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LMS Young Solicitors' Management Conference 2005 - a review
The Law Management Section of the Law Society of England and Wales recently hosted the 2005 Young Solicitors Management Conference. As the chair of the conference Simon Tupman writes, the content was relevant to lawyers of all ages.
For the third successive year, the LMS section of the Law Society of England and Wales hosted the Young Solicitors' Management conference. The programme covered a wide variety of management issues presented by a distinguished line up of presenters. As with previous years, this conference was a hit with the 120 or so delegates drawn from private practice and from in-house. Outlined below are some of the highlights of the day
The conference was opened by Kevin Martin, President of the Law Society. In setting the scene for the day, he gave delegates an overview of the proposed reforms to the legal profession as outlined in the Government's Legal Services Bill. The reforms will make it even more important for lawyers to equip themselves with management skills.
Heather Stewart of Otterburn Legal Consulting then presented a session on 'people management'. Her session was not confined to management though; additionally and importantly, she distinguished between leadership and management, emphasising the need for both in order to grow your practice and yourself. Her key points centred around four imperatives: the need to manage yourself; to manage others who report to you; to develop leadership skills and to delegate effectively. Summarising her session, she added 'managers become leaders by helping others to work better'.
Of course, no management conference would be complete without a session on marketing and business development. Rosemary Ghazaros of the Business Development Practice duly obliged. For many attendees this was their first exposure to this topic and so Rosemary emphasised why lawyers today have to get good at marketing and communicating. She emphasised the importance of planning around client needs and developing appropriate tactics to sell to and communicate with clients. In offering practical ideas such as 'pick up the phone and find out what's happening', 'give presentations' and 'keep up with the industry', she warned delegates that while they had several mountains to climb, they had to make a start in order to succeed in today's competitive market. She reminded delegates not confuse 'busyness' with 'business'.
Getting paid is something employed lawyers sometimes forget about in the 'busyness' of answering to clients. Andrew Otterburn, author of the excellent book 'Profitability and Law Firm Management' gave delegates a primer in law firm finance, information that, in my day at least, they never taught at law school.
Taking the theme of money one step further, Patricia Wheatley-Burt of Trafalgar suggested to delegates that lawyers were notable for wasting money through inefficiency. To make her point, she waded into the audience and relieved several delegates of £10 and £20 bank notes from their wallets. She then proceeded (apparently) to set fire to the bank notes in front of the aghast audience. Much to their subsequent relief, Patricia had cleverly substituted 'fakes' for the real notes! Nevertheless she had the audience's attention and made full use of it to make her points about efficiency and the need for self-promotion in today's legal marketplace
The afternoon sessions were divided into breakout streams, one for those in private practice and the other for those who worked as in-house counsel.
Simon McCall of Sherwood Consulting gave private practitioners some frameworks for understanding how law firms work and the management implications. The highlight for me was his explanation of why partners are in partnership together. Referring to Professor Stephen Mayson's 3 'C's, he explained they were for convenience, to complement or to combine, adding there was no right or wrong reason.
In a former life, Des O'Connell worked in-house as a senior executive with Barclays Bank. His session on managing the legal department for in-house practitioners focused on the role of the legal department and led to a discussion on the merits of developing a legal risk strategy for the department, the team and for the individual within given time frames.
Olivia Burren of St Paul Travelers presented a no-nonsense session on quality and risk management explaining the need for indemnity insurance, the cost of risk, quality standards and what to do if things go wrong. Matching risk with quality she stated 'there is no substitute for risk awareness and common sense. If you don't apply the basic principles of risk management, a quality standard alone will not improve your claims history'.
Meirion Jones, Director of Business Development at Lovells then presented on 'Law firms, clients and the balance of power'. He explained that the principal challenges facing law firms were numerous and were forcing law firms to address their 'USP' (unique selling proposition). He added that law firms are adding value through providing training, offering online services, developing new products, seconding lawyers to clients and offering innovative pricing structures. He argued that maybe the biggest challenge in all this was bringing about behavioural change in firms and overcoming cynicism among lawyers about management.
With the focus towards the end of the day on career progression, Adam Edwards, partner with Cumberland Ellis gave a de-mystifying talk on partnership, - the structure of partnerships and the pros and cons of actually being a partner, including how much money partners typically make. He pointed out that the number of lawyers continues to grow in England and Wales with over 120,000 solicitors on the roll (compared with 49,000 in 1980) 90% of whom hold practising certificates. Drawing on previously published statistics he demonstrated that private practice can still be highly profitable, especially if your firm is in the upper quartile where average profits per partner range from £99,000 (2-4 partner firms) through to £120,000 (11-25 partner firms).
Overall, an action packed day full of enough information to fill an MBA programme! Throwing down the gauntlet at the end of the day, the chairman reminded the audience that the world is full of information but arguably not enough transformation. At a time when the legal profession is experiencing so much change, he encouraged delegates to act on what they had learnt.
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