Buy-sell agreements are arrangements between owners of a business where one or more owners agree that they will purchase the interest of an owner who withdraws or becomes deceased. Essentially, a buy-sell agreement is similar to prenuptial agreement between business owners, which details the financial aspect of the unwinding of the business relationship.
The old-school term is Client Satisfaction. It's been replaced with Client Delight, which is defined as beyond satisfaction. No matter what you call it, best-in-class client service is where it's at ' and where it will be going for some years to come.
Hourly rates can be a moving target as clients negotiate down firms' published rates, but in a low-demand era where lawyers need every dollar they can bring in, it seems associates are the ones troubled lately with how rates are set.
Should law firm leaders be firing more lawyers? That seems to be the takeaway of a report released last month by the legal consultancy Altman Weil.
The author learned a great many lessons from his late father. In this article, he mentions several things that have helped him considerably throughout his professional marketing career, and that he frequently passes along to others at various stages of their professional development.
A strong, powerful and constructive culture has a significant impact on a business's ability to differentiate, to offer top-shelf client service, to attract and retain talent at all levels and to reach new levels of profitability. Regardless of how technology continues to help the legal industry reinvent itself from a mature industry to a young and thriving industry, culture and people will remain a key driver of any firm's long-term success.
There have been four waves of change over the last 50 years. We are now entering the fifth wave and this one will be a tsunami. The lawyers who do not recognize the trends will not be able to enter a new era and survive. The fifth wave will turn partnership leverage, compensation systems and the business model upside down. There is not much time to make the incremental changes that will support sustained profitability in law firms.
The Wall Street Journal's recent front-page headline on billing rates tells only part of the story. "Legal Fees Cross New Mark: $1,500 an Hour," the Feb. 9 article announced before listing partner hourly rates at several big firms. But that's only part of the story.
Despite appearing to accept that rapid and ongoing market change is here to stay, firms, and their leaders, have responded with change efforts that can largely be described as limited and reactive short-term solutions. Why?
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