Legal Operations

Buyers of legal services are now a highly sophisticated and connected community. What the clients now not only want but insist on, is operational efficiency, effectiveness and transparency.

Firm leadership must think about their talent (and that means all their talent) differently than they do today: as a core business asset whose managed value can make or break the firm's success.

It is not accidental that funding the creation or growth of law firms and practice groups has tended to follow a traditional path. Rather, this circumstance is a combination of traditional legal temperament and structural barriers to innovation. Recently, there have been changes to both.

In the post-pandemic era, widely adopted flexible work arrangements have given lawyers a new view of their work. But in a profession without mandatory retirement policies, a partner's decision to keep practicing may not entail a discussion of the ultimate succession of their practice and clientele.

Office drama can be a big problem for law firms. Whether it is showing up as office gossip, the partner who is terrible to their associates and staff, two people who just cannot seem to get along, or a revolving door of lawyers or staff, drama can be distracting, hamper productivity, and reduce billable hours.

No one would have predicted hybrid operations — but hybrid is here to stay. Firms have a lot to gain in terms of creating a new culture that attorneys love but that new culture will be built on flexibility and dynamism only technology can manage.

This article reminds readers of §409A's draconian penalties and specific guidance of amending modifying, amending or terminating existing nonqualified deferred compensation plans.

The New Reality, for which law firms are scrambling to equip themselves, is that law firms no longer define their own service levels. Now it's the clients, and they have clear expectation parameters.