“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 dissatisfied with their outside counsel, chief legal officers rank firms at a 3 on a 1 to 10 scale for commitment to change, and clients are moving their legal work to other firms or to non-firm vendors), it would seem that we should be properly incentivized to speed up the pace of change. From the Peer Monitor/Georgetown 2016 Report on the State of the Legal Market, which cautioned BigLaw against a “Kodak moment” Continue Reading What’s Holding us Back from Real Change in Legal?

The ILN is proud to announce our latest firm of the month, Ferrari Pedeferri Boni Studio Legale Associato – Italy!
Ferrari Pedeferri Boni is an independent Italian law firm that handles legal issues on business law, with main office in Milan and secondary office in Trieste. They strive for excellence in their services and are proud to meet the highest international standards of the legal profession. Their clients are entrepreneurs and executives, Italian and foreigners, and their philosophy is to take a pragmatic and business-oriented approach when assisting them. They regularly handle cross-border and international transactions and litigation cases. Over the years, they have garnered significant expertise in international market and have developed a trusted network of professionals that they put at the disposal of their clients when needed.

Continue Reading ILN Firm of the Month – Ferrari Pedeferri Boni Studio Legale Associato, Italy!

Over the last decade, we’ve seen a titanic shift in the legal industry, and one thing I know for sure is that we’ve all got to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. Change, innovation, disruption – it’s all here to stay, and how it shakes out will be different for each law firm and law firm client.

What we do know is that the client is king – they always were, but now they know it too. And that means clients expect their firms to get creative about ways and means to provide value. This can be accomplished in a myriad of ways, depending on your strategy, goals, and clients, but a piece of that puzzle is the law firm network. Continue Reading 5 Ways a Law Firm Network Can Make Your Firm More Successful

Who wants to think about work while they’re on vacation?

I know, the idea is to get AWAY from work. And I fully endorse that. But there are two things I know to be true:

  • You never know who you’ll meet, and where – you may meet a potential client or referral source while you’re sitting on the beach!
  • Sometimes, doing thirty minutes of some type of work during a vacation day actually can make the rest of your day feel MORE enjoyable. (I didn’t make this up – Gretchen Rubin, of the Happiness Project, figured this one out)

With those two things in mind, you can start implementing the following business development tips during your summer vacation and set yourself up for future success!  Continue Reading Nine Business Development Tips to Practice on Your Summer Vacation

ming-jun-tan-122694Today, I’d like to use a recent bad customer service experience to illustrate a couple of key points about client service:

  • Listening to your clients may enable you to get at the root of the issue, and find a way to resolve it.
  • Sometimes you can resolve an issue in a way that will strengthen and secure the client relationship, even if the client doesn’t get what they want.
  • Making every effort to solve an issue, even if you can’t achieve the desired result, is sometimes sufficient to please the client.

Last year, I had the opportunity to use a dress rental company for a gala event. Everything about the rental and the return process went flawlessly, and I was so happy with the results, that I shared the experience with a number of people, especially anyone who complimented me on the dress that evening, and when they saw photos. I was sure I would rent from them again and many years into the future.  Continue Reading Turning Bad Experiences Into Good Client Service

rawpixel-com-250087During the recent CLOC conference, attendees had the opportunity to receive a complimentary copy of Richard Susskind’s second edition of “Tomorrow’s Lawyers: An Introduction to Your Future.” Susskind also spoke as the lunch keynote on the first day, and shared with us that while his first edition had been written for young and aspiring lawyers in the profession, he had found that everyone interested in the changing legal ecosystem wanted to hear more about (and sometimes argue with) what he had to say. And so the second edition was updated and published.

Towards the end of the book, with respect to the future of the legal industry, Susskind says:

Given our economic conditions, the shift towards liberalization, the new providers in the marketplace, and the burgeoning, exponential increase in the power and uptake of technology, I find it unimaginable that our current legal institutions and legal profession will remain substantially unchanged over the next decade. Indeed, it seems to me that the least likely future is that little will change in the world of law. And yet, the strategies of most law firms, law schools, and departments of justice assume just that. In truth, for much of the legal market, the current model is not simply unsustainable; it is already broken.”

Those are strong words, but we’re living in a time when change is fast-paced, faster than it’s ever been. And while most leaders in the industry are willing to accept that change is happening, not many of them are either willing or able to do anything about it.  Continue Reading Turning Innovative Ideas Into Results: A Practical Guide

FirmoftheMonth1

The ILN is proud to announce our latest firm of the month, Hall & Wilcox – Australia!

Hall & Wilcox is a leading independent Australian law firm with 70 partners and offices in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Canberra and Newcastle. Continue Reading ILN Firm of the Month – Hall & Wilcox, Australia!

foto_home1Welcome to ILN-terviews, a series of profiles of ILN member firm attorneys, designed to give a unique insight into the lawyers who make up our Network.

For our latest interview, you get two for the price of one, with responses from two of our lovely lawyers, Sebastian López-Sansón and Rafael Salaberren Dupont, with new member firm, Salaberren & López-Sansón Abogados (SyLS), in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

In one sentence, how would you describe your practice?
Rafael heads the Corporate-Finance practice of SyLS which comprises M&A, General Corporate and Corporate-Finance transactions; Sebastian leads the tax practice of the firm; and they both co-ordinate the internal teams within the firm to make sure the firm’s motto is achieved, which is to provide an excellent, sophisticated, fully blended corporate-law / tax-law- service, tailor made to the needs of each of our clients. Continue Reading ILN-terviews: Sebastian López-Sansón and Rafael Salaberren Dupont, SyLS

Change - Speedometer Races to RevolutionAt 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 sharing what we heard at CLOC with our own corners of the legal ecosystem, and keeping that drumbeat for change sounding. While I plan to recap some of the key sessions I attended, I first wanted to share with you some of the excellent articles that have come out following the conference, which should be further galvanizing the legal industry. Continue Reading Change is Not Just a Six Letter Word: CLOC Urges Lawyers to Put Ideas in Action

clem-onojeghuo-122041Any 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 relatively new group in the industry, bringing together legal operations professionals for networking, education, to share best practices, and really, to drive change. But they’re more than just legal ops – in fact, their mission states quite clearly that this drive for change involves working with “other core corporate legal industry players” in addition to legal operations professionals. Their goal is to “optimize the legal service delivery models needed by small, medium and large legal departments to support their clients,” and they recognize that this can only be done together.  Continue Reading CLOC: Change is a Drumbeat