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Marketing The Law Firm
Mastering Collaboration: Enhance Productivity With Your Outside Marketing Agency
Melanie Trudeau
For law firms seeking to thrive in today’s competitive landscape, partnering with a specialized marketing and PR agency is a strategic imperative. Agencies possess a deep understanding of the intricate balance between legal expertise and effective brand communication.
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Marketing The Law Firm
Building the Law Firm of the Future
Joel Wirchin
As organizations strive for growth into the future, outsourcing helps to find the balance between risk and opportunity, between cost and access to new skills and capabilities, curating innovation, and incorporating new remote working norms.
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Marketing The Law Firm
Effective Hybrid Work Polices Need a Stick to Go with the Carrot
Anthony Davies
While many firms have, in fact, embraced hybrid operations, the meaning of hybrid has evolved from “office optional,” to an average required 2 days a week, to now many firms coming out with four-day work week mandates — this time, with teeth.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
How to Build the Law Firm of the Future
Joel Wirchin
The onus is on law firm leaders to balance risk and opportunity. How can firms guide through an increasingly perilous landscape rife with opposing hazards to start building the law firm of the future today?
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
The Flight to Quality and Workplace Experience
Anthony Davies
That the pace of change is “accelerating” is surely an understatement. What seemed almost a near certainty a year ago — that law firms would fully and permanently embrace work-from-home — is experiencing a seeming reversal. While many firms have, in fact, embraced hybrid operations, the meaning of hybrid has evolved from “office optional,” to an average required 2 days a week, to now many firms coming out with four-day work week mandates — this time, with teeth.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Old Dog, New Tricks: Time to Retire Associate Lockstep Compensation
J. Mark Santiago
This article maps out a system that would enable law firm management to implement a meaningful pay-for-performance system that drives positive associate performance and enhances the firm’s culture.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Determining Law Firm Employee Classification Through the ABC Test
Jonathan Weinberg
Law firms have traditionally been large consumers of contract labor for a variety of purposes. These workers are traditionally classified as independent contractors, issued a 1099 and treated as ineligible for employee benefits. In recent years, many states have started to adopt the “ABC” test to determine whether a worker should be classified as an independent contractor or an employee.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Online Extra: Law Firms Doubling Down On Billing Discipline Amid Demand Decline
Andrew Maloney
Some large law firms are doubling down on billing discipline, as Big Law clients take longer to make payments and the legal industry continues to see demand declines.
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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy
How Modern Law Firms Are Navigating Digital Transformation
Ari Kaplan
A new report emphasizes the connection between legal technology and law firm success, the importance of training to ensure technology adoption, the influence of automation and document management on digital transformation, and how law firms are deploying data to create a competitive advantage.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Is Consolidation Coming to a Firm Near You?
Harold Westervelt
Automate Onboarding & Offboarding Processes for Smoother Transitions
Questions about the role of AI in the legal market continue to dominate current headlines, but firm consolidation remains a big part of the transformation the industry is undergoing. And yes, technology and automation are playing key parts in this. As firms merge or acquire others to expand their capabilities and client base, a streamlined approach to attorney onboarding and offboarding has become essential.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
The Future of IRS Summonses After Supreme Court ‘Poselli’ Ruling
Jeremy H. Temkin
In Polselli v. Internal Revenue Service, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously refused to limit the IRS’s ability to issue summonses without notice to situations in which it seeks records of accounts in which a delinquent taxpayer has an interest. This article discusses the court’s decision, Justice Jackson’s concurring opinion, and the potential for future challenges to the IRS’s issuance of summonses without notice.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
New Report Looks At the Expanding Influence of Legal Operations
Ari Kaplan
The economy, technology, and practice preferences continue to influence a reconfiguration of the corporate legal department in a post-pandemic period.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
The Business Benefits of Leasing When Combatting the Increasing Costs of Operating a Firm
Mike Henderson, Whitney Jones and Bill Pitcairn
There’s a wide range of business benefits to leasing that help firms better manage current market challenges beyond cash management — so we asked our law firm clients what they saw as the most compelling business benefits of leasing in today’s challenging economy.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Is Non-Lawyer Ownership of Law Firms Coming Soon?
Quentin Brogdon
Powerful forces are now pushing regulators in the direction of non-lawyer ownership of law firms in the United States. Some of the forces are completely well-intentioned, but some of the forces are not so well-intentioned.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Should Law Firms Make Pass-Through Entity Tax Elections?
Jonathan Weinberg
As a result of the TCJA, the owners of pass-through entities are limited in the amount of state and local taxes they can deduct on their Federal income tax return. In response, over 25 states have enacted pass-through entity tax regimes, which allow the owners of law firms to preserve their state and local tax deduction on their income from the law firm.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Midsize Firms Outpace Am Law 200 In Key Growth Metrics
Justin Henry
While many of the country’s largest law firms contend with financial volatility that has resulted in financial declines and workforce overcapacity, the 20 midsize firms included in the Am Law 200 outperformed the 2023 Am Law Second Hundred in key financial metrics.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
The Way Big Law Reacts to Economic Cycles Is Unrealistic, Unhealthy and Inhumane
Alexander M. Geisler
The problem isn’t that economies are cyclical, that’s a fact of life. The problem here is that Big Law can sometimes have unrealistic reactions to both upturns and downturns. If this happens, it’s not in the interests of their own attorneys or their clients. It’s inhumane and unhealthy.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Big Law Leaders Grappling With Attorney Disengagement
Andrew Maloney
Unlike burnout or “quiet quitting,” which arguably stemmed from mostly short-term dynamics, observers point to a collision of current and long-term trends, such as post-pandemic work and generational shifts, that have led lawyers today to be less committed to or fulfilled in the profession as they were a decade ago.
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Marketing The Law Firm
How to Handle Layoffs from a PR and Crisis Management Perspective
Elizabeth Lampert
No industry is immune from layoffs in a global (and shrinking) economy, and law firms must prepare for this highly delicate situation to hit home. Handling layoffs from a PR and crisis management perspective requires sensitive, transparent and clear communication.
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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy
Plan to Protect Cybersecurity for Employees Before Day One
Luke Tenery and Daron Hartvigsen
With new employees come new risks; from aspiring insider threats that intend to join a target to extract sensitive information, to insecure processes being exploited due to too much trust being placed in candidates and new hires.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Four Legal Ops Traps That Can Stunt Growth
Brian Corbin
For legal stakeholders seeking to take their existing legal operations programs to the next level or start new programs from scratch, there are a few all-too-easy traps that can stunt growth, cost political capital and cause headaches. Having a strategic plan, budget and critical executive buy-in is not enough to avoid these four common issues.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Using the Generational Gap To Enhance Engagement
Marcie Borgal Shunk
In an era where the power dynamics in the legal industry are shifting decidedly to talent, a firm’s ability to tap into generational differences to invigorate, attract and retain talent is a competitive advantage.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
The Am Law 100: Equity Tiers Rose But That Might Not Last for Long
Andrew Maloney
the word “invest” was top-of-mind for many law firm leaders, particularly when it came to Managing their equity partner ranks. Even as demand and profits fell in 2022, Am Law 100 firms increased their equity ranks by 1%.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Reducing Headcount May Not Be the Best, or Only, Option to Weather an Uncertain Economic Climate
Valerie Chan
One of the lessons we learned — or should have — from the pandemic was that, from a market share perspective, if companies are not visible and in front of customers, it is hard for them to retain existing clients and prop up market share
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Won’t You Stay? Using Stay Interviews To Gain Employee Feedback
Scott Wooldridge
Stay interviews are designed to give employees a chance to give feedback and insight into their experience at work so that companies can better meet their needs and concerns.
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Marketing The Law Firm
ChatGPT or Me?
Susan Freeman
A Generative AI Primer for Law Firm Marketers
ChatGPT can provide a new channel for client engagement and interaction, which can help improve the client experience and drive client acquisition. It also has its pros and cons.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
GC Panel Reveals Challenges and How Outside Firms Can Help
Eric Dewey
While General Counsel are becoming involved in more areas of the business, especially as a result of COVID, their core responsibility remains enterprise risk.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Help! My Clients Want My Firm to Start Using ChatGPT!
By Dan Felz, Wim Nauwelaerts, Paul Greaves and Josh Fox
Part One of a Two-Part Article
Corporate legal departments are increasingly receiving requests from business clients to use ChatGPT or similar AI-powered tools in their operations. These requests can be urgent, with business clients demanding enablement from legal. This article is in two parts: Part One briefly details what “generative AI” tools like ChatGPT are and provides an overview of key legal considerations, including by looking forward to upcoming AI-specific legislation in the EU and the U.S.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Investing In Practice Management Can Pay Off for Partners, Talent and Clients
By Mark Masson, Ed Estrada and Jay Russell
While the practice leaders, partners and lawyers in a practice know their clients best, they focus most of their time and energy on being legal experts. This is where practice, operations, and firm-level leadership need to provide focus, process and resources to help their legal experts deliver their unique value to clients.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Legal Industry ‘Ripe for Disruption’
Cassandre Coyer and Justin Henry
While the law firm model has historically rewarded inefficiencies, recent trends show that model is reaching its expiration date.
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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy
Strategies to Improve Security and Optimize Your Technology Spend
Mike Henderson, Whitney Jones, and Bill Pitcairn
Uncertain and challenging markets are times when firms and organizations of all types conserve cash. If this can be achieved without cutting needed projects, equipment or services to ensure successful returns to the office, then this is clearly an ideal financial strategy. In fact, leasing and financing not only helps firms conserve cash, but when done right, helps firms also maximize their IT budgets.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Financial Strategies that Improve Security and Optimize Your Technology Spend
Mike Henderson, Whitney Jones, and Bill Pitcairn
Shifting large IT purchases over to a predictable monthly expense is a pricing model that has taken over most industries with the introduction of cloud services, and this can be a particularly useful model during challenging markets.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Legal Operations Success In an Uncertain Economy
Ari Kaplan
In the uncertain economy that is characterizing the first quarter of the year, there remains a significant emphasis on demonstrating value to secure new resources.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Top 7 Reasons Firms Are Leveraging Experience Data
Jason Noble
Looking forward, firms appear to be counting on rate increases to maintain profitability, but there are signs that clients are likely to be more resistant to further rate hikes as payments slow down and realization was in decline at the end of 2022.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Law Firm Profitability and Learning from the Past
J. Mark Santiago
Future partners will be identified, developed, and elected from the associate ranks, so they truly represent the future of the firm. Reducing the number of associates from which to choose future partners is a risky undertaking.
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Marketing The Law Firm
Financial Strategies to Optimize Your Technology Spend
Mike Henderson, Whitney Jones, and Bill Pitcairn
Uncertain and challenging markets are times when firms and organizations of all types conserve cash. If this can be achieved without cutting needed projects, equipment or services to ensure successful returns to the office, then this is clearly an ideal financial strategy.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Despite Aggressive Rate Increases from Law Firms, Clients Have Room to Negotiate
Andrew Maloney
Rate increases across the legal industry haven’t been as big as the conventional wisdom implies, and clients have more room to negotiate than they probably realize.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Embedded Finance Is Changing the Business of Law
Kevin Gallagher
A revolution is underway in small and medium-sized businesses (SMB) banking and payments and will impact the way legal, accounting and other professional services firms manage their finances.
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Marketing The Law Firm
What Hybrid Work Plans Are Working?
Anthony Davies
Starting in late 2021, the drumbeat of “return-to-the-office” began and now — somewhere in the neighborhood of two years later of that — it begs the question: how are firms doing with their return-to-office? What programs — if any — have been successful?
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Marketing The Law Firm
Strategies for Reining In Expenses During Down Market
Rob Mattern
What strategies can firms take to rein in expenses during a challenging, down market to avoid further layoffs? Look no further than the firm’s back-office operations. This article provides a brief overview of five areas where your firm can not just “cut costs” but actually improve operations while doing so.
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Marketing The Law Firm
What’s Behind the Surge In Law Firms Launching Crisis Management Practices?
Dave Poston
Over the last year or so, there has been a surge in law firms launching “crisis management” practice groups. Does this move reflect expanding relationships beyond one-off litigation matters? Is this just a collaboration and renaming or repackaging of existing attorney expertise and practices? Or is there something deeper going on?
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Expense Right-Sizing In a Challenging Economy
Rob Mattern
What strategies can law firms take to rein in expenses during a challenging, down market to avoid further layoffs? Look no further than the firm’s back-office operations. This article presents a brief overview of five areas where your firm can not just “cut costs” but actually improve operations while doing so — this is expense “right-sizing.”
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
What Successful Hybrid Firms Are Doing
Anthony Davies
We are seeing is a variety of successful measures that are designed to help attorneys get what they want: a best-of-both worlds scenario where they keep some work-from-home and fold-in an opportunity to intentionally connect and collaborate with colleagues in the office.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Improving Firm Profitability Through Contracts
J. Mark Santiago
The best and most effective way to drive firm profitability is through influencing partner behavior. The best way to incent the partners is by linking their compensation clearly and directly to the achievement of the firm’s business strategy.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Techniques That Up Your Team Management Skills In 2023
Sharon Meit Abrahams
Being a good team leader is not easy. It is your responsibility to manage everything about the people and the positions you oversee. Good team leaders create an environment in which attorneys and staff work hard, are loyal, and add to profitability. Setting expectations and goals is an essential step in becoming an effective team leader.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Layoffs, Expenses and Return-to-Office Policies Top Worries of Law Firm Leaders In 2023
Andrew Maloney and Patrick Smith
While economic troubles and fears of a recession are top concerns for law firm leaders now, some shifts within the legal industry are also triggering alarm bells. Interviews with more than a dozen law firm leaders identified a growing list of challenges that law firm leaders are grappling with now,
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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy
A Legal CIO’s Guide to Technology Procurement In 2023
Ted Theodoropoulos
For a legal CIO, one of the key responsibilities is to establish that the organization has the right technology in place to support its operations and achieve its business goals. This can be challenging, as there are many factors to consider when choosing new technology for your organization. One bad decision can have a material impact on not only the bottom line, but on the ability of your firm to compete in an ever-changing legal market.
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Marketing The Law Firm
Two Techniques That Up Your Team Management Skills In 2023
Sharon Meit Abrahams
Good team leaders create an environment in which attorneys and staff work hard, are loyal, and add to profitability. Setting expectations and goals is an essential step in becoming an effective team leader. Make a commitment this year to up your management skills with these two key techniques.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Using Feedback To Improve Team Performance
Mark Beese
The problem with giving feedback is that it often comes across as criticism. Human beings tend to react defensively, resulting in a denial of the feedback or worse, entrenchment in the behavior or attitude that may be derailing them in the first place. How can we give feedback in a way that minimizes defensiveness?
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Why Are Some Bills Easier to Collect Than Others?
Alex Geisler
Why do some people sail through the entire budgeting, billing and collection process, while for others collection always means trepidation?
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