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A Message From Amy Larson, Thomson Reuters

Survival of the Most Adaptable: Why Law Firms Need to Change

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Running a small law firm is an exercise in contrasts. To successfully strategize a legal matter you must rigorously adhere to precedent. However, to successfully manage your legal practice you must be willing to depart from it.

Consider the 2018 Report on the State of the Legal Market by The Center for the Study of the Legal Profession at Georgetown University Law Center and Thomson Reuters Legal Executive Institute. It states that “firms are unlikely to achieve future success using traditional strategies and structures.”

Or, simply put, you need to be changing how you run your practice if you want to be set up for future success.

The report details the issues that point to this conclusion, which include:

  • Seven years of flat demand across all law firms – before 2008, the legal market grew 4 to 6% annually.

  • Gradually decreasing productivity – lawyers work 156 fewer billable hours annually than the beginning of 2007.

Regardless of several years of growth for the rest of the economy, it seems as if the Great Recession never really ended for law firms. That’s probably because law firms still cling to the old way of doing things, even though it is becoming increasingly painful. Take the Thomson Reuters U.S. State of Small Law Firms Report. Year after year it reports the most pressing challenges for small law firms relate to running their business, specifically:

  • Finding new business
  • Spending too much time on administrative tasks
  • Wanting more control over costs and expenses
  • Clients demanding more for less

Yet, on average, only about one fourth of firms are making changes to respond. That’s probably because of the limitations that come with using traditional strategies and structures, which are more time consuming. However, moving in a new direction isn’t as complicated as you think. Now is the time to make the changes that will help you manage your practice as effectively as you manage your legal matters. It only takes a minute to find out the next steps to make it happen – find out how in this white paper: How to Run a Successful Small Law Firm.

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