When the downturn is over, the businesses that survived will be those who adapted, changed and kept the fundamentals at the forefront of strategy. Raymond McLennan, solicitor and former entrepreneur launches a novel manifesto for success during 2010, proposing radical, yet simple advice.

Victor Frankl famously said that: “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” Change was the main word bandied about in the legal sector in 2009:  get ready for change, things are going to change, everything is changing.

We know that due to the Legal Services (Scotland) Bill there will be a blueprint for some sort of change, but the reality is that no one knows for sure how far and how deep the changes will go. In my experience,  any eventual changes will be delivered kicking and screaming. Of all the lawyers I’ve talked to recently, the main things that stand out are that there is now officially, not enough work to go round, everyone knows someone who has been made redundant and most firms are carrying on as if everything will return to normal.

We started with a quote. Here are two more:
“If you keep on doing what you’ve always done, you’ll keep on getting what you’ve always got.” (Thanks to Jackie B Cooper for that).
And:
“Faced with the choice between changing one’s mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.”  John Kenneth Galbraith

If there is one thing that everyone can do, that is change ourselves, change our own ways of looking at things and change the attitude towards the delivery of legal services.

The reason that internal change is needed is because whatever happens in the legal sector, you, as an individual, need to be ready and by that I simply mean an openness to new ways of doing things. I recall starting a presentation to the partners of a legal firm last year by comparing them to my local garage mechanic.  

“When I take my car to my local garage, I tell him what I want to be done.  A full service or for him to do something about the rattling noise. He tells me that the service will cost £x or that he will look at the car and call me if it’s anything serious. Later on in the day I get a call from the mechanic, not someone in his office, telling me what the noise is and what it will cost. I either approve the spending or not, either way, I have a say in the matter. I agree to the work and later on collect the car and pay by credit or debit card.”

If I contrast that with the delivery of legal services, just talking to the lawyer to discuss what may happen racks up a bill. I get something done but I’m not truly sure what it was and then I still get a bill, nearly always larger that I thought and 30 days to pay.

Naturally, this analogy caused outrage.

Lawyers are nothing like mechanics, we have to study for years, you cannot compare car servicing to legal services and so on. All very well and all very dull and totally missing the point.

The public doesn’t care about what you do to solve their legal problems, they just want to know how long it will take and how much it will cost and regardless of the legal situation, that process can be managed far more effectively than it is now.  

That in a nutshell is what Clementi and the Legal Services Bill has been all about.
So if you can set aside all the arguments about everything else and focus on that phrase: The public doesn’t care about what you do to solve their legal problems, they just want to know how long it will take and how much it will cost. Regardless of the legal situation, that process can be managed far more effectively than it is now.  Worth repeating, isn’t it?

Unfortunately, “getting better” in some firms means cost-cutting. No business can grow by cost-cutting. Yet all around I see and hear of legal firms shedding staff, stopping the newspapers, cutting back on marketing, stopping all non-essential travel and taking pay cuts.  The problem with this type of thinking is that it permeates through the firm and everyone gets into a Scrooge-like survival mode. Clients and customers pick up on that and you have a downward spiral.

By the time the recovery happens, your staff are so demoralised that when the good ones get offers from other firms, they leave. This situation is something that has not happened to legal firms before but whilst the world changes, human nature never does and there is no reason to assume that this will not happen.

Getting better means growing but how do you grow a firm in the present economic climate? Let’s start from the only 4 ways to grow any business;
1.    Increase the number of customers or
    clients of the type you want to have.
2.    Increase the number of times they
    come back to you.
3.    Increase the average spend of each
    customer or client.
4.    Increase the effectiveness of each
    process in the business:

Clients come back to you time and time again. By deciding what your ideal client is, you eliminate the “catch-all” approach to getting business which means letting go of clients you don’t want.  This frees up time and energy. I know that you have clients that you don’t like, don’t need and don’t want…get rid of them.

Once you have decided on your ideal customer, concentrate all your energy on getting more of them and encourage them to come back for other services.  This means looking after them, keeping in contact, remembering things about them, agreeing their fees in advance! A happy client will buy other services from you.  The right time to sell those other services is just when they have bought a service from you. The divorce client needs somewhere to stay, they may need their will adjusted, advice on bankruptcy. Look at the lifetime value of each client and make sure that you are their only provider of legal services for as long as they live.

Business processes include how you answer the ‘phone, how you handle work-flow, how you communicate with clients (letter, e-mail or text depending on age) managing cash-flow and accounts more efficiently or refining the recruitment policy.

Here are some other things that some people and firms are doing to get better:
• Optimising the firm website
• Signing up to online legal document providers
• Taking classes in marketing
• Joining sites to compare lawyers

In most legal practices - correct me if I am wrong - there has been little work done on obtaining the hard data on client preferences which are the very stuff of sensible forward strategic planning. As yet, no-one knows what the legal service delivery of the 2030s will look like and the guesswork we see looks suspiciously like the guesswork we saw 20 years ago about what it would look like now.

My advice to you is to concentrate on getting your own house in order, so you are solidly client-centred, highly efficient and highly nimble so that you can make decisions fast and convert these to actions fast. If you do this, you will be able to retain enough profit to make a reasoned investment in the most profitable future when that becomes clear: it isn’t now, and some firms are spending what seems to me to be silly money on things that may prove to be worthwhile, but I am sure in many cases won’t. The firms which will improve the most in 2010 will do so by looking inwards.

In my business career, I saw a few businesses which made more than 20% net profit, I could only manage 25% net profit in any business that I was in charge of. Good, well-managed law firms should make 40% net profit and that’s what will attract non-legal owners into the profession when the Legal Services Bill becomes law and lets them in.

If you need a manifesto for yourself or your firm, you could maybe use this:
I am a proud member of the United Kingdom’s essential profession. Without lawyers and the rule of law, a free, fair and open society is not sustainable.

I’m an innovator. A maverick. A pathfinder.

I am a Legal Rebel.

Finally, It is not necessary to change.  Survival is not mandatory.

Good luck.