitalist success.
But we will move on. Germany is the third most 'profitable' country in the world - with a positive current account balance of $115 billion. Then the list goes into various oil producers, watchmakers, and assorted national curiosities – such as Algeria with a, would you believe it – $18 billion surplus! Even tiny Hong Kong ended last year nearly $20 billion to the good.
But between Swaziland and the Comoros (which, I believe is an island nation somewhere off the coast of Africa) the figures make the kind of transformation that can only be likened, in the material world, to going from light to darkness. That is, they go from positive to negative.
 And guess who makes the end of the line-up? Guess who has the worst current account deficits in the entire world? Guess which countries spend more than they earn - regularly and spectacularly? Last in line are the nations of the Anglo-Saxon, English-speaking debt-based empire! New Zealand has a deficit of nearly $10 billion. Then, South Africa, and India, and Australia. The UK itself is third from the bottom with a $57 billion negative current account balance. And then, the worst of all . . . the United States, with a current account balance of minus $829 billion.
Add up all the deficits of the entire world and you get a figure barely half of the U.S. total. Nothing fails like success.
Whining Consultants (09/07/06)
One of the few consultants I really enjoy hearing from is a guy by the name of Alan Weiss who founded Summit Consulting Group. This is from Alan and I think applies to anyone, in any profession:
 I’m encountering so many whining, moaning, complaining consultants that you’d think they were forced into this profession at gunpoint. It’s not like they entered the profession only after finishing four years of post-graduate work, interning, and amassing six figures of debt. Most just mentioned to passersby, “I’m a consultant, do you need one?” and they were off and running. Not exactly a high cost of entry.
The reason the profession is so difficult for some—while others thrive right next door—is that the sufferers don’t understand their own complicity in their malaise. This is the marketing business, not the methodology business. That is, no matter how great your intellectual property or beautiful your 19-step matrix or intriguing your call for “strategic planning,” you need to get in front of people who can give you money. Most of us, including me, never underwent schooling or formal processes to teach us marketing and sales. So, we need to learn and develop those skills.
You need to stop worrying and bemoaning dumb, minor, and irrelevant issues, which include: obtaining too much business (we’ll get to that problem when it actually happens); building staff (you don’t need staff if you’re doing under a million in business, and even beyond); worry about how much publicity to pursue (as much as you can, your name can’t be seen too much); agonizing over a logo or tag line (they don’t make or break business); constantly trying to maximize technology (executive-level buyers do not troll the Internet looking for consulting help).
Astoundingly, I meet people who call themselves consultants who don’t read the Wall Street Journal and have never read Peter Drucker. I meet some who don’t deign to join professional associations, who don’t want to publish nor speak at public events. They can tell you their 9-point process for conflict resolution, reconcile Maslow’s Hierarchy for modern organizations, and diagnose your learning style, behavioral profile or emotional intelligence. But they can’t interest you and they can’t get in front of a buyer. They meet and astound each other with their erudition. They also wonder how they will make the next mortgage payment.
It’s time to come to grips with an ineluctable fact: If many people are successful in this profession and you are not, it’s NOT the profession that is the distinction. You might think you understand consulting. Now learn the business.
Thanks Alan!
The Success Trap (08/31/06)
Imagine yourself back in the 1870s. You are a British army general commanding a famous regiment of which you are very proud. These soldiers have used military strategies to great effect and take orders without question. You now plan your strategy for the Zulu Wars. You pull out the battle plans from Waterloo -- after all, British army tactics sent Napoleon packing, so why change something that has worked so well? Wrong. Wearing a heavy, bright red uniform under scorching African skies was sheer madness, yet that is exactly what the British army did. One of the last times a British regiment wore red into battle was at the Battle of Isandlwana in 1879, when a fully armed regiment was wiped out by Zulu warriors with spears and animal-hide shields.
Yet, this is still the same type of lunacy I see in some professional service firms every day. Old practices that were very successful in past market situations are re-used again and again. When you are doing well is
exactly the time to stop and think again, because the only constant is change. You need a complete rethink and trashing of the old
ways.
There is a thin line between confidence and arrogance, but the difference shows up in the thought process. Power partners stop listening to clients and say, 'They are lucky to get us, we are so good at what we do.' Sadly, those once dominant often say that the very reason for their decline was their success. They stopped questioning the way they did things. That led to complacency, the fastest route to failure.
Take a few minutes now to ask yourself the reason you are engaging in strategic planning. What do you want to achieve? Do you still want to separate the thinking from the doing? Or do you understand the process that can get your people really doing handsprings?
Innovation E-Magazine Available (08/17/06)
The inaugral issue of InnovAction e-Magazine published by the College of Law Practice Management, a 70-page publication is now available for downloading (free) This publication celebrates the achievements of a dozen law firms from various countries, in four categories of innovation, and features the following articles and authors:
• The Courage to Innovate - David Maister
• Innovation in Leadership - Silvia Coulter
• Innovation in Law Firm Management - Bruce MacEwen
• 10 Steps to Enhancing Innovation in Your Firm - Patrick McKenna
New E-Book Available (08/10/06)
 My new e-book is now available (free) for downloading.
Entitled First 100 Days: Transitioning A New Managing Partner,
this text provides prescriptive counsel to new firm leaders on what actions they might consider as they begin undertaking their initial responsibilities.
Included is the experienced wisdom and real-world commentary of some twenty law firm leaders.
The kind folks at NXTBook (http://nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/NXTbigthing/julyaugust2006/ - click to see the latest in online e-book and magazine technology) have kindly published this work for me.
Here is what a few gracious reviewers have had to say:
“Patrick McKenna has written a fabulous new 23-page-book called FIRST 100 DAYS: Transitioning A New Managing Partner. I showed Patrick’s monograph to some clients of mine outside the legal profession, and they agreed that it’s incredibly useful and well-written." David Maister
“The book is both short, and terrific—an easy on line read in one sitting. The entire monograph consists of about a dozen pages of Patrick's distilled wisdom on "The First 100 Days," followed by another dozen pages of invaluable observations from Managing Partner's themselves, all in response to Patrick's asking them where he'd run off the rails in his advice. (The answer: Nowhere that you'd notice.) . . . So, if a tour of duty as a Managing Partner is on your horizon, either distant, indistinct, and as vaporous as a dream, or if it's beckoning as clearly as F. Scott Fitzgerald's green light at the end of the dock in The Great Gatsby, you need to read this. And if you don't know Patrick, you should.” Bruce MacEwen
"Recognizing that the new managing partner of any firm is about to have his or her life change, and that the new task is often addressed with anxiety and confusion, McKenna has assembled extraordinarily sound advice to guide the way to establishing domain and leadership in the first hundred days in office. This simple manual is real and practical. It’s a strong, clear, and knowing voice that rises above the usual leadership claptrap that abounds today." Bruce Marcus
How Would You Like This To Be Your Picture? (08/04/06)
 Nearly five years after his retirement from General Electric, Jack Welch still commands the spotlight. He is power-lunching, making the gossip columns, still the charismatic embodiment of the star CEO. His books are automatic bestsellers. More than any other single figure, he stands as a model for a way of doing business that dominated the world's economic landscape for a quarter century. What came to be known as Jack's Rules are by now the business equivalent of holy writ, bedrock wisdom that has been open to interpretation, perhaps, but not dispute.
According to a recent issue of Fortune magazine, once upon a time, there was a route to success that intelligent firm leaders agreed upon. But in today's fast-changing landscape, that old formula is getting tired. The time has come to announce a new playbook:
New Rules vs. Old Rules
1 Agile is best; being big can bite you. Big dogs own the street.
2 Find a niche, create something new. Be No. 1 or No. 2 in your market.
3 The customer is king. Shareholders rule.
4 Look out, not in. Be lean and mean.
5 Hire passionate people. Rank your players; go with the A's.
6 Hire a courageous CEO. Hire a charismatic CEO.
7 Admire my soul. Admire my might.
We are told that in executive suites across the country, a dramatic rethinking is underway about fundamental assumptions that defined Welch and his era.
Now for my part, I've never been a Welch groupie, or a reader of his books. I just wish things were so easy, so black-and-white, so able to be constructed as a set of basic rules. Imagine . . . finding a profitable growing niche, but not establishing a dominant position in that niche . . . hiring a talented group of passionate people, while ignoring your A players . . . if only things were so simple!
When You Absolutely Must Provide a Discount (07/28/06)
Your last resort should be to discount fees. In such situations, you must extract a reasonable quid pro quo in exchange for the discounted fee. This is because we all know, giving away a service will only cause your client to attach no worth to it, and also create a precedent for repeating the practice. Here is a short list of quid pro quos that you might want to consider:
• I am constantly surprised at the willingness of sophisticated attorneys to offer discounts unconditionally. If you are going to offer a discount, that by definition affects your firm’s profitability, it should only be in exchange for a commitment from your client that the deal is your as a result of the concession.
• Your request might be that the client pay your accounts on a monthly basis and render payment electronically within two business days of receiving the account. The effect of this quid pro quo is to enhance your cash flow and profitability.
• It may be somewhat easier to provide a fee concession if you can reduce some of the time you or your people might have to spend on the more mundane aspects of the transaction. If your client then would be willing to provide some human resources to supplement the effort, the effect would be to reduce your costs.
• There could be enormous compensatory value to your firm in having a client agree to serve as a spokesman for your firm or as a reference with interested prospects.
New Quarterly Magazine Available (07/11/06)
To view the table of contents
or to download the articles
from our Summer 2006
Edge International Review Magazine,
please visit our Website.
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