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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy
Legal Operations Success In 2023
Ari Kaplan
Strategies for Navigating an Uncertain Economy, Leveraging CLM Technology to Streamline Processes, and Embracing Change
During a recent discussion with a select group of leaders in legal operations in highly-regulated organizations, several key themes emerged that are likely to drive new initiatives in 2023.
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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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Marketing The Law Firm
Shrinking Demand? Top 7 Reasons Firms Are Leveraging Experience Data
Jason Noble
While the competition for outside legal services has never been more intense, the strategic approach firms take — including a strategic approach to technology — will define whether the market pressures are a threat or opportunity.
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Marketing The Law Firm
Marketing Tech: Legal Ops Success In an Uncertain Economy
Ari Kaplan
Ari Kaplan speaks to leaders in legal ops on key themes emerged that are likely to drive new initiatives in 2023.
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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
Recessions Offer Opportunity To Improve Your Processes and Innovate
Ioana Good
Recessions are full of opportunity. No matter what industry you work in, a slowdown in the economy is an opportune time to invest in your brand, improve your processes, strengthen your business focus, and innovate to get a jump on competitors.
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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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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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Marketing The Law Firm
Meeting Client Expectations to Provide Good ‘Customer Service’
Alex Geisler
Buyers of legal services are now a highly sophisticated and connected community. What the clients now not only want but insist on, is operational efficiency, effectiveness and transparency.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Investing In Resources That Make a Law Firm Hum
Jennifer Johnson and Haley Revel
Firm leadership must think about their talent (and that means all their talent) differently than they do today: as a core business asset whose managed value can make or break the firm’s success.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Litigation Financing 2.0: Financing the Business of Law
Joshua Libling
It is not accidental that funding the creation or growth of law firms and practice groups has tended to follow a traditional path. Rather, this circumstance is a combination of traditional legal temperament and structural barriers to innovation. Recently, there have been changes to both.
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Marketing The Law Firm
Without Mandatory Retirement, Lack of Succession Plans Threaten Small and Midsize Firms
Dan Roe, Justin Henry and Jessie Yount
In the post-pandemic era, widely adopted flexible work arrangements have given lawyers a new view of their work. But in a profession without mandatory retirement policies, a partner’s decision to keep practicing may not entail a discussion of the ultimate succession of their practice and clientele.
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Marketing The Law Firm
Conflict Strategies: Three Keys to an (Almost) Drama-Free 2023 for Your Law Firm
Susannah Margison
Office drama can be a big problem for law firms. Whether it is showing up as office gossip, the partner who is terrible to their associates and staff, two people who just cannot seem to get along, or a revolving door of lawyers or staff, drama can be distracting, hamper productivity, and reduce billable hours.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
How Attorneys Can Have Their (Hybrid) Cake and Eat It, Too
AshLea Allberry
No one would have predicted hybrid operations — but hybrid is here to stay. Firms have a lot to gain in terms of creating a new culture that attorneys love but that new culture will be built on flexibility and dynamism only technology can manage.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Amending (or Terminating) Deferred Compensation Plans Without Penalties
Lawrence L. Bell
This article reminds readers of §409A’s draconian penalties and specific guidance of amending modifying, amending or terminating existing nonqualified deferred compensation plans.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Meeting Client Expectations
Alex Geisler
The New Reality, for which law firms are scrambling to equip themselves, is that law firms no longer define their own service levels. Now it’s the clients, and they have clear expectation parameters.
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Marketing The Law Firm
The Difference Between Service and Hospitality
Anthony Davies
Today, we see outsourcing accelerating as the pandemic has served to highlight the traditional benefits of outsourcing: cost reduction, flexibility, expertise and efficiency. But providers need to do something more to increase satisfaction rates among their law firm clients.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Are You Stuck With the Hasty Tech Decisions Made In Crisis Mode?
Tomas Suros
In March 2020 and the months immediately following, many firms found themselves scrambling to implement tools that would meet the needs of new remote work realities. Understandably, many of these decisions were done quickly without the normal level of due diligence. Now, the same firms are realizing that those hasty, though necessary, decisions should be revisited or undone.
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Marketing The Law Firm
Recession Proofing Your Law Firm
Melissa “Rogo” Rogozinski
Whatever term the economists use to describe the slowing pace of commerce, the real question is: how do you protect your law firm’s revenue stream when economic pressures are causing current and prospective clients to tighten their budgets?
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Solving the Information Governance Groundhog Day Syndrome
Ben Schmidt and Nathan Curtis
Security and privacy start with good information governance, and for many firms — trying to get their information governance policy implemented feels a lot like Groundhog Day. Yes, the one with Bill Murray. Let’s take a closer look.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Recession Proofing A Law Firm
Melissa “Rogo” Rogozinski
Whatever term the economists use to describe the slowing pace of commerce, the real question is: how do you protect your law firm’s revenue stream when economic pressures are causing current and prospective clients to tighten their budgets?
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Legal Sales Strategies
Eric Dewey
The “best choice” provider pitch may not be the optimal sales strategy. It's better to adjust to where the prospect is in their buying decision process — whether that means they are looking for providers, they are studying the situation, they already have counsel, or they have decided not to address the issue.
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Marketing The Law Firm
Time Well Spent: Make Meetings Valuable
Sharon Meit Abrahams
“Ugh, not another meeting!” Do you hear this from your colleagues and direct reports? If so, you should turn your meetings from a waste of time to a value-added use of time. We know meetings are important. They increase collaboration, set accountability, and create a shared sense of purpose and progress — all important elements of a happy, successful workplace.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Midlevel Survey Shows What Law Firms Are Getting Right — and Wrong
Dan Roe
Midlevel associates aren’t less willing than their predecessors to do the brain-bending amount of work. It’s that after two years of billing massive hours through an isolating global pandemic, they’re completely disloyal to the status quo. They kept firms going, they made partners rich, and now they plan to reshape the profession in their image.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Law Firms May Make ‘Course Corrections’ to Battle Inflation
Andrew Maloney
If inflation remains at current levels, law firm billing rate increases won’t be able to keep pace. But firm leaders may make other “course corrections” to capture profits through the end of 2022, analysts say, by utilizing leverage and alternative pricing models and making additional investments in technology.
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Marketing The Law Firm
Great Marketing Initiatives Happening Now
Stacy West Clark
Some great marketing initiatives happening in law firms around the country — as well as some recommendations.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Tips to Minimize Malpractice Claims
Michael R. McAndrew
So long as humans are practicing law, mistakes will happen; but well prepared attorneys are proactive and take the affirmative steps to put themselves in a position to minimize the danger to the client and the case.
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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy
Traditional Legal Ops Putting Law Firms At Disadvantage When Recruiting for Cybersecurity and Privacy
Bruce Love and Patrick Smith
Law firms are still insisting on engaging with clients in the traditional legal model — by hours billed. Whereas cybersecurity services such as breach monitoring have the potential for a much deeper and stickier relationship with the client.
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Marketing The Law Firm
How to Properly Align Marketing, Business Development and Sales
Melissa “Rogo” Rogozinski
As we move into a post-pandemic era of inflation and recession rumors, it is imminent that we make changes in how we operate and grow our businesses in order to move successfully — and profitably — forward. For law firms, we need to understand how marketing, business development and sales work together to produce new opportunities for revenue growth.
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Marketing The Law Firm
Do Law Firms Need to Re-think Outsourcing Strategies?
Anthony Davies
flexible sourcing models, with interchangeable or multiple service providers, is now becoming the mainstay for most client sourcing strategies. This outsourcing trend has been consistent over the past two years, with clients describing their strategies as “multi-vendor” and “multi-sourced.”
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
The Great Unbundling: Do Law Firms Need to Re-think Outsourcing Strategies?
Anthony Davies
Service “‘bundling” provides economies of scale, lower overheads, a single point of contact and a single invoice at the end of each month. However, the bundling of services to create a single multi-service provider may now be hurting firms who are increasingly looking for specialization, especially with regards to onsite workplace experience services.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Top Law Firms Look to Invest Profits In Future Success
Dan Packel
There’s no doubt that much of the legal industry’s profit gains are simply the result of surging demand. But smart firms were also able to harness booming demand to push through rate increases, owing to clients who were desperate to see their deals go through. There’s no doubt that the firms taking advantage of this confluence are in an enviable position. That doesn’t mean they are sitting on their laurels.
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The Bankruptcy Strategist
The Interplay Between Vendor Finance Agreements and Bankruptcy
Ann Pille, Richard Tannenbaum, Alexis Leventhal and Emily Costantinou
While regularly used among lenders, manufacturers, and dealers, treatment of Inventory financing program agreements in bankruptcy is not uniform, and uncertainty exists with respect to how such agreements may be treated in the context of a manufacturer’s Chapter 11.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Current Economic Climate Likely to Cause Law Firms to Offer Flexible and Creative Fee Arrangements
Nicole R. Rekant and Stevan J. Pardo
The current economic climate will incline lawyers, specifically litigators, to rethink their fee structures. With inflation at a 40-year high, residential and commercial rents rising, and a predicted looming recession, clients are tightening their budgets, but also demanding the same level of service and results from their attorneys.
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Marketing The Law Firm
Experience Is Everything: Why Focusing On Client Experience is Critical and How to Get Started
Kristen Dallman
In this marketplace, one thing is abundantly clear: To remain competitive, you must adapt. So how can you adapt in a way that meets the increased expectations of today’s client? Focus on client experience.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
The Connection Between Process Improvement, Project Management, and Pricing
Catherine Alman MacDonagh and Frederick J. Esposito Jr.
Law firms must continuously review business and legal processes to operate and interact with less waste and costs and develop pricing models that address client needs while generating profits for the law firm. This is actually simple, but not easy to do.
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Marketing The Law Firm
Using Process Improvement and LPM for Competitive Advantages in Pricing and Fee Arrangements
Catherine Alman MacDonagh and Frederick J. Esposito Jr.
This article explores the connection between process improvement, project management, and pricing. Clients want budget predictability, options in fee arrangements, and value. The firms that do this well, regardless of their size or location, will have the competitive advantage.
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Marketing The Law Firm
Use Marketing and Biz Dev Content for Cross-Selling Success
Wayne Pollock
If you’re unsure about how to get your cross-selling efforts going, marketing and business development content, in all of its forms, is your secret weapon for cross-selling your firm’s services.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
The Culture Code for Law Firms
Marci Taylor
Many firms have made a valiant attempt to maintain firm culture in the brave new world in which we find ourselves. Culture is not something that is pre-destined or accidental. Rather, it is something that exists and evolves in organizations where particular skill sets are present and cultivated.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Use Business Development Content for Cross-Selling Success
Wayne Pollock
If you’re in that boat, or you are unsure about how to get your cross-selling efforts going, marketing and business development content, in all of its forms, is your secret weapon for cross-selling your firm’s services.
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Cybersecurity Law & Strategy
Driving Innovation in a Dynamically Changing Legal Market
Ari Kaplan
A series of interviews with large law firm partners around the world to better understand how they are leveraging technology to drive innovation and transformation in their practices.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Ensure Financial Health Ahead of an Economic Downturn
Derek F. Meek and Hanna Lahr
Proper planning is key to ensuring a company’s financial health when facing an economic downturn. Although companies will come into such planning with different levels of financial health, the same considerations can be helpful in determining the best path forward.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Aligning with Client Expectations
Vivian Hood and Terry M. Isner
We’re well into 2022, and despite the flip of the calendar, COVID is still sweeping the U.S., it feels like not much has changed. Or has it?
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Sales Enablement: The Next Big Thing In Legal Services?
Eric Dewey
Sales enablement is how law firms can take control of their business development and marketing processes and improve the effectiveness of their revenue growth initiatives.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Highlight Client Service Skills In the New Year
Sharon Meit Abrahams
Attorneys need their clients to see them as a trusted advisor and partner in their legal solutions. If the lawyer takes time at the beginning of the relationship to establish expectations, then future conflicts can be avoided or resolved more quickly.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Legal Ops Tech: Tips for Success with Cloud-based Practice Management In 2022
Tomas Suros
While functionality and features are important, there are a number of additional considerations when evaluating a practice management solution. Will your platform provider serve as a partner that will offer expert guidance and be invested in your ongoing success?
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Lessons from 2021 That Will Help Prepare for 2022
J. Mark Santiago
Many firms are projecting that 2021 will be an improvement over 2020’s average revenue growth and PPEP growth, which in January was not the common wisdom. But we have also learned some things in 2021 that should not be forgotten or overlooked in the rush to year-end.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Disruption, Opportunity and Outsourcing In a Post-COVID World
Rob Mattern
Law firms are at a crossroads triggered by the transformational impact of the pandemic, and wondering whether the mandate for change will continue or shrink back to pre-2020 operations. For most firms, the answer is to continue on the road for change, including reengineering the delivery of legal services.
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Accounting And Financial Planning For Law Firms
Five Things Law Firm Leaders Need to Do As People Return to the Office
Mark Beese
Slowly, ever so slowly, lawyers and staff are making their way back to the office. While we all look forward to returning to normal, the normal we left…
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