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IT Procurement in law firms
On 27th June we delivered a CPD event for the Law Society of Northern Ireland. The below article is a summary of the session delivered on the day and will cover: Why is procurement so important? Why do projects fail? Types of procurement How to approach procurement...
Should your law firm company convert to an LLP?
If your firm is a Company, it may therefore be costing you a lot of money and may be time to change to a Limited Liability Partnership, (LLP).
Our firm is profitable but…
Many Managing Partners get exasperated by their firm’s inability to get away from being cash-strapped, despite seeming to make decent profits…
The single most important factor in making law firms profitable
In my time advising and helping manage law firms, I have twice been asked the question: “What is the single most important factor in making law firms profitable”? Both times I was asked by a firm’s Managing Partner, so it was clearly important to them and equally...
Making law firms more profitable – Part 4: Real life profit improvements
This is the last of this mini-series on law firm profitability and how to effect serious improvements in Net Profit. The previous articles illustrated that there was only one sound way to improve law firm profitability, which is to improve fee earner productivity. You...
Making law firms more profitable – Part 3: The Fool’s Errand
So far in this mini-series, we have looked at two ways of increasing law firm profits. Firstly, by only increasing fee earner numbers, and Secondly by making fee-earning staff more productive, i.e., they produce more Income, per fee earner, per annum. We concluded...
Making law firms more profitable – Part 2: Increasing Fee Earner Profitability
This is the second in a little series of short articles, where we are looking at what is the best way to make law firms more profitable. In the previous article, we mentioned that there are three main ways to increase profitability. They are: Increase fee earner...
Making law firms more profitable – Part 1: What are our options?
It’s a given that law firms would like to be more profitable. But how do we become more profitable? In the following series of articles, I shall point you to the key issues that you need to address to make your firm more profitable.What are our options? Luckily the...
Banking Services – The law firm FD’s and their advisors’ opportunities
Should we look at making our routine banking operations cheaper and slicker? Here are some opportunities. I was a full-time law firm FD until a couple of years ago. Now I help smaller firms by providing those services to them on a part-time basis. That has given me...
Baskerville Drummond in elite Band 1 of Chambers new guide
Baskerville Drummond is delighted to announced that it has been given a Band 1 rating in Chambers and Partners’ new LawTech Consulting guide. In common with all Chambers’ guides and directories, this is an independent evaluation of market players, with research...
Hi, Finance – May
“Our income is not the same as our fees. Is that wrong?” The problem Most law firms and managers within those firms, such as Department or Team Heads, tend to monitor performance by looking at the fees billed by each fee earner/team/department, or the firm overall....
The fresh face of IT
For the love of tech
For any of you that are in an IT team, this is a tough one isn’t it? Enough said – you know what I mean!
Hi, Finance – April
“I can see from the Management Accounts that I need my fee earners to record more time. Nearly all of them are under target for the Year-to-Date. I am sure they are busy enough, but they are just not getting the time down on the system. No matter how many times I talk...
Changing the attitude to change
Cathy Kirby: Out of Practice After three decades in practice, Cathy Kirby has joined Baskerville Drummond as a consultant, to share a lifetime of learning and hard-won experience across the law firm technology and business strategy space. In this series of articles,...
Hi, Finance – March 2021
“I don’t understand why my firm is profitable and yet we always seem to be up against it with the Bank. We don’t want to be putting in more capital this year so what can we do now to get a grip on this?” Ultimately all a firm’s cash is generated from its fee income in...
Hi, Finance – February 2021
“Our issue is, very simply, that we should be making more money than we are, given what I see going on within the business. How do I turn this around?” This problem, or variations of it, is something that I hear almost every week. It goes something along the lines of...
The “R” Rate for law firm growth
Since March 2020, we have become familiar with the “R” rate, which tells us whether the rate of infection for Covid-19 is increasing or decreasing. When “R” is greater than one, each infected person is infecting at least on other person and the rate of infection...
Virtual Part-time FD – the best of everything
In many firms a Finance Director is what you need and they are the people who help you through that stuff – but they can be expensive if you have a full-time one and what do you do with a FD when they aren’t doing high-grade FD stuff?
The curious case of the disappearing phone system
Over the last five to ten years, it has become normal to follow a cloud-first IT Strategy. This is particularly the case when considering telephone systems. The promise of a more robust platform on a ‘pay per user per month’ basis makes compelling business sense for such commodity services.
Cost-cutting – you might be getting it wrong
When business slows down or stops and the cash correspondingly also slows down, it is natural – and right – to reduce expenditure. The manager’s job is to manage, not be overtaken by events by failing to respond.
Making a success of succession planning
Law firms have a problem. There are too many owners that want to retire and too few people that are interested in taking over their business or share of their business and paying them out, so that they can do so.
Why a virtual or part-time finance director makes sense
Over the last 20 years or so, a steady revolution has been taking place in the employment market, which has led to fewer firms employing full-time specialists to lead their business support roles.
GDPR – Are You Late to the Third-Party?
As we see an ever-increasing stream of high-profile data breaches and regulatory fines Sean O’Brien, Director DVV Solutions, takes a look at one of the most common weak links in law firms’ data security and GDPR compliance programs – the risks posed by third parties and suppliers.
The Benefits of an Independent IT Review
Kevin Goosman, Associate at Baskerville Drummond, offers a perspective on the benefits of undertaking an independent IT review. It’s good practice to monitor and review all aspects of your business. But with IT change happening so quickly and technology so pivotal to...
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