Last week, for the second year running, Conscious Solutions brightened up (literally) the Lowry Hotel for the Manchester Law Society annual Conference. David had spared no expense on his shirt for the day; looking, well, as orange as usual. This year, orange dogs in tow and set up for a day of exhibiting from our stand, we helped ourselves to a few too many pastries as the delegates arrived. After a little snooping around the enemy camps with a cup of coffee in hand, the delegates were ushered into the Conference room; Fran Eccles-Bach and Chairman Nick Jarrett-Kerr keen to get introductions underway!
Fran, in her introductions to the room, expressed her excitement about the line up of experienced speakers and interactivity of the exhibitors' stands. Joanna Swash from MoneyPenny, sponsor of the Conference, introduced themselves next. Working with over 700 law firms, ranging from sole practitioners to international firms, clearly they were a worthy sponsor with vast experience of providing outsourcing services to law firms.
Soon enough, the Conference kicked off as follows:-
- Nick Jarrett Kerr - Essentials of Business Strategy
- Bill Kirby - Organisation Structure and Accountabilities
- Jonathan Gulliford - In-House or Outsource
- Richard Hodkinson - IT Strategy
- Steve Carter - Finance Strategy
- Rita Maguire - HR Strategy
- Bill Jones - Quality and Compliance
- Phil Jepson - Business Development
- Chris Bull - Closing Remarks
Nick Jarrett-Kerr delivered the key note speech; as both the Chairman of the Manchester Law Society and a member of Edge International, a leading global consultancy to law firms, he certainly held the room's attention. Primarily concerned with business strategy in the legal sector in the current context, his speech focused broadly on competitive survival, concerns surrounding ABS’, performance management and recruitment and retention (amongst many others!). He highlighted the need for growth, but stressed the importance of strategy in driving growth. Increasing the number of specialist staff on the team, investing capital in your firm's branding and profile, and working towards becoming dominant in the local area were just a few examples. Arguably the most helpful aspect of Nick’s talk, was his practical, simple and easy to implement strategic planning process. Broken down into strategic intent, analysis, options and plan; Nick talked the audience through the process stage by stage. Firstly, he explained the need to identify your firm's internal culture and identity. Secondly, that you need an awareness of the external factors affecting your business (including competitors, threats and opportunities). Thirdly, and key to business strategy, is the development of clear foundations of strategy, in terms of consolidation, growth, expansion and diversification. Nick explained that the final stage involved writing the plan of how to put that strategy into practice. Possibly influenced a little by Jamie Oliver, Nick talked ingredients of business planning from four different perspectives; financial, operational, people and client. Key to every business strategy is that each individual within your firm should have the same objectives; the idea being that all goals are tied up together in the interest of the business.
The second speech was delivered by Bill Kirby; a leading consultant in the professional services, specialising in both business and IT development strategy. Broadly speaking, Bill’s speech could be split into two distinct strands; one centred on business, the other on management. First and foremost, he stressed the need for lawyers to start thinking of themselves as legal businesses, which went hand in hand with the importance of having a business development plan. Thanks to Nick Jarrett-Kerr, the audience had a clearly defined method of planning business strategy, now came the need to put it into place. Management adopted a key role in Bill’s presentation on a whole number of levels; first and foremost, he outlined the responsibility of the Management Team to oversee the performance of individuals within a business, ranging from establishing individual responsibilities and monitoring their performance and seeing these in relation to the overall performance of your firm. Bill also identified that firms need to make the cultural shift from ‘responsible for’ to ‘accountable for’; in making this shift, objectives and milestones can be reviewed easily, with marketing activities/events to support business performance being easier to measure. Still along the management lines, Bill talked of the importance of the Legal Heads of Department. They have a great deal of power to control cost reduction and maintain a balanced headcount between partners, lawyers and secretaries. They also have a responsibility for team business development; having the knowledge to exploit the market and an awareness of new business, cross selling and client retention. The client’s experience including all letters and complaints is high up on their priorities list also. The idea of lawyers' promotions being based on length of time at a firm, not qualification for the job, is something unique to the legal sector. Many lawyers will move up the career ladder but not necessarily because they're the right person for the job; so make sure your HOD is covering all bases!
At this point it was time for a break, networking and exhibition session, in other words, a chance to pester speakers, grab a quick cup of tea and have another munch on pastries! In all seriousness, the structure of the day was great; there was plenty of time to eat and drink (always welcome), but also to network.
Straight after the break it was back with Jonathan Gulliford, one of the three founding members of Co-Operative Legal Services. Responsible for the Co-operative’s drive to become an SRA regulated ABS, he bore witness to the Co-op's vast growth in the sector, culminating in revenue over £25 million and over 400 staff by his departure in 2011. Possibly the most truly irresistible (couldn’t help that pun!) talk of the day, was Jonathan's shedding light on the Co-operative's future legal strategy, primarily concerned with the lifetime value of a client as the key to maintaining successful business. He addressed that they might be in customers’ faces, admittedly giving them the upper hand, but reminded the audience to be around to pick up the non-consumer business disinterested in working with the Co-op. Plus they did have a six year head start over other ABS’, so it doesn’t necessarily follow that every other ABS will do so well!
And all this on top of his In-house or Outsource presentation – what a treat! Firms need to conduct reviews regularly to conclude if outsourcing or keeping in house is the right option. He outlined areas for law firms where business could be outsourced including telephony, office support and finance, amongst many others! Following this, some of the positives of outsourcing included freeing up office staff, resources and cost effectiveness. A few negatives Jonathan touched upon were; loss of management/firm control, the threat to security (payroll, personal data) and the potential for overall quality to be lower as the culture/consistency of your firm will obviously be different from the company you’re outsourcing to.
Next up, just before what would turn out to be a truly delicious lunch, was Richard Hodkinson, IT Director at DWF LLP who holds responsibility for all aspects of IT strategy and delivery. With an appropriately picturesque slide as the background, Richard set both the business and technological scenes. Most compelling has been the shift in consumer demand, both at home and at work people are driving demand. Particularly strong has been, and continues to be, the growth of tablets; in 2011 over 60 million were sold worldwide, with sales in excess of 369 million predicted over the next 3 years. Highlighting predictions for the next big things from Deloitte, Richard explained the move towards cloud technology, the exponential growth of data and the importance of multimedia over the coming years. Accenture predicted that social driven IT would be a huge grower in 2012, alongside increased client engagement.
Straight after lunch and in the dreaded graveyard spot, was Steve Carter talking finance strategy. He successfully prevented the audience from falling asleep by using vehicle metaphors to demonstrate each area of finance strategy, from needing a suitable car for the business journey, the right driver (staff) for the road, using your Sat Nav to ensure you're following your business strategy and keeping your mechanics (the team) a tightly knit entity so they're available for any repairs! It is safe to say that he had the most Who Wants to be a Millionaire slides in the day whilst demonstrating accountabilities and measures.
Rita Maguire’s presentation just before the afternoon break came around very quickly. Focused on people planning and HR strategy, Rita talked practical ways to make the most out of your staff; increasing their business awareness was a priority, alongside effective people management, retaining talent and maintaining employee satisfaction. She focused on the need for an integrated people/HR strategy to enable effective setting up of objectives and subsequently measuring the results.
During the next talk from Bill Jones, I did find myself thinking ‘what’s that got to do with the price of eggs?’ Not because the topic was irrelevant, but because at this point Bill threw an egg into the audience to demonstrate how much risk there was in the egg breaking, or more simply put, to illustrate risk assessment. Living in a more interactive world, with the likes of Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter on demand, Bill also outlined confidentiality issues that faces lawyers.
There were definitely a few chuckles in the audience as dodos went up in flames on Phil Jepson’s slides during his business development presentation. The concern was of course that many law firms could be extinct over the next few years, which perfectly illustrated the need to plan, write and implement a business development strategy. Firms should be spending between 2% and 10% on business development; when in actual fact, the majority of firms are spending 2%. Phil pointed out that during a recession, three things which receive less, to in some cases, no spending allowance, are marketing, training and recruitment. The three very things, which in Phil's opinion, will help businesses to grow, (prompting the next slide to have the words, ‘CAUTION – CRAZY PEOPLE INSIDE’ on it, rather appropriate in fact!). Phil reminded the audience that within a law firm, business development is not the sole responsibility of one, but is the responsibility of everyone; it is wrong to hide behind the, I’m a lawyer, not a salesman excuse!
After the closing remarks from Chris Bull and the final prompt for any remaining pressing questions, the Conference drew to a close for another year. From then onwards, it was a casual drink for all in the downstairs bar. Naturally, our best friends (orange dogs) were still by our side, if not for any other reason than the fact that they are quite the conversation piece!