By Lindsay Griffiths on Altman Weil recently released their “Law Firms in Transition” survey, which is now in its tenth year. The survey, which includes responses from half of US law firms with 50 or more lawyers, was initially developed as a response to the 2008 recession, to help firms understand how other firms were reacting to the marketplace … Continue Reading
By Lindsay Griffiths on We’ve had a lot of discussion over the past several years about what the future of legal services will look like, and what critical characteristics and ideas will be necessary for lawyers and law firms to embrace in order to operate within it successfully. Last week, we opened the conversation again with the release of … Continue Reading
By Lindsay Griffiths on Long-time readers of Zen may remember when we first started talking about the future of the law firm and the idea of “SmartLaw” in 2016, when HighQ asked the question “What do you believe lawyers and law firms need to do to prepare for the future of legal services?” Over the course of several posts, … Continue Reading
By Lindsay Griffiths on If you haven’t had the opportunity to read retired soccer player, Abby Wambach’s remarks to the graduates of Barnard College, it’s worth taking a few minutes to give them a read. Wambach’s speech, and the discussion that we recently had at our Annual Conference with facilitator Wendy Merrill of Strategy Horse, which incorporated the concept … Continue Reading
By Lindsay Griffiths on Today, I’m bringing you a post from an ILN marketer, Amanda Schneider. Amanda is with ILN member firm Epstein Becker Green, where she is the Chief Marketing Officer. Amanda provides tips on how firms can leverage the multigenerational attorney workforce through involvement in business development initiatives. *** It is critical for firms to understand that … Continue Reading
By Lindsay Griffiths on Today, we’re bringing you a special guest post from the folks at Legal Gateway, who have identified the top eight mistakes that in-house counsel make when implementing legal technology that prevents it from being successful. In-house lawyers: this one’s for you, and for our outside counsel readers, consider sharing this with your clients and discussing … Continue Reading
By Lindsay Griffiths on Starting at the top is essential, but you need the right mix of people within your firm to really be successufl. Disney calls this “cast excellence.” The corporate culture at Disney is, by design, well-defined, clear to all, and goal-oriented. It can seem challenging to implement this at a law firm, but I’ve seen it … Continue Reading
By Lindsay Griffiths on CLOC is a movement. You’ve heard me mention this before, that CLOC (also known as the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium) is a community, a movement. It’s a drumbeat. And it’s not going away. But why is it so important for lawyers and law firms to be paying attention? Three reasons.… Continue Reading
By Lindsay Griffiths on Several years ago, I had the opportunity to attend a keynote session focused around Disney’s approach to business excellence. The recap I shared has been among one of my most popular posts, and the advice provided by Jeff Williford from the Disney Institute proves to be timeless. Despite a changing marketplace, the tenets that underlie their success … Continue Reading
By Lindsay Griffiths on “It’s a community, it’s a movement.” These were among the closing words from Mary O’Carroll, the Head of Legal Operations at Google and CLOC board member, as the first CLOC EMEA Institute wrapped up last week. And for those of us in attendance, you could certainly feel the energy. It was not unlike what we … Continue Reading
By Lindsay Griffiths on A lot of people I know were happy to see the backside of 2017. But even with the enthusiasm for a new year in our pockets, it can be hard to find the motivation to kickstart our plans and projects as we head back to work this week and find ourselves facing the same day … Continue Reading
By Lindsay Griffiths on Last week, we delved into some methods for leveraging your law firm or referral networks to provide additional value. Building on that theme this week, we’re going to look at three opportunities to develop fertile ground for further relationship and business development within your networks, among your clients, and within your jurisdiction. Content As a recommendation … Continue Reading
By Lindsay Griffiths on Around this time last year, HighQ posed this question to a number of legal industry leaders: What do you believe lawyers and law firms need to do to prepare for the future of legal services?” This resulted in an interesting and in-depth e-book that delved into a variety of answers, many of which overlapped and all … Continue Reading
By Lindsay Griffiths on Like with any relationship, the relationship you have with your law firm network will give back what you put into it. (This is true for any informal referral networks too, by the way) While we wholeheartedly advocate that you join a network with the goal of being able to better serve your clients by offering … Continue Reading
By Lindsay Griffiths on I’m excited to bring you a guest post today from Wendy Merrill, who classifies herself as the Chief Rainmaker, Dot-Connector, and Growth Engineer at StrategyHorse Consulting Group. Wendy reached out to me a couple of months ago on LinkedIn, and when we talked on the phone, we connected right away, so I’m sure you will … Continue Reading
By Lindsay Griffiths on The legal industry is in the midst of challenging and exciting times. To many firms, so much change and uncertainty may feel like a bit of a crisis, while others see it as more of an opportunity. Regardless of how you see it, it’s certainly a time of upheaval. I have finally gotten around to … Continue Reading
By Lindsay Griffiths on Four years ago, we were talking about the “new normal” for law firms. It’s almost comical to believe that we’re still talking about it as if it’s new. It’s not. Even at that time, Above the Law was telling us that the new normal was really more of the “old normal,” though if we’re honest, … Continue Reading
By Lindsay Griffiths on “Change or die.” How many times have you heard that over the last eight years? A friend of mine in the legal industry pointed that out to me recently, along with commenting that it always sounds so dire. And it does sound dire. But after the statistics that we covered in a recent post (1/3 of clients are openly … Continue Reading
By Lindsay Griffiths on At the recent CLOC Institute, Connie Brenton, CLOC President & CEO, along with Chief of Staff/Director of Legal Operations for NetApp gave us a challenge: Stop thinking about how we can fit into the world around us. Start thinking about how we can change the world around us.” For many of us, that change has started with … Continue Reading
By Lindsay Griffiths on Any time you pick your head up from the daily work you’re doing in the legal industry, “change” is the drumbeat that you hear. Nowhere was that more apparent to me than at last week’s CLOC Institute – for those of you who aren’t familiar with CLOC, it’s the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium. They’re a … Continue Reading
By Lindsay Griffiths on “Change or die.” How many times have you heard that over the last eight years? A friend of mine in the legal industry pointed that out to me yesterday, along with commenting that it always sounds so dire. And it does sound dire. But after the statistics that we covered in last week’s post (1/3 … Continue Reading
By Lindsay Griffiths on The “law firm of the future.” We’ve spent a lot of time talking about this in recent months, not because I find it to be interesting (which I do), but because other than my “Instagram for Lawyers” post, this has been the hottest topic on Zen this year. I had a conversation with a senior … Continue Reading
By Lindsay Griffiths on We’ve spent several weeks addressing the potential characteristics that the lawyers and law firms of the future will require in order to be successful. Today, we look at the last two contributors to High Q’s book on Smart Law and the Law Firm of the Future, but I invite all of you to continue to … Continue Reading
By Lindsay Griffiths on Last week, we considered the idea that maybe the law firm of the future was going to have to start from scratch in order to really generate change that matters. On LinkedIn, one commenter saw this as an opportunity for smaller firms to grab marketshare from BigLaw, as they are able to be more nimble … Continue Reading
