It all comes down to the central question:  What activities are going to be the most effective?

The answer to that question is going to be different for every lawyer.  One of the first steps I do when begin when working with a new coaching client is to conduct a strength analysis. 

Why the focus on strengths?  Because by focusing on what we are good at we start ahead of the game.  We all come into this world with a unique set of talents, and over our lifetime with the addition of experience and learning we establish a foundation of knowledge, skill, and ability. The winning strategy is on maximising your strengths.  Tim Ferriss, author of The Four Hour Work Week puts it this way:

It is far more lucrative and fun to leverage your strengths instead of attempting to fix all the chinks in your armor. The choice is between multiplication of results using strengths or incremental improvement fixing weaknesses that will, at best, become mediocre.                       

If you have never done a strength analysis then think of it as a detailed answer to the question: “What am I good at and what have I got going for me?”   I have an article posted on the cooperative Canadian weblog Slaw.ca with a short list of questions that can guide you in conducting your own strength inventory.  Who do you know?  Do you enjoy writing or presenting?  The answers to these and other questions begin to form your inventory of strengths.

In addition you can try taking the free VIA Signature Strengths Questionnaire found on the Authentic Happiness Web site. You have to register (free) on the web site in order to access the test.  This test will indicate your top 5 strengths.  It was developed by Professor of Positive Psychology Martin Seligman at the University of Pennsylvania.  Thanks to Alexander Kjerulf and his blog Chief Happiness Officer for passing on this tip!

Your goals provide the directions and your strengths (and values!) make up the foundation for your business development efforts.  The right moves so often take advantage of the resources you have at hand, the people and contacts you have in your life, and your natural abilities, drive, and motivation.

The study is very well researched and provides an up to date report on what’s working for coaching in organizations.  You can download the report from the Canadian Management Centre website here:  http://www.cmctraining.org/whitepapers/?wp_id=22

One highlight from the study looked into the most important factors in determining the success of a coaching engagement: 

“The strongest correlations were found between coaching expertise and coaching success and between personality and coaching success. In general, this suggests that companies that match based on the coach’s expertise or based on complementary personalities are more likely to report successful coaching programs.” 

In other words, retain coaches with experience that matches your needs and interview the candidates to ensure you find a coach who fits your personality. This just seems like common sense.  If you are a lawyer looking for practice development coaching then you are best retaining a coach with experience in the legal field and practice development and interviewing them to find out if they are a good “fit” for your personality. 

Don’t feel like downloading the report?  Here is an excerpt of the some of the other key findings from the study:

Finding One: Coaching is used by only about half of today’s companies. In the
North American sample, 52% report having such programs in place, and, in the
international sample, the proportion is 55%.

Finding Two: Coaching continues to gain in popularity. Among respondents
who say their organizations don’t yet have coaching programs, a sizable proportion
(37% in the North American sample and 56% in the international sample) say such
programs will be implemented in the future.

Finding Three: Coaching is associated with higher performance. Correlations do
not necessarily imply causation, but respondents from organizations that use coaching
more than in the past are also more likely to report two kinds of advantages:
1. They’re more likely to report that their organizations have higher levels of
success in the area of coaching.
2. They’re more likely to say that their organizations are performing well in the
market, as determined by self-reports in the combined areas of revenue
growth, market share, profitability, and customer satisfaction.

Finding Four: Coaching is primarily aimed at boosting individual performance.
The desire to improve individual “performance/productivity” is the most widely cited
purpose of coaching.

Finding Five: Clarity of purpose counts. The more a company has a clear reason
for using a coach, the more likely that its coaching process will be viewed as successful.

Finding Six: Evaluating coaching’s performance may help boost success rates. The
more frequently respondents reported using a measurement method, the more likely
they were to report success in their coaching programs.

Finding Seven: It pays to interview. Having an interview with the prospective
coach has the strongest relationship with reporting a successful coaching program.

Finding Eight: It pays to match the right coach with the right client.Matching
people according to expertise and personality seems to be the best strategies.

Finding Nine: External training seems to work best. Externally based methods of
providing training on coaching are most strongly correlated with overall coaching
success, though they are less often used.

Finding Ten: Coaching’s international future looks bright. Compared with the
North American sample, organizations in the international group have not had
coaching programs in place for as long, but more in this group plan to implement
coaching programs in the future.

Finding Eleven: Peer coaching needs to become more effective. Although a little
over half of responding organizations use peer coaching, only about a third of
respondents who use it consider it to be very effective or extremely effective.

The British Columbia Courthouse Library Society (BCCLS) is currently planning the redevelopment of the Courthouse Library Website and they would appreciate your help. 

An online survey has been launched for practicing B.C. lawyers.  This survey will help the BCCLS to obtain better insight into your current technology and online usage patterns as one aspect of the development process.

The short 13 question web-based survey takes approximately three minutes to complete.  Please help out by taking a few moments to complete the survey and/or encourage the lawyers in your organization to take part.  Your participantion will help create a more effective resource that benefits everyone in B.C.’s legal community.

Launch Survey!

Survey respondents will also be entered into a draw for one of two 8G iPod Touch music player/portable internet devices.

On behalf of the Courthouse Library Society I’d like to thank you in advance for your anticipated assistance.

As promised I have attached three documents related to business plan development in the password protected post below.  To access the documents please enter the one word password in lower case.  The password is the first word in the title of the presentation I gave at the ALA yesterday morning.  The word begins with the letter t.

The first document is a business plan quadrant tool to help associates evaluate where they can make the best investments of their time.  The second is a detailed business plan template with different sections for each activity.  I would recommend that the associates also use this as a tool for determining what kind of marketing activities to invest in.  My favourite plan is the third document - a short monthly action plan.  It lists some important questions for the associates to consider and leaves a blank space for writing in their monthly action items.

Please just give me a call or send me an email if you have any questions. 

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

Tom knows that my business is coaching lawyers so this morning he gave me his unedited review of his lawyers, law firm, and the legal business model.  The fee structure, the billable hour business model, and lawyers insistence at wordsmithing documents on his dollar all got a failing grade.

Here are some of his candid comments:

1. Why no flat fee structure for this work?  We keep getting told that each deal is unique and there is no way to accurately estimate the lawyer time it will take.  Yet, when you look at the total legal bills for each of our deals they always come in at about the same amount.  Why not just flat fee us, and leverage your own internal time saving innovations?
2. The only reason we don’t put out a request for a law firm who will work this way (see above comment) is that we have a long-standing relationship with our current firm.  They know us and our business.
3. I can’t stand it when lawyers insist on writing me a long and expensive memo when what I need is a quick answer.  I’m a business man; I need my lawyer’s best answer on the spot.
4. I recently did a deal where the lawyers on both sides disagreed about how the deal was written.  They started to argue, at a cost of 700/hr about wordsmithing.  I asked my lawyer, “look, does the deal work as it has been written?”  The lawyer responded “yes, it works but I don’t like how it is written.”  This is about getting deals done, not about writing an epic novel.

In my local legal marketplace we don’t get the biggest and best financings.  Tom’s company would count as a very good client and source of lots of good work.  Even though they have an existing law firm relationship (who doesn’t?) in my view they are ripe for the picking.  What would it take?

• A willingness to invest in developing a relationship with the company, quickly, at your own expense.
• A willingness to work on a flat fee or other alternative structure.
• A lead partner who is able to provide the kind of “shoot from the hip” legal advice Tom is asking for.

I would like to point out that Tom is an easy-going, even tempered guy.  You’d never know it this morning.  It just goes to show how the way our law firms conduct business can be so negatively received by the very clients we serve.

Tom’s rant also points out the value of relationships:  He and his company haven’t taken their work to another firm because of that relationship.  It would be too much work.  However, if another firm was willing to make it easy for them to make the change through investing time in learning their business, and offering a different fee structure, they would likely jump.

What are you willing to invest in retaining your current clients?  And growing your business?  Could you offer what Tom is looking for?

I first blogged on this topic in December. Today I will continue where I left off and provide my top ten list of steps for launching a successful associate marketing and business development training program:

1. Segment your training to target lawyers of a particular year of call, or practice area, so that the curriculum content is appropriate to their skill and knowledge level and can be put into immediate practice.
2. Conduct strength assessments with the associates taking part in the training program.  These assessments provide a measure of where they are starting from, help frame the business development process, and serve as a point of departure for developing their personal business plans.
3. Launch the training program with a Mindset component.  Mindset means aligning the business development approach to the strengths and values of the participants, framing business development in the context of career success, and clearing up any misconceptions about what business development is all about.
4. In keeping with the active learning emphasis, hold monthly meetings, with actionable homework and feedback components. 
5. Connect the content of the monthly training sessions to each associate’s goals and business plan. 
6. Use the training program and homework items to support associates in developing the habit of integrating regular business development activities into their weekly schedule.
7. Track results.
8. Small groups provide the opportunity for discussion.  Each training component is followed by an action item.  For example, after the networking session the associates each attend a networking event.  Following the event they prepare a brief memo on what worked, what didn’t, what contacts they made, how they will follow-up.  At the next training session the first minutes of the class are then spent reviewing the group members’ experience of the networking event.
9. Integrate partner experiences into the program through holding partner panels, or collecting business development stories from the partners for inclusion in the training sessions. 
10. Integrate client experiences into the program through holding client panels, sharing client survey results, or by creating opportunities for the participants to speak with clients of the firm. 

Just like learning to improve a golf stoke, lawyers can best develop business development skills through putting knowledge into practice and receiving feedback on performance.  Training programs require more than just the seminar component.  They require action assignments and the opportunity to debrief with colleagues and a coach or mentor after the event.

Developing a successful business development training program takes time and effort, but the rewards are substantial:

• A training program with measurable ROI
• A  team of lawyers who all business develop
• Increased retention of associates

Done right, programs that teach the participants new business development skills, encourage new behaviours and have measurable goals and results will have a fundamental impact on profitability and retention.

For further reading on this topic don’t miss the Hildebrant Article: Masterclass: Adopting A Business-Development Attitude: A Shared Responsibility

1. Ask before telling
2. Listen before speaking
3. Discover how you can help

And I would add one caveat:

Don’t fumble the follow-up.

These principles form the foundation for all my business development coaching and training.

Applying these principles opens up an approach to business development that is equally accessible to introverted and extroverted personality types.  For example, at networking events the focus is not on talking about yourself, but on preparing ahead, asking great questions, learning important information about the people you are meeting, and following up after the event on what you have learned.  To learn more about how these principles apply in practice please visit my article Networking for Introverts on the Canadian legal weblog Slaw.ca.

Congratulations to LMA Toronto

First I would like to send congratulations to LMA Toronto President Nanette Matys and Board members Elizabeth Gill, Karyn McLean, Diana Lawrence, Lynda Monteith, Dianne Rychlewski, Stuart Wood and Elizabeth Cockle, for successfully undergoing the considerable work of forming a Chapter and for organizing the impressive launch event.  The LMA Toronto Chapter promises to be a valuable addition to the Toronto, and indeed Canadian, legal landscape.

Top Legal Trends in 2008

Now on to the BTI Consulting Group report on the top legal trends to watch for it 2008. Of the ten trends reported the four I will report on today are:

1. Outside counsel spending is slowing.  After a five year period of growth the trend is now turning and “projected market growth for 2008″ is estimated at 6.1%. 
2. Legal work is moving in-house, AGAIN.
3. Convergence is back - more dollars for fewer firms.  If you aren’t one of a client’s top two law firms then your share of the wallet is getting smaller. Side note - over 50% of companies switched their primary firms in 2008.  That means if you have the position of primary firm guard it closely!  And if you are a secondary firm, dislodging a primary firm can result in a considerable increase in wallet share so start planning your approach now.
4. The top goal for corporate counsel for the second year in a row is cost management and value for the dollar.  Don’t equate lower fees with value. 

What do Corporate Counsel Mean by “value for the dollar”?

Value for the dollar is the perception of the value of the work received from the lawyer, law firm.  BTI reports that this is the top unmet need expressed by Corporate Counsel.  If you are seeking to take over a primary law firm spot, then build your strategy around this.  Value for the dollar does not mean lower legal fees.  Indeed, the firms rated highest for value are also high fee firms. 

BTI reported on several measures of value:

• Understanding the client’s business:  This means providing solid business solutions to the client grounded in a deep understanding of the client’s business, industry, and the specific needs related to each transaction or file.  The law firm invests non-billable time in learning as much as possible about the client’s business.
• Responsiveness:   Responding in a timely fashion. Responsiveness is not just about responding to phone calls and emails promptly.  It more generally addresses the lawyer and law firm’s ability to meet a wide-variety of client requests.  For instance, on five separate occasions BTI heard from corporate counsel that when requesting quarterly instead of monthly bills from their law firms they were told by their lawyers that their accounting departments were unable to accommodate this request. 
• Commitment to help:  The lawyer is truly interested in helping to solve the problem not just bill the hours.

Old News

Value for money is not a new concept.  The ideas listed above make up the content of a library shelf full of books.  Law firms have invested countless dollars in retreats, seminars, and conferences on the topic.  The question is: why is it so difficult to get this right?  The answer is time.  What David Maister has referred to as investment time.  It takes time, non-billable time, to get this right.  And time is the one thing no lawyer has today.  The billable hour demands keep going up.  The “investment time” any lawyer has is scarce.  If you want to achieve value for money then give your lawyers the time to deliver it.