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Legal Business Development 
Trends and techniques, updated every Wednesday
Post Frequency: 1.5/day Last Entry: March 30, 2011 at 02:00:00 Recent Entries: 206
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Alternative fee strategies (Part 2 of 3): Conservative risk avoidance
Posted on October 13, 2010This three-part series is reproduced from the LegalBizDev Survey of Alternative Fees, a research report based on in-depth interviews with chairmen, senior partners and C-level executives at 37 of the largest law firms in the US. More conservative firms are...
Alternative fee strategies (Part 1 of 3): Aggressive risk-taking
Posted on October 06, 2010This three-part series is reproduced from the LegalBizDev Survey of Alternative Fees, a research report based on in-depth interviews with chairmen, senior partners and C-level executives at 37 of the largest law firms in the US. Over the course of...
Legal project management (Part 15): The power of sharing
Posted on September 29, 2010This post was written by Steve Barrett and Jim Hassett. Any lawyer who has ever had a mentor knows how valuable it is to have access to information about what has worked in the past, and what hasn?t. But lawyers...
Value questions to ask your top clients (Part 2 of 2)
Posted on September 22, 2010This post concludes our list of questions to ask top clients. As noted last week, the idea is to pick just a few that fit your situation, schedule a meeting to discuss them, and listen to them while they talk...
Value questions to ask your top clients (Part 1 of 2)
Posted on September 15, 2010When an AmLaw 100 senior partner recently asked us for advice on strengthening the relationship with a top client, we recommended asking questions about his client?s perception of value. We sent this list. His task was to pick a few...
The billable hour: How sick is it?
Posted on September 08, 2010The failure of the billable hour to die is back in the news. In a recent AmLaw Daily post entitled The Billable Hour Endures, former Kirkland & Ellis partner Steven Harper argued that, ?Regularly over the past 20 years, optimists...
Announcing a .pdf version of our alternative fees survey
Posted on September 08, 2010A .pdf version of the LegalBizDev Survey of Alternative Fees is now available for $99. To order today, email survey@legalbizdev.com or call Elisabeth Westner at 617-217-2578. The LegalBizDev Survey of Alternative Fees is based on in-depth interviews conducted between June...
Project management (Part 14): The power of checklists
Posted on September 01, 2010In the business bestseller The Checklist Manifesto, Atul Gawande makes a powerful case for the value of this simple project management tool. As the book jacket notes, ?The volume and complexity of knowledge today has exceeded our ability as individuals...
How to improve pitch meetings
Posted on August 25, 2010A few months ago, I wrote about ?The biggest mistake lawyers make when trying to develop new business": they fail to listen. As I wrote in that post: The familiar term ?pitch meeting? shows just how pervasive this mistake is....
Overcoming resistance to change (Part 3): Raising the urgency level
Posted on August 18, 2010Last week I wrote about how short-term wins can help to promote change in law firms. In the book Leading Change, John Kotter also talks about the value of ?raising the urgency level,? and even provides a table listing nine...
Overcoming resistance to change (Part 2): Short-term wins
Posted on August 11, 2010Last week I wrote about a simple strategy to promote change: find the feeling. Sounds great in theory, but exactly how do you do that? Of course the answer will depend on your firm?s culture and on the change you...
Overcoming lawyers? resistance to change (Part 1): Find the feeling
Posted on August 04, 2010In preparing for an upcoming panel presentation in Chicago (for details, see the end of this post), I?ve been reading and thinking a lot about lawyers and change. The most useful book I?ve found so far does not mention lawyers...
Legal project management (Part 13): Getting the ?Statement of Work? right
Posted on July 28, 2010This week?s post was written by LegalBizDev Principal Mike Egnatchik, former Associate General Counsel at Xerox. Law firms are increasingly realizing that they must both adopt and adapt the principles of project management in order to perform their work more...
Why project management is becoming increasingly important to law firms
Posted on July 21, 2010This week?s post comes from the preface to my new book. The preface starts by explaining how to use the book?s tools and templates to improve profitability and client service, then transitions to the material below, explaining why project management....
Should you buy Pat Lamb?s new book on alternative fees?
Posted on July 14, 2010In my opinion, any lawyer who wants to understand the nitty gritty details of how non-hourly fees really work, from pricing to project management, should buy Pat Lamb?s new book Alternative Fee Arrangements: Value Fees and the Changing Legal Market.....
How Should Law Firms ?Gear Up? to Manage Projects Better? ? A 50,000-foot View (Part 2 of 2)
Posted on July 07, 2010This two-part series was written by LegalBizDev Principal Steve Barrett, former CMO at Drinker Biddle. You?ve decided that your firm needs to assess the need for or embark upon instituting project management as an efficiency improvement and margin protection discipline...
How Should Law Firms ?Gear Up? to Manage Projects Better? ? A 50,000-foot View (Part 1 of 2)
Posted on June 30, 2010This two-part series was written by LegalBizDev Principal Steve Barrett, former CMO at Drinker Biddle. It is based on an article that will appear in Of Counsel: The Legal Practice and Management Report. Approaching the second anniversary of the September...
Legal project management (Part 12): What Canadian firms are doing
Posted on June 23, 2010Last week we offered a project management webinar workshop at Clark Wilson, one of the leading law firms in British Columbia. The next day, a colleague asked me how Canadian legal project management differs from the US. My answer: it...
Another mistake: Overestimating the value of personal relationships
Posted on June 16, 2010A few weeks ago, I wrote that the biggest mistake lawyers make in developing new business is failing to listen. This week I?ll talk about another mistake that is not quite as common, but just as deadly: overestimating the value...
Legal project management (Part 11): End of matter evaluations
Posted on June 09, 2010Communication is absolutely essential in project management, and systematically debriefing clients at the end of every matter is more important than ever before. Indeed, the ACC Value Challenge Briefing Package suggests that clients should take the initiative on this and...
Legal Project Management (Part 10): Where to begin
Posted on June 02, 2010Which should come first: a formal legal project management system or legal project management training? This particular chicken and egg question has come up quite a few times in the last few weeks. For example, I recently talked to a...
Former GC joins LegalBizDev project management team
Posted on June 01, 2010A few weeks ago, I wrote about how Mike Egnatchik, former Associate General Counsel (International) at Xerox Corporation, has joined the LegalBizDev team. Today, I am pleased to announce that Kirk G. Forrest has also joined us to help meet...
The biggest mistake lawyers make when trying to develop new business
Posted on May 26, 2010The biggest mistake most lawyers make in developing new business is that they don?t listen. In a shocking turn of events, they talk too much. Experts agree that when you are building business relationships, you should spend 50% to 80%...
Legal project management (Part 9): Getting away from perfectionism
Posted on May 19, 2010When Voltaire wrote the phrase ?Better is the enemy of good? in the late eighteenth century, he was not thinking about the needs of legal clients. But the phrase is extremely relevant to the challenges lawyers face today as they...
Legal Project Management (Part 8): McDermott?s Deal Dashboard
Posted on May 12, 2010If you believe what?s been written on the web lately, you?d think that the idea of applying project management principles to legal matters was brand new. In fact, however, some lawyers have been focused on these ideas for years, developing...
Legal Project Management (Part 7): Training
Posted on May 05, 2010All of a sudden, legal project management training is hot. Whether you want a one-hour webinar, a three-day workshop, or anything in between, someone has just the course for you. What a difference six months makes. Last November, Paul Lippe...
Legal Project Management (Part 6) ? Budget problems and solutions
Posted on April 28, 2010Many lawyers believe that it is simply not possible to predict the costs of complex legal matters. As the managing partner of a firm with more than 1,000 lawyers put it in The LegalBizDev Survey of Alternative Fees: [Some] litigators...
Former Associate General Counsel joins LegalBizDev team
Posted on April 26, 2010I am pleased to announce that Mike Egnatchik, former Associate General Counsel, International at Xerox Corporation, has joined our team. He will help us meet the growing need for our proprietary ?just in time, just enough? project management training programs...
Legal Project Management (Part 5): Six Sigma and Lean
Posted on April 21, 2010When I started this series of posts, I thought it would have only five parts. However, a significant amount of new information has been published on this topic since I started the series a few weeks ago, so I will...
What every lawyer needs to know about project management, Part 4 of 5
Posted on April 14, 2010It?s all about tradeoffs If we lived in a perfect world with unlimited resources, no one would need project managers. But here on Earth, resources are limited and managers are constantly forced to make difficult choices. For example, when computer...
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I have worked for this employer for only three weeks. The employer makes up his own rules as to what he chooses to report for the purpose of property taxes. He tells me to "let them come after us". He defines Entertain
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This has happened 3 or 4 times a month now- they have turned the electric off 2 days consecutively, the water off about 9 or 10 times now, and our heat has broken 5 times (once it would not shut off, and we were forced t
i say stick with the apartment. eventually, everything possible will be replaced...
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Look up CONSTRUCTIVE DISCHARGE...................this looks like what happened t...
How do you recover money from a stop payment placed on a personal check given to you?
you can always take them to small claims court and sure them for 3 times the amo...
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How to evict a roommate?
First, in most jurisdictions "self-help" is not a remedy available to any party ...
I have worked for this employer for only three weeks. The employer makes up his own rules as to what he chooses to report for the purpose of property taxes. He tells me to "let them come after us". He defines Entertain
He arrogantly insists, "let them come after us." Well, if you are invo...
This has happened 3 or 4 times a month now- they have turned the electric off 2 days consecutively, the water off about 9 or 10 times now, and our heat has broken 5 times (once it would not shut off, and we were forced t
i say stick with the apartment. eventually, everything possible will be replaced...
The company I worked for forced me to quit instead of dealing with someone harassing me, what can I do?
Look up CONSTRUCTIVE DISCHARGE...................this looks like what happened t...
How do you recover money from a stop payment placed on a personal check given to you?
you can always take them to small claims court and sure them for 3 times the amo...
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