Practice Management

 Every day I read about law firm layoffs and the effect of the recession on our profession.  Rarer are insightful articles about what to do about it.  Here are a few that I found helpful:

Surviving the Slide:  What Firms Should (and Shouldn't) do to Ride Out the Economic Storm.  Panelists Ed Flitton (former managing partner of Holland & Hart), Merrilyn Astin Tarlton, Karen MacKay and Gerry Riskin participate in a prescient panel moderated by Dan Pinnington for LawPro Magazine.  The panel offers insightful and sometimes counter-intuitive advice on matters of leadership, human capital, employee engagement, client relationships, marketing and finance.  Read the abbreviated article here and the full discussion (worth the read) here. 

Weathering the Storm.  Gerry Riskin and fellow Edge Group Consultant Robert Millard offer these seven admonitions to law firm leaders in this article.       

1. Display Strong Leadership
2. Ramp up frequency of financial data reporting
3. Make the hard decisions quickly and humanely
4. Focus client and practice team leaders on short term action plans
5. Involve your clients
6. Manage internal expectations
7. This too shall pass:  Keep a balance with your long term strategy

On law.com, we find ACC's Susan Hackett's advice to GC's on getting through the storm.  Her advice focuses on how to set matter and project budgets for outside law firms.  Her comments are from ACC's new songbook, the ACC Value Challenge.

Lee Altenberg discusses business development in a National Law Journal article from last May in this article.  Gail Cutter offers some personal professional development advice for lawyers in a recession, in this New York Law Journal article, Think Like an Olympian. 

Peter Zeughauser discusses four pillars of a strong law firm culture in hard economic times in the American Lawyer Article,Four Essential Elements of a Strong Law Firm Culture.  They are:

1. Hard Work
2. Rewards for Rainmakers
3. Knowing who you are (and aren't)
4. Transparency, with discretion.

Zeughauser is always a must-read.

Finally, I opine on a new e-zine, Originate, focusing on relationships with key clients.  Read the article here.