Avoiding Extinction in a Turbulent Legal Market: Financial Hygiene Perils

The early days of 2003 have brought a stark reminder to the leaders of law firms: While strong law firms have experienced an exceptional level of prosperity and growth in a consolidating market, continued expansion and ever increasing profitability are not the only potential destinies for law firms today. As the high profile closures of long established firms such as Brobeck; Peterson & Ross; Hill & Barlow and others demonstrate anew, firms can fail. And with failure come career interruption, client uncertainty and financial distress for many. Recent dissolutions reinforce the fact that law firms are fragile enterprises. If not carefully and constantly renewed and developed, they are in danger of falling apart, often rather quickly. In reality, in spite of appearances of rapid failure, the seeds of collapse are generally sown long in advance ' in most cases, even long before the firm begins to noticeably decline (eg, as seen in the form of firm shrinkage or lowered profitability). The lessons learned from dissolving firms offer leaders an opportunity to avoid seeing their firms consigned to the dustbins of history ' if properly focused and motivated, there is almost always time to intervene and change a firm's direction, before it is faced with a final crisis. Of course, leaders must know where to focus their efforts. There is no simple list of things that drive a firm to failure, and in most situations the underlying problems are many and complexly interwoven. In general, the sources of failure come from three overriding areas, and usually from more than one simultaneously: