Legal News

Get Firm Management Advice with a Side of Breakfast

By Brian Harris

By Jaime Bochet
Of the Legal Staff

Calling all firm managing partners and executive committee members! What are the big questions you have about the coming year? How can you address the issues at the forefront of how you manage your firm? What do you expect the legal landscape to look like in 2011?

The Legal Intelligencer invites you, as the leader of your firm, to hear the answers to those questions and more at our annual Managing Partners Breakfast, being held on Tuesday, Dec. 7, from 8 to 9:30 a.m. at Morton's Steakhouse in Philadelphia.

Not only will you enjoy a fantastic breakfast on us, and get to peruse the new 2010 issue of PaLAW: Annual Report on the Legal Profession, but you?ll also get those questions and more answered by Altman Weil consultant Tom Clay. The presentation will recap the results of the Managing Partners Survey, which are included in the PaLAW magazine, but it will also include Tom?s personal take on what lies ahead for 2011.

Here?s a taste of what to expect. In the article Tom wrote for the PaLAW magazine, he said, ?In reviewing the PaLAW Managing Partners Survey, as well as a number of other economic studies, it?s clear that 2009 was a year for law firms to cut costs.  This was necessary triage to counteract the effects of the recession in 2009. ... However, I believe that too many firms believe the work is done. It is not. Law firms are still too expensive to operate and will need to take some very innovative, and perhaps extremely difficult, approaches to reducing costs even more significantly.  New strategies will be needed to improve ? or even maintain ? profitability.

?This may seem harsh, but gone are the days when law firms could raise billing rates each year at twice the rate of inflation or more. Firms also are not going to be able to make large profits on inefficient work. Even if volume returns, the profit levels and margins will not be the same as in the past. These two things will force law firms to reduce overhead costs even more.?

If you?re interested in attending the complimentary Managing Partners Breakfast or have any questions, contact Diane McCollum at dmccollum@alm.com or 215-557-2335. We hope to see you there!

Full post as published by The Legal Intelligencer Blog on December 01, 2010 (boomark / email).