Legal services downturn: survival or progress?
Graeme Johnston / 20 October 2023 In periods of reduced demand for transactional and financing work, the playbook for major law firms typically includes two main strategies reducing cost (mainly staffing) and ‘managing the equity’ (reducing partner numbers, or the share of some partners) targeting more of the kind of legal work that arises from […]
Ten conversations about LPM and LPI in UK law firms
Graeme Johnston / 8 September 2023 This article summarises ten one-to-one conversations I had in August and early September 2023 with people involved in LPM (legal project management), LPI (legal process improvement) or both in the context of UK law firms. The conversations were an attempt to understand and share, in a qualitative way, how […]
Legal costs in complex work: action and reaction
Graeme Johnston / 5 September 2023 This article discusses the development of ways to bill for complex, unpredictable work – in particular, hourly billing some of the ‘billing countermeasures’ (a personal usage, inspired by ECM) which have developed in response to concerns about the over-reach of hourly billing some emerging possibilities and a couple of possible […]
Three approaches to legal work
Graeme Johnston / 28 August 2023 Two established ways to approach legal work are: 1) Focus on substance: concepts, words, evidence, stories, negotiations, documents, solutions. That’s where the magic is. ‘Process’ is mainly about finding time to focus on them. It takes as long as it takes. Ideally you’ll manage to find ways to limit […]
The sacred and the mundane
Graeme Johnston / 10 August 2023 A conversation I’ve been having for many years now, but which always comes back, is the distinction in legal work between The complicated and the complex The standard and the bespoke The template and the matter The planned and the reactive The commodity and the unique The routine and […]
Minimum viable process in English and Scottish litigation
Graeme Johnston / 31 July 2023 [T]he key problems facing civil justice today are cost, delay and complexity, these three are interrelated and stem from the uncontrolled nature of the litigation process. Lord Woolf (English judge), Access to Justice: Interim Report (1995) (England and Wales) Litigants do not care all that much about stones being […]
A simple taxonomy of legal fee types
Graeme Johnston / 20 July 2023* * Updated on 24 July 2023 to deal with paras 1.2, 1.3 and 1.4 in a different way and to split out some content into para 4.2 This article proposes a draft simple, practical, neutral taxonomy for fee structures used in legal work. ‘Draft’: it’s work in progress and […]
Different dreams: a US survey on business law services
Graeme Johnston / 18 July 2023 In my article a couple of days ago, I mentioned a 2022 survey of US law firms and corporates by the Blickstein group. I think the contents are sufficiently interesting to warrant a further article. I won’t go through the whole thing, but will simply highlight the things that […]
Legal work: times never a-Changin’?
Graeme Johnston / 16 July 2023 Olas de gordo aceite son mis días:pasan tan lentamente que no pasan.Los hombres a mi lado miran, pasan,lentos también como mis lentos días. El futuro está ahí, lleno de días,pero es un duro charco: por él pasanlentas sombras de sueños cuando pasan…Nocturnos cielos cúbrenme los días. Aprendí, me enseñaron […]
A fourth pillar for legal work: process and pricing
Graeme Johnston / 10 July 2023 The argument of this article is that people doing legal work typically utilise three highly-developed technology pillars but that a fourth needs more attention if real progress is to be made with the crucial challenges of improving both quality and pricing. I freely admit that this is not […]