Associates are suffering from billable-hour demands, caused partly by the scarcity of available work. Billing targets for partners exacerbate that scarcity and waste partners' time and effort. Enough.
I am a tax partner at asbz, a law firm with approximately 200 lawyers in Brazil. Recently, I came across your analysis of the legal market, and I must say they are absolutely fantastic! After reading several of them, I am very pleased to conclude that our law firm is following a disruptive path.
Among several different initiatives, here, billable hours are not a financial criterion for any of our lawyers since day one (2011)! Partners and associates are neither promoted nor remunerated based on hours.
Great post, Jordan. It's so helpful to restate the law firm business model. The whole point of a firm is specialization. Associates specialize in learning and doing the work. Partners specialize in leadership, generating work, and training. A law firm that won't specialize is saying they won't convert to the assembly line. They want to keep making entire cars piece by piece one craftsman at a time.
I want to share a terrific comment by Patti Macdonald from the LinkedIn post of this article:
"For several years as a partner at a mid-size firm, I (secretly) set myself a (low) *maximum* billable hours goal. This worked like a dream to facilitate delegation and give me lots of opportunity to do all the other business things a partner needs to do. My delegation credits were exceptional. I no longer work in the billable hour model, but the habits are ingrained, and 9 months into the launch of Fit Law LLP, it’s paying off in spades!"
I am a tax partner at asbz, a law firm with approximately 200 lawyers in Brazil. Recently, I came across your analysis of the legal market, and I must say they are absolutely fantastic! After reading several of them, I am very pleased to conclude that our law firm is following a disruptive path.
Among several different initiatives, here, billable hours are not a financial criterion for any of our lawyers since day one (2011)! Partners and associates are neither promoted nor remunerated based on hours.
https://asbz.com.br/en/esg-practices/
Great post, Jordan. It's so helpful to restate the law firm business model. The whole point of a firm is specialization. Associates specialize in learning and doing the work. Partners specialize in leadership, generating work, and training. A law firm that won't specialize is saying they won't convert to the assembly line. They want to keep making entire cars piece by piece one craftsman at a time.
This is a great post. I hope many law firm leaders read and take this on board.
I want to share a terrific comment by Patti Macdonald from the LinkedIn post of this article:
"For several years as a partner at a mid-size firm, I (secretly) set myself a (low) *maximum* billable hours goal. This worked like a dream to facilitate delegation and give me lots of opportunity to do all the other business things a partner needs to do. My delegation credits were exceptional. I no longer work in the billable hour model, but the habits are ingrained, and 9 months into the launch of Fit Law LLP, it’s paying off in spades!"
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7196905465354620928?commentUrn=urn%3Ali%3Acomment%3A%28activity%3A7196905465354620928%2C7197236967263145984%29&dashCommentUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afsd_comment%3A%287197236967263145984%2Curn%3Ali%3Aactivity%3A7196905465354620928%29