The Lawyer's Office

Change. In the world of management, this seems to be a very difficult word to utter and to hear.

Why? We do not like change. We like to keep things as they are. We are familiar with why we are doing things the same way or taking the road we travel to the office.

There is stability, and change upsets that stability, our equilibrium, and perhaps everything else.

Yet, as the owner of a business you have to make changes every day. In the practice of law, our strategies change depending on what our opponent does or doesn't do, or how the judge rules on a matter.

Why is that we do not effectuate change in our offices, when needed, to react to changes in business trends, changes in our procedures, changes in software and technology, and changes in our staff?

The answers are varied but boil down to the fact that change requires effort. All too often, we are so busy practicing law that we do not have the time and energy to devote to making change happen. Change is hard work.

I am advocating that change is absolutely necessary in every practice, whether it is a large firm with many lawyers or a sole practitioner's office.

Change is happening around us daily. New technology, new laws, new ways of communicating, new words - it is all around us.

We need to begin by understanding that change is with us, and we need to embrace it. Once you accept this as a fact, and understand it, you become able to manage it.

As the leader in your firm, or the owner of it, you have to be the agent of change. Your staff will not be the ones to make any significant changes. They are not the ones who are aware of the trends in your practice.

You are the change agent in your firm. You need to educate your staff to think of change as being something that will take the firm forward. It is not something to be wrestled with and fought, but rather an ally in how you deliver legal services to your clients.

Let me put this in another context. Each of us needs to run the practice of law as a business. We need to pay the bills and take home some money to take care of our families and ourselves.

It would be nice if we didn't need to worry about profit-and-loss statements, but that is not the case. As much as the practice of law is a profession, the running of a practice is a business.

As in all businesses, there is competition for clients. There are issues in delivering legal services to clients. The proliferation of lawyers has, in some practice areas, created a downward pressure on fees and in many practice areas fees remain static.

How then do you continue to have a profitable practice? You need to adapt and change. If your “old way of doing things” continues, the law office down the street may build a better mousetrap and take some of your market share. That means fewer clients, which translates into less income.

As that firm down the street gets those new clients, it may have the inclination to stop making changes, happy with the newfound income and working hard to deliver the legal services.

The firm that lost market share is now strategizing on how to win back those clients, and is making changes in order to do so. The old firm soon implements changes and wins back the clients and more. The newer firm then has to make changes, and the cycle continues.

You can praise your successes, but do not rest upon them. If once you make changes that produce a positive result, you can rest assured that competitors will come along and copy them. You must always be making changes.

I recently praised one of my departments on an achievement that it had obtained in delivering excellence to our clients. At a subsequent meeting, I shocked them.

I had allowed them a few days to bask in the glow, and then I informed them that what we had been doing, we are not going to do any more. We were going to review all our procedures and make changes.

They were aghast. When I explained to them that we could not stop - we had to change in order to become even better to service our clients to a higher degree - they understood.

Your staff will understand if you explain this to them. It is amazing to see them relish the task of making things even better. The key, however, is you: the change leader.

You need to embrace change. You need to lead by example. You need to change.

• • •