The future in your hands

Are you satisfied with your working life? Probably not if you’re like most of the lawyers Mark Powers meets. In extracts from his talk at last month’s Law Society of Scotland conference, he writes that by adopting new perspectives we can create a client centered, innovative practice – and one which gives you freedom to live a more fulfilling life.

The future is a terrifying place to anyone who is fearful of change… but, to those of you who embrace change, the future is full of hope, possibility and opportunity. When I speak to law firms in America I speak of their law firms as goldmines. When I say goldmine, I mean that there are more financial rewards, more professional rewards, and control and independence than most can imagine.

Unfortunately for the legal profession, many lawyers don’t have a great deal of experience coping with change nor does embracing change come easy. It is a profession rooted in the past and in tradition. And this rich and wonderful history makes it difficult to accept the changes it now must face. And make no mistake about it, they will have to change.

To complicate matters, most lawyers are trained to be risk identifiers, not risk takers

Legal training in precedent makes many believe that you can only find the future by what means? By studying the past. But in the world we face today, if you stay in the past too long and are not innovating with the forces of the business environment, you get run over.

I assert that the future of the legal profession is dependent on you, the individual practitioner and the law firms, it is not going to change from the top down.  The Law Society can point to the issues, but you are the leaders that will initiate innovation.

When I interview American lawyers and ask them what they want from their profession, they say that they want personal freedom, independence, control, professional and intellectual stimulation, economic gain through profit and income, the ability to make a difference and help people, a creative outlet, to work with interesting people, time to think and contemplate. I’m sure most of you will agree that this is what you want when you start your law firm or enter into a partnership.

What the current model for law firms has produced, not necessarily for you personally, is stress and frustration, long hours (60-70 hour weeks), little time off, constant interruptions, frozen or declining incomes, and lives out of balance. This is pretty much what we are getting. The assertion that I’m making for you is that the model for building law firms is broken.

Defining insanity

Here’s my definition of insanity – you walking into your office every single day, opening the door, turning on the lights, sitting behind your desk, starting to work and somehow imagining that today is going to be different from yesterday. That you’re somehow going to get the positives that you imagined early in your career. The model’s broken!

This is the part, which you might find particularly insane… this has been going on for 20 – 25 years! And there isn’t any sign that it is going to change… unless you change it.

At the core of this model, the biggest obstacle to growth and success is something we call the technician. Let me make a case for the technician. Who starts a medical practice? Doctors. Who starts accounting or CPA firms? Accountants. Who starts a plumbing company? Plumbers..Who starts law firms? Lawyers. What do all these people have in common? They invested time, energy, and money developing their professional or their personal trade. They did not spend all of those years going to school to be a business owner. They wanted to be a lawyer or doctor or tradesmen. From a business perspective, we’re going to call the person who does the technical work, the technician. What does every good technician want to do with their trade or profession? Practice it well. The only thing they really wanted to do when they went to school or when they got out was to do it good. To the point where they say things like “if those damn clients would leave me alone, I could get some work done around here.” What you want to get out of this article, and I mean no disrespect, is that every business, whether it’s a medical or a law practice or a plumbing company, has technicians and they do the technical work of the business. And the very skill they need to free themselves from the grind, time management, marketing, finance, or managing staff are the very distractions to being a good technician.

Your three roles

When you decided to be a partner, take on a partnership, or when you started your firm, you took on basically three roles. You took on manager. And the other role you took on was owner. So you’ve got responsibility as owner and then you’ve got responsibility as manager who has to pull all those pieces together. If you’re in a larger firm, you have people you hire to do a lot more of that, but you do it as well. And if you’re in a smaller firm you do a lot more management functions. And the last role is technician. Someone has to do the technical work. So you have three basic roles. When you became owner or shareholder, whether you like it or not, you took on those other two roles. Here’s the kink in the system, the technician just wants to do the work, the good work, unfortunately, the other two things are the things that free them to allow them to do the work. But these are the very distractions that keep the technician locked in. Michael Gerber, in his excellent book the E-Myth said, “there really aren’t entrepreneurs, just technicians that had an entrepreneurial seizure and they made a fatal assumption”.  Now, I know you conscientiously may not have made this assumption, but it goes like this: “If I understand how to do the technical work in the business, if I understand how to practice law, I must understand the business that does the law”. And this is a very fatal assumption because the business that’s supposed to free you and give you these positives starts trapping the technician and the technician feels locked in.

The trap

And the trap is set very slowly and insidiously. It’s very innocent. Most of you don’t see it coming. It starts with “I really can’t get the work done during the day. So, what do I do?” I stay nights. And because there’s interruptions all day long, I have to stay nights. I have to do the work. I can’t do the work during the week. So, what do I do? I start coming in on Saturday. I can’t get the work done on Saturday. So the technicians stays until Sunday. And then the technician begins to accept this as the way things are. The technician starts tolerating missing time with family. They start tolerating the lack of exercise. They start tolerating not taking vacations. It becomes acceptable and I know that you didn’t say “hey, Mark I volunteer not to take a vacation. I volunteer to not see my family or exercise or do those sort of things”. Usually it sounds like this – “Mark, you don’t understand. Who’s going to do the work if I don’t? I’m the one that’s got to do it. Who’s going to take care of the client? I’m the only one that knows how to do this.” And it’s usually a comment you make to your spouse. Then we lock the technician into place by this last one. The technician becomes clear that nobody but nobody is as competent as them. Nobody can take care of the client as well as I can. “I’ve delegated and the client just wants to come back to me.” “I’ve tried delegating work and I just have to stay late and correct it because nobody knows what they are doing but me.” So the technician starts believing, truly believing, that everybody else is incompetent. They are the most competent one. So it traps them in place. It’s a slow trap.

We lure you into this wonderful opportunity of a law firm with all the money, income, control, growth and independence and what you get is stress, long hours, high liability, and lots of staff headaches. Until you boil to death. Here, I’ve got a deal for you. Let me tell the truth about it. I’ve got a law firm for you. Now, listen there’s going to be a lot of stress. You probably won’t get a vacation. You’ll have all the responsibility and liability on your back. I can’t promise you any control over the cash flow and you’ll just get no time off. Jump in! You wouldn’t do it. You wouldn’t do it. It doesn’t make sense. But it’s what our technician does because they can’t see the difference. It’s a slow trap.

It’s not your fault. There was just never really a distinction between technician/owner/manager. I just want you to recognise that you may be a technician and thinking about your firm in a technical perspective. What I would like for you to get out of this article is that the technician is not building a business. A technician is building a job and not such a great job when you think about it. They are the business. When you go away, so goes the business. There’s a double penalty if you’re ever able to take a vacation and then you lose the income. If you took four – six weeks off, what would happen to cash flow for a lot of you? It would tank.

In this model of technician, the only way to earn more money for most of you reading this is to work more hours. Hours in, hours out. For most of you in this model that’s how it works. There are limited growth and no significant value.

I’m going to replace this technician model. But what I want to do is that I need to put a nail in the coffin of this technician. I think it’s critical that you get the power of what’s going on here.

I want you to imagine with me for a minute that the technician is at the job, they are working in their business everyday. Their heads are down and they are trying to get production done but they’ve got constant interruptions. Their staff is interrupting, their clients are interrupting, they’ve got pressures to get money in from billing and deal with new clients and then they’ve got pressures from home – to get home, to get to the game, or they have pressures from the body to get exercise. Can you imagine that? Now, while the technician is working IN the business, what’s happening is that the world has changed around them. It’s been changing a long time. Supply and demand, advancing technology, unauthorised practising of law, multidisciplinary practices, regulatory shifts and expectations/sophistication of the client

It’s been going on for 20 years or so, and this is what you need to get: clients are in control. Not you. Client dictates. Their loyalty has declined. You’re squeezed for profit. Almost every one of you are looking for new ways to get money out of the firm. There’s extreme pressure for productivity. Today, you have to be a good marketeer. It’s a skill you have to develop or you get to be dependent or worse, you get put out of the market place. You have to play catch up on technology and there’s high levels of lawyer dissatisfaction..

The model is broken
So, what I’m asserting to you is that the model is broken. But what if there was another approach? What if there was another approach that gave you the freedom. Another approach other than just the technician and a process that gave you control over it, freedom, the ability to take vacations for six weeks, some of you much longer vacations, and control over the day. So the real question in my mind is going to be “how do we turn things around?” You have a couple of options, don’t you. You can go back and do business as usual. Can you go back and do business as usual? Sure. You can go back and do business as usual and expect the new results? No, you can’t. You’re not going to be able to go back and do business as usual and get a positive result. Well, you can close the door and get another job. Go to work for another law firm. The only problem there is that they are building the same model you were working with. What I’m asserting to you is that you have no choice. In this economy, which is 20 years old, in this profession, where changes have been going on for over 20 years, the only option is to innovate and reengineer … to work on this firm. It’s the only choice and I’m going to share with you a seven-step process to reengineer your firm.

Here are the seven steps.

• New Perspectives
• Personal & Professional Focus
• Productivity or Time Management
• Client Development Systems
• Staffing Systems
• Cash Flow Systems
• Continuous Improvement

New perspectives
I will briefly cover new perspectives. There are three perspectives that will alter your life and change your practice forever. The first perspective is an entrepreneurial thinking practitioner – working on it – not in it, which is opposite of the technician. Systems perspective is the second and then there’s a client-centered perspective. Let’s talk about each one of these briefly.

The entrepreneurial perspective is quite simple. It’s just the opposite of the technician but for we don’t know what the difference is really from a technician. A technician goes to work every single day. They get into the office. What’s the question they ask when they get into the office? What work do I have to do today? Every time a technician sits at their desk, what work has to be done? The owner/entrepreneurial thinking attorney ask the question - what’s the business work today? Big, big difference. I want you to start asking this question everyday – how must I work today for me to take care of my clients better than anyone else and my firm. How must the business work today so that I don’t have to come in on the weekend? How must the business work today so that I get vacations? How must the business work today so that I can do my work better? I can be a better professional. How must the business work? To the entrepreneurial thinking attorney, providing value to the client is the highest work of the business. To the technician, doing the work is the highest value. I just want you to get the distinction. I’m not telling you to jump away. You obviously can choose to be a technician as much as you want. For some of you, that’s your highest joy. And that’s fine. The bottom line difference is that the entrepreneur is working on the business everyday, the technician is working exclusively in it.

You understand that you are the owner. You work ON the business, but what do you work on? You work on systems, which is your second perspective.

My assertion to you is that your law firm is nothing more than a series of systems - processes. And you understand some of them. For example, you understand production. You open a file. You put it into the work in progress. You close the file. Some of you have post-closings. Then the file turns into money. Think of it a lot like inventory. Like someone has a manufacturing plant. The files are turned into inventory. If you run that production system well, they go through that production line and then they turn into money for the owner. So, you’ve got a system for production and you’ve got four other systems to work on. You’ve got a productivity system…time management, how you manage your time, you’ve got client development systems, you’ve got staffing systems and cash flow.  Every system in the business has an input, a process and a result. If I want to change the result, for example, if I’m working with incompetent staff, what system would I go to work on? Staffing system, right? So the staffing system has selection, recruiting selection, the hiring, the motivation and supervision and then the system has a termination part of it. And if I’m working with incompetent people I have to go to work on my recruitment and training process. If I don’t have enough clients or clients paying my bill, what system would I go to work on? Client Development system on my client selection.. My assertion to you as owner you start making distinctions about the business. The business is always talking to you. The technician can’t hear it because everything sounds like a problem or frustration. The owner starts distinguishing between frustrations. So one frustration, meaning I’ve got incompetent people, means I have to go to work on a particular staffing system. If I do not have enough cash flow, means I have to go to work on my cash flow system. If I don’t have enough clients, I have to go to work on the client development system. As owner, you know now that there are systems to work on. The only thing we have to do is distinguish what are the elements of the systems to work on.

Combine your systems effectively
Your challenge is to combine all of the systems to build a business that takes care of your clients better than anyone else could do it. This will raise the profession. This will raise the quality of care. This will take care of the client. The only problem is that to take care of the client, you need to know what they want. And what do clients want? Results – what else? Attention – what else? There are surveys – most lawyers around the country will say the number one thing clients want is results. The number two thing is for free. Every survey of clients whether it’s the ABA or your state bar or your firm, the client says concern and caring. And when they distinguish what they are talking about – the client says, “I want somebody that will take my issues to heart – it will be personal. They’ll treat me like this problem is as important to them as it is to me”. They want to know that you care. How do you prove you don’t care? Don’t answer the phone, don’t return phone calls. How else? Have piles of files around your desk. When they come in, have boxes. One person said to me – “my client said to me when they came in and saw all the boxes – oh, I didn’t know you were moving”. They weren’t. So, your job is to build the system that takes care of your client and you have to build a business that goes back and ask the question – is my staff giving the clients the impression that they are important? Did you know that a staggering 68% of clients that leave you and never come back, never come back because of something called perceived indifference. That didn’t perceive any difference from your law firm or someone else’s.  You made no impression on them. That is your job as owner to work the systems and build it so the client cares.

The third perspective, The Client Centered Perspective, is that we work on the system from the client’s eyes. So in this new model, it’s no longer about being more efficient or effective, that’s not really the real intent. It’s really about what is relevant to your clients. Do you know what I mean by relevant? Make a difference. What I mean is, are you relevant. If you should go out of business, would they be upset? If they were outraged that you went out of business and left them, then that’s what relevant is.  This is what you have to ask about your law firm and you want to get that distinction.  In your law firm, you are rewarded to the extent that you add value to your clients’ life. Your financial rewards are in relationship to the value that you add to your clients’ lives. And the more value, the more relevant you become.

Innovating your practice
So, this is really about you innovating your practice and working on it to serve you and your client better. As in any evolutionary process winning innovations succeed, survive, and prosper until the next evolutionary shift.

In Stampede to Extinction, Charlie Robinson, a legal futurist makes the analogy between the legal profession and a great herd of buffalos in the Americas during the 1800s. Buffalos were easy to hunt because of their herd mentality and if you could keep the lead buffalo in a particular direction, the others would follow. The hunters would then stampede the herd toward a cliff and by the time the lead buffalo saw the danger it was too late, there was no where to turn and the momentum of the herd would push them forward over the cliff. Those in the middle of the herd will not survive, because they won’t be able to turn unless they start to move now. Those on the edges may have an option to change direction. Even those with the physical ability to avoid the cliff will have to understand that the cliff is close in order to understand the need to change direction. Charlie predicts that at least six out of 10 American lawyers will go over the cliff. He is asking how far away is the cliff considering the evolutionary changes in the landscape.

So who will be rewarded in the future?

• Those willing to take risks
• Entrepreneurial thinking attorneys
• Excellent marketeers
• Those who can provide ‘extraordinary’ value to clients and be accountable to their needs
• Those who can bring clients back for additional value
• Those attorneys who are willing and able to INNOVATE and change

Mark Powers is the President of Atticus, a leading training and development company that teaches American lawyers how to successfully increase their incomes while decreasing the stress and hours they put into their practice.