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April 27, 2007
Rule Eight: Think Like the Client--Help Control Costs.
Rule Eight: Think Like The Client--Help Control Costs. (See the first 7 rules 1-6 here and 7 here).
Ask any associate lawyer or paralegal what a "profit" is.
You will get two kinds of answers. Both answers are "correct"--but neither of them helps anyone in your firm think like the client.
The answers will be something like this: (1) "A profit is money remaining after deducting costs from receipts." This is the correct young transactional/tax lawyer answer. Or (2) "it's money left over at the end of the hunt." This is the correct fire-breathing young litigator answer.
The right answer?
A profit is a reward for being efficient. And until a lawyer, paralegal or staffer gets that, she or he will never know how a client--or a law firm partner--thinks.
Rule 8 is really simple. Watch and minimize costs and show the client that you are interested in doing that. Go beyond just avoiding wasteful spending, and think of the client's business as yours. Factor cost (including fees!) into everything you think, say and do. Let the client know that you know that holding down costs is good for both the client and your law firm. You want repeat clients, and a maximum of steady income streams, so let clients know you really care about saving it money because of just that: you want to keep costs down so the client will stay with the firm in the long-term.
Most clients not only get this but appreciate it greatly in time. Three years ago, at the beginning of a fairly intense but short-term lobbying project in DC for a new client (a high-tech company with a fabulous product), I told the client's CEO--by the way, she was brilliant, talented and rich but surprisingly unsophisticated on the use of lawyers--that she had three options on legal paths she could take on the project, and that I wanted her to use the least expensive one on legal fees. She actually said: "Dan, you know we really like you guys. But your goal has got to be to make as many thousands of dollars you can a month from this project. Why a cheap avenue for me that involves fewer lawyer hours? Why should I take this seriously?" My answer: "Because whether you sell this company or not, we want to represent it or whatever company you next develop on a long term basis, and we would rather work for you for years and years than just a few months."
That made sense to her. Everyone in our shop needs (1) to think in terms of holding down client costs--attorney fees and out-of-pocket expenses--at every step and every moment of a client project, (2) to know why, and (3) to be prepared to explain that to the client.
Posted by JD Hull at 10:29 AM | Comments (0)
April 26, 2007
"How Much Money Has The Client Spent So Far?"
What Each Timekeeper On A Project Should Know.
Knowing what the client is paying your firm informs and affects the strategy of a big project--indeed, the business strategy of the entire company if the stakes are high enough--and, importantly, the thoughts, instincts and habits of your people who work on it.
Suppose you have a great business client you want to keep, and you want to expand that work. Initially, you start off doing "day-to-day" work for it: a mixed bag of projects for a Fortune 500 company or a substantial start-up. Steady, fun and interesting stuff--but nothing fancy or high pressure. Planning. Monitoring or applying new environmental regs. A lease. Compliance items. Employment issues. Putting out fires. Spot projects for in-house counsel. Nothing too contentious. The monthly bills are rarely more than, say, $8000 to $15,000.
The client seems to like your firm--and, importantly, you like the client. You want more. But suddenly, the general counsel presents your firm with an intense litigation project or regulatory dispute which will consume a good senior litigator and 2 or 3 associates off-and-on for 18 to 24 months. This results in monthly bills suddenly ballooning to $40,000, $80,000 or more.
In this situation, I think that every lawyer working on that highly active project (1) should know what the client is spending ($) and (2) be given a written report in cumulative totals every time the invoice goes out. It especially should be given to the involved associates for this or any other active litigation or intense transactional work or deals you are billing hourly. We've written that younger lawyers are not truly partnering with a client, and giving great service, unless they watch costs. See "WAC?" Rule 8, Think Like The Client--Help Control Costs". So they need to know about the money the client is spending and see that on paper. Knowing what the client is spending informs and affects the strategy of that project--indeed, the business strategy of the entire company if the stakes are high enough--and, importantly, the thoughts, instincts and habits of your people who work on it.
Note: I know that not everyone would agree with me on this one, and there are exceptions to everything. When I was an associate and later a partner in a larger firm, associates were given written reports only of their hours and those of all other "competing" timekeepers. Actually, I liked that system. We had time-honored professional, proprietary and Machiavellian reasons for keeping non-partners in the dark about money.
Posted by JD Hull at 07:41 PM | Comments (0)
April 25, 2007
US and Canada Revisit 1991 Air Quality Agreement
Air pollutants released at one location--especially those released through smokestacks--can travel long distances and affect air quality hundreds of miles away. Before global warming became a hot topic, this cross-border transport of particulate matter and "acid rain" occupied more of center stage. Within the US, the focus has been on power plants in Midwest harming air quality in New England states. It's an international problem, too. Earlier this month, the US Environmental Protection Agency and the Canadian Ministry of the Environment began to revisit US-Canadian cross-border issues. See article and links at Environmental Protection, a publication for industry professionals.
Posted by JD Hull at 05:09 PM | Comments (0)
April 24, 2007
Israel: 59 years
Israel turned 59 today. Starting last night, and in cities all over the world, the anniversary of Israel's independence has been observed with picnics, memorials, recollections and a bit of malaise. See this AP story in the International Herald Tribune.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:08 PM | Comments (0)
Elefant and Levin on the Virginia Tech tragedy
Blogging is still young. WAC? has made no secret of the fact that we think the jury is out on "whether blogs matter". We don't know or care. We do like tossing out ideas that have worked for us or we think merit exploration. Each of us doing business, lawyering or just sitting on a beach is a player of some rank in our bold, demented, sad, dangerous, exciting and wonderful new world--whether or not we have a blog, read a blog or know what a blog is. Yet here are two posts on a recent American tragedy which, by themselves, and for different reasons, do make blogs and blogging worth it. DC-based Carolyn Elefant wrote Virginia Tech Tragedy and the Law at her Law.com Legal Blog Watch column. And Boston's Diane Levin has offered Why I will not be observing One Day Blog Silence at her Online Guide To Mediation.
Posted by JD Hull at 03:26 PM | Comments (0)
April 23, 2007
Williams: South Seas Journal
Craig Williams, the California lawyer who writes the well-regarded May It Please The Court, sometimes blogs from abroad. During late March through mid-April, he's been on a dive boat (if you're from Scranton, Albany, Cardiff or Manchester, that's not a floating Irish bar) in the Coral Sea, between New Guinea and Queensland, Australia, and famous for its best feature, the Great Barrier Reef. And then he spent some time inland around Day Ten in apparently Queensland and the Northern Territory, and its Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park. In eleven posts so far, Williams has blogged consistently and in interesting detail about his South Seas travel adventure.
Posted by JD Hull at 10:39 PM | Comments (0)
David Halberstam (1934-2007)
Halberstam, a New Yorker, Yankee's Yankee and Pulitzer Prize winner at the age of 30 for war reporting, was killed in a car accident today in San Francisco. He gave us both the idea and the book of Viet Nam as supreme American hubris in the 1972 bestseller The Best and the Brightest.
Posted by JD Hull at 04:14 PM | Comments (0)
"Is What You Read About China Remotely Reliable?"
Here, from Asia Business Intelligence, by American lawyer and Asia business consultant Rich Kuslan. Kuslan's post is inspired by an article by Carsten Holz of The Far Eastern Economic Review appearing this month at New York Times writer Howard W. French's blog, A Glimpse of the World. Holz's article is entitled "Have China Scholars All Been Bought?".
Posted by JD Hull at 02:06 PM | Comments (0)
From Canada: Blawg Review #105
Canada, as you can see by scrolling down the left-hand side of this blog, has more than a few fine blawgs. The wise and ubiquitous Ed. at Blawg Review has noticed. So this week, Toronto's Connie Crosby hosts Blawg Review #105 in her tribute to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization's (UNESCO) World Book and Copyright Day.
Posted by JD Hull at 01:18 PM | Comments (0)