Succession Planning – Why most firms should but dont

Published September 13, 2011 By John

Succession Planning: Why most firms should but don’t.

Succession Planning – Why most firms should but dont (PDF)

John Chisholm, Principal & Jessica Hadley, Associate – John Chisholm Consulting. 

The End of the Financial Year – The Price We Pay!

Published June 20, 2011 By John

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As another financial year comes to an end (at least in Australia) many firms spend much time and energy in the month of June doing things such as:

  • Completing their staff performance reviews (“appraisals are just a form of sanctifying decisions already made”; trotting out the same standard list of Key Performance Indicators)
  • Negotiating staff salary reviews (usually CPI for “non fee earners”, some rule of thumb formula aligned to personal billings targets for “fee earners”)
  • Agonising over how much (if any) the market can stand for hourly rack rate* increases (mainly firms rely on reverse competition to set rack rates )
  • Publicising their internal promotions (well justified, even if promotions were made during the year; and at least can justify some rate increases if lawyers move up the ladder)
  • Finalising the new financial year’s budget (same age old formulas; use some 12 month old benchmarking data; negotiate potential revenue targets with partners; undertake a capacity revenue budget- and then discount for “realities”)
  • Scraping around trying to find cash (the annual debtors purge)
  • Writing off unbilled and unrecoverable WIP (the annual WIP purge)

Letter to The Editor: Excitable tones call for alternatives to time based billing

Published June 14, 2011 By John

Below is my letter to The Editor of  Legal Affairs, published in The Australian (6.5.11) in response to Peter Slattery’s Article April 29.

“Value Based Pricing is Best”

“The comments made by Mr Slattery (April 29) I have no doubt are echoed by many in the profession and warrant aleft much more detailed discussion than this letter allows. Suffice to say that I and many others believe there is no justification whatsoever for time based billing of professional services but readily acknowledge that the entrenched culture of time recording and time based billing will remain the “norm” for many professionals and their clients for some years yet.

I suspect that the prime reason many leading members of the legal profession, younger members of our profession, the judiciary, our regulators, the legal press, legal commentators and clients are seen to sometimes use what Mr Slattery calls “excitable” tones in calling for more alternatives to time based billing is because there are better options out there. But our profession is often perceived as being too slow and too reactive to genuinely and objectively examine some of its outdated and obsolete business models-particularly in relation to time based billing.