News Briefs
December 29, 2006
Highlights of the latest franchising news from around the country.
More from the Best of MLF 2006
December 28, 2006
In last month's issue, we covered the best of MLF from February to and including June 2006. In this issue, we will take a look back at July through November.
Confident Communication Key to Success
December 28, 2006
The glass ceiling is alive and well in America's 200 largest law firms. According to a survey released last October by the National Association of Women Lawyers (NAWL), women make up a paltry 16% of equity partners, 16% of governance committee members and 5% of managing partners in these firms. NAWL says the firms should double the number of women equity partners and corporations should reach the same target with chief legal officers by 2015. Even so, the percentage of women in equity and leadership roles in the legal profession would still fail to reflect that women now represent about 50% of all law school graduates. <br>Do women attorneys have a particular need for communication skills development? Yes.
Some Questions ' and Answers ' on Managing a Law Firm
December 28, 2006
As law firms have continued to grow and the practice of law has become even more of a business, firms are now giving serious attention to how to manage the firm. As they cope with this issue, firms raise many questions. Here are some of the ones they most frequently ask us as consultants ' and our answers.
Is Your Web Site COPPA Compliant?
December 28, 2006
In 1998, Congress passed the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), broadly expanding the Federal Trade Commission's (FTC) enforcement powers in the Internet arena. Since then, states and the FTC have become more active in regulating the collection, use and security of consumer's personal information generally. However, the protection of children's personal information remains a top FTC enforcement goal, and the commission has become more aggressive in enforcement of COPPA each year. Companies that fail to proactively act to ensure COPPA compliance do so at the risk of seven-figure penalties. <br>This article provides Web site operators with suggestions on how to comply with the spirit of COPPA when legal obligations are not crystal clear, as in the case when the operator of the Web site in question believes that it can make a good faith effort to be a 'general audience' Web site, but has reason to believe that the site may attract visitors under the age of 13 and is unsure how the FTC will view and treat the site.
Age Diversity
December 28, 2006
The challenge of embracing age diversity is building up to be the talent employment issue of the next five years ' and beyond.<br>With the pressure for 'more, better, faster,' and with more money at stake and people wanting more control in their work and personal lives when there seems to be increasingly less, inter-generational issues in the workplace are causing more sleepless nights than ever for firm leaders and managers.
Sustaining a Client Service Initiative
December 28, 2006
Most client service improvement initiatives fail to produce sustained results. While such a statement may seem harsh, I think that most would agree with the statement based on their own experiences. After investing significant amounts of time, effort, and money in service improvement initiatives, most organizations do not attain the sustained results they were hoping for. Failure is usually not due to a lack of creativity or resources, but most often the result of a lack of long-term commitment to the hard work that sustainability requires. The 'launch' phase of an improvement initiative can be challenging, but it is also energizing. Top management is involved in the launch, frontline employees join improvement teams, and service communication abounds. There are skeptics, of course, but most are hopeful that this time things will actually get better. The launch phase may last several months, or even a year, depending on the organization.
Just-in-Time Benchmarking
December 22, 2006
Benchmarking has long been a difficult undertaking for private service providers and for law firms in particular. While firm partners historically have tracked firm-wide metrics such as billings, profits per partner and individual productivity, firms have until recently not had the means or opportunity to benchmark performance at the practice group, office location and timekeeper level with any accuracy or currentness.<br>This article, as the title implies, discusses how refined performance measures are made possible by a new benchmarking tool, West Peer Monitor' from Thomson West
Policy and Regulatory Outlook: 2007 ' Franchise Industry Eyes New Congress
November 30, 2006
With the recent Congressional elections returning leadership of the U.S. Senate and House to Democrats for the first time in more than a decade, the business community is keenly interested in the priorities of the new Congress. While it is apparent that Congress will initially focus on issues outside the direct domain of franchising (Iraq, Congressional ethics, etc.), numerous matters of importance to franchisors and franchisees are on the table, too.
