I was thrilled skinny to have won an award at the Legally Flushed Awards 2024 on 5 June 2024.  To be recognised by an organisation within the very profession which I serve is wonderful.

Thank you to Joy Ogeh-Hutfield for nominating me and thank you to Imogen Robins who is the brainchild behind Legally Flushed. Pictured.  The gentleman in the photo is Judge Nigel Lickley KC.

Its raison d’être is to enhance the lives of women in the legal profession. 

Would you believe that clumsy clot here managed to trip on the leg of a chair as I was walking up to the stage and twisted my ankle.  So, I needed help getting up on the stage!

I do hope no-one took a photo of that!

Had I been speaking that evening, I would have turned the incident into an icebreaker and immediately got the audience on side.

Back to Imogen who is one of the warmest, most humble people I know in the legal profession with a heart as big as a house and she’s a brilliant speaker too (and I don’t say that lightly as I’m not easily impressed!)

How lucky her clients are to have her.

Law firms: How much money is being lost in your firm due to unpaid bills?

Do you even know or care?

You’re not getting paid at all and no-one seems to be that bothered.

Whose responsibility is it to recover monies owing?

 
🟣Credit control?

 
🟣The relevant fee-earner?

 
🟣The Head of Department?

🟣Someone else?

🟣No-one?

Or are you all just passing the buck?

Look, I don’t want to be mean but if you really wanted to, you could eradicate bad debt altogether. It’s very simple.

 
Just follow the second R of my TRUE WORTH methodology which stands for:

💥Receive Remuneration – remittance at speed is just what you need.💥

How?

💧Get money on account – always!

💧Bill fortnightly or monthly. No excuses.

Until a job is paid, it is not complete.

AND make sure you get paid before the job is completed.

If your lawyers are not doing the above, you need me!

This is the last in the series of 8 leaks I see in law firms. Tomorrow, there will be a rather lovely post showing how the value of my work goes on months and months after training has been delivered.

Law Firms: Stop the madness – every year, law firms up and down the country are losing hundreds of thousands of pounds because their lawyers are discounting final bills.

 
Even if it’s only £10,000 per fee earner and you only have 10 fee-earners, that’s £100,000 pure profit, isn’t it?

 
And if you have 100 fee-earners, that’s a cool million.

Gone, never to be seen when it could have been yours.

Imagine that another million on your bottom line would do for your firm.

What could you do with that?

There are many behaviours which cause them to be losing money as you can see in the previous 6 posts about leaks.

🟣Do you have any idea how much they are discounting? Work out your own figure if you can. Make sure that you’re sitting down, though.

Are you happy with that? Surely the answer must be a resounding no!

🟣When they are discounting?

🟣How frequently they are discounting?

🟣And why they are discounting?

The question I am particularly interested in is WHY they are discounting.

Let me tell you a story about a client I worked with. He is a Senior Partner in a law firm.

💧His discounting habit was to knock £200 to £300 off every hourly rate paid invoice.

💧No discussion with the client.

💧No rationale behind it. Purely a knee-jerk, emotional reaction.

💧We worked out that he was probably losing around £16,000 a year just from this one behaviour.

💥I helped him to understand the value of the work he was doing for his clients.

💥I helped him to uncover the reasons why he was discounting.

 
💥I changed his perception.

💥He stopped discounting.

And I can achieve these sorts of results (and more) in my group training and coaching programmes too.

If you’re scratching your heads wondering how on earth you can solve this problem, then it’s simple, just get in touch with me.

Law firms: How much WIP is on the clock at any one time and how long is it outstanding for?

The answers to these questions will determine the following:

🟣the state of your cash flow

🟣whether you get paid at all

🟣potentially increased discounting

🟣the firm’s stability

🟣how many complaints you receive

🟣the state of your stress levels

In my book, whatever your answers are, it’s too much and too long.

So why do lawyers NOT bill on time?

🧿because they don’t even think of it! Really? Yes really.

🧿because they’re too busy! Yep, I hear this one. It’s ridiculous.

🧿because they’re too scared. Because they haven’t billed regularly and they racked up a shed load of money, they’re worried what the client will say, so they don’t bill.

What’s the solution?

💧Get money on account – always!

💧Bill fortnightly or monthly. No excuses.

Until a job is billed, it’s not complete.

Under no circumstances, let the bills mount up.

If you’re not doing the above, you need me!

Law firms: Look I’m not saying you should never do anything for free, I’m just saying, you shouldn’t make an unconscious habit of it, otherwise you are throwing money away unnecessarily and making a rod for your own back.

When you work for free, the client doesn’t really value it, because they may not even notice it or if they do, they don’t consider its true value.

If they are a regular client, it then just becomes the norm and will be expected.

A habit is created which is very hard to break without outside, professional support.

NB: I am not saying never do anything for free. There may be occasions when this is warranted. However, it should be done in a way, so as not to be taken for granted.
Here’s my suggested approach.

A client asks for something extra, and you know it will take very little time to do it. They are a valued client and you’re happy to do it without charging. You say:

Normally, I would charge for this but as you are such a valued client, I am happy to do it for you on this occasion without charge.

However, can we just explore the value to you of me doing this?

That way, the client is very clear that

🟣 they are important

🟣 you don’t make a habit of doing stuff for free and

 
🟣 they understand the value of the extra work you are doing.

This is very different from an automatic habit of saying yes without any discussion. The former is born out of fear and the latter comes from a place of confidence.

Let me help you help your lawyers renounce working for free. 

Law Firms: Do you know that this is happening in your firm? I bet you do.

Scope creep happens because the scope changes (no shit Sherlock) and all too often, it’s not managed correctly so money is lost. It’s all too easy.

So why don’t lawyers manage this correctly? Probably one of four reasons:

🧿Because they don’t make it clear at the beginning of the project what happens if the scope changes.

🧿They don’t realise it has happened until it is too late, so they are then too embarrassed to go back to the client and talk about additional fees.

🧿If they do realise it, they don’t know what to say to the client.

🧿They lack confidence in having to talk about money in general which is a big part of why they don’t handle it properly in the first place.

So, what’s the solution?

🟣Teach them what to say, how to say it and when to say it.

🟣 Give them the confidence to do this, rather than listen to their wayward monkey mind.

🟣Sell them the benefits of doing this versus the pain of not doing it.

That is what I do.

Look out for leak 5 next week.

Law firms:  Do you know that this is happening and how much it’s costing you?

If your answer is yes, then that’s positive as without awareness, you cannot do anything about it.

However, if the answer is no, then that is very concerning.

I don’t really like being the bearer of bad news, but I have to say that in my conversations with law firm leaders over the last few years, I have discovered that this is a really common problem.

This means it is very likely taking place in your firm too, whether you know it or not!

Why do lawyers do this?

It really boils down to just a few things, yet they have a massive impact on your bottom line.:

🧿not being confident in having those fee discussions with clients

🧿don’t know what to say

🧿don’t understand their value

🧿fear-based thinking

🧿a habit

Even if you have the most up-to-date technology, this will not solve the problem.  I’m not saying don’t have technology; it’s vital. 

I’m just saying that it can’t make your lawyers do something they don’t feel confident doing.

What will you do then to solve this problem?

Will you just tell them to stop discounting?

That may work, but I doubt it.

Or will you give them training as to how to stop doing it?

I do hope it’s the latter.  If so, do get in touch.

Law firms:  If your lawyers are not recording all their time, how do you know if the work they are doing is profitable?

You don’t!

Providing you have a decent case management system, then you would think life would be sweet.

But no.

The biggest problem is not that lawyers forget to time-record, the biggest problem is what is going on in their heads. 

How they think and what they say to themselves impacts on whether they record all their time on a job.

And it’s not rational.

This is what I hear all the time:

“I shouldn’t have taken all that time to do the work, so I’m not going to record all the time, and so they don’t.”

Whether it’s a trainee or someone with 20 years’ PQE or more, I’ve heard it.

In fact, I remember a barrister working within a law firm who had 20 years’ experience saying that very thing in a workshop.  I.e. that she was taking too long and comparing herself with some imaginary barristers with the same number of years call as her and coming off badly.

It's totally irrational but very commonplace and is going on in your firm too – guaranteed.

You probably already know this yet haven’t solved the problem.

You must be able to get your lawyers to understand that recording all their time is vital for the business and they won’t be chastised for taking too long.

 You must appeal to their rational mind and manage their fears.  If you haven’t succeeded yet, may I suggest you get in touch.

This is particularly prevalent when lawyers are estimating for a fixed fee and happens for several reasons:

🟣They are very busy and don’t spend enough time considering how long it will take.  So, it might be a lick of the finger and stick it in the air sort of approach.  This is haphazard and may prove to be inaccurate.

🟣 It’s based on a job they did for another client which is similar but that was 2 years ago, but they still quote the same.  It probably wasn’t accurate then, so it won’t be 2 years later.

🟣Human beings naturally under-estimate how long something will take, regardless of whether it relates to cost.

🟣They are not confident talking about costs with clients and so the tendency is to state a lower fee, as they feel more comfortable doing that.  This means that potentially there is double under-estimating going on.

🟣They are not clear with the client what the boundaries of that fixed fee are.  The client is then at liberty to contact them constantly because it won’t cost them anymore.

🟣I will address scope creep as a separate post.

So, what’s the answer then?

🟣Don’t rush estimating.

🟣Discuss with an impartial colleague.

🟣Become aware of their own tendency to under-estimate.

🟣As a firm, get external training to help eliminate these leaks.

Even if you’ve had a client for a very long time, can you honestly guarantee 100% that they will pay if you bill after doing the work?

You can bet your bottom dollar that if they have a money problem, they will put themselves before you, and that’s a fact.

And it’s not just good enough to get money on account at the beginning, it must be topped up regularly, so the firm is never in a position where work has been done and there is money owing.

I recently heard one firm who was stung for a very large amount of money - a quarter of a million to be precise -which is not only crippling financially but emotionally too.

Decide as a firm that getting money on account is your standard procedure and make sure all relevant client-facing staff know this.