This article is reprinted with permission from Practice Innovations, January 2009 | VOLUME 10, NUMBER 1.© 2009 West, a Thomson Reuters business.
There is nothing quite like helping a prospective client see how your firm’s services will help their company reach its business goals and having your firm hired as a result of your strong presentation and your ability to tie your services to their needs. Contributing to your firm’s revenue builds confidence, wins accolades, and emphasizes that you are part of the team. But today, differentiating one firm’s services from another is becoming increasingly difficult and a real challenge. To retain clients you’ve fought so hard to sell requires consistent delivery of the services and the brand that your firm promised with the sale.
This article will discuss two areas that will help today’s law firm effectively compete for and retain clients in the evermore competitive legal environment: building the brand and delivering the brand.
This article is reprinted with permission from Practice Innovations, July 2009, Volume 10, Number 3. © 2009 West, A Thomson Reuters business
Social networking can boost your business development efforts. But first you must educate the members of your organization about appropriate usage, professional conduct and ethics, and avoiding legal liability.
“Unless we’re in touch with our customers, our model of the world can diverge from reality” –Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO
SOMERSET, N.J., September 21, 2009 – Hildebrandt, the leading management consulting firm to the legal market, today announced the introduction of LawVision™, a new consulting service that helps law firms adapt their business models to changing market conditions.
The current economic downturn has focused attention of the legal profession on the basic structural, economic, and work process models that have dominated law firms for many years. Some of the key aspects of currently prevailing models include hourly pricing, lockstep progression and compensation for associates and a profit model based on growth and expansion.
SOMERSET, N.J., and HOUSTON, Dec. 4, 2009 – Hildebrandt and Baker Robbins & Company, the two leading consultancies serving the legal market, announced today that they will merge into a single company, effective Jan. 1, 2010. Both are part of the Business of Law group of Thomson Reuters.
Hildebrandt is the premier management consulting firm serving law firms and corporate and governmental law departments throughout the world. Baker Robbins & Company is the leading technology and business process consulting firm for the same market. Together, the new firm – which will be known as Hildebrandt Baker Robbins – will be the largest and most diversified consultancy serving the legal market, with more than 120 consultants working around the world in a broad range of practice areas.
SOMERSET, NJ, November 18, 2009 – Hildebrandt, the leading management consulting firm to the legal market, today announced the global expansion of Hildebrandt services in Beijing, Hong Kong and Sydney effective January 1, 2010.
The potential growth of the legal profession in Asia is impressive. Global firms continue to invest in the region although many lack a strategic business plan for their offices. Local and regional firms are also growing and we envision some potential consolidation of the market. The biggest challenge for local and regional firms is to put in place a structure and systems that will allow them to compete effectively in this changing market. We would not be surprised if there were consolidation between the growing Chinese firms and a major US or UK firm.
In many ways, mid-sized law firms are very much like their larger counterparts. They have collections of attorneys who practice similar types of law, serve similar industries, share the same clients, and even market together. The firms also have, for the most part, similar (though sometimes less complex) governance structures, compensation models, and partnership tiers. There are, however, some important distinctions between mid-sized and large firms that can impact the smaller firms’ success operating under a practice group structure. For the mid-sized firms that have addressed these challenges effectively, the results have been very positive: