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Setting the next year’s billing rates follows a simple formula at most firms: last year’s rate plus a common percentage increase across all lawyer cohorts. A more disaggregated approach is needed. Specifically, firms should set higher percentage increases for senior lawyers and lower increases for junior lawyers. Why? Because, over the next 10 years, hours leverage (i.e., the number of associate hours per partner hour) at elite law firms will decline as more of the lower value-added work is handled not by junior lawyers but by enhanced technologies, in-house counsel, and alternative service providers. To maintain profitability, the margin that was earned on the displaced junior lawyer time has to be recouped through higher margins on senior lawyer time. Failure to increase senior billing rates differentially, and thus to rebalance the source of margin from junior to senior lawyer time, will result in a calamitous decline in profitability. It can be avoided if firms start now to gradually change their billing rate structures.
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Unbiased Thinking: A Blueprint for Your Law Firm Billing & Collections Transformation
By Dan Safran
Law firms generally experience a similar set of common challenges and costs tied to inefficient billing and collections practices. This is a cost no firm can afford; and to that end, this article offers a blueprint for transforming billing and collections
Crafting an Effective Roadmap for Implementing Information Governance In Law Firms
By Gregg Parker
This article discusses why a robust IG program is critical to modern-day law firm operations, the complexities associated with crafting such a program, and what a high-level roadmap for implementing the program looks like.
Prospective Partners Ask Small and Midsized Firms Tough Questions About Succession
By David E. Wood
Do Their Chief Finance Professionals Have Good Answers?
Many senior associates want to know whether the firm is well-positioned financially to grow and prosper when the current generation of senior partners retires. To get the information they need to value an investment in the firm, they turn to its finance professional.
What We Should Have Learned from COVID, Part 1: When In Doubt, Communicate
By J. Mark Santiago
First In a Series
First COVID Lesson: Leaders should communicate regularly to their firms in a more personal way, let their personality shine through, show some vulnerability and maybe reveal that they own a dog.