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August 17, 2012

Redux: Special Projects Groups for Expertise-Imprisoned Firms: Quarterbacks, Point Guards, Project Managers. These are your New Lead Dogs.

Increasing Complexity, Ambiguity and Multi-Practice Issues: The Need for One "Special Projects Group" in Every Larger Law Firm.

No matter what larger corporate law firms want to think, with five or six exceptions--e.g., think perhaps Baker, Kirkland, Skadden, Covington, Williams & Connolly, Boies Schiller--most GCs and CEOs have enormous problems distinguishing one large firm (i.e., 250 lawyers or more) from another. Clients are beginning to see peer law firms as generic. An SPG, done the right way, might make the right law firm stand out--and even do much better work.

Like others, we've written on several occasions and with different twists about the "silos" mentality of law firms in America and Britain serving higher-end corporate clients. And we do think--well, we simply know--that right now is the time for every one of the largest 250 Western law firms to develop, establish, carefully maintain and market to clients one strong Special Projects Group:

No, get over yourselves. If you are a larger firm, the entire operation will never be one SPG. It is our smaller firm's idea--based on the way we've delivered services to clients for over 15 years--and it has three parts. 1. Control whenever you can the kind of clients you serve long-term by researching and targeting only solid companies with savvy management and sophisticated general counsel. Choose your clients. 2. No matter how the work comes to you, be nimble: do the work better, faster and cheaper--but without reducing your “rack” hourly rates. In the end, deliver Value. 3. Operate on the assumption that many projects fall immediately into several practice areas and or even areas which have “no name.” Advise, transact and litigate that way.

Parts 2 and 3 of the idea address a problem Julie McGuire (from an in-house culture) and I (from a larger law firm culture) keep seeing repeatedly over the last 15 years. Many law firms that service large and publicly-trade companies take a fragmented approach to working for clients (as well as to prospecting for them). Lawyers in one specialty can’t or won’t spot issues that should get the attention of lawyers in different specialties that the great client really needs. Rather than being “full service,” the law firm is relegated to “an aggregation of narrow views” (a Carolyn Elefant term). The best clients and law firms on earth suffer from this problem. Some lawyers think of this as the competing “silos” mentality.

Walt Frazier, the best defensive point guard ever.

One possible solution is for larger firms is to (a) formally establish and (b) actively brand a special projects group (SPG). The SPG would be led by two or three lawyers who would be most likely to recognize the need for multi-specialty approaches to novel, complex engagements. They are full-time roving Quarterbacks--or Project Managers. The managers build a different team for each complex project and of course draw upon, whenever possible, lawyers from their own firm. But no law firm has the best of everything; good clients now know this. So SPG managers could in special cases go outside the firm to retain talent from another law or professional services firm.

Think of it as “unbundling” or freeing talent from sources outside the firm. In any case, work by an SPG--the law firm equivalent of special forces--would be done aggressively, quickly and at premium (i.e., higher) lawyer rates or equivalents.

Better Expertise. Apparently, no American or British law firm has yet established an SPG. But other large service companies have. For example, Turner Construction ($8 billion/5,000 employees) has a Special Projects Division with branches in several of its offices dedicated to lucrative but smaller-scale and higher-end design projects. The Division hand picks a different team for each project. Some construction industry folks regard Turner’s Special Project Division as operational and marketing brilliance.

Better Market Profile. Apart from delivering better services, an SPG can help differentiate a law firm from its competitors. No matter what large firm lawyers think, with five or six exceptions (e.g., Baker, Kirkland, Skadden, Covington, Williams & Connolly, Boies Schiller), most GCs and CEOs have enormous problems distinguishing one "large" firm (i.e., 250 lawyers or more) from another. Clients are beginning to see them as generic. An SPG, done the right way, might make the right law firm stand out.

Julie E. McGuire, Visionary.

[Updated 8-17-12]

Posted by JD Hull at 11:54 PM | Comments (0)

August 14, 2012

Amiens: France has its challenges, too.

It sounds almost American. Go to the reporting at BBC and NBC about ongoing rioting in the northern and racially-mixed city of Amiens. It was apparently triggered by a police stop of a local driver. France's Interior Minister Manuel Valls was jostled and jeered yesterday during a visit. And the new national French leadership has vowed to show its stuff and restore order. From NBC:

Tensions remain high in many French suburbs, where poor job prospects, racial discrimination, a widespread sense of alienation from mainstream society and perceived hostile policing have periodically touched off violence.

Weeks of rioting in 2005, the worst urban unrest in France in 40 years, led to the imposition of a state of emergency by the then center-right government. Incidents involving police provoked disturbances in 2007 and 2010.

The repeat bouts of violence have provoked agonized debate over the state of the grim housing estates that ring many French cities and the integration of millions of poor whites, blacks and North African immigrants into mainstream society.

Amiens earlier today. (Photo: Guillaume Clement/EPA)

Posted by JD Hull at 02:18 PM | Comments (0)

August 13, 2012

You gotta love the British press at the Olympics: "A raucous pageant of popular culture".

When did America's Fourth Estate last use "raucous" in a headline? Ah, but Britain, she really did deliver, didn't she? See The Guardian's artful swan song for London's two week-long moment: "London 2012: This closing ceremony was a raucous pageant of popular culture." Excerpt from the piece by Richard Williams:

Jessie J, Tinie Tempah and Taio Cruz performed from moving Rolls-Royce convertibles, like an extended advert for the best of British bling, while Russell Brand sang I Am the Walrus from a psychedelic bus that metamorphosed into a giant transparent octopus from which Fatboy Slim delivered a short DJ set. When the Spice Girls sang from the top of black cabs, the Olympics seemed to have turned into the Motor Show.

Last of all, after the speeches, Rio de Janeiro's preview of 2016 and the extinguishing of Thomas Heatherwick's cauldron, came the surviving members of the Who, closing the Games with the adrenaline shot of My Generation, although the real anthem of London 2012 had undoubtedly been David Bowie's Heroes.

There was no message, and nor did there need to be, except "Wasn't it fun?" and "Aren't we great?" But Damien Hirst's tie-dyed rendering of the union flag, filling the ground on which the world's finest athletes had run and jumped and thrown their way into history, reminded those suspicious of raucous patriotism of how great the union flag suddenly looked when it was ripped out of the hands of the extreme right and wrapped around the shoulders of Jessica Ennis or Mo Farah.

The Pet Shop Boys get down, as it were. (Photo: Julien Behal/PA)

Posted by JD Hull at 05:12 AM | Comments (0)